C100 Narratives in the Age of Media Convergence

Alternative blog account

2007-04-16T15:12:00.000-07:00

Because I opened this blog account for the class I taught in Fall 2006, I haven't blogged much here. My actual blog is here. Check it out, mainly academic stuff, but sometimes I talk about whatever hits my fancy...

Closing to an end

2007-02-22T20:40:00.000-08:00

Well my class ended three months ago and I still haven't wrote any concluding thoughts on how it went. After having read the evaluations I can happily say that the class was challenging, entertaining, and more importantly, interesting. Students were saying that they found the readings hard, but the class discussions were explanatory. And most felt that they actually learned something about digital media. What more can I ask for? They also said that this should have been a semester, not eight weeks. It was initially designed as a semester long, but the logistic difficulties made it impossible to offer it as a full semester class.
How do I feel about it? Well, pretty good actually. Most had their firsts in using some of the tools in my class, they were baffled at first, then were able to adjust and learn. The Wiki was useful I think and I was successful in implementing it. Also I successfully adjusted the schedule to fit the students' level, which wasn't what was promised to me. Coming in I thought I was teaching an honors class only to find out all of my students actually dropped out of their first class and decided to take the next best thing and most weren't even interested in the topic. But most struggled through it, liked it, and learned a lot from it.

Casino Royale

2006-11-19T15:04:00.000-08:00

As a long-time James Bond fan, I was quite curious to see how the new Bond character was going to play out. I went to see the new one on the second day and tried to keep an open mind about it. I don't like to reject something just because it doesn't conform to the routine. This last one was definitely an anomaly in the Bond tradition. As far as I've seen in the trailers, I absolutely didn't like the new Bond (Daniel Craig), I figured it was going to be another Timothy Dalton who will never get the play the role again. Plus I was too much in love with Pierce Brosnan whom I think just as hot and appropriate for the role as Sean Connery had been in his day.

To my surprise I liked it. Granted it could have been shorter. Towards the end there were many false endings and I was afraid we were going to watch another movie. But this was one of the rare instances where you saw Bond as a human being and not a super hero with magical powers! It also played with a lot of Bond traditions too. Some are:

M's real identity was almost revealed when Bond broke into her apartment. To which M replied "One more syllable, and I'll have you..."
M was shown at one point in her bed with her husband waking up to a phone call?!!! Never knew she was married...
Bond lost all his money in the poker game and the woman who represented the treasury (and who was pretending to be his lover for appearances) refused to give him more money to Bond so he can try again. Has any woman ever said "no" to Bond? Another poker player gave him the money...
When Bond asked for a martini at the casino, the bartender asked "Shaken, not stirred?" To which he replied "I don't care." WHAT??? Are you out of your mind? OK, that was outrageous.
Bond fell in love with the treasurer of the bank (good choice, I might add). There was one instance in previous movies where Bond fell in love and got MARRIED. But the woman was killed shortly after by the dark side. So my assumption was that they were going to kill her off at the hands of the enemy. Well that did not happen, but what happened was that she stole all the money Bond won and gave it to some other party. During the last chase, she got stuck in an elevator in an old building located in one of the canals in Venice, as the building came down, she drowned. So ultimately she died (no big surprise about that).
Shortly after he fell in love with this woman, there were a series of tacky love scenes, to which my reaction was, god let this be over soon, I think I am going to puke! In one of these moments, as he and his lover were approaching to Venice in a boat. And he was in his laptop e-mailing his letter of RESIGNATION to M. Ok, nevermind the absurdity of the act, how in the world are you going to get wireless in the middle of the sea??? A lot of movies omit this little detail. I assume they rely on the audience's suspension of disbelief. Well it sticks out.
The torture scene was particularly hilarious. What better way to hurt Bond than hurting his masculinity. He was strip naked while the villain kept hitting his you-know-where with a rope-ball. His response? Apart from painful screams, he said that everyone will know that he (the villain) scratched his (Bond's) you-know-where... That was a moment of comic relief that you normally don't see in a Bond movies.

But I liked it, isn't that interesting? It should definitely be shortened and tightened a bit though. I mean, there are some parts of the plot that I didn't quite understand how to relate to the rest of the movie.

The story project

2006-11-17T12:33:00.000-08:00

Funny, I am reading through the forums and I constantly come across interesting posts. We have a story project that we are writing as a group. I figured, let them experience digital culture in its full potential, with all its glory and frustrations. Let them bless it and curse at it at the same time. So I guess somebody deleted another student's chunk of the story. Boy was s/he ever upset. Nevermind the fact that I can compare versions and see what changes have been made as an administrator, the post was too funny.

It read "Ok, whats the point of having a story where everybody contributes when people are just going to erase what you wrote anyways? Just cause you may not like it doesn't mean you can erase it! Thanks to the jerk who did that to me. I hope your grade drops!!"

Wrar, cat fight!!! The "jerk" would have been considered a "griefer" in Second Life and he would have been temporarily banned from the game. This student decided to play the story game a little bit differently than others. He just had a bit of a sense of humor, is all. Of course, in real life, where users from all over the world are collaborating in a project like this, an incident like this happens all the time. And you get really frustrated, and you get deleted, and you re-add your stuff again, and then get deleted again, and so on and so forth. I think this was a telling experience for both students. All I can say, it was interesting to see it play out.

Reconfiguring narrative

2006-11-17T12:25:00.000-08:00

Well that was a surprise... We were discussing Landow's Hypertext 3.0 in class last Wednesday. We actually read the introduction couple of weeks ago, but our assignment was Reconfiguring Narrative chapter. As I explained to them the wildly popular debate between narratologists and ludologists and asked them whether they thought narrative existed in videogames, everyone said yes and looked at me as if I just came from the moon. I would have expected more of a reaction, or even resistence. So many gamers have refused it stubbornly. My class actually made some insightful comments on the topic. Who knew??? Either as a culture we are moving beyond certain dichotomies or our class was an anamoly. Either way, I didn't even feel the necessity to convince them. They were there (before I was).

Great class

2006-10-31T06:53:00.000-08:00

Well, I worked really hard in designing this course and it is challenging for my students to take a course like this, I am getting to like it by the day. The students are participating in class discussions more and more, the blogs are getting under way, the forums are slow and coming, but that's OK... I really feel like I am rewiring their brains for a different way of learning, most importantly, a different way of thinking. As an instructor, you normally get feedback on and off, but having the class online and teaching it face-to-face, allows you to get feedback instantly. This is pretty wild. And I trust they get the same instant feedback from me.

Reading through the student blogs, I get an insight to my student's lives that I normally don't get when I just have them in class. The mother of one of my students commented on her blog, greatly appreciating the fact that she restarted her blogging so the family is able to get news of her. So touching, really. And another claims that he is really getting into the topics that we are talking about. And he is quick to add, "No, really, I am getting very interested." I know it sounds way too idealistic for me, but if I can change how three of my students think, I think I have accomplished a lot. But of course I am shooting for higher goals...

Battlestar Galactica

2006-10-27T19:14:00.000-07:00

I had made myself a promise to blog only about the class in this blog, but I am about to break my promise. Oh well, I can't be perfect.
I just got done watching another great episode of Battlestar Galactica and I am still amazed at the differences between the original series and this one. I still remember 25 some years ago, when I was about 7, me and my dad would cancel everything in our lives and watch Battlestar Galactica, in black and white. Those were the days... It was still a great show despite all the technical limitations. I remember Starbuck was a man and I was totally in love with him. So seeing him reincarnated as a woman always takes me by surprise watching the new series. But it is kind of interesting to see that they are using hand-held camera techniques to shoot the battleship scenes. I don't think I ever watched a sci-fi that uses that technique ever. And the Saylons (not sure if I spelled this correctly) are definitely new and improved in this new series. As a matter of fact, there are no close up shots of the Saylons in the new series, but there were in the old one. And Saylons that took the shape of humans were unheard of, forget about them being self-generating! When you killed one of those suckers, they died, period.
It is kind of scary being old enough to compare the old version of the series to the new one, LOL.

Forums

2006-10-26T20:13:00.000-07:00

I began talking to my students about what is expected of them at the forums. This week was basically the honeymoon with the technology, meaning I let them use is any way they wanted it, so they got used to the idea of having a virtual classroom. Last class i gave them a bit more guidance in that i asked them to post stuff that are related to our readings. I also told them that forums aren't chatrooms, they serve a different purpose.
I am also planning on posting a grading rubric for the forums as I will be paying more attention to what kind of interaction goes on in the forums and i will treat it as class participation.

First reaction to technology

2006-10-26T19:53:00.000-07:00

I asked my students what their first reactions were to the technology they were using for the class, you know, how the wiki worked out and how it didn't work, how blogger.com worked and how it didn't work, stuff like that. I want them to notice all the glitches, overcome the challenges of using technology to write so they can fully appreciate the impact. I literally want them to suffer all the negative sides of technology and be able to evaluate its full potential after having taken my class this semester. But I also want them to realize its benefits too. Faster communication within the group/community, being able to publish anything and everything for everyone to see, its flexibility so that mistakes are easily corrected and so on. It is probably most amazing that you don't have to be McGann, Spielberg, or Oprah to publish something that everyone would read. You don't need money, you don't need to find a publisher, you don't need to advertise or anything. Any mistakes you make are noticed by the community immediately and corrected. If you have a question about something, you can get an answer from someone who is also interested in the same topic but lives on the other side of the planet. You might not ever met this person, but he is willing and able to help you out. That's the beauty part about reading and writing on the digital platform. But of course, it comes with a price. Technology can be a pain in the neck at times. You might feel like throwing your laptop out the window at times, servers might be down (as some of my students already experienced in blogger.com), it might take a while to figure out how something works. Technology is a wonderful thing that allows us to do millions of things, but I also want my students to experience fully the negative sides of it too.
While some of my students are struggling with what to write on their blogs, some are treating it as if they blogged all their lives. Some are already manipulating the ready made templates, posting URLs, pictures and such. Others need a bit more assistance. But they are learning skills that will last them a lifetime. One of my students writes that although at first she wasn't exactly sure about this blogging, she feels that it is becoming quite addictive. It is very true. This is why I currently have three blogs.

Interesting times

2006-10-25T07:44:00.000-07:00

Yes, I finally met my students and saw that most are in my class not because they were interested in the topic (though some may thought the topic sounded cool) but they had to find a class because they had to drop out of their first classes. As I suspected, the advisors did not enforce the GPA requirement that we asked them to do. But that's beside the point. The most interesting thing for me was to see that most of my students never experienced a teaching envirionment quite like this. Most did not go beyond browsing the internet, most never blogged, most never attended forums, most never read any fiction online. I get the opportunity to teach them, for the first time, these topics. I will have to rewire their brains to be more compatible with today's world. Force them to think in a totally different way, which I never thought I'd get a chace to do. Everyone seems so tech-savvy these days, so familiar with the ways of the digital world. Of course by the time they graduate, they will have already experienced these things and the initial innocence would be gone.

When I explained to them the syllabus and what was required of them, all I saw was bewildered faces, looking at me as if I were insane, that this could not be happening in a real classroom envirionment. They were literally unsettled. No one asked questions. Finally, after the break, one bold gentleman dared to ask, "So what is the difference between forums and blogs?" I knew everyone had the same question in mind. I told him that it was a great question and asked him why he hadn't asked this question before. And he said "Well you looked so serious..." I about died of laughing. I think the main reason was it took him some time to fully comprehend the content that I was throwing at them. Once that was registered, he was ready to ask the question.

I went home, thinking this was going to be long semester. By the time I was in front of my computer, the forums were already in use, the blog URLs and usernames were already entered into the class wiki. I did get some frustrated e-mails asking me how to do things, and I replied back. Then i received e-mails saying "Hey this wasn't that hard!" I read the blogs, left some comments on some.

Now students are concerned about the difficulty of the readings. Well it is college, not highschool, so it has to be hard somewhere so you learn new things, otherwise it wouldn't be called education. These are the most interesting times indeed.

Today is the day!

2006-10-23T10:45:00.000-07:00

Today C100 begins. I am so excited to meet with my students and to see how the class will unfold in reality. Initially I thought the class started next week, but one of my students from my other class gave me the heads up. Whew, that was close. The dates they posted online must have been inaccurate and our secretary didn't warn me about it. But everything is a go.
I fixed the problems I was having with the forums, started writing some study questions for each reading, and I hope to write a brief plot for our story project soon, hopefully this week.
I checked and double checked the classroom. Good wireless, at least. I checked out the projector that they will be sending to the classroom, learned how to use it.
It will be a difficult class. Studying digital media is always labor intensive and theory intensive. Especially if you're not familiar with it...But once you are over the learning curve, it is quite fun. But then again, I might be just a tad bit partial.

Forums

2006-10-01T21:31:00.000-07:00

I think I should start coming up with questions about the assigned reading to post on the discussion forums and come up with paper topics. I still have another month to go but I need to prepare for them some supporting material on the wiki to get them through the theory readings that they will have to do in such a short time.

Reconsidering the blog assignment

2006-10-01T21:28:00.000-07:00

I ran into Thom in the Telecom hallway after one of the brown bags and I thanked him for the interesting T101 syllabus he posted on the Media ecology list and I told him I swiped his blogging assignment for my own class. And we got to talking about it and he told me—though I knew this already but ruled it out—that he let’s the students blog about their daily experiences, which essentially is what blogging about anyway. I told him that I was going to have the students blog about their readings so I can make sure that they do their readings. He recommended that I give them daily quizzes instead. Although I didn’t like his idea of blogging their daily experiences at first, I started to think that that this is what blogging is really about. So if they blog about their readings, they are not really blogging in the true sense of the term. First of all, it is not really fun to blog about assignments, unless you’re a crazy graduate student like I am, secondly, the blogging experience does not include blogging about homework, it should be about whatever that interests you. So the real question is, how am I going to define that “whatever”? I decided to give them daily quizzes instead and keep to blogging about whatever. I think this will give them a better comparison about blog writing and academic writing, which I will ask them to do twice in the semester anyway.

Wiki in progress!

2006-08-27T19:37:00.000-07:00

Yes, I finally set up the class Wiki with the help of a good friend and it is up and running. It didn't take me too long to learn the ropes and I uploaded most of my syllabus. It looks pretty good. I am going to try to have the students use it as much as possible. I will also upload additional information and some URLs that might help them out in their readings. I also created myself a user account. This class is becoming very exciting. Can't wait!

Negotiations with Patchwork Girl

2006-08-23T19:20:00.000-07:00

Still negotiating with the department to have them buy ten licenses for the e-book. The department is somewhat reluctant to give $75 for an electronic text which, I sense, they assume that it will not be used by anyone but me. So in a sense it is a lost investment. Never knew it would be this hard.
I think if our departments will go extinct, it will be because our unwillingness to open our boundaries up a bit. We need to realize, along with all the other English departments (who seem to have realized it long before us), that literature is moving beyond print. Shakespeare is moving beyond bound books. Books will always remain and will serve invaluable purposes, but digital literature will be considered just as valid.

Wiki

2006-08-16T17:21:00.000-07:00

I am going to create a Wiki and post my syllabus there. I will also post class notes, background information on the readings, and useful URLs on this site. But I also had two great ideas about the class Wiki:

I will start discussion forums about our readings and expect the students to participate.
I will also create a page where we can create a class story where everyone contributes to the story. They can even blog their writing experiences on their personal blogs.

I think this will engage them intimately with digital texts. Let's see what I can prepare until the class starts.

Patchwork Girl

2006-08-16T17:15:00.000-07:00

It seems I have to jump the hoops of bureaucracy to have ten licenses of Patchwork Girl ordered from Eastgate Systems. We'll see how it goes, I might have to get the library involved as well. Negotiating between three different locations isn't making it easy either.

Every step of this course is presenting a new challenge. I am doing something new in this department, so I have to work hard to break new ground. All the obstacles point to that.

Maybe I might be pleasantly surprised and all will be resolved soon...

Scale it down a bit...

2006-08-13T13:18:00.001-07:00

Lately, i keep remembering that Eddie Izzard sketch that I saw in Dressed to Kill, which BTW is one of my favorite performances. Eddie Izzard in this show talks about his childhood and how he became the way he is, i.e. an "executive" transvestite. Of course, I don't think anyone, to this day, has understood what he means by "executive." Anyway, apparently one day his school career counselor came to class to talk to the students about their career choices. When he asked Eddie, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" he replied that he wanted to be an astrounout and explore new galaxies and go to places where no man has ever gone before. His counselor responds, "You're British, scale it down a bit." Then Eddie says he wants to be a shoemaker and explore new shoes and discover shoes that no men has ever discovered before. The counselor says "You're British, scale it down a bit." Finally, Eddie decides to become a garbage man... Well, this is my story in designing this course (LOL).

I think that i can pull the hypertext project, but now I realize that I may not have enough time for it. It turns out that eight-week semester in reality means only 6 weeks! No room to breathe. Damn. I guess I wil have to save this brillant assignment for future, if and when I get to teach this class as a full semester. Funny, the amount of hours is the same as a full semester class, but since it is condensed, I can't assign too many stuff in such a short time.

I can hear my advisor saying, you're British, scale it down a bit... Gotta settle for becoming the garbage man (LOL).

Hypertext assignment

2006-08-12T08:50:00.000-07:00

I am thinking about additional assignements for my class, besides the blog that they will keep daily about their readings.
I don't want them to just read about digital writing, I want them to experience it in different ways. So I remembered a hypertext I created for my Digital Arts class offered in Fine Arts. In that class, I was just beginning to take interest in new media so in that class, I had this brillant idea of translating Snow White into a hypertext environment. But at the time I wasn't aware of Storyspace (a software that created hypertexts). So I created the sentences, words, in other words lexia in Photoshop and position these accordingly so it would look like a hypertext. I can show this as an example in class, do a quick crash course on how to use Storyspace, and give them short stories to translate into a hypertext. This would be a cool assignment where they will have to think about the problems they encounter. In the end, we can all see what the groups came up with and comments on them.

Potential problems:

licencing, funding
computers to install this program
learning curve of the software

I e-mailed Eastgate Systems to inquire about the licencing for both Storyspace and Patchwork Girl (which I will include in my reading list). For ten licences Storyspace is $550, for Patchwork Girl is it apprx $80. I decided to e-mail my director and ask them if they can buy Patchwork Girl. I highly doubt the department will support the purchase of Storyspace.

We'll see what happens...

Blogging assignment

2006-08-10T11:51:00.000-07:00

By now, I realize that I need to come up with other assignment idea. Second Life will not work.

In one of the e-mail lists that I subscribe to, I read an e-mail from Thom. He posted the URL for his syllabus for T101. I looked at the syllabus and there are a lot of cartoons that describe the assignments and there are some interesting projects. In this class, he requires his students to keep a blog for a part of their grade.

AHA!

This could be one of the assignments for the class. They could open up a blog account free and blog their readings for the class. This gives me the advantage of getting to think about their daily readings. I will ask them to blog what the readings remind them of in their daily lives, their thoughts and the issues they had while reading it. I too will keep a blog (this one). Everyone will read each other's blog (including mine) and comment on them. I can read everyone's blog before I come to class and identify major problems regarding their readings.

I like this idea... Doable, entertaining, educational. I should e-mail Thom and thank him for the idea some time.

Second Life and the challenges it presents

2006-08-09T17:12:00.000-07:00

My biggest challenge is yet to come. I thought about some interesting assignments that could make the theory reading more tangible for them.

My first idea: Have the students play Second Life for the entire semester and keep a daily journal on their experiences. What kind of an avatar they choose to create, why, what kind of games they engage in. This would be an extraordinary project for them to do. Quite exciting to say the least.

Technical difficulties:

Second Life is a very sophisticated program that require a high-end computer with a good video card.
It has a long learning curve.
The students may (or will) not have computers.
University Technology Department will refuse to install it on the STCs.

I figured, for those students who don't have computers, I can assign them another assignment asking them to follow a story from the four online Second Life journals. I will ofcourse give them specific questions.

Sounds great, but it is not going to happen. I will probably assign online readings on Second Life, but I will have to end it there. Such a shame...

I e-mailed one of my professors to see how he handles this problem. After all he teaches this. As I expected I received no reply, as usual. I guess I will have to give up on this idea.

Challange of teaching this course

2006-08-09T10:13:00.000-07:00

When I am assigned a course, the first thing I try to assess is the challenges that might come up along the way. I was ecstatic in being able to teach such a course, but later, this enthusiasm was dampened with the realization that my goals in this class will suffer from technical limitations.

The first problem I ran into is to find a classroom that was technologically equipped for the stuff I wanted to do in this class. After all, it is kind of hard to teach about new media in a regular classroom. When I was teaching Public Speaking we were using these high-end tech rooms. No matter how hard I tried to reserve a room in Sycamore, I failed miserably. So our secretary ended up reserving a dorm classroom. I will schedule a VCR and projector for my classroom and will bring in my laptop. I am hoping there is wireless in the room.

My picture

2006-08-08T19:05:00.000-07:00

Great news!

2006-08-08T19:00:00.000-07:00

I just found out that Comparative Literature is offering me to teach a class on my dissertation topic. This is an invaluable opportunity and i hope to make it a very interesting and fun for the students (and also challenging...)

my Web page

2006-06-25T09:56:00.000-07:00

Ok so far, i've been using my other blog, but I am posting my Web site here. My dissertation progress can be viewed at my typepad blog.