“this is boring!” high school students, the internet and gaming culture nick maniatis
TRANSCRIPT
“This is Boring!”
High School Students,
The Internet
and Gaming Culture
Nick Maniatis
http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/
Three Workshop Goals1. Is there an information / communication / technology
gap between teachers and students?2. If so, what is it (in my experience) and does it disrupt
student engagement?3. How do we (begin to) bridge the gap and (re)engage
students? Clearly not all of our students have access to the
technology I will be discussing.There are serious access and equity issues related to this
that I will not be addressing.
Loose Ends…• Why I’m here presenting this workshop
today.
What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. James Paul Gee, 2003.
• Addresses the issue: Video games are a waste of time because the child is learning no “content”.
• 36 learning principles.
• Question: How can I apply these learning principles to my teaching? (Without games)
Ilana Snyder – Gold Coast Conference 4/7/05Pattern Recognition. William Gibson, 2003.
• Cayce – Cool Hunter.• Fictional online film – ‘The Footage’.• Finding patterns and meaning. • Snyder – Early predictions about
computers fundamentally changing teaching have not come to fruition, but there has been huge social change.
Everything Bad is Good for You. Steven Johnson, 2005.
• Popular culture (video games, television, blockbuster films) as presented by the media targets the lowest common denominator. ‘Dumbing down’ of entertainment.
• Johnson argues that popular culture is more sophisticated and demanding than ever before.
The Long Tail: How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand. Chris Anderson,
2006.• Shops: 80/20 Rule. 20% products
account for 80% of sales. • Digital content: The 98% rule. • “In a world of almost zero packaging
cost and instant access to almost all content in this format consumers exhibit consistent behaviour: They look at almost everything.”
• Niche categories in ‘the long tail’ can make up a significant market.
•The Long Tail at Wired Online: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html?pg=1&topic=tail&topic_set=
Wired Online: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html?pg=1&topic=tail&topic_set=
What are our students doing outside school?
• How do they communicate? What has changed / is changing?
• Let’s start with what we know.
• Activity: Communication Technologies
Communication Technologies Twenty Years Ago:
Television Tin-can telephoneTelephone Posted letterPager Thumb-Tack Bulletin BoardRadio
Ten Years Ago:
Today:
Communication Technologies Twenty Years Ago:
Television Tin-can telephoneTelephone Posted letterPager Thumb-Tack Bulletin BoardRadio
Ten Years Ago: Email LAN (Local Area Network) gamesThe World Wide Web Dial-up modem networksList servs/ emailing lists Analogue mobile phonesBasic web forumsInternet Newsgroups
Today:Digital mobile phones: text messaging, video capable Instant messaging (ICQ, MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger)Wireless networking devices (laptops, PDAs, portable computer game devices)Social networking websites (YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, Bebo)RSS News FeedsWired and wireless broadband infrastructureVOIP telephony (voice over internet protocol)BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing protocol
• Our students have access to a vast array of communication technologies that connect them to each other in wildly complicated and exciting networks.
• This is great for them… maybe not so good for us.
Communication Technologies
• Mobile Phones
• Television
• Online Chatting
• Gaming
• Blogging
• Social Networking / Video
• ARGs
Mobile Phones
• Young people are empowered by pre-paid schemes
• SMS / Text messaging.
• Camera functions.
• Video recording functions.
• Internet and television access.
Television
• Twin Peaks
• Big Brother / www.behindbigbrother.com
•Lost / www.lostpedia.com
•Post show online analysis.
Online Chatting• Email• IRC• Message boards / online forums• Instant messaging services (ICQ, MSN
Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AIM, Google talk)
• All are primarily text based.• Ability to conceal and/or create an identity.• Collaborative, social, homework.
Online Gaming
• Often competitive.
• Collaborative.
• Voice communication.
• Gaming clans as social groups.
Counter-Strike Source (PC)
• Maximum of 32 simultaneous players.
(16 vs 16)
• Tactical team based first person shooter.
• Game video. Watch.
Battlefield 2 (PC)
• Maximum of 64 simultaneous players.
(32 vs 32)
• Modern warfare ‘simulation’.
• Game video. Watch.
MMORPGs
• Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games.
• Hundreds – Thousands of simultaneous players.• Most are subscription based.• Everquest (Sony) “Evercrack”• World of Warcraft
Guild taking on Prince Thunderaan to obtain the Legendary weapon, Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker. Watch
Disruptive Gaming Technologies
• Nintendo DS - 2004
Portable
Two Screens
Touch sensitive
Wireless connectivity
Disruptive Gaming Technologies
• Nintendo Wii - 2006
Motion Control
Topic 1: Bored Students
Topic 2: Engaged Students
Blogging• “A Blog (Web log) is a website where entries are written in
chronological order and displayed in reverse chronological order. “ -Wikipedia
• Primarily textual. Personal journals, reviews, news, politics etc.
• Blogs link to other blogs. Readers are able to respond to posts and to each other.
• The ‘blogosphere’ is the community of blogs, bloggers and readers.
• Technorati blog search engine. (http://www.technorati.com) In May 07 it was tracking 70 million blogs.
www.boingboing.net
www.kottke.org
BloggingTools
• www.livejournal.com
Very popular with young people.
• www.blogger.com
Purchased by Google Feb 03.
Social Networking
• The blogging explosion of 1997-2000 changed online social networks.
• 2003 http://del.icio.us/ social bookmarking.• 2003 MySpace www.myspace.com (2003)
100 million members (NewsCorp 2006)• 2004 Facebook (www.facebook.com)
28 million members.• 2005 Bebo (www.bebo.com).
del.icio.us
www.myspace.com
Social News
• slashdot.org and digg.com
• The “slashdot” and “digg” effect due to large readership swamping and crashing / overloading web host servers.
• News Trust (beta.newstrust.net) news stories are peer reviewed and discussed by members.
slashdot.org
digg.com
beta.newstrust.net
Social Video
• 2005 YouTube (www.youtube.com)
Bought by Google Nov 2006.
• LiveLeak: Redefining the media
(liveleak.com) War footage, crime, accidents.
www.youtube.com
liveleak.com
The ARG
• Alternate Reality Games are an evolution of role-playing games that use many different communication technologies.
• 2001: The Beast used to promote Steven Spielberg’s A.I. There were three entry points or ‘rabbit holes’, one was a phone number hidden in the text of a movie trailer.
• July 2004: I Love Bees to promote the game Halo 2 for Xbox
• 2007: Year Zero to promote the latest Nine Inch Nails album.
• http://www.unfiction.com/
Is it any surprise…
That we hear students exclaim,
“This is boring!”
The long tail… of teaching and learning
• The long tail as a metaphor for teaching and learning.
• Electronic resources, communities and online environments give us access to tools that allow us to engage students ‘in the tail’ that some of our ‘greatest hits’ pedagogies do not reach.
To move our teaching down the tail we need to:
• Acknowledge that the technologies our students use for entertainment are also powerful tools for communication.
• Use the same technologies in our teaching and our own learning.
• Use different technologies to motivate and teach different students.
Topic: Trying to engage students with communication technology
What can we do to begin to engage bored students?
• Use the Learning by Design framework (Kalantzis & Cope) http://l-by-d.com/
• Build options into teaching and assessment that require, utilise and develop communication technology skills.
• Re-imagine linear texts as hypertexts or create gaming manuals for a game based on the text being studied.
Hypertext / game manual literacy activities can be a powerful motivators.
• Use free tools and encourage students to blog, podcast, videoblog or remix existing media.
Audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/(Free cross-platform sound editor)
YouTube remixer (account required) http://www.youtube.com/ytremixer_about
Use the www.archive.org collection of copyright free video to create video mash-ups.
• Create web comics using free comic creation tools.
http://www.stripcreator.com/make.php
http://www.wittycomics.com/make-comic.php
http://www.stripgenerator.com/ (Flash 9)
• Encourage students to use gaming engines that they can customise to create virtual environments, or create simple games using software such as Game Maker 7.http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker
Survivor Camp from Robert Swindell’s Brother in the Land recreated in the Half Life 2 game engine. Watch
Barricades
• Personal expertise.
• Internet restrictions at school.
• Perceived danger / issues of freedom.
• Privacy.
• Time management.
Braiding Loose Ends…
• The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version)
• Created by Dr. Michael Wesch, Kansas State University.
• Digital Ethnography Working Group
http://mediatedcultures.net/
• Watch
and we’ll need to rethink… Teaching
I don’t have the answers.
I hope I’ve started you thinking.
The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version)http://mediatedcultures.net/
http://youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g