Facebook

So... here is my Facebook profile...

I'm not really sure what it "says" about me, other than that I don't really use Facebook that much. I am also not really sure how it relates to the reading, since I don't think the "digital divide" is as great between me and my (future) students, who are approximately the same age, and I have never used MySpace so I don't know much about "white flight" in that setting.

I am fully prepared for my mind to be blown on Tuesday.

Are We Having Fun Yet?

Most of these learning principles seem to apply to learning of all sorts, not just learning related to gaming. And that seems to be the point that Gee is trying to convey: that gaming is learning. It seems like his goal, then, is to understand how people learn from games, and to try to incorporate that somehow into teaching. I’m not sure that bringing games into the classroom really accomplishes this (or that Gee would want it to), since I think an important part of the learning that happens in gaming is that it is voluntary, and turning a game into school, no matter how fun the game, removes that voluntary quality.

Or maybe it would work, I don’t know.

Gee’s principles themselves, though, seem numerous enough to cover pretty much anything and to provide opportunities for incorporation into non-gaming classrooms. “1: Active, Critical Learning” certainly takes place in all English classes, and students learn to “2: Design” academic writing, as well as to understand “3: Semiotics” and “4: Semiotic Domains.” And so on.

Not really sure what I’m trying to say here. Perhaps discussion will be more illuminating.

Utopia Not Achieved

Despite ANGEL’s best efforts, I did actually manage to contribute somewhat to the class’s online chat, and I would hardly term what I participated in as anything even remotely approaching “utopia.”

The main problems were lag and lack of visual cues for conversation. Lag could be fixed by using a system that actually works, instead of ANGEL, but visual cues are a little more complicated. Most instant messaging programs have a little icon that appears when the other person is typing, so you can wait for them to finish if you want. But with so many people I’m not sure if this would work. Google Wave also shows people’s messages as they type them, so you could interrupt someone more like a regular conversation, but then it’s harder to tell when they’re finished.

I don’t think I would use this sort of thing in a classroom unless those issues were resolved. And even then, I think I prefer non-face-to-face communication to be a little more “composed,” like blog posts or other responses. I prefer my synchronous conversations to be in person, not over a computer.

Blackboard

I have not had much personal experience with distance learning. My only experience has been with course management systems (first Blackboard and now ANGEL), which I suppose is how distance learning works, except all the time (but maybe not?). I am not particularly fond of course management systems. My main gripe is that they always seem outdated, and the rest of the problems stem from there.

If the functionality of a course management system can be better achieved with something like a Google group, then I have a hard time seeing the point of using a proprietary system. Most of my interactions with course management systems have been overly convoluted, requiring unintuitive navigation through an inane labyrinth of sections designed by someone who seems to have never used the Internet, let alone taught a college class with it.

Once I got out of entry level classes, most of my undergraduate professors used their own websites instead of Blackboard, if they used the Internet at all for their class. And those that did use Blackboard only used it as a repository of course documents, not for its more marketable features, like discussion boards or other student interactions.

I think the main reason for this was how hard it is to get a pre-made system to do what you want it to do. And Blackboard (which now owns ANGEL) more or less has the market covered, requiring little innovation on their part. The system is simply not flexible.

All of my experiences with instructor-made websites have been significantly better than with a course management system. I think if an entire course were to be taught online, it would require a more flexible and complex system than Blackboard or ANGEL. Students would need to be able to interact with the instructor and with each other more than simply through written text.

Keep Remixing

I had always wanted to read Remix, but for whatever reason never got around to it. I think it has very interesting implications for the future of media, culture, and the Internet. But its relation to teaching composition is less clear. How do we use Lessig's concept of "remixing" in English 101?

Two obvious (and non-exclusive) options present themselves. We could introduce visual media into English 101, and have our students remix it in some way to create media of their own. Or we could attempt to teach them how to remix written texts.

The first of these is appealing from a theoretical perspective as it brings in all the sorts of multimodal conversations we have been having in this class. Students would learn to compose in a different medium, and to use others' work in an interesting new way. But I do not think this could be the sole focus of English 101, as written text needs to be incorporated at some point. This leads to the second option, of remixing written text.

This is a significantly less clear concept. What does it mean to remix text? Our students cannot simply take others' work and rearrange it in an interesting way to create a new text. At least not while fulfilling the goals of the university. But as Johnson-Eilola explained, all texts are related to other texts. Texts are, by their very nature, already remixes. Lessig has a similar viewpoint:

"...remix with "media" is just the same sort of stuff that we've always done with words. It is how Ben wrote. It is how lawyers argue. It is how we all talk all the time. We don't notice it as such, because this text-based remix, whether in writing or conversation, is as common as dust. We take its freedom for granted. We all expect that we can quote, or incorporate, other people's words into what we write or say. And so we do quote, or incorporate, or remix what others have said." (82)

So if we are already remixing, perhaps we need to become aware of it. We need to show our students that they are remixing when they write an essay,

How do we do this? I'm not sure. We could stress to our students that they are participating in an ongoing discussion, show them the importance of entering that discussion. I think this is very important, if only because I was not told this until my senior year of college.

We could also allow the texts that students write to become the texts of the course. This has been mentioned briefly in English 501, but not really elaborated on. As I understand it, the idea is similar to showing students that they are entering a discussion, but instead of the discussion being between distant academics, they create the discussion in the classroom. The texts they write form the discussion, and future texts they write build on it. The students create a sort of microcosm of the academic community.

Whatever we decide to do, it seems clear that we have always been remixing, and that we will always remix. Maybe we just need to let our students know that they are too.

Welcome to the World Wide Web

Chances are you haven’t had much experience navigating the various kinds of spaces that have begun cropping up in what is increasingly being referred to as “the Internet.” It will be helpful, then, for you to think of this space as a sort of library, or maybe a city. Or a circulatory system.

Maybe a superhighway? It is hard to believe that in just eight years since its original printing, “our long-term cognitive abilities” have, in fact, caught up with “the immediate paradigm shifts underway between print and electronic sources.” We do not need to “rely on imagined geographies from the physical world to describe and comprehend complex discursive spaces.” Or if we do, we certainly don’t think about it and don’t need an article to tell us how. In fact, I think it is more likely that our students would rely on imagined spaces from the Internet to describe complex geographies in the real world. Sidler’s article maintains that the Internet is a confusing place that cannot be understood without relying on metaphors of the real world, which I think is somewhat outdated.

The other article from Computers in the Composition Classroom shows its age less, despite being written earlier. However the authors are somewhat vague about everything, and their discussion of web literacy could fairly easily be transposed to any other sort of literacy. Perhaps that is the point. But I think they miss some opportunities to discuss the interesting new things going on with the Internet, particularly in their discussion of the interplay between text and image, which they keep hinting at but never really say anything about. All of their examples in this section involve only images, not text.

Johndan Johnson-Eilola’s article is perhaps the most interesting, if only for the unusual ideas it presents. He stresses that all texts are intertextual, and that it is impossible to write without referencing some other written work. He moves to a discussion of Intellectual Property law, and then to the somewhat startling conclusion that databases and search engines should be considered texts.

I was initially (and, I suppose, still am) hesitant to accept this. Just because texts are, in a sense, a collection of other texts doesn’t mean that all collections of texts are themselves a text. Or does it? I think my problem here is that a traditional text is created with a certain amount of authorship. The writer collects various texts for a purpose. The creator of a search engine, however, simply creates an algorithm that allows a computer to search through a huge variety of texts and find certain words and phrases. The only real “authorship” here is the ability to privilege certain types of connection between search terms, and that is questionable at best.

Weinberger would probably like this idea of search engines as text, since he goes nuts for anything remotely “miscellaneous.” But I think it is this very - and I apologize in advance for this one - miscellaneity that causes search engines to be different enough that to analyze them in the same way as an intentionally composed text implies similarities that do not exist. Instead of lumping these two things together, we should be investigating them as separate, if somewhat related, entities.

Panopticomputer

Ohman argues that the agency associated with computers and how we use them is controlled by an elite group of people who design and manufacture them. This lends a large amount of credibility to the idea that we should be teaching students how to navigate the modalities of new technologies. We must teach students to be literate – in the fullest sense of the word – so that they can effectively communicate their thoughts, and function as individuals.

Foucault’s description of the panopticon, then, as a device which simultaneously increases visibility while separating individuals, which increases efficiency while removing communication, could be used to discuss the role of computers in literacy.

There are, I think, a wide variety of ways to apply the metaphor of the panopticon to the widespread adoption of computers in society. In the spirit of Foucault, here is a list:

1. The computer allows users to find a huge array of information, so the computer could be the panopticon, and the user the observer at the center, looking out at the cells filled with various parts of the Internet.
2. Individual users are compartmentalized while constantly relying on and, perhaps, being surveilled by the computer itself. So the computer could be seen as the observer at the center of a more nebulous type of panopticon filled with computer users, perhaps representing society, or at least digital society.
3. Combining both previous points, the users of computers fulfill the roles of both inmate and observer, each separated from each other, each having the opportunity to observe the other, in a sort of endlessly overlapping set of panopticons. Each individual is at the center of their own panopticon, while simultaneously in the cell of many others.

This last point is perhaps the most troubling. “We are neither in the amphitheatre, nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine, invested by its effects of power, which we bring to ourselves since we are part of its mechanism” (Foucault, “Panopticism” 217). We are all simultaneously observer and the observed.

We might argue that the computer-literate, and more specifically the computer creators, are at the center of the panopticon, and the computer-illiterate are in the cells. But I think Ohman’s point after visiting McDonalds about how the computer-illiterate can still use computers leads to a slightly different conclusion. If we do not know how to fluently use the machine, we are “prisoners” to those who made it. We are forced to use it how they intended.

Foucault makes a similar observation, noting that once the structure of the panopticon is in place, anyone can function as observer. In fact, the observer is theoretically unnecessary. Once the panopticon is created, it is impossible to use it for any purpose other than that for which it was created. Luckily I do not think that the comparison between computer and panopticon is so strict that this feature is present in both cases. The computer is much more malleable, and able to be used for whatever purpose the user desires. However, the users level of computer-literacy does impact the range of these uses. Therefore I agree with Ohman (and Selfe) that computer-literacy is as important as traditional literacy, and needs to be emphasized.

The New New Media

Computers are a central part of my life as a student and as a human being. I use computers every day, and probably create some sort of “new media” text several times a day. I am not exactly sure how to tackle the problem of computers as a necessity, though. I think if they were magically removed from the world tomorrow, I would certainly be deprived of an ability to create and gather knowledge, but I think that if computers did not exist something else would. There would still be some sort of “new media,” or other technology to accomplish similar goals.

Wysocki defines “new media” as any media which is aware of its material. Presumably the media would have to somehow reference itself and its own material, otherwise it would be impossible to determine if it “knows” what its material is. An essay which comments on its own nature as an essay, a webpage which references its existence on the internet, and so on. Wysocki’s definition is concerned with “materiality,” which is an over-suffixed way of saying that the medium of the text is just as important as the content. I agree that this definition is more useful than the more common definition of new media as digital media. I think that Wysocki is right to make this distinction: an essay in PDF form is not “new media” simply because it is on a computer. It is essentially the same text. But I think a PDF with links, or images, or other digital aspects should be considered new media, even if the text does not explicitly reference its own medium.

Should this blog not be considered new media unless it references its own nature as a blog? Should it be considered new media simply because it does?

Perhaps more useful would be to define a text as “new media” if it uses its medium in such a way that another medium could not adequately do the same job. A film could not be printed as an essay and retain all the same nuances. A webpage could not be made into a photograph, and a journal article could not be turned into an interpretive dance. Certainly these various media allow for unique modes of communication, and I think that this uniqueness is more useful than reflexivity for discussing new media. Reflexivity is certainly interesting (and I think reflexive texts would fit under my vague definition above), but I don’t think Wysocki’s definition is inclusive enough.

Composing on the Internet

Since I have not yet begun teaching, and have never formally taught in the past, it is difficult to summarize my views on a field I have not really thought about until a few days ago. However, many of the points raised in Yancey’s paper seem very important, particularly her discussion of how students learn writing in a variety of ways on their own which they are discouraged from using in an academic setting, and how different mediums create different sorts of writers.

Students learn to write in a variety of places, namely the internet, but the style of writing developed there is not encouraged in class. I don’t think this itself is a bad thing, since academic writing should probably be more structured than, say, a blog post. Instead of trying to use blogs or other new forms of communication to connect to students, perhaps more important is creating the motivation for writing in the first place. In class a student is required to write a paper, while on the internet they choose to write a blog (or other sort of communication). I don’t think the method of writing is really the problem - getting the students interested in the topic seems more important. Simply turning a paper into a blog post doesn’t remove the nature of the assignment: it’s still an assignment.

This also connects to Yancey’s discussion of writers created by different mediums. Would a writer created by the medium of a blog really be more desirable than a writer created by the medium of the printed page, at least as far as academic writing is concerned? Again, I think this has less to do with the medium than the motivation, or the content of what is written. A huge variety of writing exists on the internet, just as a huge variety of writing exists on the printed page. Different arrangements of text and other opportunities are presented in different mediums, but without the proper motivation or content, they are each as vacant as the next.

If students who would rather spend their time on the internet writing blogs or posting on forums is the problem, turning writing assignments into blogs and forums is not the solution. A student is no more going to want to write a blog as an assignment than a paper as an assignment. Just because they like writing blogs on their own time doesn’t mean they want to write blogs for a class.

That all seems kind of negative... I did find Yancey’s discussion of remediation to be particularly interesting, and think that this sort of use of different technologies could be rewarding, since the focus there is on the actual content, and how it changes in different mediums.