Chapter Four

In chapter four, Gee brings up an interesting four-step process which must be used to be successful in video games. The four steps are:
1. probe
2. hypothesize
3. reprobe
4. rethink
He says that in a video game, a player must look around the current environment (probing), guess what something might mean (hypothesize), see what effect they get with that guess (reprobing), and then either keep or change that hypothesis by what they have learned (rethinking). He uses this process in terms of video games, but then he shows how it can be used in learning as well. I found this to be very interesting because it is very true; whether we realize we are doing it or not. An example that comes to mind is when a young child is given three shaped blocks, a square shape, a triangle shape, and a rectangle shape. They also have a table in front of them with the three respective shapes cut out of it; the object being to fit the right blocks in the holes. The young child would go through those four steps: they'd look around at the shapes to see which one they were going to pick up, and maybe they would pick up the square (probing), then they would make a guess as to which hole it fit into, maybe they would try to put it in the triangle hole (hypothesize), then they would see how that guess worked out for them, seeing that it didn't fit (reprobing), and finally they would try a different hole, changing their original hypothesis (rethinking).
I found this to be very interesting because it is definitely something we all do, we just don't realize we are doing it. It is in our subconscious.