ipod touch

I'm most intrigued as we begin looking at gaming and gaming literacies with the "why" behind playing games. What is it that attracts someone to games in general and video or electronic games in particular? I suspect that they are related. Maybe someone who likes to play games in general will also like electronic games? I don't know. Or does it have to do with the way our brains function? It would be easy to say that it is about age and gender, but there are far to many exceptions to this generalization for it to be true. It is true that I don't know even one teenage or pre-teen boy who doesn't like electronic games, while I do know teenage and pre-teen girls who don't -- so maybe it is safe to say that it isn't quite a prevalent with girls -- but I don't know where that would get me. The same is true for age. I know lots and lots of men who love electronic games and plenty of women who like them. Take my own family, for instance. I have two brothers and four sisters. Both of my brothers (48 and 32) love electronic games. The 32-year old grew up with them, but the 48 year old didn't. Of my sisters and me, two of us don't play electronic games and three do. My sister and I who don't play them do not play other games much either. My attention span when it comes to gaming is so short. It's not that I don't like them -- it's just that they don't hold my attention for long. But then again, neither does chess, checkers, card, board games. When my children were young and wanted to play something like Trouble (the board game) with them, I would feel so anxious by the time we finished. I can't even imagine sitting through a game of Monopoly or Life.

I wonder what it would take for an electronic game to catch my attention or my sister's attention? I wonder if it is even possible... and this from someone who loves technology, gadgets, and the like. I wouldn't go for a run without my Garmin -- I love podcasts -- and I'm fascinated by online technologies for teaching... So it's not about it being electronic. And I don't have a sense that it is waste of time. In fact, I'm quite convinced by Gee's arguments. I think it's an interesting question because there is a chunk of the population who isn't consuming this very easily consummed good...

Brainstorming for end-of-semester paper

I want to write about the place of sound/aurality in the basic writing classroom. I will use info from the Selfe piece, and I will use my own experience with the audio comments in CCDE 110 (survey response).

I want to investigate the use of voice – real voice – in the basic writing class. If diversity is truly to be acknowledged, one must investigate the ways in which diversity is performed/demonstrated. One way is certainly through voice. Typically we think of voice as what? Style, mood, genre, tone, vocab choice. We allow “stars” to enact whatever voice they want – stars like bell hooks, Adrianne Rich, so forth. They have permission, or take it, to demonstrate voice through words, grammar, syntax, font, type face, etc.

How do we encourage/allow basic writers to enact their own voice? Much discussion about standard dialects of English verses non-standard – terms are troubling. As a result, like Selfe says, there is often “deafening silence” in basic writing classes. They have been pushed out of mainstream academy and so when we invite them to participate, they are hesitant – naturally.

Our (comp teachers) voice is also silenced in some ways. Yes, we speak at students, but do we have conversations with them? My using the audio comments feels more like I’m having a conversation with the text/with the students than when I offer written comments. They seemed confused by the audio comments – not what they expected – but eventually warmed up to it.

What about podcasts? Would that also be inviting sound back into the classroom? Could a student truly find his/her voice by producing an mp3 argument instead of a word-processed argument? Maybe they aren’t podcasts really – but audio files instead of text files. How would that affect the composing process? I feel like I’ve got to try this out. It’s different from a speech in that there is no audience when recorded – or at least an audience isn’t necessary. The student has voice as another rhetorical device at her disposal. How will it affect revision? I’m also curious about the practical elements…

Alright, so what information can I look for that will help me sort through these ideas and formulate an argument?

Selfe, C. The Movement of Air, The Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing. ( has this been officially published somewhere?)

http://www.users.muohio.edu/sommerjd/files/Taped_Response.pdfAudio-Taped Response and the Two-Year Campus Writing Classroom: The
Two-Sided Desk, the “Guy with the Ax”, and the Chirping Birds
Teaching English in the Two-Year College, 31 (No. 1), 25-39.
by Cheryl Mellen and Jeff Sommers

Spoken Response: Space, Time, and Movies of the Mind.” Jeff Sommers. Writing with Elbow. Eds. Pat Belanoff, Marcia Dickson, Sheryl I. Fontaine, Charles Moran. Logan, Utah: Utah State Press, 2002.

http://www.users.muohio.edu/sommerjd/ (website)

http://www.write101.com/lethamfind.htm (traditional definition of “voice”)

http://hollylisle.com/fm/Articles/wc1-6.html -- gotta use this one – wow, what a definition!