I suppose a lengthy discussion of new media literacy, such as the one in which we’re engaged in our class would be incomplete without a fuller discussion of the use of videogames as educational tools. Henry Jenkins, who was the primary author of Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture, is a central figure in the field. James Paul Gee, whose video I’ve posted below, also has some excellent ideas on how games are good learning tools, as does Ian Bogost, whose article “Videogames and the Future of Education,” serves as a rousing call to action, urging concerned citizens to think more critically about K-12 education in the United States.
Here’s a link to a very good video with James Paul Gee: http://vimeo.com/4513412. I was unable to embed it.
One of the reasons that commercial games, which are not designed with any pedagogical goal in mind, are so effective at teaching its player how to play them is because of the profit motivation at work for the game developers. Gee explains, in his article, “Good Video Games and Good Learning,” that, ” If no one could learn these games, no one would buy them—and players will not accept easy, dumbed down, or short games. At a deeper level, however, challenge and learning are a large part of what makes good video games motivating and entertaining.” Ahh. I think Dr. Gee is on to something here. Because games are “long, hard, and complex” as Gee asserts, why would young people give a damn about learning to play them? Because game designers have become experts at keeping people engaged in their products. One of the reasons they can do this is by doing a fantastic job of teaching players how to play the game. Unfortunately, the public education system is not competing with anyone else, so they don’t have the incentive to be effective the way videogame designers do.
At the start of the video that I posted earlier, Gee is quick to point out that he isn’t discussing educational games per se- games designed with the purpose of teaching players something academic in nature. Rather, Gee is interested in analyzing the way games teach players the rules of the game, such as in tutorials. For Gee, “educational games” are another thing entirely. Simulations, such as Madden NFL Football, which most of you have already had the misfortune of hearing about from me, fits this mold nicely. As do role-playing games (RPGS, or in the case of massively multiplayer rpg, MMPRPGs), which need to teach the player scores of different functions to successfully navigate the terrain, engage in the battle system, and work through the story. At the heart of both types of games is the question of problem solving: how do I use the affordances of the game mechanics to find a solution to this problem. In the case of Madden, the player must determine whether a run or pass play is most appropriate in a given situation. For a RPG, a player must use the right piece of equipment, the right weapon, or the right spell to defeat an enemy. While some games are more complex than others, Gee points to the problem-solving nature all well designed games as a place we can look to where applied knowledge trumps rote memorization.
Though Jenkins may have a different audience and different goals in mind in his Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture, the structure of his essay seems to be a good model for what we’re trying to do with our own collaborative essay. Jenkins seemed to echo many of the authors we’ve read thus far, organizing their theories in such a way to argue for schools’ support of participatory culture. Jenkins touches on many different topics, separating each with subheads and clear transitions. We can learn from this.
It’s important for us to see how Jenkins first defined literacy, then explained why it must be modified.
“A definition of twenty-first century literacy offered by the New Media Consortium is “the set of abilities and skills where aural,
visual, and digital literacy overlap. These include the ability to understand the power of images and sounds, to recognize and
use that power, to manipulate and transform digital media, to distribute them pervasively, and to easily adapt them to new
forms.”36 We would modify this definition in two ways. First, textual literacy remains a central skill in the twenty-first century. Youths must expand their required competencies, not push aside old skills to make room for the new. Second, new media literacies should be considered a social skill” (28).
I like the mention of his two modifications: Textual literacy remains a central skill, and to participate in new media literacies requires social skills, as well as technical skills. Before students can engage in participatory media, they must first be able to read and write.
Anthony, I think maybe we could add this to your introduction.
Also, we were asked to think about how we will organize and outline our essay to include each of the theories and themes we’ve dubbed salient.
Here are some of the topics I saw reappearing in Jenkins’ essay:
Web 2.0 ethics – or lack thereof. Jenkins notes that participants feel empowered by their anonymity. The lack of a watchdog in casual settings is causing questionable behavior.
Creativity operating differently in an open source culture, such as sampling (Vaidhyanathan)
Multitasking and multimodality (Kress)
Coupling pedagogical use of new media technology with a greater focus on media literacy (Selber)
Jenkins covers all of these topics that we’ve already discussed in different sections of his essay. What does everyone think about sectioning our essay similarly? It would certainly be easier to divide the work up.
Given that we were asked to read Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture entirely on the computer, it is appropriate that discussion notes should also be posted and read entirely on the computer as well.
According to Jenkins, participatory culture allows “artistic expression and civic engagement,” gives support for sharing with others, includes “mentorship … [for] … novices,” contributions of participants are meaningful, and connect people socially. (Jenkins, 7)
Jenkins also states that young people already are part of participatory culture through affiliations with online communities, expression through creative work using media, already utilize collaborative problem solving by working with others, and circulation by sharing of media (Jenkins, 8 )
The above can be affected by what Jenkins refers to as:
the participation gap – unequal access to technology (Jenkins, 3, 12)
the transparency problem – students’ potential lack of knowledge regarding the media itself (Jenkins, 3, 14)
the ethics challenge – the “breakdown of tradition forms” and students’ growth in media use and participation (Jenkins, 3, 16)
Personal note/direct observation – world of warcraft participants can create their own maps and societies and invite others to join them – this is a clear example of a young person experimenting with participatory culture
Jenkins says there are certain skills that young people utilize in participatory culture (Jenkins mentions both middle/secondary school as well as young college students) – those skills need to be nurtured and by educators and utilized to help students’ growth – the following terms define Jenkins’ theories – definitions can be found in the texzt on pages 4 and 56:
Play
Performance
Simulation
Appropriation
Multitasking
Distributed Cognition
Collective Intelligence
Judgment
Transmedia Navigation
Networking
Negotiation
We can define and discuss our understanding of the terms from Jenkins text noted above.
One of the requirements for the class was to join and post messages on Twitter. This is not something I would normally consider – sometimes new challenges help to stretch your mind. Although, it isn’t really so much of a stretch since it seems to just be a more sophisticated version of text messaging. It is the more sophisticated aspect that makes it special, however. Though it is a platform similar to regular text messaging, you can connect and communicate with a much larger audience than you could with simple singular text messaging in the cell phone world.
While utilizing twitter, it’s easy to forget that you are using a fairly sophisticated networking tool. The twitter site says that twitter is privately funded. The idea grew out of a desire for Jack Dorsey to be able to keep track of what his friends were up to.
When you go to the about page for twitter, you learn a lot more of the specifics about the company and where it is headed.
There were a lot of results when I did a Google search. One of particular interest was a page full of free twitter backgrounds. Though I managed to put up a picture of one of dogs on my twitter page, I found the image is unstable (probably due to size) and it periodically disappears leaving just a brown screen. Though twitter does provide a few backgrounds, I didn’t want to use any of them. This twitter backgrounds page may provide a solution. Additionally, I have seen interesting backgrounds employed by some posters and wondered where they came from. One of the free backgrounds sites is called twitterbackgrounds.com. Of course, if you would like to you can also have a custom designed background for $99 – probably most useful in situations where twitter is used in a business environment.
There are endless options for free twitter backgrounds there – 77 pages of them to be exact.
I only covered a small portion of the twitter information I found. The twitter world is a much larger one to explore than one might initially think.
Now I’m off to explore some backgrounds. Go see the results on my twitter home page.
Recently I noticed that one of the people I follow on Twitter had been having what I thought of as interesting conversations with someone that they follow. Since I was interested and could only see half of the discussion I decided to follow that individual as well. I didn’t think that there was anything unusual or surprising about that decision. The following day I received a message on my Facebook account from that individual stating that they had noticed that I was following them and asking if I knew them. I am paraphrasing their words which were said in what I perceived to be a slightly more harsh and accusatory tone. I was a little surprised and I did not know exactly how to answer the question. I had not thought that a face to face meeting was a necessary prerequisite to following someone via Twitter. I did not think that was so for friending someone on Facebook either but I can see where the term “friend” and the idea of calling someone a “friend” might imply that your social spheres have crossed or that there was some level of cordial communication involved. I did not see it that way at all for Twitter.
I was under the impression that the site promoted following based on the ideas and interests that the individual is tweeting about, among other things of course. Lisa Brookes Kiftstated about social networks that they are “a great way to network and foster relationships with like minded people and those interested in learning more about topics that I know something about.” Twitter itself explains that this is a way for individuals to “stay hyper-connected to your friends and always know what they’re doing. Or, you can stop following them at any time. You can even set up quiet times on Twitter so you’re not interrupted. Twitter puts you in control and becomes a modern antidote to information overload.” Dr.John M Grohol PsyD states that Twitter “is a unique form of online socializing. Twitter offers no real beginning, middle or end to a conversation. As a result, the open universe of non-stop, rolling chatter makes people feel like they don’t want to miss anything.”
Twitter is also not just for individuals and small businesses. More and more twitter activity has become a corporate endeavor. The suggestions for a successful corporate twitter presence differs somewhat from the common sense etiquette that individuals should follow but not all too much. According to “Corporate Twitter” by Chris Miller these guidelines include listen to followers, add value and provide useful content, only follow others when followed or mentioned so to not to annoy or appear as spam, respond to every tweet directed at you, and use replies rather than direct messages so to appear more transparent.
One of the challenges that we must tackle is to decide on the goal of the article. What is it that we wish to accomplish? What is the purpose of the text? What is it doing? What is it saying? These questions are somewhat complicated because there are several of us working on the project and our interests and ideas for it may be different. We will also need to discuss how that article is broken up, what to include in the literature review, which case sources to explore, what contextual information we need, etc.
This is a collaborative project so we are adding to, changing, and deleting each other’s work. There is an excellent chance that what you had written initially will not find its way into a later draft. Such concepts challenge the definition of authorship which has been addressed by several of the texts we have read this semester but most recently in Vaidhyanathan’s Copyrights and Copywrongs; The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity.
It will be interesting seeing how the collaborative essay, Toward an Understanding of New Media Literacy changes and develops. And it will be equally interesting to see which challenges provide difficulty in the upcoming weeks.
I know I tweeted a link to this via Twitpic, but I just installed the wordpress iPhone app so I thought I’d try it out. Below are the themes that emerged from the web 2.0 packet we discussed.
Before offering my thoughts on name and title copyrights, I’ll first apologize to Anthony Bakowa for using the title of an earlier Godzilla blog post that he had written. “What’s in a Name?” is a post reflecting Bakowa’s reading of Lingua Fracta: Towards a Rhetoric of New Media. Though I may have used the same title, our posts address very different subjects and do not compete for readership. My intent is to support some of Siva Vaidhyanathan’s arguments for “thinner” copyright protection in his book Copyrights and Copywrongs. Plus, my spelling of “name,” while incorrect, is different from Bakowa’s. Doesn’t this make our titles different? Is an apology even necessary?
My intentional misspelling of “name” helps me introduce lawsuits filed by the widely famous Metal band, Metallica. Apparently, the band has sued several times over the use of its name. My blog title addresses Metallica’s suit against furniture store owner, Kim Hodges in late 1999 for calling his store “Metallika.” An online ABC blurb does state that the owner was a fan of the band, but clearly wasn’t marketing any music or products that would hurt the sale of records.
Earlier the same year, the band pursued a lawsuit against lingerie-giant, Victoria’s Secret for creating a line of “Metallica” lip pencils and cosmetics without the band’s permission. Victoria’s Secret, according to MTV article, Metallica Tell Wheel Company: Don’t Tread on Me, later settled out of court.
The MTV article first addresses a settlement proposal at the time of its publication on August 22,2001. A California wheel manufacturer was asked to discontinue and recall its “Metallica” wheel, named for its metal composition. The sales manager assured interviewers that his employer knew little of the rock band when chosing the product’s name.
The band’s lawyer, Jill Pietrini, explains “it’s just a matter of a company having the right to protect its name. I couldn’t start up a Coca-Cola record company.”
I suppose both the wheels and cosmetics could have been titled differently and simply used the adjective “metallic” to describe the metal-like appearance of the products without risking copyright/trademark infringement. I’m not sure I agree that the sound of the word “Metallica” should be protected, though. Vaidhyanathan discusses “derivative works” the copyright of “The Death Disk,” first published as a short story by Mark Twain. He asks if D. W. Griffith infringed on the copyrights of Mark Twain in his creation of the film “The Death Disc,” although he had changed elements of the story and the spelling (85-100). The same spelling of “Disk” is later used by Biograph and STILL falls into a gray area of copyright protection.
Vaidhyanathan offers justification in the use of “Disk” and “Disc” for the use of different elements in each of the works. Attempting to apply some of his thoughts and arguments, I wonder why a furniture, cosmetic, or wheel company couldn’t then use “Metallica” if not selling anything musically-related.
This weekend, I downloaded “District 9”, “Bubba Ho-Tep”, and “Zombieland” with the bit torrent application, uTorrent. It’s a handy little tool that I’ve been using regularly since 2003 to download large files such as movies, games, and music albums.
To handle the smaller files, such as individual songs or various essential component files (to properly run programs), I’ll use Limewire. The file-sharing program, DC++, was helpful in the past, but only on the campus network.
Back when I used to play computer games with a near-fanaticism, I searched high and low for CD cracks, passwords, DVD image rippers, and various what-have-you.
So suffice to say, I am a pirate. If you ask me why I do this, I’d have a hard time casting myself in a positive light. However, let me say that I try to find the best deals on goods. If I’m able to get a product for free without leaving home, I’m not going to spend fuel and money just for the box it comes in. I’m not a bad person, I swear, but if the opportunity arises for a free copy of “Plan 9 from Outer Space”, I’ll take it without question.
My theft was largely a result of the band wagon mentality – everyone else was doing it, so I might as well have hopped on – but I won’t discount my own conscious decisions to violate copyright laws. I knew what I was doing. When Napster was being hit hard with copyright infringement lawsuits in 2000, I was temporarily hesitant when downloading mp3s, but that fear was short lived and I thieved under the idea that I was very unlikely to be “discovered” by the “authorities”. This all doesn’t mean that I didn’t eventually go out and buy the albums I was downloading – there is always some validity in holding the official copy.
Siva Vaidhyanathan mentions this post-download buying on page 179 in Copyrights and Copywrongs, “…it’s not so clear that people will stop buying CDs just because they can get free MP3s one song at a time.” I’m not at all alone in my justifications. I may very well be just another follower in the Grateful Dead business model he discusses – “…give away free music to build a following, establish a brand name, and charge handsomely for the total entertainment package.” Indeed, I often do buy after downloading, and I often buy obsessively. Upon downloading Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” in 2000, I bought the album, then the performance in Berlin, then “Dark Side of the Moon”, and soon after simultaneously buying and downloading every single Pink Floyd album I could find.
I can’t say I act the same way with movies, unless the film was particularly good. I’m more likely to download, watch, and delete. There can be raised an issue of theft-for-profit, if I had a desire to make a profit, but I see this more often done elsewhere and usually unnoticed (or even accepted). For instance, I was in Iraq last year and on base there was a small shop ran by a couple foreign contractors. They sold copies and bootlegs of movies on DVD and movies still in theaters for $3 or two for $5. Their primary customers were U.S. soldiers. It felt almost disturbing to see such blatant violation of copyright, that our own Constitution protects, being violated on a U.S. military post. Why did we let this happen? Convenience, mostly, but we were a captive audience – I doubt that selling DVDs at a standard state-side market price would have seen any less buyers.
Whether or not it was lawful, the residents of the post were grateful to have such a service provided and I’ll admit that having such cheap movies made the quality of life a little better.
The same can be said of much of the copyright infringements we see today. Although perhaps I assume humanity to be more generous than it is, much of the copied content I see on the Internet has no real aspirations other than entertainment. The YouTube site for The Gregory Brothers is a good example of an amalgamation of material for such entertainment. Known for “Auto-Tune the News”, The Gregory Brothers use a tuning program on the voices of political figures, as well as other musical effects, to create music where there previously wasn’t. Here is their latest video:
Though the group does accept donations and have t-shirts for sale, they do not sell any of the audio of video they have mixed. There is simply no need. The remixes they create are for laughs and to add a little enjoyment into what would ordinarily be a drab speech in Congress.
Similarly, the site Garfield Minus Garfield author Dan Walsh crafted his art for the public for months before the comic strip author, Jim Davis, took notice. Davis, however, was actually intrigued by Dan’s creativity:
“I think it’s an inspired thing to do,” Davis said. “I want to thank Dan for enabling me to see another side of Garfield. Some of the strips he chose were slappers: ‘Oh, I could have left that out.’ It would have been funnier.”
Another popular site that twists copyrighted material is YTMND (You’re the Man Now Dog), which mashes together picture, text, and sound in often humorous ways (i.e.: Lord of the Rings’ ‘potato’ scene). While this site falls largely under the protection of parody and the creators of the “ytmnds” are required to cite their sources, it regularly falls into lawsuits with Ebaumsworld and Sega (over the use of Sonic the Hedgehog’s image), their position of parodizing is repeatedly held and the public continue to thrive on and contribute to the content.
On page 155 Vaidhyanathan quotes Richard Stallman as saying:
I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. Software sellers wants to divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way. I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement.
While it’s completely impractical to apply this theory to all of media, it should be important to consider it. Linux and its dozens of sister operating systems adhere to Stallman’s idea of copyleft, which requires anyone who alters Free Software publicly release all changes to the text. Since its creation, Linux certainly has become a huge force among the programming elite and techno-savy, and it’s curious to see how they develop it into platforms that can compete with Mac OS and Windows with graphics and user-friendliness.
I dual-boot with Windows and Linux (the Ubuntu release). I enjoy the idea of not paying for an operating system, though I don’t know enough of programming to use Linux to even 50% of its potential. Why bother? Perhaps it’s that band wagon mentality again. How can so many experts be wrong? It’s the same utopian ideal we’ve been seeing since this whole “internet” thing took flight, the same concept we see Wikipedia developing, the same principle Napster had publicized, and the same goal early webrings had sought to accomplish.
But perhaps I assume humanity to be more generous than it is.
A classmate claimed that the reason that textbooks are so expensive is because of the royalties paid to authors. That classmate further stated that maybe if there was no copyright and authors weren’t being paid royalties, that textbook prices would be much lower. I knew immediately that this was faulty reasoning. So, I left class planning to do some research on the subject. Here is some of what I found:
According to Cyndi Allison in her article Sticker Shock, “Texts today include color, illustrations, photos, and other reference materials such as page tabs, which make textbooks more expensive to produce than straight words on paper.” She also states that “Manufacturing costs top out as the biggest portion of your text receipt at around 30 percent with marketing running second at over 15 percent.” That is 45 percent total – that does not include the cost of shipping the heavy textbooks or the cut by the store that sells the book.
In Where Your Money Goes by Ryne Dittmer of Iowa State, the author breaks down the percentages of the total book cost of and who gets what. Dittmer says the highest percentage, 39.2 percent, goes to Publishers and their cost of production where only 7 percent of the total serves as income for the publisher. Dittmer further points out the author’s income – likely split among several authors – at just 11.7 percent.
Still not convinced? Here is a graphic by the NACS Foundation that appeared on the BYU website in a section titled Why Are Textbooks So Expensive– it shows a clear breakdown of where all the money goes:
Note: this graphic can only be found on the BYU site, the original on NACS web site can only be accessed by registered members
…. and here is a sometimes humorous discourse on textbook prices found on YouTube – it has some good, solid insight from a textbook author as well
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