Protected: Of Mice and Men: Creating a Module
Gaming: The Pedagogy of the Future?
As the concerned friends and family of World of Warcraft players will tell you, massive, multiplayer, online role-playing games (MMORPGs) can be life-consuming. Devoted gamers can spend countless hours online, working with other players (or solo) to vanquish the next foe, locate the next item, or reach the next level. While MMORPGs certainly encourage a fair amount of competition between players, it’s common for gamers’ strongest motivating source to come from within rather than from without. How can I outdo my last conquest? How can I most efficiently level up? Where can I find the most valuable loot?
This mentality falls perfectly in line with the theory Jane McGonigal puts forth in her 2011 work Reality is Broken: Whe Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World (qtd. In The Internet as a Game, Jill Anne Morris 2018). McGonigal posits that, contrary to the popular belief that games (and video games in particular) are escapist fantasies reserved for those who can’t face the harshness of their realities, gaming can be used as a force for good in the real world (Morris 157-58). Following this thought, rather than viewing games as merely a distraction from important matters, McGonigal claims that applying game theory to real-world problems will help foster practical solutions. Not only does gaming encourage strategic, systematic thinking, it can also foment collaboration among peers (158). There’s a reason one of the very first viral internet videos centers around a group campaign in World of Warcraft gone horribly, hilariously wrong.
Warning: some language NSFW
Perhaps the most striking component of McGonigal’s argument is that gaming involves solving “unnecessary obstacles,” seeking out challenges that the player doesn’t need to overcome in order to survive (Morris 159-60). It is the gratification of solving complex problems and seeking out new challenges that contributes so solidly to games’ supposed addictiveness. McGonigal observes the obvious connection between this challenge-solution gaming model and educational applications, and Morris adds that 2009 saw the opening of an RPG-styled school in New York City (Morris 160-62). By gamifying every aspect of the school experience, students are encouraged to not only meet educational requirements but to also seek out additional academic challenges around the school to “level up.” Students are also required to collaborate with each other complete certain “quests,” ensuring that no student can live in an academic vacuum (160).
This scholastic model steers into the skid of gamified, systematic education: educators, parents, and students alike have railed for decades about the seemingly robotic, supposedly objective method of structuring classes and grading student work. Writing for Mindshift in February 2019, Katrina Schwartz relays a seasoned educator’s reevaluation of his grading practices: in an attempt to keep his biases out of the gradebook, this teacher set up cut-and-dry numerical scores for each component of his class, including attendance, behavior, homework, and exam scores. This teacher eventually changes his policy, however, when he realizes not only that including attendance and out-of-class work in his evaluations might unfairly affect economically disadvantaged students but also that students had been “gaming the system” by prioritizing certain assessment areas over others (Schwartz). The teacher now grades to standards of mastery instead of percentages and allows his (admittedly subjective) judgment of his students’ mastery to guide the way.
By creating a scholastic “game” in which students level up not by numbers but by collaboration, understanding, initiative, and effort, educators can have their cake and eat it, too. There is a way to gamify learning without resorting to a codified numerical system that leaves students cynical and exhausted. It all simply depends on educators’ ability to present “unnecessary obstacles” in a positive, dare I say “fun,” way.
Works Cited
Morris, Jill Anne. The Internet as a Game. Parlor Press, 2018
Schwartz, Katrina. “How Teachers are Changing Grading Practices with an Eye on Equity.” MindShift, 10 Feb. 2019. https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/52813/how-teachers-are-changing-grading-practices-with-an-eye-on-equity
Fake News and the War on April Fools’ Day
Ah, April Fools’ Day… the day school-age pranksters save their allowances for, the day adults are most afraid to accept food and drink from friends, the day universities across the country temporarily change their mascots or offer a (bogus) chance to cancel final exams.
While most real-world April Fools’ Day pranks are a perennially-welcome break from the monotony of daily life, on the internet, the monkeyshines seem to have lost some of their spark. From Google’s many April 1st features (this year, among other jokes, the game Snake has invaded Google Maps, and Google Home can apparently talk to tulips) to McDonald’s milkshake-flavored sauce to news that football superstar Tom Brady is retiring from the Patriots, the shenanigans just seem… tired. Passé. But why? Is America reaching its jaded Terrible Teenage years? Is the internet no longer the dreamscape of possibilities it was once believed to be? Or is the reason something more… presidential?
Yes, I believe that there is a massive conspiracy lurking just under the surface of the internet, a devious plot to destroy the spirit of this cherished holiday… a sinister War on April Fools’ Day.
In this era of fake news, when the internet is a superhighway for outlandish claims and troll-bait for and from everyone from the President down, is April Fools’ Day actually different from any other day of the year? I think not! The spirit of the holiday is meant to breathe some fresh air, some life, some light-hearted whimsy into our proceedings as winter melts away to spring. We can shake off the dust of seasons past and enjoy a good mayonnaise-filled donut or meringue pie in the face.
The Fake News War Machine, whose poster child is our very own president and whose infantry of basement-dwellers utilizes guerrilla trolling tactics, wants nothing more than to rip the whimsy of April Fools’ Day right out from under us. The trolls’ Schopenhauerian tactics of confusion and rhetorical bad faith for the “lulz” are a base perversion of the friendly nature of this most holy day (Morris 112-116). Internet trolling depends on the one-sided nature of the joke. While traditional, American-as-apple-pie April Fools’ Day encourages joke recipients to be “good sports” and invites them, in the end, to have an equal share in the fun, trolling takes no such quarter. It is impossible to be a good sport for a troll other than to either completely sign off and shut down or to fight fire with trolling fire, and what good does that do (106-108)? Trolling only drums up civilian casualties. What a twisted take on a beloved tradition!
(courtesy of KnowYourMeme)
What’s more, the War on April Fools’ Day aims to destroy the holiday by weakening its unique place in the hearts of the faithful. Each time someone takes as gospel a tale of the fabled Florida Man or is outraged by a one-sided clickbait headline on a dull Thursday morning, an innocent April Fool Elf falls down dead, weakened by the ever-growing cynicism of the Internet War Machine. When we are bombarded every day of the week with ridiculous, exaggerated, or outright fabricated “news” stories, how can we preserve the spirit of this hallowed day? As with many legends of yore, I believe the answer to our Fools’ conundrum lies in the most inauspicious of places, in this case, a snarky, self-righteous meme.
If the unique nature of April Fools’ must fall by the wayside, then we must keep its spirit in our hearts every day. We must regard every offered piece of chewing gum as though it were laced with teeth-blackening charcoal. We must trust our instincts when we feel that a certain news development is too good (or too bad) to be true. We must jealously guard our internet selves from the onslaught of bad-faith trolls who wish nothing more than selfish glee at the expense of others. And most importantly, when something truly funny does happen in our lives, whether in the real world or online, we must cherish it with all our hearts. So this April Fools’ Day, shake hands with an electric buzzer, stop and smell the squirting roses… just make sure you’re not the only one laughing.
Happy April Fools’ Day!
Work Cited
Morris, Jill Anne. The Internet as a Game. Parlor Press, 2018
Captain Marvel vs. the Internet
Ad-hocracies, as Jill Anne Morris borrows from Alvin Toffler in her book The Internet as a Game, are groups that “not only come together quickly to solve a problem but that break apart again just as readily when a job is done” (12). Throughout the book, Morris mentions online ad-hocracies (or “ad-hocs” for short) that have zeroed in to troll targets from the Church of Scientology to independent game designers, from far-left bloggers to dark web pedophile rings.
The highest-profile target of recent internet trolling ad-hocracy is Marvel Studios’ latest release, Captain Marvel, the first from the studio to feature a female in the main leading role (after over ten years and twenty films). Even before the movie hit theatres, scores of largely anonymous internet users called for a boycott, claiming that Marvel is ruining the Marvel Cinematic Universe by including so-called “social justice warrior” content in the film. Exacerbated by an out-of-context quote from eponymous star Brie Larson (she was talking about her efforts to have more inclusive press junkets), a group comprised mostly of white males coalesced to sabotage Captain Marvel‘s release. The new ad-hoc created YouTube videos decrying Larson’s “man-hating” and how she has single-handedly cost Marvel millions of dollars, and they review-bombed the movie’s Rotten Tomatoes page. The difference between the professional critics’ “Certified Fresh” approval rating of 79% and the audience score of 41% is telling. The audience score was even lower before the movie came out; the vitriol against Captain Marvel was based purely on the movie’s trailers and on negative internet hype rather than the film itself.
The backlash against the film was strong enough to merit an official response and policy change from Rotten Tomatoes. On February 25th, still more than a week before the film’s release, site management released a statement notifying users of several new cosmetic and substantive differences, including disabling comments from non-critics before a movie’s release. The statement reads: “Unfortunately, we have seen an uptick in non-constructive input, sometimes bordering on trolling, which we believe is a disservice to our general readership” (par. 6). Although Captain Marvel is far from the first film to receive unmerited negative reviews on the site, the timing of the policy change is no coincidence. The multitudes of ad-hoc audience “reviewers” may claim that the film and its lead actress are tanking Marvel’s efforts, but the real perpetrators are the trolls themselves.
The question remains, then, what next? Per Morris’ definition of ad-hocracy, the group must disband when their goal has been achieved. Has this anti-Captain Marvel ad-hoc achieved its goal? What even is their goal to begin with? At face value, the “job” is simple: sabotage the movie’s release with boycotts, tweets, YouTube videos, and review-bombing. However, this incident feels like just another skirmish in a much larger conflict, both online and in the real world. Small ad-hocs may come and go, but as long as pop culture continues its trend of challenging patriarchal tropes and including more progressive material, will the conservative ad-hoc’s work ever be done?
For now, it seems unlikely.
Works Cited
Morris, Jill Anne. The Internet as a Game. Parlor Press, 2018
“Hello, We’re Making Some Changes.” Rotten Tomatoes Product Blog, 25 Feb. 2019. https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/making-some-changes/
25 years later, who is Max Mouse?
The year is 1993. The first Jurassic Park had just stomped into theatres, grunge is the order of the day, and we collectively ask for the first time, “Got Milk?”. The internet as we now know it is but a twinkle in the mythic Al Gore’s eye, but the computer boom is well underway, and the future is rife with digital possibilities. How do we educate the kids on computer basics while also teaching the potential dangers of the digital world?
Enter Ghostwriter.
The acclaimed Children’s Television Workshop show ran on PBS from 1992 to 1995 and was internationally syndicated. Teaming up with a ghost who can read and project words and letters, a group of Brooklyn middle schoolers solve crimes and learn about the world on the way. In season 2, a four-episode arc called “Who Is Max Mouse?” has the Ghostwriter team investigating a hacker, “Max Mouse,” who uses the school’s computer system to post a death threat against the principal, arrange frequent and random fire drills, change student grades, and more. This arc encapsulates both the era’s dewy-eyed optimism for the future of cyberspace as well as its dangers, not just in the digital realm but in the real world, as well.
The juxtaposition of miraculous and terrifying, of utopic and dark-edged, is most directly shown in the first episode of the arc, when the editor-in-chief of the school newspaper (and suspected hacker) Erica, played by a young Julia Stiles, lays claim to following the hacker story for the paper.
Although Erica is not the school hacker (sorry for the 25-year-old spoiler!), her fascination with computers and the fledgling internet encapsulates their complex nature and hints at issues that are still relevant at the beginning of 2019.
Erica says that the internet is “a world where [people] are judged by what [they] say and think, not by what [they] look like. A world where curiosity and imagination equals [sic] power” (00:33-00:40). Erica’s thoughts mirror those of Jill Anne Morris in the preface to her 2018 book The Internet as a Game; Morris’s remembrance of early internet culture includes embracing the utopic view of cyberspace as “without gender, race, or class” and that the internet “was going to connect us to people from all over the world” (Morris ix-x).
Although these two vastly different works examine diverging problems in cyberspace (Ghostwriter deals with hacking, Morris with trolls), they both treat computers and the internet with the gravity that they deserve. It has become all too common for adults (including teachers) to tell young people that walking away from a computer will solve their online problems, from cyberbullying to doxxing threats. In today’s world, though, checking out and logging off isn’t really an option. Ghostbusters illustrates this by tying real-world consequences to the hacker’s attacks, including a small child almost being killed because the fire department was on call for a false alarm at the school (Part 2 24:40-24:51). The Internet as A Game includes and often references feminist blogger and webmaster BB, who was forced to close her website and was subjected to threats of rape and violence from online trolls (Morris xi-xiv).
Given that the digital world has not turned into the utopia that early internet denizens dreamed of and that it isn’t any safer than the real world, do we not owe our young people an education on digital safety? It may seem strange to take cues from a 25-year-old TV show wherein middle schoolers find books about computers using a library’s card-catalog, understanding cybersecurity should be as important as understanding to look both ways before crossing the street. After all, in this day and age, who is Max Mouse? Anyone.
Works Cited
Morris, Jill Anne. The Internet as a Game. Parlor Press, 2018.
Stiles, Julia “Julie”, actor. Julia Stiles in Ghostwriter. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLlj_GeKniA.
“Who Is Max Mouse? Part 2.” Ghostwriter, Public Broadcasting Service, 3 Jan. 1994., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nySSS4toCZ0.
Spider-Man and the Rhetoric of Distraction
Sunlight filters into future Spider-Man Miles Morales’s bedroom through a dusty window, illuminating the small piece of art that Miles is drawing. As he works, he sings along with the music in his headphones, his marker strokes keeping time. As he is carried away with the music, he stops drawing entirely and leans back in his chair to hit the high notes, only to be interrupted by his father calling for him to get dressed for school. This all-too-familiar scene from Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is emblematic of some educators’ hesitations about devices in the classroom or workspace–students, no matter how good their intentions, will be tempted to succumb to distractions while working if given the chance.
The issue of distraction, of course, is much more complicated, and not only because current-generation students are digital natives. As a relatively new educator, I often think about my role and my ideals as a teacher, and I usually come to an impasse on the issue of devices in the classroom. On one hand, devices during work time sometimes lead to distractions and lower productivity; but on the other hand, is it really my place to demand one specific work environment for all students?
“The Rhetoric of Distraction: Media Use and the Student Writing Process,” written by Patricia Portanova for Social Writing/ Social Media: Publics, Presentations, and Pedagogies, chronicles a small study of college students and their reactions to potential distractions while writing. I didn’t know what results to expect from this study, but I was certainly surprised: there was no demonstrable difference between students’ focus and performance whether they were working in silence, listening to music, answering texts, or checking Facebook. Some students performed worse, but they reported beforehand that these distractions break their routine; and one student actually performed better with distractions than without. He reported that he is a frequent social media user (257-259). This study, broadly speaking, shows that one student’s disruption is another student’s comfort zone.
Reading this article gave me pause. Usually, my policy with my FYC students is that they may listen to music during independent work time, but they shouldn’t use their phones/laptops/etc. for other purposes. Knowing what I know now, should I adjust my policy?
As of now, signs point to yes. On top of Portanova’s study, our friend Miles from Into the Spider-Verse shows a potential benefit of music and other digital “distractions”: about halfway through the film, Miles is playing sidekick to a middle-aged Peter Parker as they attempt to steal a computer from the villains’ lab. Miles, still learning his spider-powers and how to control them, finds his fingers stuck to the ceiling with seemingly no way to free himself. He must relax in order for his spider-grip to release, and the evil scientists could enter the lab at any moment. What does he do to release his tension? He sings the song that he was listening to while working at the beginning of the film. He finds his music so relaxing, in fact, that his fingers release almost immediately.
While Peter’s exasperated “Oh, for crying out loud” may resemble our reactions to this young person’s taste in music, Miles’s tactic works for him. One of the film’s strongest points is its portrait of Miles as a lovable Everyteen, encouraging young viewers to see themselves in him and older viewers to see his generation. When the availability of music, communication, and information is always increasing; when the “real world” we are purportedly preparing students for increasingly demands multitasking skills; when we as educators are encouraged to foster our students’ sense of responsibility and allow them self-determination in the classroom; who are we to prevent them from experimenting with different work styles? When we demand that devices be left out of the independent work environment, whose comfort are we really protecting?
Persichetti, Bob, et al., director. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Written by Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman, Sony Pictures, 2018.
Portanova, Patricia. “The Rhetoric of Distraction: Media Use and the Student Writing Process.” Social Writing/Social Media: Publics, Presentations, and Pedagogies, edited by Douglas M. Walls and Stephanie Vie, WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado, 2018, pp. 247-62.
Tally-ho!
Thanks for joining me!
I’m going on an adventure! –Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit
Writing on Writing 