The Wiki: 506 and Beyond

Partially because adding to a wiki is like adding to an encyclopedia, it took me a while to appreciate the idea of the wiki; the credibility of such a collaborative work runs contrary to the traditional sense of authorship. But what I have come to love about wikis (a little too late for our 506 wiki) is the focus on substance over recognition. Wikis are not void of author recognition, but the emphasis is not on who supplied the information but the information itself. Considering that wikis can be constantly updated by anyone, and they are free, encyclopedia sets have become obsolete. Back to our 506 wiki, another problem I had was that our interests are so diverse that instead having a dozen heavily edited pages, we have a fifty pages that are hardly edited. Although I did not get much out of our course wiki, I did acquire a greater appreciation for wikipedia; I am convinced that it is a great first step for research in virtually any field. Wikis simply accumulate more information and link to more information that an encyclopedia set ever could.

Blogging in 506

Through creating a blog of my own that I was required to add weekly posts and software, I have developed a new appreciation for blogs. The autonomy of personalizing my own blog was the hook that really drew me into blogging in 506. Having my own blog encouraged me to learn a little html code, get familiar with hyperlinks, add Clustrmaps (I saw it on your website James), and apply compatible open source software for attaching video, photo, and music to my blog and websites. In summary, blogging enabled me to combine multiple literacies to communicate. I also liked that we were required to comment on our classmates’ blogs. Reading other peoples’ comments on my blog gave me a real sense of audience. I think these practices could be very useful for developing literacy at the secondary level, but only if students are required, as we were, to participate through a certain amount of posts and comments.

Movie (re-)Reflection

I had a great time making "Chaucer: Undead in the 'Burbs" for our movie project. I'm really glad I was able to use open source software to put the film on the web; take advantage of the film capabilities of my Canon Power Shot; and store all my footage on my camera's memory card. As James knows, I made three films with my friends, two in high school. Making films in today's classroom is so much easier, and it is easier for students to have a real sense of audience for their films. My concern is that there is a discrepancy of comments about my film on YouTube. I really appreciate the comments that some of you have made, but I was hoping to get some non-506 comments as well. What is it about the YouTube audience that has caused this discrepancy? With virtually any topic available to view, perhaps the zombie Chaucer market has yet to explode. Maybe I need to change my film's tags? It may be that anyone can view videos, but people have to sign up to make comments. As of today there have been 126 views of my film, but only two comments.

Chaucer for fun

Here's a post for all you Chaucer fans, who are not afraid to take your love of Chaucer beyond the classroom. Bill Baily performs a skit in the spirit of Chaucer.

Tecmo

Tecmo Bowl (1988) and Tecmo Super Bowl (1991) reinvented football video games. The controls are simple but intuitive, while the side scrolling camera angle allows the player better focus on most of the action. Recently a few friends of mine told me about an open source version of Tecmo Super Bowl complete with updated rosters. Our plan is to create a tournament through this program and create a website to keep track of game statistics. This is very interesting to me because it merges my generation of gaming (Nintendo and Super Nintendo) with the current generation of online gaming.

Here's some classic Bo Jackson Tecmo Super Bowl Action

Time

In response to Professor Stearns' interest in my previous post about a topic in 671, I have another, which probably covers the most popular topic of the class: time. Just look at the photo: James seems to be on the brink of a mental overload; he's obviously overwhelmed by the apparent rupture in the space-time continuem that occurs weekly during our class. Jack seems paralyzed; maybe he is. How else do we explain why two hours and thirty minutes becomes a marathon of cosmic proportions. How many years of life have we lost while attending the 671 time-warp? The damage is done, and I don't want to think about it anymore.

America is not the Coolest

A few days ago NPR did a show on how Japan is replacing the U.S. as the hub of popular culture. I had not really thought about it like that before, but I agree. In terms of video games, most of the good game developers come from Japan. And many games are released in Japan six months before they get to the U.S. (there are many good games that never reach the U.S. market). Some games I own are based on Japanese anima or manga. My current favorite video game, Okami, is based on Japanese mythology. I have been trying to purchase an illustration book based on Okami's Hokusai-like art work (I have a gigantic poster of Hokusai's "In the Well of the Great Wave of Kanagawa."), but there is not English translation. Last year I found the most detailed model of the X-Wing (from Star Wars) to be made by a Japanese company called Finemolds (they make the most detailed Star Wars models without question). The only problem was that the directions were in Japanese. At one point, I was looking to pay a translater to decipher the directions. Luckily, I found an English translation of most, not all, of the directions (Yes, that is the model I made in the photo). Maybe my next hobby will be to learn Japanese.