Blog #4 for 7/24/2016

The readings were lighter this week as we transition into working more heavily on our unit planning; the majority had practical applications and ideas for creating specific writing assignments. I think writing might in some ways be the easiest of the English disciplines to adapt to new technology, as the option of having students write in a new medium is always there as a default. 

I chose to reading Chapter 9 of our main text, which was "Interactive Fiction" by Gerald Aungst. This is a subject I have actually studied extensively, or did about ten years ago anyway. Aungst's idea was basically to open English classrooms up to playing and creating text adventure games. I played these types of games frequently in my youth, and they were probably the earliest type of game that tied the medium to literacy in a significant way. These days, the Japanese have pulled way ahead of Americans in this genre in terms of production, and they tend to market toward an adult audience, but that doesn't change the basic mechanics and usability of text adventures in classrooms. These games are fun, and can certainly test a student's reasoning or critical thinking skills in their specific scenarios. However, the old model of having contrived scenarios demanding a text input that Aungst's article suggests feels like it comes from a player mostly familiar with 80s text adventures such as King's Quest. These days, parsers are mostly out of fashion and a bank of choices tend to left available to students. All excitement aside, I am very hesitant to incorporate adventure games into classrooms unless the topic of the game supplements a core text. Often, these games are more about general puzzles than puzzles relevant to language. The suggestion of having students create text adventures I found more compelling. My biggest problem with doing this is it takes a lot of time to make (quality) games, and many students are probably not game or programming-minded. However, as an alternative project I could see a lot of value here. Students like me who enjoy these experiences could thrive if given the chance to create something they would have found engaging. Perhaps I’ll incorporate this into my Unit plan project as one of the things a student could create. I like that it can also be used for publishing experience, and it would be a good creative outlet for some, but the standards addressed by Aungst are skimpy otherwise. Perhaps this works better as an interdisciplinary tool with Computer Science.

Troy Hicks et al.'s "Same as It Ever Was" provided a good philosophical background for the rest of the readings. Essentially, we must see technological evolution as a development that has been happening for all of time, and English lessons have had to adapt at many different points as a result. However, the article suggests that teaching for the current time is more feasible and useful than trying to predict trends. I think this is an important point to keep in mind. We may fear our lessons become outdated at some point, but as long as students are able to navigate their current environment, they will be ready for change. The most difficult thing is for teachers themselves to stay on top of changing times, especially once we have built a repertoire of lessons from experience. A great example of this in action is found in the "Using Online Role-Play" article by Candace Doerr-Stevens et al. Online forum technology and role-playing games have led to a form of drama that is relatively recent and quite similar to classroom theater. Students can be instructed to take on roles during a debate or discussion. This has the benefit of letting them experiment with different perspectives and also take a turn at modifying their language for a context. These are both practical, relevant applications of communication, and if the idea can be made to work I believe we could get some great writing out of students. However, we need to remember through all this that students have different strengths, so allowing options could be of benefit in many cases. For instance, Jesse Gainer's "Remixing Old and New Literacies" article suggests having students remix videos, literature, and other forms of media to express some conclusion. Her example of a student mashing up Twilight and Buffy to demonstrate a feminist critique is cute and interesting, but that student probably had an exceptional eye for that type of expression. As I mentioned in regards to interactive fiction, I think it may be better if students can select many different types of high-Blooms creation exercises. Having a simpler option like editing text in a comic strip would also be a good gesture.