betajames

The Myth of Wikipedia Democracy
'The Wikipedia elites may be partly to blame for the site's diminishing participation. In a survey conducted this year, nearly a quarter of respondents who declined to contribute to Wikipedia said they were "afraid of making a mistake and getting 'in trouble' for it," among other reasons.'

Facebook now has 350m users - and there's no point in advertising to them
"Facebook is the most glaring example of an unsolved puzzle: how to convert social networking into a sustainable business."

How our brains build social worlds
"During any kind of social interaction people unconsciously imitate each other, or else show the appropriate complementary action and reaction. When this happens, the parts of the brain that unconsciously respond to the actions of others create a form of resonance."

Philip K. Dick's Defense of Video Games
"Philip K. Dick’s fiction is a defense of the validity of video games because despite the fact that they are not real, his stories argue that there is still something valid in the artificial."

Will e-books spell the end of great writing?
"How much have our perceptions of reading and writing changed now that you can craft a novel on a laptop and scroll through it on a Nintendo games console? This Christmas could be the moment when our idea of curling up with a fat novel are transformed for ever."

With pecha kucha presentations complete in 252 and 298, it is time to reflect on how they all went down. For the most part, I was impressed with what students put together. As expected, there were some technical difficulties, but nothing that was too damaging to any one presentation. Many utilized images and phrases to their advantage, capturing not only the spirit of pecha kucha but also providing better explanation of their ideas. I was also better able to see how these creative and critical topics of interest mattered to students. Whether working from a script, notes or memory, the importance of their projects was often quite clear. "This means something to me," said many of the presentations, "and here's why." Of course, there were a few that showed a lack of practice, preparation and/or respect for pecha kucha, but even these showed deeper concern and interest in particular topics. I have even greater anticipation now for the drafts of their projects due Week 13.

Despite the hiccups encountered, the most recent 513 session represented a return to form. Thanks in large part to the last two student facilitations, both of which were presentation-heavy but otherwise handled well, there was again some real engagement with issues concerning online identity and the technologies utilized to foster it. Cynicism and skepticism were present in the comments of certain students, but not without foundation. The Internet can be an overwhelming, if not scary, place, and it has the potential to become even more so as it and the surrounding user-cultures/societies continue to change. This is not to imply a doom-and-gloom future, though, as I think just as much potential exists for creative, positive utilization, which is something I hope students know and understand as a result of taking this course. Perhaps their pecha kucha presentations in two weeks will reveal this...

Finding more in 'most': Scientific study of an everyday word
"...the exact meaning of plain language isn't always easy to find. Even simple words like 'most' and 'least' can vary greatly in definition and interpretation, and are difficult to put into precise numbers."

Local Bookstores, Social Hubs and Mutualization
"Like record stores and video rental places, physical bookstores simply can’t compete for breadth of offering and, also like the social changes around music and moving images, the internet is strengthening rather than weakening the ability of niches and sub-cultures to see themselves reflected in long-form writing."

The Videogame Debate: Bad for Behaviour, Good for Learning?
"...research suggests that appropriate use of recreational and educational video games can facilitate learning and the development of important skills. "

Half man, half machine: The cyborgs are coming
"Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed ultra slim and flexible electronic circuits on silk that dissolve once implanted inside the body leaving the electronics behind to do their thing."

The I's Don't Have it
"The Internet makes everybody a linguist, the same way it turns us all into medical diagnosticians and tracers of lost persons. Counting words has become a favorite way to track a trend, uncover a hidden meaning or cut a long text down to size."

Conference Humiliation: They're Tweeting Behind Your Back
"The microblogging service Twitter is changing a staple of academic life from a one-way presentation into a real-time conversation. Flub a talk badly enough and you now risk mobilizing a scrum of digital-spitball-slinging snark-masters."

Can Science Fight Media Disinformation?
"In the 24/7 Internet world, people make lots of claims. Science provides a guide for testing them."

Your Brain On Books
"...the human brain is a much more constrained organ than we think, and that it places strong limits on the range of possible cultural forms. Essentially, the brain did not evolve for culture, but culture evolved to be learnable by the brain."

Games 'permit' virtual war crimes
"Video games depicting war have come under fire for flouting laws governing armed conflicts."

(Skilled) Self-Presentation
"Presenting knowledge or arguments effectively involves putting together a lot of different sub-skills on the fly."

Teaching With Twitter: Not For The Faint Of Heart
"...asking 250 students to post questions on Twitter during a class doesn't risk life or limb. But it can cause ego damage if the mob of students...gets disorderly online."

The near end-of-the-semester doldrums dissipated with the introduction of the final project in ENG 252 and ENG 298. Both courses appear to have some late life left in them as a result. Project requirements ask for students to focus on an issue of their interest within the focus of the course, writing studies and game studies respectively. Beyond posting initial proposals to their blogs for peer and instructor approval, the final project asks for pecha kucha presentations prior to a first project draft. There was some initial resistance to this aspect alone, with students expressing surprise at the strict requirements and others suggesting slight variations of the established rules. For perhaps the first time in the semester, I was immovable to any suggested changes, which some interpreted as anger or frustration. Class sessions focused on the discussion of final projects proved to be some of the most energetic and interesting of the semester, but not just because I kept saying no to possible variants of pecha kucha. The level of engagement missing from previous weeks made a triumphant return, I think, as students thought aloud and online about possibilities. Freed of blogging and reading about predetermined subjects, which I intended as preparation for final projects, many students showed great willingness to move forward in creative and critical ways.

For as glad as I am about students taking to their final projects with some degree of gusto, I'm concerned about the timing of such work. It is normal for most all college-level courses to conclude with some larger project, but the effect of this often means overwhelming students more than usual. While we might justify such work by saying that which does not kill us makes us stronger, I want to entertain the idea of having students complete final projects in future courses two weeks before the semester's end. In earlier posts, I observed how the constant grind of blogging and reading didn't sharpen students' resolve but dulled their senses. Perhaps an earlier introduction of the final project could work as a preemptive attack then. Having a calmer last two weeks, too, would also leave students more time to reflect on the course and their performance as well as to complete their final projects in other courses.

Such a change would be most welcome in 513, given reactions to my suggestion of taking a figurative, collective deep breath after the completion of midterm essays. While I think some viewed this as another step toward full dissolution, I'm hopeful that the next session will be more of a return to proper form. Right now, I think the course suffered and, to a certain degree, continues to suffer under the weight of great expectations, both mine and those of certain students, and also how some of those expectations remained unspoken for the majority of the semester. As observed in previous reflective posts, the level of prescription could, and perhaps should, have been higher from the beginning. The majority of the class still appears to be learning and getting something helpful out of the course. At this point, the lone apparent sensible thing for any of us to do is just ride out the avalanche.

Twittering the Student Experience
"An experiment into the use of social media at the University of Leicester has shown that Twitter, an online blogging service, can act as an exceptional communication tool within academia."

Ghost in the Shell: Why Our Brains Will Never Live In The Matrix
"To recreate a brain/mind in silico, whether a cyborg body or a computer frame, is equally problematic. Large portions of the brain process and interpret signals from the body and the environment. Without a body, these functions will flail around and can result in the brain... well, losing its mind."

Educator Use Of Social Networking Lags Behind Interest
"The final results of an extensive nationwide survey on educator use of social networking were published last week, and it appears that more than six educators in ten are at least interested enough in the growing medium to register on one or more sites."

Choose Your Own Freshman Comp
"Freshmen are required to take this six-credit seminar, which is organized around a specific topic. Students spend three hours with a full-time faculty member focusing on the specific topic and then another three hours with a writing instructor -- typically a graduate English or writing student -- who uses content from the topic section to teach college composition."

How Not to Write Fiction: Style and Evidence in Qualitative Research Studies
"I had begun to read research studies, and I found that good research studies – the ones that were solidly grounded, well written, and intellectually curious – were more interesting than fiction to me."

Venezuela bans violent video games: a first-person guest essay
"The law is just the latest nail in the coffin of Venezuelans' right of dissent and broader civil liberties. A pitiful attempt to blame video games and toys for the widespread lethal violence in our country, instead of a defective judicial structure, systemic corruption and governmental (purposeful?) ineptitude to deal with the problem."

The truth about videogame addiction
"Tabloid headlines gorge themselves on this kind of stuff. These tragic events are just a handful of instances among millions, perhaps billions, of gaming lives, but they're easily exploded out of all proportion by the hype-seeking missile of cheap journalism."

The History of the Internet in a Nutshell
"...considering how much of an influence the Internet has in our daily lives, how many of us actually know the story of how it got its start?"

Course frustrations culminated in an abrupt assignment adjustment this past week. The decision to eliminate the fourth and final observation from ENG 252 came from suffering through the third round of submissions, both oral and written, which were enough evidence that the once interesting idea had gone stale. In future incarnations, there will be two total observations required, one oral and one written, in which students analyze and compare representations of writers and writing, composers and composing. Asking for four such observations from students this semester was just too much for all parties involved.

In contrast, the last student-led reading group session went well. Despite the "boring" and "painful" focus on forms of professional writing, the ensuing whole-class discussion was enlightening and productive. Student discussion leaders offered some very good observations on the importance of putting together cover letters, personal statements and resumes. What I appreciated most was the introduction of a writing activity asking students to compose resumes for cartoon characters. I found this to be an appealing assignment for many reasons. Students in my Winter 2010 technical writing course shouldn't be surprised to encounter some variation of this.

Discussion in ENG 298 was better this week, even though it remained apparent that whole-class discussion has lost significant momentum. The same six or seven students contributed to the conversation; the other two-thirds sat in relative silence with some variance in terms of attention and engagement. As mentioned in my previous reflective post, I am quite glad to be moving forward with the final game studies project because it changes the entire point of holding class. Course goals will soon be even more common and students will need to rely as much on each other as they might me for critical feedback on their work.

I had some expectation that my lunch meeting with three ENG 298 students might turn to their thoughts on the final game studies project, but we ended up just talking about videogames. I was surprised and energized by their questions about the relationship between learning and videogames, about my own starry-eyed aspirations for changing the very structure of college-level courses to better fit what's most successful in RPGs like Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and FPSs like Left 4 Dead. Perhaps that will be a course I guide sometime in the future.

For now, though, I'm skeptical and worried about ENG 513. It appears on the edge of full dissolution. I realize this is my fault; I've mentioned reasons in previous posts. The first few facilitations were of such high quality; perhaps it was naive of me to assume such a level could be maintained. It's almost as if the course began as a modest snowball that took on greater mass each week until it became what it is now. As facilitations became less cohesive endeavors, marked by unexpected comments and uncomfortable silences, an avalanche took shape, and now I wonder if I should try in vain to slow the descent or just ride it out to the end and then climb up and out. This is not to say that some aspects of the past few facilitations haven't been helpful, but these parts seem fewer and farther between.

Then again, these observations might be little more than evidence of how I'm being too hard on myself, the course, the students. The melodramatic nature of my words here are designed to draw attention, of course, but there is a strong element of truth as well. As always, I welcome comments that further this conversation.