WYMHM: There are no new excuses for plagiarism...or are there?

The Internet no doubt makes it easier to plagiarize—there's simply greater access to more material. But it also makes it much easier to catch plagiarists. Ironically enough, Posner's apology seems to echo (in spirit, not word) former New Republic reporter Ruth Shalit's excuses back in 1995 (the Cro-Magnon period of journalism, electronically speaking).
via newsweek.com

Although Ms. Hegemann has apologized for not being more open about her sources, she has also defended herself as the representative of a different generation, one that freely mixes and matches from the whirring flood of information across new and old media, to create something new. “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity,” said Ms. Hegemann in a statement released by her publisher after the scandal broke.
via nytimes.com

WYMHM: Which came first, Google or the incompetent user?

It was like we had unearthed a long-lost city, the Atlantis of the Internet. But instead of treasures and gold we'd found a steady deluge of confused and frustrated users who had tried everything they knew to do and just wanted to log in to Facebook, damnit. But how had this happened? It certainly wasn't that thousands and thousands of people had just started searching for "facebook login" yesterday. This stream of people has been there all along and something is broken.

via readwriteweb.com

WYMHM: Harness potential of social media to help students become "efficient knowledge workers"

With students using channels such as Twitter or discussion forums in their normal life, it "only makes sense" for educators to speak to them through channels they are familiar with and proficient at using, said Netzley.

"Sometimes, as educators, we make the assumption that ideas must come first from us, the faculty member. We dislike anything that draws attention away from us as we deliver what we think students need to know," he said. "Frankly, I feel we sometimes over-elevate the importance of faculty in the complex process of student learning."

"Learning happens everywhere," he said. He added that the use of Twitter or discussion forums such as FriendFeed in the class opens up opportunities for students to participate and play an active role in their learning.

via zdnetasia.com

WYMHM: "the odds of surviving a 6-mile plummet are extra­ordinarily slim, but at this point you’ve got nothing to lose"

There are two ways to fall out of a plane. The first is to free-fall, or drop from the sky with absolutely no protection or means of slowing your descent. The second is to become a wreckage rider, a term coined by Massachusetts-based amateur historian Jim Hamilton, who developed the Free Fall Research Page—an online database of nearly every imaginable human plummet. That classification means you have the advantage of being attached to a chunk of the plane. In 1972, Serbian flight attendant Vesna Vulovic was traveling in a DC-9 over Czechoslovakia when it blew up. She fell 33,000 feet, wedged between her seat, a catering trolley, a section of aircraft and the body of another crew member, landing on—then sliding down—a snowy incline before coming to a stop, severely injured but alive.
via popularmechanics.com

WYMHM: The influence of social media on identity, fun & global crises

the identity of an individual is constructed, maintained and developed simultaneously in several socially orientated environments. The representation of one’s identity depends on the particular environment and its functional dimensions since different environments serve different purposes as social realities. An individual’s existence and identity becomes visible through observable and accessible linear or nonlinear narratives that exists as fragments or concisely constructed storylines depending on the given environment (e.g. Google search results, Twitter status stream, Facebook activity history, photo blog). The context of a narrative affects its meanings and possible interpretations.
via spacecollective.org

The main thing to note here is that, unlike many of the Silicon Valley and Alley Twitterati, who take themselves and their tweets oh-so-seriously, this crew is having fun. The tweets are meant to be funny, and the funniest and most outrageous of them will wind up getting retweeted. Yet despite the fun and the humor, the flow of the hashtag is uniquely Twitter-like in that it mixes people who already know each other with strangers who are interested in the same topic -- or joke, as the case may be.

via adage.com

are social networking tools, such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and ad hoc sites set up in the wake of a major event really useful tools or are they simply riding a publicity wave?

According to Connie White, of the Institute for Emergency Preparedness at Jacksonville State University in Alabama and colleagues there and at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, online social networks permit the establishment of global relationships that are domain related or can be based on some need shared by the participants.

via sciencedaily.com

WYMHM: On fatherhood in videogames & the importance of achievements

video games are still not the great portrayers of believable romance, less accomplished at that feat than chick flicks and breath mint commercials. There may be some successes with romantic love in games, but not as many as there are attempts at depicting it.

Being a dad, however, is becoming nearly as popular in video games as health bars and shotguns and, to my playing sensibilities, nearly as successful.

via kotaku.com

Achievements offer a compact way for players to communicate with one another about their accomplishments. They serve an evidentiary function, affirming particular feats and prowess. This service value is similar to social value, but offers more than just status: it gives players a way of verifying their in-game acts during social encounters.
via gamasutra.com

WYMHM: A parent comes around, military consoles & more on games as art

Video game: two words that have always been evil in my mind. And I have reminded my kids over and over how they shouldn't play them too much - they aren't good for you, they'll rot your brain - the list of horrible things goes on and on. Now, I was opening one for myself.

via winonadailynews.com

Right now, every military command post and every training center is packed with PCs. In the future, many of those machines might be replaced with game consoles — if the armed forces can ever work out their disagreements with the console-makers.

via wired.com

It’s good that there is some art that has a particular tone that’s prickly and intellectual, and then there is pop culture that’s embracing convention and is really accessible, but still capable of being profound. The Wu-Tang clan can be profound. To me that’s where games exist. That’s why Doom doesn’t belong in the museum. It’s heavy metal. It’s rock and roll. You don’t put rock and roll in a museum, that’s just silly. We like going to the museum and we like rock and roll, we have both of those things in our lives. We don’t think of one as higher than the other.
via edge-online.com

Two-Year Review: Research Summary (Draft)

My most recent scholarly activities involve the submission of a chapter proposal for Rhetoric/Composition/Play, an edited collection designed for academics new and well-versed about videogames and consisting of essays assessing, theorizing and contextualizing the medium. As editors Matthew S.S. Johnson, Rebecca Colby and Richard Colby appeared to be asking for my dissertation word-for-word, I revisited the manuscript to answer, culling some of the strongest pieces for a chapter proposal entitled "Techne as Acquisition of Literacy in Composition and Videogames." An exercise in reflection and recognition of past and present perspectives of the relationship between technology and society, my chapter submission illustrates and emphasizes the importance of exploring connections between techne, phronesis, episteme and ethos as a means of understanding composition pedagogy and videogames. All this happens in the service of making more obvious the aesthetic and technical elements of the communicative technologies that students use to make meaning.

I think it important to mention that putting together this particular document served as something of a wake-up call. That the editors of this intended essay collection put together such a call for papers is further proof that the focus of my dissertation is an increasing area of interest for many. It is with this in mind that I seek to revise and update my manuscript during the summer of 2010 with the intent to publish in full. I do, however, have some other scholarly work to attend to first.

In May 2009, I submitted a chapter proposal for Network Apocalypse: Visions of the End in an Age of Internet Media, an edited collection focusing on how communicative and entertainment technologies influence belief systems about the end of human history. I proposed a chapter for inclusion concerning Fallout 3, a videogame that offers a provocative perspective on a particular post-apocalyptic scenario and reveals the sustained prevalence of war. Though on a scale more personal than political, more intimate than global, war in this videogame focuses on simple survival and associated moral choices. With individual morality and survival at the forefront, the game provides players a vehicle for exploring the nature of humanity through the powerful cultural lens of a prophetic apocalyptic version that presents itself as secular but pushes its players to engage questions often associated with the religious.

Given the focus of the collection as well as the intent behind my initial proposal, I was rather confident about acceptance, which proved true months later. In addition to service and teaching responsibilities, I spent much of the Fall 2009 semester writing the chapter, entitled "'We All Stray From Our Paths Sometimes': Morality and Survival in Fallout 3." A substantial portion of my dissertation focused on videogames, specifically how they relate to composition pedagogy, and I think my chapter for this collection is not only an extension of that work but also representative of the interdisciplinary possibilities offered in videogame studies. Having received revision suggestions from editor Rob Howard on February 10, 2010, I look forward to revisiting my chapter in light of his commentary.

Also in May 2009, I worked with fellow English department faculty Dr. Jacob Blumner and Dr. Stephanie Roach in crafting a proposal for the 2010 Conference on College Composition and Communication Annual Convention. With an aim to examine some of the important features of field knowledge and how to bring those important rhetorical values to bear in the classroom, Jacob, Stephanie and I put together individual proposals revealing of particular strengths. Inspired by an assignment sequence prevalent in first-year and advanced composition taught at UM-Flint, I endeavored to provide perspective on the commitment to 21st century literacies when having students engage with ideas in texts. This proposal complemented Dr. Blumner's proposed talk about the addition of speaking services to a writing center as well as Dr. Roach's planned presentation on addressing of plagiarism as a rhetorical problem.  While our collective proposal was ultimately rejected, I found the overall experience of working with colleagues to be pleasant and refreshing. Overall, it was a good opportunity to further develop professional relationships with two faculty members I admire and respect.

A still-current example of my professional development and creative work lies within The Scholarship of Teaching, which reprinted my chapter, "The Personal As Public," from The Computer Culture Reader, a collection of essays edited by Joseph Chaney, Judd Ruggill and Ken McAllister. I should note that while I listed it as "forthcoming" on my CV last year, the collection is now available from Cambridge Scholars Press. I produced this essay while completing doctoral work at Bowling Green State University, but I mention this particular publication because delays plagued the overall project, causing my biographical information to be out-of-date. At the request of Judd Ruggill, I provided an update and made sure to include my position as Assistant Professor of English at UM-Flint. So, rather than shining positive light on where I earned my doctorate, The Computer Culture Reader now illuminates our university. 

Because of my diverse research interests in composition, pedagogy, technology and videogames, it is essential to remain current. Offline methods include memberships to MLA and NCTE and reading their respective publications, PMLA and College Composition and Communication. I also subscribe to pertinent mailing lists, including WPA-L and TechRhet, and plan to attend the 2010 Conference on College Composition and Communication Annual Convention as well as Computers and Writing 2010: "Virtual Worlds" @ Purdue University. Where I feel most in research alignment and enlightenment, though, is online. 

In keeping active accounts on Delicious, Posterous, Scribd and Twitter, I not only make scholarly activities accessible and public, but I also follow those with similar interests and keep abreast of new developments in fields of particular interest. Interaction via these communicative technologies is somewhat akin to my WPA and TechRhet listserve subscriptions, but in ways more accessible, open and public. Through such social media tools, I show the kinds of academic work performed on a daily, weekly and monthly basis as well as the fruits of those labors. Functioning as a model of sound academic research online, Delicious, Posterous, Scribd and Twitter also work together as a performance of public intellectualism, though each has a specific use.

• I store all online information relevant to my interests on Delicious, a social bookmarking site that allows for the maintenance of a reverse-chronological record of online research. Through the application of tags like "pedagogy," "rhetoric" and "videogames" to relevant articles and other links, I'm able to keep track of the most recent developments in these areas of scholarship. 

• Posterous, a simplified blogging service, functions as a vehicle for working through ideas in a public format and recording the directions my research interests take. It is also in this space that I documented the drafting of my chapter for Network Apocalypse. 

• Scribd is an online repository for all I consider to be academic work, including assignments and syllabi for past and present courses as well as my dissertation and other essays approved for publication. Similar to Youtube in that anyone can post any text-based document, Scribd can also function as a kind of alternate curriculum vitae; this is how I use it, to provide tangible evidence of my academic output.

• Twitter, a social networking service, provides a way to announce as well as brainstorm new work. There's an implicit encouragement to Twitter in finding community with others; it also functions as a launching pad to the other online spaces mentioned here. Conversations via Twitter continue to have a direct influence on my future scholarship.

As a way to better illustrate scholarly activities related to the above online technologies, I offer the following anecdote: One of the many academics I follow on Twitter recently posted a link to an article about how the post-apocalyptic genre is similar to that of the Western. After reading the article, I bookmarked and tagged it via Delicious and discussed particulars of the article via Twitter. Inspired and intrigued, I later composed a new blog entry on Posterous about the article and the online discussion that followed. And I think it quite possible that entry will form part of a longer academic piece, one to be posted on Scribd with the approval of some future editor. Again, these are the kinds of scholarly activities in which I engage almost every day. I think it vital to remain informed of burgeoning ideas and the latest research on topics of importance and interest. These online communicative technologies help me do that. 

I maintain a strong presence online not only to provide a public document of my scholarly activities but to also maintain a network with interested colleagues at UM-FLint and across the nation. Such networking involves discussion of important issues within our respective fields of interest as well as the sharing of important and/or provocative links. The majority of what I share comes from one of the scores of academic blogs and online news outlets I peruse every day via Google Reader.

These online activities are also important academic work because, like my chapters in The Computer Culture Reader and Network Apocalypse, I put forth an identity representing UM-Flint as well as myself. How I present who I am and engage with others online says volumes about me, but it also reveals something about the university. In other words, I'm an online representative of the English department at the University of Michigan-Flint. I remain mindful of this in every online action I take. 

WYMHM: On the prevalence of conspiracy theories

I think we live in a more conspiracist period. There’s no question there are more of them, and they’re more global, and they take off more quickly. They’re also more complex and relate to virtual communities rather than real ones. I think it’s because of global interdependence. We live a global period, and there’s a huge temptation among people to believe there is a master plan, because otherwise the suggestion is we’re interdependent and the world is chaotic — and that’s a mindfuck.

via salon.com