Jenkins et al. "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture"

Henry Jenkins et al. in “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21^st Century” argue that the emergence of new skills created by a participatory culture should begin to reflect in the pedagogies of teachers and the goals of education. With this new culture comes problems—they also focus on the participation gap (unequal access), the transparency problem (do youth reflect on their own practices), and the ethics challenge (preparing youth to be community members).

Because of the new communication technologies that children are growing up with, Jenkins et al. suggest taking an ecological approach to see how the technologies work together, how they connect cultures and communities, and how they encourage certain activities. What this means for education, then, is that it needs to rethink its static, conservative approach and perhaps begin to incorporate the experimental learning that children (and adults, although that is not the focus of this paper) are doing on their own time. Jenkins et al. seem to be entering the conversation by disagreeing with reports from the Kaiser Family Foundation that focus on the negatives of “screen time.” They do not dismiss these concerns, but they instead explain they will be focusing on the skills and knowledge that are developing from this “screen time.”

Rethinking literacy does not mean a complete overhaul of previous notions—Jenkins et al. explain that students must be able to read and write to be part of the participatory culture. Instead of replacing these skills, students must expand them. They also explain that these new literacies are social skills. These skills include play, simulation, performance, appropriation, multi-tasking, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, judgment, transmedia navigation, networking, and negotiation. For each of these skills, Jenkins et al. describe how they define the skill, give examples of the skill in practice, include relevant research or scholars who discuss the skill and the practices that accompany it, and finally offer several discipline-specific suggestions on how to incorporate activities into the classroom (what seems to be the K-12 classroom.) 

Jenkins et al. offer three calls-to-action. They argue that schools do not need to make more room in the curriculum for these new skills, but rather need to reshape the current curriculum to include active application of these new skills and knowledge-making. They acknowledge that more research does need to be done in order to make these skills more effective and personalized for each discipline. After school programs are also important, not as an add-on to school, but as a place for both students and teachers to examine and produce media. Lastly, parents are targeted as media literacy sponsors. They argue that parents should not try to prevent their children from use of media; rather, parents should be helping their children develop these skills. Currently there seems to be a large gap in the literature on how parents can approach this responsibility.

Gee's "Deep Learning Properties of Good Digital Games"

James Paul Gee’s focus in “Deep Learning Properties of Good Digital Games” is to examine the properties of entertainment digital games that encourage learning, relating both to skills development and commitment to the game. He argues that digital games are actually problem-solving spaces that encourage learning, but these games cannot be used for learning if certain properties are not present. He then discusses these properties, some of which are discussed below.

Gee argues that gaming is about problem solving and that players can become emotionally and personally committed to their goals for the game. He connects this to learning by referencing research that suggests people learn more when they have an emotional attachment or something is at stake for them.

Gee explains that emergent properties are the rule-like properties in games that players can control or use as they choose.  This relates to one property Gee discusses about microcontrol. When players are able to microcontrol one or more property in a game, they not only gain power, but then the game also becomes a potential space for players to embody.

But in order for a game to be conducive for learning by experience, Gee argues it must have the right conditions. Some of these conditions include being structured by specific goals, allowing for immediate feedback so users can assess their errors/expectations, and the need to apply experiences to other situations.

Although learning can often come from experience, Gee argues that can be too concrete. He says that games can act as models that bridge concrete and abstract ideas. Models, he says, “are basic to human play” (73).

Another property Gee lays out are “effectivity-affordances,” which are what make games more than “eye candy.” He explains an affordance is a feature of the game that allows for action, while the effectivity is the action that can actually happen. He uses an example from WoW in which some animals can be skinned for their leather, but only certain people have the skill to skin animals. (Some animals cannot be skinned so they are not an affordance, and some players do not have that skill so they lack the effectivity to do so.)

Lastly, Gee argues that games that encourage learning allow for multiple trajectories for a player; this means the player can choose different options and make different decisions that will alter their journey through the game, giving it personal meaning.

Gee explains that all of these properties together can create “powerful experiences that compete with experiences in the real world precisely because experiences in the real world, at their best—when we humans feel control, agency, deep learning, mastery—meet these properties” (78).

There was something that Gee mentioned in his conclusion that I was also concerned about while reading: it’d be nice if there were more games that promoted “good” learning that weren’t army or warrior-based. (Because if these are the real world experiences that good games are creating, I’m not sure how they can transfer to daily problem solving my students must do.)

Connections Among Readings/Questions = Riveting 2-in-1 Blog Post

I now feel the need to define everything. Because we are reading so many texts, I’m almost confused as to what things like multimodality, new media, and technology are. I find myself being as specific as possible when I mention things like “computer-related non-alphabetic multimodal projects.” It’s become annoying to me. But I also understand that this is good because my notions of these things are expanding and becoming fuller. The most recent example is Shipka’s reminder that technology does not mean only the newest technologies. It is so simple, yet was a much needed intervention of my thoughts.

Because everything is defined or discussed in different ways, I wonder: how connected is the conversation of multimodality/new media/technology? Is it productive to have so many scholars defining and using these terms according to their needs and pedagogies?

My final question relates to how I am not able to see the readings connect: how can we use some of these theories and notions in a college writing classroom?  This is something we are always told to be mindful of while reading, but I would love to have a conversation attempting to link concepts like networks and Brooke’s reframing of the canons to our daily practices. Is it possible to bring in more than one of these notions of new media and technology into our classrooms? Or have these texts been so powerfully framed that we must fully board the ship in order to set sail?

(That last line was really unnecessary. I blame it on my sinus infection meds that make everything—including my brain—go kind of hazy.)

In Response to Shipka's Toward a Composition Made Whole

In Toward a Composition Made Whole Jody Shipka shows that she not only does some cool things in the composition classroom, but also that she has a clearly defined and well-developed pedagogy. I find her assignments fascinating, but her idea of a FYC classroom is far from mine (which will be discussed later).

First, a writing classroom and a composition classroom should be defined separately. I taught Rhetoric and Writing at OU, and here I teach Intro to College Writing. A simple analysis would suggest that the titles reveal what the focus of these courses probably is. Perhaps an Intro to Composition course is more suited to include non-traditional ways of composing. Such semantics are relevant when you consider the values and goals of a writing program and what that means for the inclusion of non-alphabetic texts in a curriculum.

Shipka expands the idea of composition to include materiality, technology, and methodology, but still seems to be favoring a specific type of composition. She quotes and agrees with George and Trimbur (1999) who say that “writing, like other types of composition (musical, graphic, handicraft, engineering design) is an act of labor that quite literally fashions the world” (29). I therefore question why she chooses to favor only some types of composition. We don’t teach music composition because there is a department for that. We don’t teach engineering design because there is a department for that. So what is it about the type of compositions that she argues for that makes them belong in an English classroom? Is it just using the same skill set as speech and writing (a rhetorical skill set)? 

In a writing class, I believe the focus should be on writing, not necessarily composing. I still value a process approach to writing, but the end product should have some weight as well. Being an effective communicator doesn’t often afford multiple chances (drafts). So I think practicing writing is key in order to become better at it, meaning there must be a lot of it assigned in a classroom.

I truly think that part of my job is to prepare students to write in college. This does not mean 101/102 are service courses for the rest of the university, but rather they teach types of writing that can transfer. I was never taught how to write a research paper in my composition course, and it wasn’t until my senior year that a generous professor sat down with me and explained a few methods of arguing. I sometimes think about the level of work I could have been doing if those methods had come earlier.

While that is partially how I see a writing class, a composition class could be broadened to include some of Shipka’s ideas. She states, “I also believe that frameworks that provide students with opportunities to move between—while reflecting upon—the affordances and constraints associated with different representational systems and ways of knowing may better prepare students for the variety of intellectual and interpersonal tasks and activities they will likely encounter in other classes, in extracurricular spaces, as well as in their future professions” (107).

The practice of looking for and analyzing choices being made in any work is valuable, and I agree that it can prepare students for tasks outside of academia and for their jobs. But I disagree with what she says right before this, in which she states that students who “are encouraged to make informed rhetorically based uses of sounds, video, still images, animation, textures, scents, and so on…” may be able to understand better how written language is functioning. Scents? I have a hard time seeing how the rhetorically based use of a scent can seamlessly transfer to both analyzing and writing texts.

What I would love Shipka to discuss is how these skills are actually brought back to analyze just writing—and I do separate writing as a different type of composing—rather than just focusing on design, visuals, and performing. (Writing to me will always firstly mean words. A lot of writing is done with words. Most university writing is done with words. And if Shipka wants to call me closed-minded because I think that then so be it.) I would argue that looking at the choices a writer is making with only words is more difficult than in a non-alphabetic text. Even harder is learning how to integrate what you observe into your own writing. And that’s why I wouldn’t devote an entire semester of classes solely to Shipka’s kind of composing.

Obviously Shipka has put in a lot of time, effort, and experimentation to develop her pedagogy. So I worry that teachers forced to teach something they aren’t quite sure of or simply don’t believe in would be unfair to the students. Perhaps teachers should be required to experiment every now and then with this kind of assignment, but they should never have to integrate it into their classes. Shipka quotes Clyde Dow, who says teachers in our field tend to trust what has been tested and proved when instead we should be saying, “ ‘Let’s try it, and test it’ “ (25). If teachers are experimenting or trying non-alphabetic projects in their classrooms, not only will they gain experience (and therefore probably comfort) but they will also see the values and pitfalls, allowing them to adopt and create their own pedagogies on the topic.

And perhaps that is one thing that really turns me off about this book: it seems as if everything is perfect in her classrooms and that all of her students are thoughtful, hard-working, and end up with something brilliant. Where are the students that refuse to learn anything and push back? Or the students that are unwilling to take risks? Or the assignment that went horribly wrong?

Lastly, I have no qualms about this kind of work not being rigorous enough for academic work. My own experience with these kinds of projects helps me understand that they sometimes take much more planning, time, creativity, and vision than when creating an alphabetic text. It is the transfer of these skills to writing that I am not thoroughly convinced by, and perhaps if Shipka had also focused on the improvement in writing that occurred with her students—rather than just the amount of writing they did—I would feel more inclined to support her idea of a “composition made whole.”

Project Update

I'm still working out what my project will specifically be about. The research I've found so far isn't really answering the questions that are driving my project:  

Are internet users hyperaware of who their audiences are? How do they know to say different things in different spaces? Or why do they not know? Related, how are internet users approaching or reading their audiences? 
How do authors of websites attempt to control their audience, both through writing and design?

Part of the problem is I'm not sure what to search for. A lot of the research I found with a basic search (audience, internet, and writing; online audience and composition, etc.) looked at blogs, the writer-reader relationship, ESL/at-risk/non-traditional students and the internet, and how business write on the internet. 

Maybe I should narrow my questions and focus on one specific site? I'm open for suggestions. 


For my multimodal project I would like to create a screen capture of a user (me) moving from site to site with a voice-over (my voice) explaining the actions and analyzing what authors of sites and users of sites are doing to control and be aware of the audience.

Relations of Writing, Publishing, and Technologies

One of my research interests is how we are changing the way we write because of our use of new technologies. Usually people agree and say, “Yes, we must be changing our writing.” But I struggle with studying, observing, and articulating how it is changing.

My master’s project developed out of a quarter-long study in my first-year Writing & Rhetoric class. I developed and taught a Twitter-themed course as a way to see how students were writing in that online space. I was inspired by the research being done by other scholars that I heard about at conferences which involved Facebook and texting in the classroom. What I would argue after this study is that the kind of “play” with language that happens on Twitter is actually semi-sophisticated rhetorical decision making. Whether users realize it or not doesn’t matter as much to me—just because they cannot articulate why they make writing choices doesn’t mean they don’t know how to make writing choices.

This is the kind of research that fascinates me. However, I worry that the overwhelming conversation about technology and its effects is causing me to withdraw my curiosity. More and more I wonder how to approach writing in online spaces if I don’t narrow my focus. And then, what good does it bring to a conversation that is, like I said before, already overwhelming?

I do think that most computer technologies require writing and reading of some sort. Writing and technologies are intertwined, and some researchers and scholars already have attempted to explain how users know how to write in these spaces. (Our readings from this week fit into this: Crystal in Txtng and indicated by the various research on CACD referred to by Warschauer.) But as fast as technology changes, I wonder if we can ever fully understand how we adapt just as quickly.

The aforementioned master’s project took the form of a webtext. I wanted to reach a broader audience, so I wrote my findings in two ways: like a scholarly research article and like a blog. Thus, the website I created allowed both for a formal (linear) reading and for a dialogical reading of the text where the two voices could mix depending on a reader’s navigation. My project needs work, including a lot of design work. But that’s not the reason I stopped thinking about publishing it. 

Very often (maybe twice?) have I been assigned a webtext to read for class, like something found on Kairos. And when we did discuss these in class, there was much grumbling about what the text couldn’t do or didn’t do and why we couldn’t really talk about it in the same way as print texts because it was hard to reference and return to certain points. So why would I want to publish a text this way if it’s not valued by those in my field or those in English departments?

That last bit is meant to be controversial. But it is certainly an argument that I would make judging by the amount of print texts we read in classes and because other scholars seem to recognize it too. Collin Brooke in the first chapter of Lingua Fracta discusses an email-exchange-turned-article that appeared in Kairos in 1999. Brooke mentions there has been a movement to include technological work as the kind of publications needed for tenure or promotions. But he ultimately argues that this article “is not really the kind of work that is recognized by our institutions” (4). This presents a problem for both teachers and grad students. Would a webtext I authored hold as much value as a print publication on my CV?

Cynthia Selfe in “The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing,” references her use of a print journal to publish: "The irony of making an argument about aurality in print is not lost on me, nor, I suspect, will it be on most other readers of this article. Indeed, it is very much the point of what I try to say in the following pages" (619). When we talked about this article in class, a student was really irked about this irony. But I kept trying to get across that maybe an argument for change isn’t effective unless you address your audience in the old, comfortable way. And I guarantee more comp/rhet scholars and teachers read CCC than Kairos.

Even if I wanted to add a video or audio component to a text it’d be complicated. Selfe invites readers to look at links she includes with her piece, but how many readers make that effort? (I would! Academic rigor!) Or I could consider an online journal to publish my work, but it might not be taken as seriously. A professor once told me, “Computers andComposition Online is a good place for grad students to try to publish.” True or not, that statement assures me that there are various values and levels of prestige that come with choices made for publications.

So my argument here is obviously that our field values certain things, and when we write to publish, we have to decide whether or not to adopt these values. While some voices seem to be effectively suggesting change with this idea, it is a slow process that might be holding back the scholarship of our field. We can talk about technology all we want, but until we practice what we’re preaching, people in our field will remain in different camps with different values regarding our own writing with technology. 

Works Cited

Brooke, Collin Gifford. Lingua Fracta: Towards a Rhetoric of New Media. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 2009. Print.

Selfe, Cynthia L. "The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing." CCC 60.4 (2009): 616-63. Print.
 

Questions for 10/17 Class Discussion

I’m particularly interested in the way Collin Brooke suggests meaning making is changing because of internet practices. He references Scott Lloyd DeWitt’s concept of reading as an “Impulsive Model” which reflects the fast-paced surfing internet users might do. Brooke further links this to Dewitt’s idea of “cognitive fabric” which is the weaving together various texts of information to create a pattern. Brooke relates it to memory, or his term persistence, and argues that these patterns are a way to outline or shape a set of texts: “Persistence as a memory practice is the ability to build and maintain patterns, although those patterns may be tentative and ultimately fade into the background” (157).

Could this be a new way to learn? Should we incorporate this kind of meaning-making and the retaining of information through patterns into the writing classroom? If so, how do we incorporate this new type of learning?  (I think about 102 more since it has a greater amount of texts that must be read for research purposes.)

Another concept found in Brooke’s text is “containerism” (93-7). Brooke suggsts we should break free from the sequentiality of traditional texts. He quotes David Kolb who suggests forms to do this (tangles, sieves, split/joints…whatever those are) that are “patterns that demonstrate a variety of rhetorical effects that are possible if we think beyond the container model” (96). My concern is how we would go about teaching these patterns if we were assigning a multimodal project. At what point does pattern (arrangement) become less about logic and more about design? How can we make that distinction?

Unrelated to Brooke, I am lost as to what constitutes a network according to Galloway and Thacker (who never seem to define it?). I don’t understand how a network is different/similar to community.

Baym frames community with five parts: space, practice, shared resources and support, shared identities, and interpersonal relationships (74-90). She then discusses networked individualism, “in which each person sits at the center of his or her own personal community” (90). How can her concepts be compared and contrasted with Galloway and Thacker?