In general, I’m enjoying this read – it’s allowing me to continue to look at aspects of learning differently, and as always in the context of L2 learning. These ideas of Facebook as a game and setting up a class as a game and avatars and identity are thought-provoking. While I’m still just ankle deep in understanding gaming studies, it was interesting to reflect on the ways I’ve used some of these approaches in an L2 context already; especially when thinking about Facebook and L2W instruction. Maybe I’m a bit more than ankle deep after-all. In the past, Facebook was in my classroom as a way to acquaint L2 learners with this idea of audience and the rules of engagement – it seems to me that the approaches Alberti discuss are similar. For example, he contends that:

Rather than a goal-directed game in the sense of working to achieve a predefined objective, Facebook represents a social-directed game whose goals are not singular but multiple, not linear but holistic: the sustaining of a viable, functioning discursive community. (p.11)

In the sense that my ideologies of writing are primarily rooted in sociocultural/socio-cognitive perspectives, I agree. Viewing writing fro this socially-directed perspectives may encourage students to reflect on the ways they already use writing: who are they communicating with? what is their message? how are they conveying it? are they successful in sustaining themselves within this community? why or why not? This leads to Alberti’s assertion that:

In Facebook and similar social networking sites, we find participants engaged in moment-to-moment rhetorical play and decision making that feels as meaningful in that moment as any other supposedly more significant kind of writing. (p.19).

Rather discarding what students find to be significant or valuable writing, engage with them using the modes they’re most familiar with and transfer those rules to the overall objectives of the course.

As a final thought, I love collaborative learning. Collaborative pair/group work has become a structural constituent in L2W classrooms as research continues to examine the effects of it on students’ language acquisition and written products (Bastone, 2010; Shehadeh, 2011; Storch & Wigglesworth, 2007; Storch, 2005). Situated in theoretical and practical application, collaborative learning is noted for creating student centered environments of exploration and application in which students share intellectual effort, mutually search for solutions, meanings, understanding, or create a product (Smith & MacGregor, 2009). What better way to promote this [collaborative learning/language acquisition/intercultural communication] than by implementing more “gaming” into the classrooms as Hodgson demonstrates. Of course I don’t agree with everything; but I like finding the areas where cooperation between disciplines can emerge.