Category Archives: Uncategorized

8:44pm: Not Much on Games…

Well, not much on video games today, but there is always tomorrow…..I am still grading Wikipedia assignments. Later, I’ll be on to blogs. I usually offer my students the opportunity to write an essay or a blog. Many go for the blog because, like the meme says…

essay why u no write yrself

I can’t wait to get back to my book project on the remediation of literary genres in video games.

As soon as the grading is done, it’s back to video games. That’s motivation for you.

1:26pm: Wikipedia – multifaceted teaching tool

Now I will sit down and grade my digital assignments for a while….

I’ll be honest here – there is something not quite right about Wikipedia, particularly in terms of the gender binaries and masculine discourse it tends to encode. Compare the entries on “man” and “woman” and tell me different. I tend to warn students to keep their critical eye open and when information is proclaimed as “neutral” (as Wikipedia trumpets itself to be), be double wary. However, I do like to use Wikipedia as a means to ensure students engage with the course material. They have to when the are using Wikipedia’s rather ingenious code. they need to check the references, read instructions carefully, proofread their work (for fear someone might say something in the “talk” page!). I don;t ask that they write individual articles – that’s quite tough; instead, they need to add to existing articles on a topic that needs more info. However, some students do add articles, like the one on Kutcha Butcha for  British Literature: Culture, History, Politics.

I am amazed at the work my students will throw into this kind of assignment. Some of this work has a  social justice component, particularly when student correct or expand on information, such as this article on Leonora Cohen that was fairly bare bones, but one of my students rectified the problem and provided excellent information on this British suffragist.

This is where DH shines – no?

12:37pm: Giving Opening Remarks and then….

I am off to give the opening remarks at a Trent University event where research is being celebrated – one of the projects is about tablet based learning – really looking forward to that paper!

and then…I must grade the rest of my students Wikipedia assignments, some of which are just stunning. I can’t wait to share them with you!

10:49 am: Deep into It

I am writing the research assistant confidentiality form and i had to outline the main goals of the project:

  1. Collect data on a select number of digital media labs in Canada
  2. Parse and examine this data for relationships and difference between the goals of these labs
  3. Extrapolate conclusions regarding the ways in which these labs are changing the university classroom in terms of course delivery
  4. Disseminate this data on the project site (digitalcommunitas.org)

At the same time, I am also grading Wikipedia assignments, which I will share in another post.

Is it me, or are we all horrendously, yet fabulously, swamped with work?

Help!

Help!

10:23 am: Revisions for DH Project

I have a meeting with my research assistant this morning regarding revisions to our submission to the Research Ethics Board (REB). We want to survey a range of Digital Media Labs in Canada to see what they have been up to since their rapid inception in the last 5 to 10 years.

You would think approval would be easy, but one of the questions the REB asked of us was “what’s a digital media lab.”  Gulp. Hence the digitalcommunitas.org project to try and spread information about the integration of the digital media and tech in postsecondary classrooms.

 

Pre-DH Day Post

Here’s What I Do

The two projects I work on concern video games and how digital tech and media are reshaping post-secondary classrooms. In both projects, I blend post-structuralist approaches, critical digital theories, and rhetorical analysis to look at how forms of “old” media and “new” media intersect.

Here’s What I Am Going to Cover April 8th

I am thrilled to be participating in Day of DH 2013. I am fairly new to DH, starting to really get into it about three years ago. April 8th is a great day for me to participate because my research assistant and I will be working on digitalcommunitas,org, a pedagogical project that has been on hold during what I like to call “Academic March Madness,” which has little to do with NCAA March Madness. We are back on track and on April 8th! I’ll mainly be talking about digital media labs and how they are changing classroom pedagogy, but I’ll also share some of our posts from the Digital Communitas project and also my book-length project on video games.

I am really excited about Day of DH!