Will's Visit

Will’s visit was great. I’m glad I had the opportunity to talk with him over lunch and dinner. Dave and I were lucky enough to listen to Will sing a little Supertramp during the drive back to his room. On Will’s suggestion, I checked out the open-source role-playing game Second Life. He described it as more of an experience than a game. Second Life is like The Sims, a reality simulator. Second Life even lets a player purchase property. Some people are able to make real money by selling virtual items (like hats) for use in the game! Sadly, my computer cannot run the program. So the character that I created, Matt Semyorka, is somewhere in Second Life standing idly.

Professor Reid also referred me to terranova , a scholarly blog about Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG). I read an article by Aaron Delwiche that discusses the unique social community that MMORPGs create and his reflections on having taught undergraduate classes; one using Everquest and another with Second Life. One of the requirements of Delwiche’s courses is to play the game for five hours a week. While students are in the game, they are to interview other players about their gaming experience and report on their findings. Interesting idea.

Homo Ludens

In “Play,” Daniel Pink argues that laughing, video games, and humor cultivate right-brain thinking. Laughing clubs sound strange, which Pink admits, but I wonder if they could be useful in the classroom. Would it do any good to encourage today’s adolescents to be able to laugh for no reason? I think so, but students would be breaking so many adolescent social taboos that only the very brave would be willing to try it. In general, I don’t completely agree with Pink’s laughing for better productivity. I would participate in a laughing circle to see what it’s like, and I do enjoy laughing for no particular reason, but there is a difference between spontaneous and planned laughing.

Pink argues that video games have already eclipsed films in terms of popularity and that they may become the literature of the twenty first century. As opposed to traditional literacy, in video games facts are connected and manipulated, not just memorized (from Gee 193). In fact, the merging of science and art in the video game medium enables players to use both logic and aesthetic: “a whole new mind” (196). Pink does acknowledge that some games are “utter time-wasters” (194), yet he does not say which games these are or what distinguishes time-waster play and functional play.

I agree with Pink that humor is one of our highest forms of intelligence (198), and it should be acknowledged more in the classroom, for example. However, I do not think it is possible to see humor as anything but entertainment first and all other functions second. Could many a truth be said in jest if humor’s primary function were not to entertain? I guess my concern here is similar to the one I have about planned laughing. Enjoying what one does is important in order to engage in work and be productive, but do we really need “’corporate jesters’” (188)? Also, how neurologists determine the function of humor was not convincing to me. The punch-line quiz on page 196 did not seem like an accurate scale for determining someone’s humor ability. At first, I thought it was a trick question. Ironically, it reminded me of one of those meaningless regents questions. I’ve always been told that I have a strange sense of humor, but does that mean I have brain damage? Of course it does.

Some questions:
Is it true that people rarely succeed in anything unless they are having fun doing it?
Would you participate in a laughing club?
Could your class benefit from a laughing club?
Are video games not respected as much as literature, or even film, because the medium is not as complex? The medium is still very young and is still considered juvenile?
Will video games become the literature of the 21st century?
Was the neuroscience study on humor convincing(196-7)? Is it really a good measure of a person’ s ability to comprehend humor?

Movie Project Reflections

WOOOOO!! It is done! My entire weekend was devoted to editing. I consider it a special torture that I was never able to see my film in real time until I had posted on the YouTube. Yes, it is there. It is not perfect, but it is on the internet! That is so cool!

Okay, I had to get that out.

The process: First, I filmed everything on my Canon A530 digital camera. My film took up less than 1 GB of memory. All my footage transfered easily to my old PC through Windows XP Movie Maker. I saved my progress often to my PC and additional 1 GB memory stick. Movie Maker was very easy to work with. When I finally finished editing, I saved my film to a CD. It took about 5 hours for my film to be recorded. Finally, I uploaded my video from the CD to YouTube, which took about an hour. I still cannot believe it worked so well.


Complaints: Coming up with a story, writing a screenplay, and filming takes a lot of time and preparation. I am pleased with my results, but I felt very rushed. Providing students with class-time five days a week will be advantageous when I teach a secondary class to make movies. Having updated technology is crucial to timely completion of the editing process. In my situation, I was never able to see my editing progress in anything more than still images. It was ardouos to sequence video and audio the way I wanted.

Having said that, the finished product is sequeced better than I expected. I found editing to be highly addictive, but also very stressful. The most rewarding aspect of the movie project was being able to make my work available on the internet without any problems. Friedman's talk on the connectivety of software is very exciting, but witnessing it first hand is even more powerful.

I hope you all view my film, and do not be afraid to comment here or on YouTube.

movie project

So far, my attempt to film my movie on a digital camera is working great. It looks good (enough), and I still have plenty of memory left on my Gig sized memory stick. Yes, I've heard, don't rely on a memory stick. Well, I've decided to tempt fate and see what happens (I have also saved most of the raw data to my personal computer). My ultimate goal is to make a film that I can show my professors, my peers, even friends and family, without too much trouble. For me, it's all about access. If I somehow make a film that I actually enjoy, but I am unable to show others, I'm going to be really mad. I am already getting a slight headache just thinking about how much editing I'm going to do. Working with a Mac is simply way too inconvenient for me for this project, in terms of time needed to edit.
As I see it, I have two choices: I can use my camera's basic editing program or Windows Movie Maker (I can access both from home). I may be better off with the basic program since it probably uses less memory (less options = less memory needed). I don't really know what I'm talking about, just a guess.

Technology will not get the better of me!

NYSEC

Professor Stearns, Jack, James, Dave, Chrissy, Dawn and I presented at the NYSEC conference earlier today. The conference was held in a fancy hotel in Albany. Inside the hotel, it was like a little village. I attended an interesting presentation on analyzing the juxtaposition of text and image in Maus and Persepolis. Overall, their analysis was both thorough and insightful. However, it was disappointing that the presenters of Persepolis, who have been using Persepolis in the classroom, admittedly know very little about the historical context. Having an informed understanding of the historical context, especially when dealing with Iran in our current political climate, can really aid students in dispelling certain stereotypes.

We had a great turnout for our presentation; our small room was packed. Professor Stearns did a great job getting things started and bringing closure to our presentation. The bulk of the presentation consisted of us leading small group discussions on applying nontraditional topics into the English classroom. My presentation was on graphic novels. I felt satisfied with my performance in terms of answering teachers’ questions, recommending appropriate texts, and representing this expanding medium.

But my NYSEC experience also taught me how to how to crash a wine tasting:

1: Walk past the registration table at the door with authority.
2: Mingle.
3: Find a glass; it is your admission ticket.
4: Mingle, study the vender’s wines, and find a friendly wine vendor.
5: Say “that’s bold,” or swish the wine in your mouth.
6: If asked: “Do you own a store or a vineyard?” Owning a store in Binghamton or Cortland are acceptable answers.
7: When revealing any further personal information to a vendor consult James.
8: When in doubt, abort wine tasting and go to NYSEC sponsored cocktail.

Great conference

Dave, you were a good roomate, but you can't steal my jacket.

Multicultural Struggle

In Richard Rodriguez’s autobiographical novel, Hunger of Memory, the Mexican culture of his family life can never coexist with the American culture that has educated him. Rodriguez laments the necessary sacrifice of one of these cultures while scoffing at attempts to recognize both, such as through bilingual education. Yet Rodriguez was divided from his family in more than just culture: economically, he is middle class while his parents are lower class; and his sexual interests, as he later admits, are dissimilar to his parents. His belief that one cannot be apart of two cultures is based on more than just culture. I only mention Rodriguez because his bleak portrayal of a multicultural life, although despicable, is still jarring in its possible truth.
Instead of blaming society for the choices one makes, like Rodriguez does, in American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang tells the more introspective story of Jin Wang. Yang interweaves three distinctly separate stories of the present, future and Chinese mythology in the coming of age of Jin Wang.
Yang’s structuring of three interrelated stories is masterful. The structuring reminds me of the end of every Star Wars film. Yang gives you enough of each story to make you want to read more, but then the reader is taken to another story.
The art is awesome. Yang uses the graphic novel medium to convey detail that text alone cannot: I doubt that Wang’s transformations could be explained as well without images. Furthermore, the character’s feelings are usually expressed through setting and body language. While the story is mostly told, drawn, and inked through rectangular panels, Yang manipulates this standard form of the medium to perfection: the Monkey King goes beyond reality by breaking free of the panels; and one story’s panels are accompanied with a laugh track.
In addressing assimilation, racism, and cultural pride, American Born Chinese manages to be funny, vivid, sincere, and philosophical. Yang’s work is the first graphic novel to the win the National Book Award. I highly recommend it to anyone who reads.
By the way, I love the Transformer metaphor.

My Enhanced Podcast

Here follows my enhanced podcast assessment. Although it may not bring one to tears, likes James’, I generally liked my first attempt at podcasting. It was refreshing to combine photo and audio files into something other people could briefly view on the Internet.

Recording audio was fairly easy and fun. I was able to record, attach, and edit my narrative to my exact specifications. My attempt at humor was also successful (people laughing equals success). Initially I tried to include James’ actual voice, but the audio file he sent me was not loud enough, or I could not make it loud enough. The selection and inclusion of background music was good. I wanted to fade out the music to one of the songs, but instead of trying to figure out how to do that, I settled for the abrupt ending of the song. This problem will be remedied for the next project.

My visual choices were less rewarding. First, all the photos I collected from the Internet came out blurry. Second, I could not use the Ken Burns effect. I did try to set up my enhanced podcast on iMovie, but the file became gigantic, and I lost all my progress. Still, I am looking forward to working with iMovie again. In terms of transferring files and editing, I had no problems.

Overall, I displayed an understanding of the lessons we read in iLife ’06, and I can see how this technology can be very useful in the secondary English classroom.