After Tuesday’s conversation with Ashley, Alisha, Sherri, and Dr. Blackmon, during which we considered the example of Neverwinter and the manner in which such a game might be used in the classroom, I am struck by all the different pedagogical applications for such a game. Whether it’s using the game to discuss research practices, or thinking about it as a site of communication and language, or using the game as the catalyst for conversations about things like audience, discourse community, representation, historical/cultural context, etc., it’s fascinating to think about how a video game can be so pedagogically generative. This actually brings to mind a comment made in “Reading between the Code: The Teaching of HTML and the Displacement of Writing Instruction” in which Mauriello, Pagnucci, and Winner point out that their various uses of technology in their classrooms led them to realize that “no one method is, as yet, the best approach” (416).

I’ve also been thinking about—as Sherri brings up in her post as well—the ideas of struggling and comfort levels in relation to the use of games with students. It seems to me that the conversations around the struggling seem to be helpful as well, for they may allow us to think about why it is that we struggle as well as what sort of implications our struggles might have for the way we think about our interactions with video games. Perhaps this speaks to something Rea and White highlight in “The Changing Nature of Writing: Prose or Code in the Classroom”: “To work effectively within the medium, both instructors and students need to understand the medium itself, because it is not only changing culture, but also the means through which people communicate and share information” (423). And maybe the various methods of engaging with Neverwinter that we all talked about together in our group are all different ways we might begin to “work effectively within the medium” in an effort to think about how we communicate and share information and how video games might mediate such communication.

I was a little surprised at first when I was assigned to the game group on Tuesday, but quickly realized that while I could see easy applications for both Second Life and MOOs, I couldn’t really come up with anything for a game like Neverwinter. Lesson: never doubt Sam, I guess. Someday I’ll learn that one.

This week I’ve been confronted with a lot of interesting ways to think about games in the classroom. Though I’m obviously very interested in games, it’s always been a little difficult for me to see beyond the most basic applications of games in class — narrative structures, for instance, characterization, presentation, design, but after someone else got me thinking about how games can teach failure (and thus revision), I was in a really good place to open up to all kinds of angles Tuesday during class. Listening to Sherri talk about different uses for Neverwinter, and to Ashley talk about SLS students and language acquisition got me doing some new thinking about how we approach games, how quickly we pick up the language unique to it (or create our own), about how we learn and begin navigating what can be a completely foreign space, and how that correlates to class. And wow, this all feels so basic, like obviously I should have been thinking about this, what an idiot am I, but I have to keep reminding myself that I’m new to this. That these connections aren’t always obvious, that they do require thinking and study.

I guess what I’m saying is I’m grateful to be here. Oh, and Sam is pretty much always right, mostly, usually.

UPDATE: because my post posted without everything, somehow, I guess (sigh):

Today in my 106 class, we were having some conversations about this, about how we use language and how that language shifts between groups/classes/contexts, and as I was trying to get them to think about purpose in a rhetorical sense, I noticed that my co-instructor in Tech 120 had left a template on a board on the other end of the classroom: [USER] needs to [USER’S NEED] because [INSIGHT/BENEFIT] or something similar, and despite possible missing words, I turned their attention to this simple template. Consider that, I said, for your papers. What do YOU need to do and for what reason? What do you want? What do I need you to do, and for what reason? If you’re writing a resume, why are you doing it? What reason does that document have for existing in the world? I raise all this because these repetitive questions reminded me of repetitive actions, too, in games, in code, in so many forms of creation/interaction. All the crossover we’re pushing in 106E is bleeding into other modes of my life and I am learning as well.

Dr. Sam should call me one of her success stories. In today’s activity where we “played” Neverwinter, Ashley V. had several questions about using games in the classroom and how this specific D&D like game could be used in her L2 class. I suppose that the last few Maymesters with Dr. Sam have sunk into my think skull. One answer that I am particularly proud of providing was in response to a question about how the game could be used to teach research practices. And behold! My suggestion to teach students secondary research practices through the staggered personalization menu (As a way to search deeply instead of broadly) in contrast with keyword lists and internet/library search engines was a success. We also discussed a series of assignments that could develop from a single game such as Neverwinter. It definitely wasn’t the worst thing in the world. However, we did discuss that video games, or any other technology/topic/content brought into the course required a comfort level that could only develop from patience and understanding. Or like Ashley said — “I like them to struggle. The struggle is real.” I have struggled for a few semesters to make sense of all this stuff and today was the first day that I felt like something made sense. Dr. Sam should buy me coffee in appreciation for my efforts.

Well said, Ashley. Well said.

we are teaching in a different world. our obligations and our circumstances are changing still, in new contexts where web writing is not so new or scary or strange or complicated. not many of us feel obligated to teach coding–there are plenty of other arenas where students probably have learned it by now. but some things are still true for us, it seems.

like what Rae and White notice about evaluating web content: “accessing information on the Web is not as much of a problem as distinguishing between valuable information and eye candy” (427).

and this: “more people have the potential to express their ideas and to influence others. Instead of the select few having access to the mechanisms for book publishing, broadcast television, or radio, people can take part in the new communication possibilities available through the computer” (423). we don’t need to make many claims about this anymore. we know. and yet– there are plenty of populations who don’t have this access. and plenty of people also have their access controlled or limited or tracked in sketchy, colonial-ish ways, too. there are lots of big hairy conversations and arguments to be had about access, even if some things can be somewhat taken for granted in 2015.

and perhaps this bit is still true too, from Maurellio, on how “research has not yet determined how much this use of code must be incorporated into composition courses” (411). I sort of chuckled at this. will research ever determine, unequivocably, exactly how anything should/must be done in any writing classroom? I mean, research is good and useful and all, but I have my doubts about how many “musts” it will ever be able to fully support.

I really love the concept of a metamedium–a medium that can reflect on itself. the web is not the only such medium, I don’t think. maybe most are, in some fashion.

When authors focus on bringing games and playfulness into the classroom, I more often than not put on my Mr. Skeptical Hat. Bringing play into the classroom can be a really difficult endeavor, especially when we’re dealing with play mediated by technology. It’s difficult enough to get students to engage with new and shiny technologies, but if they see the activity as frivolous, they seem to be even less likely to engage. So while we may have the best of intentions with bringing the fun via new tech, it’s a really risky move. We see this in the Haas and Gardner piece, where they had to spend TWO WEEKS to essentially teach their students how to play a text adventure game. One class? Maybe two? I can totally see that being worthwhile, but two weeks eats up about half of one unit for me. I don’t have time for that, and neither do my students—especially considering the fact that they likely won’t have to interface with something like that ever again.

If we want to bring playful tech into the classroom, it needs to super accessible in terms of learning how to interface with it or there needs to be some legitimate transfer between learning the fun tech and learning useful tech.

While reading for today, I kept flashing back to when I was a child and the ways I would attempt to play with language – mainly through poetry and my little 8 year old rants in my journal. I then considered the ways I began intertwining Spanish and English, trying to find my place in both. Reflecting back, I think I was attempting to develop some sort of power role that I could exert in my monolingual classrooms (I wonder how that would have come across in any of the “games” mentioned in the readings for today). I never considered any of that play. I did, however, recall the many Saturday mornings I’d wake up early just to play Donkey Kong and Mario Bros on our new Nintendo, and while that was certainly play, I, again, didn’t consider the role of language and negotiation when playing with my adoptive father who’d speak primarily in Spanish to me during two player games and perhaps the impact that had on my language development – oral and literate. Jumping forward 20 years, my interests in the role of “play” in second language development is certainly budding. I wonder how ESL/multilingual students would respond to a task such as the one Daisley discusses: what personas would they take, would they continue to focus on form or venture over to meaning? how would negotiation play out if this occurred between a NS and NNS versus two NNS? Would a different identity emerge than the one they hold to in their L1? would they feel empowered at all? would ownership of a language that isn’t their Mother Tongue take root?

Alisha’s post has one of my same reactions as I was reading through the articles…which is that play and games didn’t really seem to be the theme (other than the MOO), yet the language was still there…and I actually find that reassuring. Too often we end up arguing about games being worthwhile learning experiences in spite of being fun–as if there is an invisible line at the classroom door where pleasurable experiences must stop and wait until the period is up. It ties in, too, with the difficulty of defining games and how much fun is required before they move from play to…something else. People get angry during games. They fight. They are hurt by loss. And, as Daisley points out, there are always people who take it too far or who end up cruel in their need to win. Fun isn’t always the essential component. That’s too simple.

As Patrick pointed out, games tend to have structures where the learning mechanisms are easy to find. They work well in classrooms because its easy to dissect the process and get students to see how they are learning, what they are learning, and why they should be learning it. The curtain is down and Oz is revealed. The perks and downfalls are exaggerated and clearly outlined because that’s what makes a game easy to learn, fun to play, and worth engaging with.

“Games” aren’t the only form of learning that use this, though, and I kept thinking of the way I use blogs in my class. I don’t use blogs in the strict classroom sense (not in the way I had to do them as a student, anyway). Instead, I have my students take the reigns and write blogs as…well…blogs. Open. Personal. Sometimes inappropriate. There is a lot of discussion about audience, purpose, and how I am not the person they are talking to. Every time I do this, I watch them groan….then I watch them start to write these fascinating little blurbs, and, sometimes, I watch them go too far.

Maybe that’s a better argument for having games in the classroom than I’d thought of before…because when my students push the limits in their blogs–when they say hurtful things, or cross the line into trolling–it’s a chance to talk about limits and purpose and why ethical behavior matters. And if games were the medium being used, that same conversation could happen. Right now, most people learn to play on their own. Video and computer games, especially, are solitary, even when they are digitally social, because a lot of people don’t necessarily learn to play from someone more responsible or knowledgeable who can tell them when they cross a line into trolling. The habits get ingrained before the discussion can take place, and that always makes things harder.

so much of what we’ve read about so far is old, semi-unfamiliar technology and interfaces that seem hard to picture because they’ve been displaced by so many other fancier, newer applications. but MOOs are a thing I actually have used and remember– some online classes at Texas Tech still use them, or at least they did in 2012. they were fun. chatroom-esque. handy transcripts of entire class periods.

would a MOO still seem like “a brave new world” to students today? One like Daisley describes here?  “when one first encounters the world of computer conferencing, it is a brave new unknown world where language is the only available tool for separating the murky waters from the seemingly stable land” (113). I don’t know if chatrooms are a thing kids these days are into, or if they would feel like a murky, unfamiliar communicational landscape. twitter and facebook and all the mobile social media do have a very, very different vibe to them, so maybe a chatroom would seem different enough.

reading all of these pieces made me wonder if it’s specifically something in the newness of these platforms that makes them welcome/encourage such play for students (or anyone learning to work within them for the first time). is it because newness and lack of previous associations make it easier for students to just jump in? I’m not sure. there is probably more to it than that.

I’m seeing so many connections between this class and Thomas’s posthumanism class. I love when that happens, and I’m glad I happen to be taking both classes. Kolko touches on the implications of blurry internet-based collaborations in a way that make me think about posthumanism: “If there is one common theme in cyberspace scholarship, particularly that which is grounded in synchronous CMC, it is that notions of a boundaried and consistent self dissolve” (177). in digital spaces, it is very, very easy to be multiple, to code-switch and take on a range of identities.

Daisley also makes some interesting (and optimistic-ish) observations about selfhood and community: “if individuals use CMC as a tool for social interaction through language, a breakdown of boundaries between the individual-subjective self and the social-communal self will be the result. Everyone, it is presumed, will have the opportunity to be heard; everyone will have a voice” (112). is that so? maybe. there is possibly still hope for this. I love what Daisley asks about why we enjoy playing with words and concepts in debate-style contexts so much– “Is it the “winning” of a rhetorical point that produces a feeling of pleasure? Or is it– as the first example intimates–simply the feeling of connectedness, the “interacting with your fellow students”?” (112). that’s a question I want to keep coming back to.

One of the connective threads weaving through all these readings seems to be this idea of the possibility for collaboration, community, and interactivity in digital spaces. Thomas Derrick details an interactive game for composition students that, he claims, makes use of computers as a means of utilizing the “concept of interactivity” in a way that helps them improve their thinking and writing together (45). Margaret Daisley considers the manner in which play affects the way we think about “computer-mediated communication” (107). Haas and Gardner believe the use of graphical MOOs in composition can be valuable in that it may “provide a better means of communication for students because they incorporate not only a familiar, easy-to-use interface, but also provide a better sense of presence with other users” (356). And finally, Beth Kolko works to complicate our understanding of electronic discourse through her discussion of intellectual property in collaborative virtual spaces.

And as Daisley asserts, something that makes the collaboration that occurs in such spaces worth considering is that this interactivity is characterized by its playfulness, and I wonder how we might unpack this intersection of play and collaborative composition as a potential part of pedagogical practices. Are the types of play discussed in these readings really all that playful? Are there better ways for us to be thinking about how to incorporate games and play into our classes? How do we deal with the potential downsides, the times during which “the ‘fun’ gets out of hand” (Daisley 107)? And what are the stakes for us when thinking about these things?

Indeed, I think that some of Daisley’s questions regarding our roles as teachers in all this bear repeating: “Who makes the playground of language, the game of literacy safe? Or, is ‘safety’ always the ideal to shoot for when it comes to language use?” (116). I wonder how we, as writing instructors, navigate language and play in a way that acknowledges “the very real ways virtual space dissolves the boundaries of authorial self and other and reflect[s] these new perspectives in the definitions we generate” (Kolko 180).

I kept thinking, as I read these articles, how deeply ingrained play and games are in learning itself, and how the dangers that come along with it are enhanced as much as the benefits by new technology. I’m thinking mostly of the Daisley piece, where the playful nature of the students is opened up, facilitating conversation in some instances, and shutting down it down with vicious comments in the next breath. Daisley acknowledges some of the hard questions, like “is abuse part of the game?” but doesn’t answer them all in-depth. I suspect that’s because her aim is to achieve acceptance of games and play as legitimate learning activities, and she doesn’t have the necessary space to gain acceptance for games and talk about handling the destructive behavior they enable. It is our job in the present, I suppose, to account for and develop strategies for handling those behaviors. Like Aristotle says of rhetoric, just because rhetoric can be used for bad purposes doesn’t make it unworthy of study. If anything, it makes it all the more paramount to study things that can cause as much harm as good so we can learn the difference between the two and make good decisions in our lives.