As children, we spend much of our time in imaginary worlds, substituting toys and make-believe for the real surroundings that we are just beginning to explore and understand. As we play, we learn. And as we grow, our play gets more complicated. We add rules and goals. The result is something we call games. Now…
Universities and colleges, including my own, have made retention a priority, encouraging faculty members to rethink what they do in order to foster student success. However, this is only half the effort needed, and may come too late for many students. Like the musical Chicago’s Velma Kelly, colleges and universities cannot be a one-person act…
The decline of handwriting and the rise of e-mail and text messaging has been highlighted in a new survey of media consumption in the digital age. It suggests that half of written communication is by e-mail, 29% by text message and just 13% by pen and paper. —E-mail and text ‘replace writing’ (BBC) But take a…
Changing Literacies/Changing Mindsets: Communicating Across Digital Difference (CCCC 2006 Chicago — Day 3) I had written a different session down in my conference planner, but I’m glad I want to this one. Sally Chandler brought two of her undergraduate students from Kean University, and together they presented what they learned about the nature of research with…
The History of the Future of Writing (CCCC 2006 Chicago — Day 3) These are rough notes, typed as the presenters were speaking, and lightly edited back in my hotel room before being posted online. Helen J. Burgess Washington State University. “Whatever Happened to My MOO?” Administered Appalachia Moo, had fun building and coding, “absolutely no…
Gaming tends to be regarded as a harmless diversion at best, a vile corruptor of youth at worst. But the usual critiques fail to recognize its potential for experiential learning. Unlike education acquired through textbooks, lectures, and classroom instruction, what takes place in massively multiplayer online games is what we call accidental learning. It’s learning…
Technology, Play and Pedagogy: Video Gaming and New Literacies (CCCC 2006 Chicago — Day 2) As is always the case with a conference blogging exercise, these are my rough notes, typed as the speakers were talking, and lightly edited in my hotel room at the end of the day. Matthew S. S. Johnson, Indiana University, Bloomington:…
Publish, Plagiarize, and/or Perish? (CCCC 2006 Chicago — Day 2) Lila Harper, Central Washington University, Ellensburg. “What Can We Learn about Plagiarism from Master’s Theses?” Is often asked, “Why in the world are you reading so many of these theses?” For the past 3-4 years, she has read, copy-edited and checked the references of every completed…
Opening General Session (CCCC 2006 Chicago — Day 2) Two huge projection screens flank the dais here in the grand ballroom. One screen shows a video close-up of the program chair, Akua Duku Anoyke. The other screen shows a textual transcript of her words. There is a soft chuckle in the room when she mentions a…
Conference on College Composition and Communication — Day 2 (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Here are links to the blogs I wrote on the second day of the confernce. I’m posting them past midnight — all this took place on March 23. Opening General Session Jay Wootten’s CCCC 2006 Address: ‘’Riding a One-Eyed House’’ Publish, Plagiarize, and/or Perish?…
Conference on College Composition and Communication — Day 1 (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) It’s a little after midnight on March 23. The fancy-schmancy hotel where the conference is taking place charges an hourly rate for internet access, so I didn’t liveblog. But here are my entries for the first day of the conference. Preface Leeroy Jenkins Meets…
Victims of poor high schooling, of whom we have plenty at my university, often come to my classes asking, “Is this an ‘opinion paper’ or a ‘research paper’?” I tell them that that is a spectacularly bad question based upon a false dichotomy; that I’m interested neither in mere feckless opinion nor in the random…
Taking our previous analogies for punctuation, what happens when it isn’t used? Well, if punctuation is the stitching of language, language comes apart, obviously, and all the buttons fall off. If punctuation provides the traffic signals, words bang into each other and everyone ends up in Minehead…. The reason to stand up for punctuation is…
In complex reading passages, organization may be elaborate, messages may be implicit, interactions among ideas or characters may be subtle and the vocabulary is demanding and intricate. The ACT isolated reading complexity as a critical factor by analyzing the results of the 1.2 million high school seniors in 2005 who took the well-known ACT college…
The infection that’s been toying with me for the last week has finally pounced. I’ve been idly surfing, looking for a lost CD, rearranging my bedcovers, and just sort of waiting to get tired so that I’ll fall alseep asleep. But what’s going through my head is the delightful sight of my students counting off…
The very nature of e-mail (which, along with first cousins IM and text messaging, is an undeniably handy means of chatting) encourages sloppy “penmanship,” as it were. Its speed and informality sing a siren song of incompetent communication, a virtual hooker beckoning to the drunken sailor as he staggers along the wharf. But it’s not…
The reason for this is egocentrism, or the difficulty some people have detaching themselves from their own perspective, says Epley. In other words, people aren’t that good at imagining how a message might be understood from another person’s perspective. —Stephen Leahy —The Secret Cause of Flame Wars (Wired) Similar:Air miles be damned. I say the best…
Meaning Usually refers to one’s family. Sometimes used (as in Shakespeare’s original) to denote all living creatures. Origin From Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Clown: I have been, madam, a wicked creature, as you and all flesh and blood are; and, indeed, I do marry that I may repent. —Flesh and Blood (The Prhase Finder) Er, no, that’s not…
Instead of beginning their day with coffee and the newspaper, there to read what editors have selected for their enlightenment, people, and young people in particular, wait for a free moment to go online. No longer need they wade through thickets of stories and features of no interest to them, and least of all need…
Because so many deaf children have problems with basic language skills, they get a disproportionate number of exercises related to these “abstract little pieces.” And unfortunately, that’s exactly what most educational games offer–more of the same thing that’s been shown not to work for these people. So what do I propose? For one thing, I…