Nmc Summer2007
Preparation for my featured talk at the June 2007 NMC Summer Conference
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- Slide 1: Pleasure, Play, Participation and
Promise
Socio-emotional dimensions of digital culture which
are transforming the shape of new media literacies.
- Slide 2: Virtual ethnographic
research since 1995
•Email
•Digital fiction
•IRC
•Talkers
•Palaces
•Forums
•Fan fiction
communuties
•Blogs
•Second Life
•Youtube
•Machinima
- Slide 3: The significance of affect in providing
transformative moments in people’s online
lives.
- Slide 4: Pleasure and Play
Work vs. Play dichotomy: uneasy tensions
The opposite of play is not work, it is depression
(Brian Sutton-Smith)
- Slide 5: Play: An Alternative Framing
Play motivates people to learn
- Slide 6: Play can provide a context which allows for the
cognitive and creative freedoms associated with
open-ended experimentation.
- Slide 7: A space in which experimentation is safe and possible
- Slide 8: A space which
allows possibilities
of creative thinking,
thinking
innovative
problem solving,
solving
and
- Slide 9: Snapshot of what teens are
doing online just to play
- Slide 10: ‘i try to be as verbose as possible. i try to use fi gures of
aphors and al i erat ons. i try to make my
speech, m et lt i
language color ful, detailed, full of unexpected turns
and twists. just in general, a good read.’ (Kitten)
- Slide 11: Play allows opportunities to view situations or
problems from various angles allowing one to
pivot one’s mind to view the issue from myriad
directions (Galarneau)
- Slide 14: Manga
For the eye,
I was attempting to
indicate her thinking
about Jether
and didn't want to draw
his whole face. -_-
There's a level of emotional content
in manga that normal comics don't
have in the eyes and the hands. It
makes use of subtle imagery,
sometimes, to tease the emotions.
Such as the randomly popping up
flower petals in romantic scenes, an
effect I mean to make use of
myself... and have a character glare
and say \"cut that out\", but that's not
the point. I used this by sticking the
feathers in. Anime has an intensity
to it that I like. Plus manga comics
usually have decent plots.
- Slide 15: Fusing identities: exploring aspects
of self through fictional characters
You can tell when people
When I am in a poor
are feeling depressed.
mood, Zhou Wei gets
Suddenly they’ll have
angry…he tends to lose a
accidents in the role-
tad of control over his
playing so that they get all
magic and is often just the attention on them.
short and annoying (Hobbitness)
(Percirion)
‘…I’ve found that since I’ve been using her as one of
my main characters, I have been…well… rubbing
off on myself, in a way.
I’m more outgoing than I used to be, and Jandalf’s
creation and use does figure in that..’.
(Jandalf)
- Slide 16: “As a spectator
I am
entertained
by my own
performance”
“Becoming a
character in
a story is the
ultimate
narrative
experience”
(Marie-Laure
Ryan)
- Slide 17: • My close friend and
colleague thinks that
since starting this
course and spending
time as Denver (my
avatar), I have
“blossomed” offline.
•
My entire identity has
changed – my
perceptions about
who I am, the way I
think and interact, and
the way I see the world
now - has changed as
a consequence of the
journey Angela has
encouraged us to take
- Slide 18: Identity Play
aspects of the body: gender,
age, race, ethnicity
disclose and reveal
emotions
affiliation and relationships
an intertextual self
storylines and discourses
- Slide 19: Identity Transformations:
the authentic expert (Gee)
the mantle of the expert (Heathcote) I roleplay
roleplaying the “Other” (Lacan) at being
famous
Thinking like a historian becomes
that transformative factor: this is a
participatory practice, even if only
in the play environment.
And once the learner has the sense
of being a participant in history
and and the investigation of
history, the door is opened to
learning and thinking critically
about it.
- Slide 20: Character name: Lady Elianna (aka
Lady Eloessa or Turelie)
Description:
She is one of the few dark-headed among the elves. Her
hair is one of her main features; as well as her eyes, which
are usually brown but sparkle green when she is angry or
startled. She looks rather young, but, being an elf, has that
luck.
*sticks tongue out at all mortals * She is only about 6'0 and
is considered a little short for an elf.
Homeland:
The Realm that she calls home is Mirkwood, but she does a
lot of traveling, and can often be found in the Realms of
Rivendell and Lothlorien. Her home before she came to
Middle Earth was the Isle of Elenna (Numenor).
Weapons and Skills:
She loves to fight and is skilled (as all elves are) in the bow
and arrow, and also in using the sword. She will almost
never back down from a fight, and is willing to lay down her
life for those she loves. She holds the powers of being able
to easily disguise herself as someone/something else, mind
reading, and she can speak with those closest to her without
words. She also bears the gift, at times, of foresight, but she
cannot predict her own future.
- Slide 21: my favorite part... is bringing
my character to life
Lalaith Elerinna is my favorite
character.
Lalaith: NO!!!! You touch him,
you'll die before you ever see
your life. You can trust your
mind to it! Back up now or I
shall throw my sword into
your neck!
thats her warrior side. :-)
hehe
now here’s her romance
Lalaith: My heart weeps at the
sight of your tears, tell me
Tregallien, what makes you
cry so?
- Slide 23: I have already become quite articulate through using Zhou
Wei's intelligent speech(tm). To do this, I read a lot and see
how people of my character's 'stature' and 'personality' talk,
and I simply pick and copy pieces into Zhou Wei’s speech
- Slide 24: Subversive performances of
gender, fantasy and desire
- Slide 25: Fantasies of Femininity
• I’ve never had a boyfriend, as I
said, and there's really nothing
else to my romantic life. Jandalf
is way ahead of me romantically,
simply because she’s older. I do
imagine I’ll get married and all
that someday …
and so I paired Jandalf up with
my favourite Star Wars male
character. Heck, Obi-Wan
always was my favourite
character period, even before I
saw the prequels. I really liked
him as an old guy, and when
TPM came out…well. Good-
looking, too. That’s always a
bonus. Heehee.
- Slide 26: Play and Risk Taking:
The Cost of Failure is Low
• I think it is important that I
tell you that I am thoroughly
loving being every different
‘me’ that I can find, and that I
don’t mind taking risks in
cyberspace. If I stuff up,
there’s always the .q. I don’t
take new risks like that in
real life; I need to retain my
reputation you know!
Reputations don't stick as
well; if you make a true jerk
outta yourself, you can make
a new name, start from
scratch.
• However, irl, you're stuck. ;)
- Slide 27: Play as Participation
• Interaction as key to engagement and learning
underscores the importance of framing the appeal of
interactive media within a larger conversation that
considers the movement away from passive, spectator-
oriented understandings of both educat on and m edi
i a.
- Slide 28: Participatory Culture:
Informal Mentorship
• Sometimes Zhou Wei is taken along with lord Xian Jing to
diplomacy... sometimes he is invited to a party...
Sometimes people come up and talk to him... Sometimes
he shimmies over. Some of the game masters are given
historical characters... those who really play them
according to history I love to play with, because it just
makes you glow. My first interaction with historical
characters was Yuan Shu, the brother of Yuan Shao.
Yuan Shu conducted a fire attack on a city and killed
20,000 innocents. I still love to role-play with them,
because it can get so interesting. Sure, I can get angry
with the characters (Die, Shu, die) but we smooth it over.
Vendettas can be so much fun ^_^
- Slide 29: 43
reviews!
Contributions matter
- Slide 30: The Joy of Participation
• I have had some experiences that have made me laugh a
lot and others that have moved me to tears. One of these
things was the real life death of Luo. In Heroes of Chaos,
last game we received an announcement that famed
member and role-player Luo had died in a fatal car
accident- the other person was drink-driving. He was
legendary- I shed my own tears then a whole 4 sims
together mourned his loss.
• But the real shock came later when Luo appears, and
announces his brother had panicked and told them he had
died, when he had only broken his arm/ribs. I was crying,
but I was also laughing in relief. Even one of the coldest,
relief
so called meanest Admins on there hugged me in tears
before we discovered he was still alive. Luo was probably
one of the most emotional experiences of my life.
life
- Slide 31: Emotional Investment =
Engagement
- Slide 32: Mutual engagement around a joint enterprise =
‘a privileged locus for the creation of knowledge’
Wenger (1998) Communities of Practice:
Learning, Meaning, and Identity
- Slide 33: Play as Innovation
Play allows experimentation outside of
limitations of physical practicality or other
opportunity barriers
- Slide 34: Innovation in art, writing,
research, film-making,
game design
- Slide 37: Nathan (11 years old)
- Slide 41: 3D Animations:
Frontier Technologies
- Slide 42: Pleasure and Power
• Relations of power are indeed made and re-
made within texts of enjoyment and rituals of
relaxation and abandonment.
- Slide 43: Fun = Empowerment
- Slide 44: The Promise of Participation
- Slide 45: • Having fun
• Making connections –
social, professional,
business
• Learning, developing,
self as identity project
• Developing
relationships
• Being understood
•
Belonging
• Being noticed
• Feeling special
- Slide 46: Winifred Warburton, 99, said that recording
the song was the best day of her life
- Slide 47: Transforming New Media Literacies
• Leadership – communication, conflict resolution, handling
group dynamics, praise, support, scaffolding newbie learning,
new forms of negotiation, maintaining community longevity
• Communication – from linguistics to multimodal semiotics
• Multimodal literacies – understanding how meaning is made at
the intersection of semiotic modes
• Identity – risk taking, play, reputation management,
consciousness of lexical resources, the personal as political
• Storytelling and narrative
• Code-cracking, hacking, innovation, ‘cool hunting’
• Spaces which allow subversive play, resistance, disruption,
crossing boundaries, the insertion of self, parody, satire,
dialogue, critique, fantasy and performance of desire
- Slide 48: Transforming Pedagogies
• Environment which privileges play
• Play and experimentation leading to
innovation
• Active participation and learner
responsibility
• Leadership and autonomy
• Scaffolding, apprenticing
• Authentic experts
• Team-work and communication
• Role-playing, identity play, spaces to
imagine and dream
- Slide 49: In the end, our dreams are what define us.
(Violetta)
- Slide 50: Angela Thomas
a.thomas@usyd.edu.au
http://angelaathomas.com
Anya Ixchel