Uncharted Is a Video Game Series That Possibilities
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Writing has nothing to do with signifying. It task for teacher and learner as explorers is to has to do with surveying, mapping, even allow for realms that are yet to come. -(Deleuze & territorialization/deterritorialization/re- Guattari, 1987, p.5 ) territorialization as real life circumstances and experiences impede or open up Uncharted is a video game series that possibilities. For Drake, the video game follows the journey of a contemporary protagonist, the final assessment of his treasure hunter. In the game, the player as success is whether or not he retrieves the the avatar Nathan Drake travels to uncharted treasure. In teaching and learning, multiple islands in search of historical treasures. In treasures can be discovered along the way video gaming, game characters or avatars that are often undervalued by educators, allow players to interact with the digital treasures such as student observations, world; however, the term avatar can be more reflections, and newly formed connections broadly defined as a performable between the student and the larger network embodiment of self. The term avatar of the world. These treasures or avatars can (avatara or incarnation in Sanskrit) already be assessed in order to provoke and engage exists within the collective cultural learners in the process of creating their own consciousness. In fact, any manifestation of learning networks. Avatars as a performance an understanding, concept, or idea in a of self produce formative instances as visual, verbal, and/or tangible form and its fragments of understanding and summative performance is an avatar. In Uncharted, the measures as a big picture map of these player, traveling around the world as the instances over time (Naughty Dog, 2007; avatar Nathan Drake, charts a journey. The Britt, 2008; Coleman, 2011). charting performed by the player as Drake does not mimic the experience of following Networked Curriculum a predetermined path on a map as he or she In Uncharted, Drake has an travels across a literal landscape. Instead, the unmapped territory to explore. He can go in landscape is created through its charting. a variety of directions based on the This is cartography, a process in which each formative decisions he makes as he traverses choice made adds a new dimension to the the territory. For education, the concept of a map’s representation. The game Uncharted territory serves as a metaphor for creates a lens through which we as educators disciplinary ways of knowing. Instead of can examine the concept of education in placing the onus of assessment solely on the relation to maps, territories, cartographies, shoulders of the teacher, we can promote and avatars that both produce and can even forms of peer and self-assessment. These become the maps in question. measures of peer and self-assessment (Un)ChARTing poses both problems and become formative points along a charted possibilities for the explorer and educator. path. Rather than urging the creation of a linear Curriculum becomes the path curriculum that focuses on assessing a created between these charted points as preformed final outcome, this article individuals and groups traverse the territory. proposes the concept of (un)ChARTED Art educators such as Efland (1995), Keifer- cartography which moves beyond Boyd (1996), Carpenter and Taylor (2005; visualization of data into performance of the 2003), and Sweeny (2008; 2013) re-image data. Performance (not pre-formance) allows the linear curriculum through lattice, teacher and learner to learn together. The hypertext, and networked models of Sutherlin, M. (2014). (Un)ChARTED cartographies: Mapping Networked Avatars. Journal of Social Theory in 52 Art Education, (34) (S. Bey, Ed.). 50-61. curriculum structure. Networks, according to Sweeny (2013), consist of nodes, links, and hubs. Nodes are elements within the network that are distinct. Links are the connections between nodes, and hubs are nodes that have multiple links. Paul Baran’s (1964) version of complexity theory describes the architecture of networks in three separate ways: centralized, distributed, and decentralized Figure 1. Types of Network Architecture. Examples of Network Architecture from or scale-free. Centralized networks are Paul Baran's Model those networks clustered around a single In educational assessment, nodes node. In education, time and efficiency are serve as waypoints of formative contributing factors in the belief that the understanding within the learning network; curricular network should be centered the teacher, the student, and the student’s around the teacher. All information must peers as hubs can track both individual and pass through the teacher as a means of collective growth through a visualization of verification. The negative aspect of such a the network. Each node or hub can be system is that the students are vulnerable to magnified to reveal another network with experiencing complete failure. If the central further connections on each layer. This node (teacher) fails in the performance of model of the learning process requires a his or her job, the whole system can crash. A decentralized network architecture in which centralized network requires the teacher to new experiences of the individual link up at know every aspect of the concepts being various points to form hubs of understanding discussed and be capable of evaluating that can be both individual and collective. students’ understanding of those concepts When this model is applied to assessment, objectively. Distributed networks, however, the teacher serves as a guide for the connect all nodes together in a non- understanding of assessment practices. The hierarchical structure. They can continue to teacher, however, is not the sole evaluator function even if nodes are removed. If nodes for every measure of assessment. Alternate within a system fail, a greater number of routes and multiple hubs in the learning transfers are required before all information process can therefore be assessed as is received by the system. In a decentralized students, their peers, outside assessors, and network a few hubs distribute and evaluate the teacher chart the map/network. the information. Although not every node is connected to every other node, decentralized Cartography or scale free networks have two major Like Drake, educators and students advantages over centralized and distributed must chart their journey through the learning networks: 1) nodes are evenly distributed territory as a path between nodes. This is a and therefore allow for efficiency in the process of cartography. Cartography (carte transmission of information and 2) the or map and graphy or writing) allows us to network is able to withstand shock because write the map of the territory with its the system can continue to function changing or developing contours and regardless of the failure of one node (Baran, boundaries. This map is not the territory; 1964; Davis & Sumara, 2006; Sweeny, although it will resemble the territory, it is 2013). Sutherlin, M. (2014). (Un)ChARTED cartographies: Mapping Networked Avatars. Journal of Social Theory in 53 Art Education, (34) (S. Bey, Ed.). 50-61. incapable of representing all the territory territorialization as the creation of borders or (Korzybski, 1990). boundaries; deterritorialization as the Cartography in relation to students’ process by which one traverses those personal understanding and learning is about boundaries; and reterritorialization as the student construction of maps that are both process by which new boundaries or borders individual and collective and speak to the are created. illumination of the path rather than the The processes of territorialization, dictation of a path. One can use a map in deterritorialization, and re-territorialization order to speak about a map. If we think of are integral to complex systems. the map as language or creation, words or Cartography allows us to “write” the map of objects in and of themselves are not the our evolutionary territorialization in the sea thing, feeling, fact, situation, relationship, or and our deterritorialization in the movement learning that might or might not be taking to land. Our emergence from the sea through place. As such, words and objects are unable the formation of legs, development of to express every aspect of our virtual oxygen breathing lungs, and the growth of understanding of the world. We leave opposable thumbs becomes a form of re- footprints or evidence of our learning along territorialization of the body which enhances the way, but we are unable, in that moment, our survival in our new territory. This to interpret or understand it. Language and deterritorialization and re-territorialization is creation are, however, self-reflexive. We can not a hierarchical scenario; it is a talk about our words and creations. What performance that is context specific and this property of language and any other form dependent on the needs of the organism of re-presentation allows is the ability to (Petersen, 2005; Ling, 2009). create feedback loops. Through feedback loops, the map is self-reflexive and can be The Cartography of Rubrics revisited in order to create and discover new Metaphorically, rubric (from rubrica meaning. As we move across different Latin for “red earth”) is the land as material aspects of the terrain, adaptation must occur. for creation and communication through the Each node in a networked construction of processes of territorialization curriculum and assessment is a point of /deterritorialization/re-territorialization.