Gaming

The first time I played a video game, I was 12 years old. It was a Lord of the Rings game where you could chose which character you wanted to be and then take down orcs and trolls, battling your way through middle earth. It was a blast, but then I never played again until college. My roommates are obsessed, playing mario cart and guitar hero 24/7. Obviously, without video games, I didn’t have the typical American childhood. My parents thought that the games were a waste of time and brain cells, so in turn, so did I. This changed when I read What Video Games Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.

This article discusses the nature of video games and what they can teach those who play them. Gee states that playing video games teach kids how to experience the world in difference ways, share social practices with others with their interests, and gain resources to prepare them for future learning and problem solving.

One example of learning given was within the game Plikmin. In the game, kids have different colored pikmin with each color having various powers. The kids learn how to manipulate the players and use the powers to their benefit. They use the players to blow up walls and advance in the game. By advancing, they internalize the systems within the games and learn how to use tools. This also relates to using new resources for problem solving. Kids use social networking by talking with other players online or on fansites. The people that they talk with and share experiences with are called affinity groups. The video games themselves are the domains.

Most of the kids I know that played a lot of video games when they were little are technically minded now. They are very visual and good problem solvers. This may have no correlation with the video games, but if what Gee says is true, the games do play a large part in their skills. I don’t know if I would let my kids play video games and I don’t regret never having played them myself, but after reading this article, I no longer think that games are as big a waste of time as I did before.

Cruising with the Top Down

Everyone has those feeling good songs that they can randomly hear at anytime of the day and be magically transported to another time or place. Basically, they’re audio-crack. I have a couple songs like this, happy melodies that make me feel like world peace, lasting love, and the return of Elvis are all possible. I usually listen to them around the time of finals, so as a result, my roommates can probably (reluctantly) sing every word. Below are the videos for them. Listen, be happy, and hug the next person you see.
Send Me on My Way, Rusted Root

500 Miles, The Proclaimers

And lastly, the Pina Colada song…..

This video makes me crack up. It’s obviously not the music video, just some random guy with courage and a sense of humor.

Naked in the ‘Nonopticon’

If you follow this link http://williamwolff.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/vaidhyanathan-surveillace-2008.pdf, you will come upon an article entitled Naked in the Nonopticon, which is about the privacy of people who use facebook. On facebook, the article claims that people post things about their favorite activites, romanctic lives and even pictures of scanfalas activites; on the other hand, when facebook opted to put up a news feed that would tell other students that information everytime it was updated, students paniced. The reaction was so bad that students created a group with over 70,000 students, and protested to leave facebook if they didn’t remove the news feed. Even though the news feed wasn’t remove, users did get the option of controlling the news feed.

     I find this situation so interesting because these students are really fighting for the privacy that they already let out. I mean granted, some students may not leave their profiles public, but the ultimate purpose of facebook is to interact with people and let them know how you are. I remember when facebook first started, it was only for college students to use. While using facebook, I would go and look for people who I haven’t seen since middle school; and any information they posted to the profiles was for  me and other people to view, who hadn’t seen them in forever. So for me, the news feed would have been perfect for us, because we’re catching up with old friends, even if it’s not physical.

       I think todays’s facebook has evolved more into a personal interactive page, like myspace. With it, you can choose who you want to see you, what information goes up, check to see who is single at your school and etc. With that being said, users may feel like it’s not everybodies business to know who you are dating. They may want some of their friends to know, but not all of them. But if that’s the case, I think users shoud only add people to their firends list if they truly are friends.

     I think this internet phase is really going to take over our interactive abilities.

Flashback of the Day!!!!

Does anyone remember Phil Collins, he was huge in the 80’s and early 90’s. His latest work was on the Tarzan Soundtrack with the You’ll Be In My Heart. This song right here brings back good memories for me, even though I was just a baby in the 80’s, hearing 80’s music makes me feel like I am there. In this song Sussudio, there is an absence of sound that is now present in todays’ music; I actually have a strong appreciation for that absence, i think it leaves room for thought when listening to music,  How does it make you feel?

Once Upon a December (I know, it’s March)

I’ve been working on a project for my Writer’s Mind class, and the topic I chose was Tim Burton.  I found this wonderful music video while browsing YouTube, and I thought I’d post it.  The song is “Once Upon a December” by Deana Carter.  If it sounds familiar, it might be because you watched the animated movie Anastasia as a child.  Anyway, I thought it was a beautiful song that’s at once eerie and sweet, and Deana Carter’s voice is really distinct.  The clips are from the movie Edward Scissorhands.  If you’ve never seen it, Edward actually does have scissors for hands, and his attempt to live a normal life and have a romance with a girl, Kim, goes horribly wrong.  The song and the movie are perfect for one another, so here it is.  Hope you enjoy!

Response to “Why Napster Matters to Writing…”

            The article “Why Napster matters to writing:  Filesharing as a new ethic of digital delivery” by Danielle Nicole DeVoss and James E. Porter makes a case for the importance of sharing information and protecting the Fair Use doctrine of copyright.  I personally found DeVoss and Porter’s article convincing.  Before I go any farther, let me just at that the article isn’t anti-copyright.  It appreciates the rights of creators to be given credit for their creations. 

            My professional goal is to be a freelance writer, a novelist to be specific, so I am all for the rights of “writers” of text, music, video, and all other forms of creation.  Long before these rights were generally upheld, writers could not make a living with their work and had to find wealthy “patrons” to support them.  These patrons often influenced what writers wrote, which is counterproductive to freedom of speech.  The system obviously doesn’t work, which is partially why copyrights are necessary “to promote the progress of science and useful arts” (185, as quoted from the U.S. Constitution).  So yes, free sharing of copyrighted music (without consent of the artists) is copyright infringement.  Getting it for free instead of buying it takes money from the artists.  That makes sense.

            However, DeVoss and Porter argue that copyright shouldn’t be seen as completely restrictive, which also makes sense.  The Fair Use doctrine still applies, especially in the case of “remixing” digital media, for noncommercial purposes.  The article we read for last Thursday’s class, Garfield’s “YouTube  vs. Boob Tube” dealt with this.  A lot of people used Diigo sticky notes to complain about the number of “copyrighted” and “illegal” content on YouTube.  And yes, some of it is copyrighted and illegal.  Instead of buying a movie, you can watch it in any number of short videos on YouTube.  

However, a lot of this copyrighted material was used the same way DeVoss and Porter seem to encourage.  Music is “remixed” with clips from television shows, movies, video games, commercials, and slide shows of still pictures.  Then there are “crossover” videos that establish relationships between video “texts” by mixing graphics from multiple videos and/or “voice-dubbing” audio from one text with graphics from another.  Isn’t this exactly the sort of intertextuality that we read about in “Understanding Internet Plagiarism” by Howard?  It creates layers of meaning by establishing relationships.  Technically, isn’t this (or shouldn’t it be) protected by the Fair Use doctrine?  The creators of these “remixes” don’t make money off of them, they usually credit the originators of the texts they have remixed, and they do increase understanding, if not in a strictly “academic” sense, then at least in a loosely educational sense.  I’m sure plenty of people will still disagree with this, and that’s fine, but to me, this DeVoss and Porter make a convincing argument.

 

Reaction to “Understanding Internet Plagiarism”

            In her essay “Understanding Internet Plagiarism,” Rebecca Moore Howard explores the widespread impression that the Internet caused increased plagiarism among students.  Howard is bold enough to question the acceptance of this idea, which is great.  I’ve heard teachers complain over and over again that the Internet has led to more plagiarism, but I have to disagree.  The only thing that the Internet has done is make plagiarists more likely to get caught. 

            Before the Internet, people still cheated.  It’s true that the copy-paste method of plagiarism was more difficult without the Internet, since it required plagiarists to actually copy the text instead of highlighting it and pressing some buttons.  However, it definitely still happened. The selling of academic papers didn’t begin with the Internet, either.  Before the Internet, people would buy papers off friends or relatives.  The Internet just transformed it into a business.  Even better for plagiarists, without the Internet they were less likely to be caught.  Even the most well-read professor could not possibly read all books and magazines published on a subject.  Add that to the huge increase in education on citation of sources, and the Internet suddenly seems more like an obstacle to plagiarists than an aid.  

            I also like that Howard distinguished citation errors from plagiarism.  I actually think that most people don’t consciously plagiarize.  In college, at least, professors place high value on having sources to back up your opinion.  So what sense would it make for someone to pretend they didn’t use a source when sources are not only accepted, but welcomed?  Again, we as a generation of students are being bombarded with information about citations:  APA, MLA, Chicago, in-text parenthetical, works cited.  Soon, hopefully, plagiarism in college won’t even be seen as an issue.

            One last thing – Howard sort of broaches this subject, but not totally.  In her discussion of intertextualiy, she brings up the control readers and writers have on what messages are being absorbed from a text.  This seems a little odd to me.  I think most people agree that we don’t write in a vacuum, especially since we consider plagiarism to be such an issue.  So it should be obvious that we also don’t write in a vacuum.  Of course there is intertextuality; how could there not be?  Everyone is influenced by something, which is in fact the great thing about reading and writing.  The things that we read and connect with of course influence what we write, and the things we are interested in enough to write about influence what we want to read.  So it seems like it shouldn’t be, ‘writer’s have control in this way but readers have control in this other way.’  Writing and reading are inherently connected.  Both what we read and what we write are influenced by what we have read and what we have written.  

Article Blog

            Occasionally, I have the fear that there is a camera in my room and I am being recorded, much in the style of Jim Carrey in The Truman Show.  These moments usually come when I am being ridiculous, dancing around my room to the Divinyls or serenading my dog.  In the back of my head flashes the idea, what if someone is watching this?  Now, I generally don’t care who knows how much of a loser I am.  I mean, I am telling you, aren’t I?  But the whole reason I don’t care can be found in Siva Vaidhyanathan’s article, Naked in the “Nonopticon.” 

            The idea behind Vaidhyanathan’s article is that although we live in a society where surveillance is expected, we still like to maintain the thought that we have at least some control over our privacy.  I don’t care is people know I do stupid things as long as I am the one controlling that flow of info.  This is what caused the outrage over Facebook newsfeed.  Suddenly, all actions on Facebook were placed on the homepage, so all friends could see what was going on.  Pictures could be seen, notes could be read, wall posts between two friends were public information.  The panic only subsided when creator Mark Zuckerberg allowed users to monitor what was seen.  I definitely use this feature.  I can send a bumper sticker to my friend Nick and then go back to my profile and hide the story.  I control what information is posted about me.

            It is a little frightening to think that the government doesn’t offer this “Hide Story” button, so I generally try not to think about.  However, when articles such as this one draw my attention to the subject, I have to think.  There is nothing about my life that I wouldn’t share.  I am a conservative, nonsmoking, nondrinking, Roman Catholic teenager.  The most controversial thing I have done in the past few months is skip class to sleep.  Once.  Despite my squeaky-cleanness, I still get scared, because I have read books like 1984.  I love sci-fi and through those books I have seen what can happen if the government gets to much power while limiting the power of the people.  It never works out.  Yet I cannot imagine what alternative should be used.  Vaidhyanathan suggests that we become aware of how we are being watched.  All means of surveillance must be shown to us.  We should become the masters of our reputations.  I don’t know if this is truly possible.  People like me would go on being who we are, but a little more freaked out.  Bad people would go on doing dirty deeds, but be more covert about it.  The world wouldn’t really change.  What do you think?                   

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

Well, I didn’t expect to be running so late on last week’s blogs, but since I am, I decided that a Celtic theme would be the best way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.  (I know, there’s a difference between Celtic and Irish, but they sometimes overlap or at least influence one another.)  So here are two songs from my favorite Celtic fusion CD, The Celtic Circle.  Both are by Loreena McKennit.  The first one is called “Skellig” and the video clips are from The Lord of the Rings trilogy. 

The next one is a live version of “The Mystic’s Dream.” 

Never Break the Chain

Oh no, I’m running a little late on last week’s blogs.  It’s been a busy weekend.  Anyway, we’re three weeks through the four week module, and I just realized that I haven’t posted anything about my favorite band, Fleetwood Mac.  Lindsay Buckingham, the guitarist, is wonderful, and Stevie Nicks, one of the songwriters, is an amazing lyricist.  And since they have three different songwriters with three different tastes, they have a lot of variety in their songs while still retaining the sound that they are known for.  The band has a pretty interesting history, having been both a blues band and a pop band (with different musicians though), so if you like this song, check them out sometime.  The song is “The Chain,” and I believe this is the original 1977 version (the video, by the way, is fan-made.  From what I can find, Fleetwood Mac never made a video for it).  Enjoy!

Here’s a live version from 1982.  I personally don’t like it as much as the recorded version, but it’s interesting to watch if you like the song.