Gaming literacy is an emergent literacy of the types of media literacy that can support teaching objectives from Pre-school to college. The main obstacles for teachers is whether games would “cover mandated content areas; the lack of infrastructure for the new technologies; and their unfamiliarity with games, and no easy route to game competence.” (Klopfer, Osterweil & Salen, 2009, p.2).
James Paul Gee (2007) Gee (2007) argues that gaming has relevance as a legitimate tool for the future in education and that it is a necessity to recognize the impact that it may have in the classroom. Gee (2003) states that from his perspective, literacy requires: “ability to decode, ability to understand meanings with respect to a semiotic domain and ability to produce meanings with respect to a semiotic domain.” (p. 33). He further defines semiotic domains “as any set of practices that recruits one or more modalities (e.g. oral or written languages, images, equations, symbols, sounds gestures, artifacts) to communicate distinctive types of meanings”(p.33). This description is the essence of learning and what the website provides.
Harushimana (2008) states that gaming literacy is an ”alternative conduit to school literacies (p.39); while Peppler & Kafai, 2007) see it as an integral part of a participatory culture. Zimmerman (2009), defines gaming literacy as a “cluster of practices” that “stand for a new set of cognitive, creative, and social skills,” all of which he envisions to be a new paradigm for what it means in the 21st Century to be literate ( p. 25). In order for teachers to utilize games in a classroom setting, they must understand games. Games can be further defined “as having the ability to explain, discuss, describe, frame, situate, interpret and/or position games,” (Zagal, 2008,, p. 34). Zagal (2008) argues that games should be examined as “cultural artifacts, in context-comparing games to other games and genres, in the context of the technological platform on which they are executed, and by deconstructing them and understanding their components-how they interact, and how they facilitate certain experiences in players”(p.34). According to van Zwieten (2012) the work of Zagal (2008) “is one of the few to explicitly deal primarily with how people (can be taught to) understand meanings with respect to video games” in the above four contexts (p.19). This is extremely important in instructing teachers in the use of video game technology in the classroom This framework acts as the foundation for the teachers to understand that video gaming is not just for fun, but to actually provide a valuable approach to education.
In video game literacy, there are three sub-literacies that form the theoretical framing of gaming literacy: functional, critical and rhetorical literacies. (van Zwieten (2012). In functional literacy, it refers to the actual tool that is used for the game, such as the ability to utilize the mouse or keys. This is a skill that is developed as a player gains more experience and is able to deal with problems confidently and strategically. Critical literacy deals with the understanding of “technology-as-artifact”(van Zweiten, 2012, p. 26). This pertains to the understanding of both cultural ideas and artifacts in the cultural contexts of which people use them., (e.g. computer) use. Rhetorical video games literacy is based on the ability to understand that persuasion that “permeates game design contexts both implicitly and explicitly” (Selber, 2008, p.33; Zimmerman, 2009,). In other words, the game should be able to persuade the player to action to feel in a manner in line with the context of the game (van Zwieten, 2012). If a teacher is able to gleam this information, then he or she is on the right path of understanding the basics of gaming literacy and ready to use it in a classroom as a means of teaching new skills or reinforcing existing skills to a greater level.