Projects
 

Course Reflection

Screen-Shot Analysis

Mechinima

R&D of Final Project

Class Blogs
 

Dr. Cheryl Ball

Adam Gertz

Daniel Harla

Emily Rieger

Jason dockter

Kate Melia

Kevin Mckenzie

Matt Wendling

Susan Grogan

   
Daily Blogs
  Amber Night

Eating Bees

Feministe

Game girl Advice

Grimwell’s Blog

Ludology.org

MMORPG << It’s about

The everyday blog of Richard Bartle

The Life and Times of a Video Game Design Student
   
Education
  Learning Games Initiative
   
Fun
  Society for the Easily Amused
   
Groups
  Association of Virtual Worlds

Death DealerZ

Joystick101

Terra Nova
   
Industry Insiders
  Broken Toys

Cuppytalk

Raph Koster’s Website
   
Journals
  Eludamos

Game Studies Journal

K A I R O S
   
News
  Gamasutra

Massively

MMORPG.com
   
The Academy
  Bonnie’sBlog

Gameology

Ian Bogost


Jesper Juul


K u r t S q u i r e ‘ s
H o m e p a g e
Past Projects
 

A Progressive Electronic Portfolio

 

Reflection and final project

The reflection

The Final Project

05/08/2009

send commants to: onyxangel13@hotmail.com

Comments: 0

Proposal Re:Write

To: the editors of The New Work of Composing
From: Jonathan Myers (onyxangel13@hotmail.com)

A Proposal for Writing An Introduction

Working title: Talking Back to Our Teachers: Undergraduate research of Teaching Multimodal Composition

 

Having “read” the three pieces composed and accepted as a chapter for the digital book The New Work of Composing by the students from Illinois State University, I am requesting permission to submit a daft of an introduction for the chapter in which they are to be contained. I recognized the value of these pieces before I read the Call For Submissions and became excited by the prospect of their publication. as a result I want to add an overarching and connecting introduction to present them. After having read the CFS, and more fully understanding the topic of the project, I find myself in sincere hope that you will accept my proposition.

The draft I am submitting takes the form of a multimodal compositing comprised of text, images, audio, and AVI video imbedded in the Sophie composition framework in anticipation of a web browser plug-in. The existing draft is an attempt to support the three individual projects and present their unified goals. It seeks to mark the place and time in which these works are situated.

The aim of my introduction is to foreground an issue I perceive all three pieces as revolving around. The issue is that of digital immigrant/native perspective of current education issues.  These three projects present a desire of students for a dialogue between students and teachers rather than two separate “sides” not talking to each other. They present a digital divide not of the have technology or not have technology, it is, in their view, that of how involved teachers are in what students see as a logical employment of digital technology. Thought provoking request to include more technologies into the teaching/learning process ranging from use of the internet for research to web 2.0 applications.

It is an introduction not only to the pieces it highlights but also to some of the more esoteric issues, such as the Technological Singularity, which I feel is essential to understanding the full debate because of what the persistent advance of hardware and software may do  for student and teacher interaction.. In addition to the general introduction and the focus on parallel concepts, I have also included an author’s reflection in AVI form towards the end.

If you accept my proposal and I have not completely achieved this goal, please inform me of the necessary editing I may need to do to accomplish this.

Jonathan Myers.

 

 

Revisions to proposal

Largely my revisions were to clarify my proposal. As was pointed out frame feedback, I never really discussed the works I am attempting to introduce. This was a major failing in the proposal. That problem is derived from my attempts to not overshadow the original three pieces. The result was, in my attempts to communicate my desire to hold up the work i seek to introduce without eclipsing them, I actually did eclipse them by not giving them their due space in my proposal.

I tweaked some of the language I used  to eliminate the sense of dominance. Part of that was bringing into the proposal an overview description of what I saw as the common treads between them as I read through the three works, which is what excited me about the potential of writing an introduction for them.

This is one of those cases where I over thought my writing. I wanted to achieve the objective of saying that I really respect the three pieces and would be honored to be allowed to write the introduction. The actual result was the opposite of that goal which i feel is also found in the draft I wrote.

 

05/07/2009

send commants to: onyxangel13@hotmail.com

Comments: 0

Review Letter to Jason Dockter for the Final Project

Jason,

Navigation:

 There is a clear sense of how the reader should move through the piece. What more can I say? It has a linier layout yet can be jumped around in if needed. The potential for possible “go back” from on section or another is very plainly obvious. As a reference object for students the titles of the sections promotes clear memory association.

The one thing I might see changing is placing the competed piece as a front page rather than the last link in the sequence. We, as consumers of DVDs, have acquired a UI language or procedure. This language or procedure is a natural inclination of watching a feature film first and then to seek out “making of” special features. By placing the completed piece first you will potential be activating that natural inclination which might foster grater engagement and/or retention of the information provided.

Here i now pick nits... the way in which the links are set in the title banner is kind of cumbersome and jarring for me. I’m not sure this can be rectified with WordPress. A positive feature of this is it is actually a way in which you can inform first year comp students that you do not actually expect perfection from them in a first time MMC work... how could you. It is a complicated process that take years of experimentation to refine. You and I are both somewhat experienced in this form of comp and we are still negotiation and compromising in getting our point across.

Choices:

One of my secret indulgences is a love for instruction materials, especially those for software. I have a pretty decent collection of such things (some are for products I have never actually owned LOL). I am really into instructional design.

I mention this so you understand the depth of the following statement: if this is intended to be an instructional piece or to be transformed into an instructional piece, your general design choices are superb in a make-sense sort of way. There are no frivolous interjections. The intent is clear. If I didn’t know any better I would have guessed that you have take at least one tech writing course. Well done!

The organization makes perfect sense. The step by step processing does its job.

A strength of the piece is that it has a casual tone, but not a too casual tone. It is conversational yet informative. I loved the cat btw!

Purpose/Focus:

Yeah, I think it is clear. one thing i might suggest you consider is perhaps shifting the “discussion of literature” section some how. I cannot tell you what I mean by that. It’s an intuition thing on my part. It works where it is but I wonder if you can make it work harder in some way.

Credibility:

Credibility was deffinately established throughout the piece.

Appreciation:

I actually really appreciate what this is.

Putting myself in the shoes of a completely inexperienced student this work would provide me not with confidence (which is something we must develop) but it would provide me with a good bit of courage. To see what my teacher has done for a similar assignment, to see the difficulties inherent to a MMC and how they are overcome  would be important to me.

As a teacher I see this as an invaluable tool (in fact it has been bookmarked to that potential). It is something I can see using to the above mentioned purpose.

Other thoughts:

I understand your concern for online student affinity with necessary technologies and the fact that in that situation you will not be able to provide hands-on assistance. That is a tough call but a necessary call.

One thing i have concern for is if this were transformed into a purely instructional piece is that it is Mac centric. I know, I know, i am yet again raising the PC banner but it is a necessary action, especially when considering you would be presenting this as an online material.

The fact of the matter is that Mac only has a 20% penetration. PC still owns the field. This means that as much as or more than 80% of your students would be using PC. In this it might be necessary to comment on the differences between the two in some way or at least provide a resources page that would give your PC students “options”.

If this is only a documentary piece, it is perfectly fine in this regard. As an experienced and resourceful PC user, I can translate tools well. As a result of viewing this I have actually decided to abandon my use of Adobe Premiere Pro. It is too much of an elitist program and is, in some ways, not as user friendly as Windows Movie Maker... meaning Premiere Pro is too dissimilar from iMovie that it creates a divide between myself and other MMC “producers”. I’ll even go as far to say that I now feel a responsibility to actually pick up a Mac if I find myself teaching a MMC class so I can speak both “languages” to the benefit of those possible students. But, I’ll never give up my PCs! Its necessary for my overall personal project <wink>

The discussion of literature section probably needs to be </br>up some. It is a really long block of text. I have always found such structures difficult. As a reader I personally like the breaks so i can keep my place when reading.

The blog and the YouTube upload both have sound problems. The levels music related assets were starkly different from your talking. This had me jumping in my chair even when I came to expect it. Making these match might help prevent your students from having seizures and/or panic attacks.

I hope this helps and was not too long winded

Jonathan


05/07/2009

send commants to: onyxangel13@hotmail.com

Comments: 0

Proposal

To: the editors of The New Work of Composing
From: Jonathan Myers (onyxangel13@hotmail.com)

Introduction for undergraduate Multi-Modal Research Pieces

Having “read” the three pieces composed and accepted as a chapter for the digital book The New Work of Composing by the students from Illinois State University, I am requesting permission to submit a daft of an introduction for the chapter in which they are to be contained. My personal, and positive, judgment of the value of these pieces was determined before reading the Call For Submissions. After having read the CFS, and more fully understanding the topic of the project, I find myself in sincere hope that you will accept my proposition.

The draft I am submitting takes the form of a multimodal compositing comprised of text, images, audio, and AVI video imbedded in the Sophie composition framework in anticipation of a web browser plug-in. The existing draft acknowledges the import of the three individual projects as a whole. It seeks to, at first mark the place and time in which these works are situated, and second to draw out the debate the student authorial groups may not have had a complete awareness of entering.

It is an introduction not only to the pieces it highlights but also to some of the more esoteric issues, such as the Technological Singularity, which I feel is essential to understanding the totality debate. In addition to the general introduction and the focus on parallel concepts, I have also included an authors reflection in AVI form towards the end of the exposition.

There has been, on my part, a conscious effort to not subsume the undergraduate works into a larger manifesto decrying the digital immigrant/native perspective of current education issues. If you accept my proposal and I have not completely achieved this goal, please inform me of the necessary editing I may need to do to accomplish this.

Jonathan Myers


04/30/2009

send commants to: onyxangel13@hotmail.com

Comments: 0

Revisions

I HAVE A PICTURE!

This always helps...

I have to admit, I am actually relatively familiar with the “official” version of Rice+Ball, which will slant my assessment somewhat. I also have to say from my initial reading of that version I have had the desire to go in and restructure it just for kicks. inlight if that desire, I will keep this very brief. So, on with the picture!

Rice+Ball

Rather than write a long meandering post I have this picture as reference (which is a link to a larger version of the picture).

For simplicity I’ll be working with elements developed for the final version rather than developing my own. I can’t say that I would have come up with something starkly different from what you all did.

In reading the letters it seems to me the biggest issue in the letter writers’ reading was navigation and some stability problems. The final submitted version largely solved a lot of those issues by integrating the relatively or seemingly disconnected sections more closely. The over all changes i would recommend is a change in the macro navigation so a reader/user would have a better understanding of where they are. Inducing a feel of being in a fixed location as I have here should accomplish this.

I would situate the elements in a three div layout. The mute piece as either a flash or a YouTube insert in the right-hand upper div. It either can be played as situated in its div or full screen. The remote imbedded in the lower right-hand div. The links at the bottom of the left hand div are a footer embedded in that div.

In the letters there is a mention of problems with the mute video poem. By imbedding it in the upper right-hand div as described those problems should largely have been resolved. Additionally, by arraigning it as it is illustrated a user can have access to it as needed in reading the rest of the piece rather than losing it through navigation to other parts of this piece.

The “buttons” in lower right-hand div and the links in the footer activate the left-hand hand dive, meaning those buttons and links change the left-hand div appearance bringing into play the elements they represent in the final version. “play movie” is the home button that reasserts the original (before activating any of the buttons) layout as illustrated in the image I have provided.

 

04/25/2009

send commants to: onyxangel13@hotmail.com

Comments: 0

Progress Report

Given the title, I suppose I should be progressing. Fortunately I am. However, I really don’t have much to report.

Main project: i am still collecting assets for one of the three videos I am creating. Today I am recording the audio for that particular piece. I have recorded the elements of one and will start assembling the clips for it in class. I am not satisfied with the audio for that one and have decided to record a loop to replace it. I’ll be recording the last video Thursday or Friday. That particular video will be pretty easy. I’ve decided to set up and frame this one as if I have been conducting an ongoing YouTube blog and am responding to viewer submitted questions. I can pump out the associated text in a day or so.

I have decided to not create a video that is a compilation of clips from the three works my work is to be introducing. What I have to say about them will be part of the text. I have come to the conclusion of if i were to use portions of the three works my work may subjugate them making them part of an unintended agenda.

I am exerting a good amount of control over this project in the sense that it is desperately wanting to become an independent manifesto.  Though a threat to my aim, this will not happen.

As I have been working on this project my perceptions of certain aspects of multimodal work have become altered. I can see a potential for a paper in my increased understandings.

I have not had the opportunity to even really touch the analysis from earlier in the semester. Reworking that is another one to one and a half day project. it will get done.

I am selfishly withholding comments about the mechinima composition. I would like to formulate a publishable paper, a guide to understanding the process. I see it as a kind of compositions manifesto, if you will.

Crunch time is upon me. Though we are only supposed to have a beta by the 22nd I would actually like to push it out to the point of being pretty much done by then. After the 22nd I don’t want to have to deal with too much further revision of it, though I may have to.


04/08/2009

send commants to: onyxangel13@hotmail.com

Comments: 0

Prediction #78 (I initially made about 3 years ago)
It is happening!

 

This is where I want to say "damn, I’m good!" but I will refrain. The reason for this abstinence from gloating is this is only part of my prediction. The fact that it must project on a surface is not quite what I have been saying. What is needed to be precisely accurate is the device must be much smaller and more capable (roughly the power of a current gaming or media production laptop) and have an “invisible” HUD that projects onto a small screen or visor or directly into the eye.

At first these devices will have the power of a Blackberry or an iPhone. A little more than a year after that they will achieve the power I am pointing to. Within 5 years of that advance these wondrous devices will replace the cell phone, the laptop computer, the MP3 player/portable media device, and perhaps even the home PC... and it won’t be made by Apple. The real key, in the end, will be the display format.

This technology represents an essential alteration in our interactivity with our world. It is the advance that will herald an absolute change in our composition needs and practices. It will encourage multimodal compositions few can conceive of now. Heck, it will change what we mean by “multimodal composition”.

Imagine creating a composition that is placed in a global database geosynchronously situated so a potential reader does not search for it or call it up, they intersect with it by walking through a trigger point, which can be made public or addressing a specific person.. Talk about changing the nature of hypertextuality

 

3/28/2009

send commants to: onyxangel13@hotmail.com

Comments: 0

 

Progress report

Sorry, I completely forgot to do this last week.

I wish I had something more material to report than I do. I’m still at the point of thinking about this project. don’t worry though. For me doing any project of any type involves roughly 70% thinking and then 30% doing.

Where my thoughts have taken me thus far has been very profitable. I have escaped the idea of native/immigrant and that misconception of the singularity having already arrived without fracturing the valid conclusions of the article those ideas sprung from.

The mistake in native/immigrant is it relies on social and economic forms and conceptions. This places, among other things, a value that is extremely counter productive in communicating the idea of “digital affinity”. Native/immigrant also produces a vastly harmful and ill-conceived binary that places blinders upon our eyes regarding access.

I at first indulged in this conception as a binary, attempting to appropriate the native/immigrant conception for myself. I understood before i attempted this that it would not bare any fruit. A binary is always a dangerous structure when discussing people. It puts those categorized in positions of opposition.

I then looked at it as a triptych. My hope in this was to container the essence in the idea of native/immigrant while putting forth a third option that describes a blend of both sides of the binary. I had some hope for this but quickly recognized that it would not work because this third element was insufficient.

I immediately discarded a quad approach. Too many terms to keep straight... this would only inflate the issue of reconfiguration. I then refocused my attention on the idea of The Singularity. In this i determined that upon achieving a technological singularity, as was implied as already having occurred in the article, that the singularity would perpetuate itself with little or no assistance from humans.

This is an important deduction. Even in the midst of a singularity there will be technologies and people consistently progressing into newer forms but because of the nature of the singularity these people would actually be in a state of “always already there” awaiting a proper name to be applied to identify them. But, because of the speed at which the singularity advances a naming convention could not be effectively employed.

That’s when it hit me! Singularity actually describes a kind of movement or state. It is a condition where in the object, in the strict case of Kurzweil’s singularity being technologies, are in a constant state of transition. Immediately Kirk Cameron’s crocoduck came to mind. This then overlaid the myth of inelegant design on native/immigrant. That binary describes something that simply cannot exist given all factors concerned.

The reality is that this issue of “digital affinity” , in its complexity, describes transitional states. The intelligent design community insists on the presentation of a transitional species to prove evolution. The reality is that all species, all members alive, dead or yet to be are “always already” a transitional form and may or may not possess attribution of the next major special leap.

Thus, at any given time, no matter how acclimated any individual is in the world or not, we are all contributing to the ongoing development of multimodal interaction, reaction, creation, or consumption. We, as a global culture, are in constant transition, each individual possessing something to contribute to the progressive conversation that is digital composition.

In this i see, in each of the three compositions from last semester, elements that can be brought together to pretty much explain away the native/immigrant binary while retaining the importance of that article that then points us in a more constructive direction in examining the “cross pollination” of those with digital affinity and those with out.

It is not that we are all either a native or immigrant, it is that we are all representations of transition. We are transitional participants.


3/22/2009

send commants to: onyxangel13@hotmail.com

Comments: 0

Final Render

swg-cfp5.avi

3/18/2009

send commants to: onyxangel13@hotmail.com

Comments: 0

 

This is what I’m talking about... The future of interactive design

 

3/13/2009

send commants to: onyxangel13@hotmail.com

Comments: 0

OMG, CFP, WTF

 

swg-cfp5.avi

So, what were the responses? “Tight” and “gnarly”. This is what I get for sending it out to Californians... aging surfer Californians (they are in their 50s). The people who saw this understood the information, where it was pointing them to and the purpose of the CFP (with the title Call Foe Papers how can one misconstrue its purpose?). The only real question was why i used a “video game” as the information dispersal platform. My two responses to this are 1. please remove the implied “it’s just a” from the front of video game. 2. Star was Galaxies is not a videogame... which is ultimately the point of using SWG mechinima.

2/25/2009

send commants to: onyxangel13@hotmail.com

Comments: 0

Final Draft?

I am providing both a linked version and. an imbedded version of the CFP. The link is to a file on my server... I prefer the file because it is the full length version.

swg-cfp5.avi

 

Oh how I hate YouTube! My reasoning for this are, admittedly, purely elitist. I dislike YouTube for the same reason I dislike Television: it is mostly mental clutter. Indeed, I will admit there are gems buried in YouTube just as there are in TV programming. But, like TV, those gems are few and far between.

This is my first mechinima composition. I have been involved in the “filming” of several mechinima productions over the years but I have not been on the editing and conversion end of it. On one hand, it is as simple as it seems: film, edit, assemble, export, and upload. On the other hand, it is not. I have yet to figure out how to format video to the best resolution. I suspect the poor resolution is because of the program I used to do my captures.

In my uploading to YouTube I had difficulty with the final uploaded render. YouTube has been cutting off the last five seconds of my composition. I have no clue why. The problem with this result is the link information is in that final five seconds. This is a problem.

Though I have had copious difficulties I feel as if I have found a new form of expression I wish to explore. I will keep at it until I get this whole mechinima thing down.

I still consider this work a draft. I have problems with the rendering and pixilation.

2/18/2009

send commants to: onyxangel13@hotmail.com

Comments: 0

CFP video rough
link
KISA Responsefor
SWG: The Avatar of MMORPGs as Multimodal WorksV.1

Well, as I always do with anything I write, I hate this composition. But, I hate ALL of my compositions! I’m not sure I exactly followed the objectives as rubric in this assignment. I kind of went around the outside of the objective, while keeping them in my sight, to accomplish what i needed to.

For a lot of the content, structure and form of the project I drew upon prior knowledge such as (in a relatively limited fashion) hypertext theory (every nerve in my body was screaming at me, begging to situate this in a multi-paged web document), my experience with/in technical writing/rhetoric, advanced rhetoric, and the bit of visual rhetoric i have picked up along the way. This is not to sat the engagement of these kernels of knowledge are obvious or even fully realized but they did contribute to my effort. Primarily their presence can be seen in my employment of images and how I situated the text and images with one another and referred to the images with text.

As far as the citation is concerned... Is standard MLA imbedded in a web text considered to be multimodal citation and research?

Now, the topic from the “key issues” discussion, I was pretty free with this. I looked to rhetoric/aesthetics largely the issue of SWG as an exemplary multimodal composition is derived from rhetoric and aesthetics. Because SWG is generally viewed as a game and not a composition or a space for composition it can be difficult to flush our these features for most people. I figured a lose discussion of aspects of the UI, the basics of “reading practices” of such an environment, and an equally lose discussion of one aspect of user composition possibility. I got all formal with the second aspect of user composition with the concept I called free play.

I am unsure of whether I have claimed that my chosen text is canonical or not. Even “lesser” MMORPGs are very complex compositions either as games or as multimodal texts. I do think I have a decent wedge into this issue. I do, however need more sources, which then leads to needing to be allowed more length.

And then there is my seemingly eternal struggle... there is so little available scholarship on this topic. There is some adjacent to it in a few directions but I am not knowledgeable enough of that scholarship just yet.

If I can find more sources and dramatically extend the length of this text I think I might be looking at a paper that is what I have been looking for as support for my view of the potential of MMORPGs. I supposed that’s positive, but I still hate it.

2/6/2009

send commants to: onyxangel13@hotmail.com

Comments: 0

The Canon Shot Heard Around the Classroom

I want to precede this post with the statement that I am not a video game nut. I have a REAL life and a REAL academic agenda. It just happens that video games are a relative aspect of my work. I will not “preach” the worth of video games in our culture. I will not spend any time telling anyone they should play video games. I will say that every person should spend some time examining virtual environments, which are not necessarily video games, which are not necessarily activated by computers or their relatives, which are not necessarily absolutely apparent as virtual environments at all. I will let you know that no one should dismiss video games as “just” video games, because they are not “just”. They are the newest and an increasingly influential form in global culture.

I concave myself as a new media scholar and developer with a focus on alternate reality compositions (both compositions within alternate realities and the alternate realities themselves). I also consider myself at least part ludologist and mostly literary critic.

I provide this qualifier because all of the objects I am offering in this assignment are in one way or another connected to video games and video-game-like artifacing. This comes from the fact that I am “on the fringe” of well known academic subjects.

and yes, I can be defensive about this so talk to me pretty!

ON WITH THE GAMES!

“not found” key-issue assignment

In the article “Using Literary Theory to Read Games: Power, Ideology, and Repression in Atlus' Growlanser: Heritage of War” by Johansen Quijano-Cruz in eludamos Vol. 2, No. 2 (2008) a question is raised by the author. This is a question of how do and how should academics approach the employment of critical theory in analyzing video games. the point of contention in this article is which theory one must use. Video game theory focuses on mechanical and systemic operations. Literary theory focuses on meaning making experience; in other words the ideas communicated in a game.

The author asks two important questions in the introduction:

”Is it really possible to apply literary theory to a game and explore the ideas presented in the game successfully?”

”Is it possible to do a close reading of a game?”

The answer provided by the author is: “Only if you want to find out what the games are really saying.”

What does this have to do with Multimodal Composition?  Boiled down to the essentials, with very little theory in between, the fact that you can do two different types of critical assessment of a video game shows us that a video game is a simultaneous dual media composition. The most apparent genre of composition is that it is a video game containing all of the attributes we as a society have come to expect of a videogame. The second, and less apparent genera is the buried literature imbedded within the video game wrapper. Though not strictly “textual” it is quite easy to use literary theory in examining a video game as a text because it does communicate ideas much the same way “traditionally defined” text does.

The at-stake issue is who is right. In my experience and research both are right. Ludologists cannot make exclusive claim on video game text and nether can those who wield the mighty hammer of critical literary theory.}

In essence, like so much we will be looking at this semester, video games belong in the hands of new media studies which takes an accepted blended approach of several academic perspectives.

After all of that, think about this: what we are doing in MMC this semester will, some day, be looked back upon by new media students in new media departments as “foundational” study practices.


finding “canonical” examples: academic and popular

Are We Truly Worlds Apart? Building Bridges Between Second Life and Secondary Education
This redistributed article by Stephanie Vie from an issue of Computers and Composition confronts the issue of rhetorical application of second life in secondary education as a tool for teaching in general. It is a pro Second Life piece with many valid points.

This is actually a topic i am quite passionate about. I absolutely do not believe Second life is a favourable platform for education, especially in secondary education. My opposition is not derived from popular mis/understandings of Second life, mostly those involving pornographic material in Second Life. It is actually derived from the video game theorist within me. Second life is a horrible platform for extended reality interaction. It has the most counterintuitive UI system I have encountered in the 10 years i have been examining MUVWs.

The idea of using a MUVW for educational purposes is an incredibly tantalizing proposition. In fact, i thing it is an excellent idea but second life is not the platform to use. Instead, a more user-friendly system should be generated to that specific purpose.

Yes, I did just say that state and federal tax dollars should be allocated to the creation of an academic MUVW. In lay persons terms i stated that we should spend nearly 100 million dollars to make a videogame for schools...

David Perry: Will videogames become better than life?
The forum is TED. TED, though not strictly academic, is academic in nature. The piece is a multi authored multimodal multi media work. As a whole it works as a presented text. At the end of the talk a student composition is imbedded, which can stand alone... and does, phenomenally!

Star Wars Galaxies

Yes, this looks like a videogame site. No, the site is not the artifact. No, I would not consider Star Wars Galaxies a video game. It is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (yeah, I know, it says ‘game’ at the end even though I said I don’t consider it a game). of all the MMORPGs out there this has a  number of unique features. At the top of the list, and the reason why I chose it is that it is a remediation of a body of work (3 movies, roughly 20 books, and 5 comic books/graphic novels) that is considered to be part of a specific canon, the Star Wars canon (yes, I know it sounds odd but there IS a Star Wars Canon). Thus, due to faithful remediation, it is considered to be of that canon itself.

additionally it contains several layers of interactivity from identify expression to “reading” stories imbedded in its core encoding. Not only that, it also contains several layers of user authorship framework. In other words, users can either read the stories presented or write stories for others to read as well as allowing uses to “live” stories of their own devising. In all of this, it is a unique digital work. There is nothing quite like it in any form anywhere in the world. I absolutely would consider SWG canon to the degree that it is REQUIERED reading for anyone working on Providence with me to enter the world and explore it. It is the only world I insist my development cohorts “read” completely. Its design is, for me as a developer of such things, the most influential work.

It also is an important work due to the fact that it has gone through substantial changes through its history, one of which actually moved it away from a greater level of interactivity and open reading. It is entirely possible this change will be a good portion of my graduate dissertation.

If necessary I can actually present this work, to a limited degree, to the class in its operation.


1/27/2009

send commants to: onyxangel13@hotmail.com

Comments: 0

 
OH NOs!

In my excitement of being free from WordPress I overlooked one key component. My blog does not have a capacity for others to post comments! So, as a solution to this, till I can get some feedback from the ISU tech people on this, I will undertake the task of manually posting responses.

At the bottom of every post I will include my email address. Send any comments to the address and I will then post them for others to read. yes, this is archaic. No, it is not an inconvenience. It will give me some practice in organization, layout, and design that will not hurt to have. The down side is a lack of expediency. The posts will not be instantiations. I’ll make it part of my morning routine. I will not edit or neglect to post comments I may disagree with.

Hopefully I can integrate a comments system soon for YOUR convinence.

1/22/2009

send commants to: onyxangel13@hotmail.com

Comments: 0

 
Thoughts about our class session

After our last class I did some thinking about a few things I saw fly across the table during the very heated and wonderful consciousness expanding group exploration. Two topics stick to the top of my brain pan: The term “canon” and Second Life. Please, allow me to revisit them. I’ll be as succinct as I can...

The term “canon”

At the core of my being, the root of whom and what I am, is a raging fur spitting Antiestablishmentarianist. I oppose any from of doctrine or dogma. I question authority of any kind. I cannot submit comfortably to anything I perceive as telling me what and how I should think beyond social contract. Even social contract largely disturbs me... I am not PC nor can I be. I participate in standardization reluctantly and out of necessity. Complete freedom of thought is the single most valuable commodity available, a commodity very few people actually have in their possession.

To me “the canon” or “a canon” is antithetical of freedom. Canon tells us what to think and how to think. It defines in a very impersonal mode what is supposed to be “good”. In this, I am reminded of the bit in Dead Poets Society where Keating has one of his students read the preface of their textbook in which good poetry is defined through an imposed formula. Though a slight exaggeration, it is not far off the mark as to method of the assembly of the literary canon used in English education.

No one can or has the right to tell us what is supposed to be aesthetically pleasing or is good. It established a standardization of perception or thought. Even if one does not embrace a canon, it still effects that person, deeply.

With this said I add: I do understand the purpose of a canon. It IS useful. It provides a common grounding from which we all can operate and use to convey ideas. I could not oppose a canon or “the canon” if I were not familiar with them/it. This is the crux and conundrum of my view. I cannot have my view without having delved into that thing, that concept, I oppose.

As far as our class goes for me and us in this; I will always oppose the concept. I will always deeply question any artifact we may suggest as being included in a canon. I may not voice this because it would be counter productive to the goals of our work but know it is their... brooding, disagreeing, seething, and contradicting.


Second Life

please do not dismiss Second Life out of hand because of what media has to say about it with out experiencing it yourself.  SL is a very important New Media/Multimodal artifact. It represents an extreme form of multimodal composition one must consider when examining MMC. SL has its problems but it also possesses a large quantity of magic.

I have spent hundreds of hours in that environment. I have come to my own conclusions of its importance to New Media, which are both substantial as well as fragmented. It represents a first move in an inevitable direction. It is, more or less, a prototype of the future of the WWW.

There are forms of interactivity available in SL one cannot experience in any other place in the internet. There are perception altering mechanics inherent to its system one cannot ignore. Its flaws are important to us as composers of multimodal work.

I do not know if it will be possible, but I would like to introduce everyone to SL. There are compositions worthy of observation and examination for our class. I know the computers in the class are capable of running the software for it. In fact, I believe it is installed on those computers. Perhaps, maybe...

01/22/2009 12:08pm

send commants to: onyxangel13@hotmail.com

Comments: 0

 

Multimodality: meaning making and education

Kress

I have to say I believe that the idea of “all texts are multimodal” is perhaps too specifying. I would rather think of this as all texts being hypertextual. This situates texts as a consistent point of departure in that a reader can chose to exist within the text as they perceive it, alter their direct perception of the text (altering the meaning making process by examining personal perceptions and interaction with the text, or can use the text as a springboard into other derivations of the text by choice. Given the fact that every text consumed effects as it is affected it is imposable to actually determine every derivative idea or thought resulting or branching from the text at hand. This is, as I understand the term, the definition of hypertexuality, not necessarily multimodality. This is not to say, however, that hypertexuality and multimodality are not so closely intertwined that they must coexist at an active semiotic level.

Schopenhauer tells us that will and idea are function and form. In looking at the concepts related in the Kress PDF I find it unavoidable to relate Kress and Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer deals very much with idea as a definer of reality, both shared and personal. Idea is the for our processing of data takes up, partly by will and partly by circumstance under which data is acquired. Will is a resulting and coexisting aspect from and if idea. At the end of the Kress article he relates the configuration of S–>M–>R stating that a message, an idea, a systemic communication form comes to rest in R. i must disagree with this idea.

Several years ago Dr. Bruce Hawkins taught me a different tri-form G–>S–>E; Grounding–>Selection–>Experience. Grounding is the idea. Grounding represents the base from which we all operate. Each persons grounding, or ideas, are very different from another’s though they may have relative forms. Selection, or will, is the process by which a person selects particular ideas from grounding. This act of selection, though a manifestation of will, is largely circumstantial. Stimuli warrant particular selection from grounding but the person, or subject, does have the ability to modify selection as it occurs through choice, or will. Experience is the resulting causal effect of selection which, unlike S–>M–>R, does not come to rest. Experience then modifies grounding for the next selection act of situational will. In this semiosis is a combination of will, idea, and consumption (a form of experience).

This perspective or model tells us that consumption of data, of information, of stimuli, of the many facets of our multimodal existence. Is more than simply recursive. It is nebulous and morphous with every synaptic discharge. It is of our very nature to “consider” or select therefore we are inherently NOT singular in our approch to input, in this case semiotic cueing through consumption of presented semantic or gramatical overarching suggestions.

Question 30

My response to this is simply to not separate traditional composition (what ever that actually means) and multimodal composition. They are largely the same in the sense that our students need to be able to learn critical assessment of all forms of media with out categorized division. A two semester component course of general composition seems the most likely answer to this question.

As a former high school teacher with experience in inner-city schools i must say that our governments, that is every level of governance in every country, REALLY need to stop screwing around and get their asses straightened out. every student NEEDS a computer to be “competitive” learners. The One Laptop program shows us exactly how possible this is! The digital divide is usually seen as an indication of privileged vs. impoverished. This needs to be reconfigured, conceptually, to being much like literate vs. illiterate because that is largely what it actually is.

Search

Tthis first link is to a teacher living in austraila with a particular interest in ESL. Though this interest does not seem comenserate with multimodality it really is. they have several posts on their blog about the use of technology in the classroom as well as responses to many articles regurding multimodality. In my mind multimodality and SL learning go very much hand-in-hand. Learning another language is a process of learning a new set of semantic cues and thusly modifying “originating” semiotic structres provided by and for the first language a subject has learned. The article links are valuable as are the perspectives of multimodality provided in personal posts. This blog is a good source or gateway to other ideas about multimodaility.

http://rampantred.wordpress.com/

This link is to a NCTE (of which I am a former member) article that explores the importance and the shifting perception of multimodal composition in the practices of teaching composition. It also explores the extension of multimodal composition outside the classroom and school, in general.

http://www.ncte.org/governance/MultimodalLiteracies

With this link, I am cheating! I did not actually search for this one. This link is to Terra Nova, a community blog for scholars and professional who are researching, investigating, and implementing various forms of digital interaction as text and entertainment. Though it would seem it is not multimodal in nature on the surface it really is. these people often discuss the impact of varied interactive “texts” on a variety of cultures. Many of these experiential texts presented are not just games, they often are multi media compositions. They ask tough questions and provide equally tough answers.

http://terranova.blogs.com/

1/21/2009

send commants to: onyxangel13@hotmail.com

Comments: 0

 

Crying?

 

1/14/2009

send commants to: onyxangel13@hotmail.com

Comments: 0