I'm starting to see that one of the good things about this public feedback process through comments is that it will give authors a chance to clarify and elaborate on abstracts while technically staying within the length guidelines. :-)

A few questions for you, Matt: You say, "Recent ICT-related research indicates that while issues of access may be improving, other information gaps have since emerged: such as, inequities in gender, race, and skills and usage." Can you cite some particular articles and/or books in which you're situating your own research? It would help me out to know specifically to whom you're responding.

Also, you allude to "particular types of interactive texts." Can you give an example? I'm not sure what you mean. I'm also curious about what the three ventures are.

Finally, thanks a lot for submitting a proposal! I hope you didn't have any trouble with the Drupal interface.

CultureCat

Good work, Matt. This topic sounds very interesting. I agree with Clancy that you should try to work in some references to people who have written on this subject--What Video Games to Teach Literacy springs to mind as a "must-cite," and Janet Murray's _Hamlet on the Holodeck_ might be appropriate here. At the very least, you should acknowledge other people who have addressed this topic and how your work fits into theirs.

I'd also recommend giving examples of particular games that you want to discuss. Are we talking Doom 3 or Sims? Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin have some great stuff on videogames in their Remediation book.

Culture Cat:

Thanks for the great questions and the chance to clarify.

(1) My study is in the same vein as other divide scholarship that's critical of the “hardware orientation” approach -- the belief that a computer and connectivity (that is, “access”) alone is sufficient to suture social-ICT divides. Furthermore, the discourse of the haves and have-nots is a reductive dichotomy that ignores specific social contexts when it adopts this simplifying metaphor.

I site the following pieces in my literature review on the divide(s):
---------------------------------------------
-- Digital Divide - a tripartite conceptualization --
Norris, P. (2004). “The Digital Divide.” In F. Webster (Ed.), The Information Society Reader (pp. 273-286). New York: Routledge.

-- Gender divides --
Clark, C. & Gorski, Paul. (2002). “Multicultural Education and the Digital Divide: Focus on Gender.” Multicultural Perspectives, 4(1), 30-40.

Liff, Sonia & Shepherd, Adrian. (2004). “An evolving gender divide?” Oxford Internet Institute, Internet Issue Brief No. 2, July 2004. Oxford: The University of Oxford.

-- Consumer / Citizen divide --
Gandy, O. H. (2002). “The Real Digital Divide: Citizens versus Consumers.” In Leah A. Lievrouw and Sonia Livingstone’s (Eds.), Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Consequences of ICTs (pp. 448-460). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

-- Educational divides --
Anyanwu, C. (2003). “Virtual Classroom Education Premise.” Television & New Media, 4(4), 389-409.

Hayes, E. (in press). “Reconceptualizing Adult Basic Education and the Digital Divide.” In A. Belzer & H. Beder’s (Eds.), Defining and improving quality in adult basic education: Issues and challenges (pp. 27). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.

-- Usage Gap --
van Dijk, J. and Hacker, K. (2003). “The Digital Divide as a Complex and Dynamic Phenomenon.” The Information Society, 19, 315-326.

-- Literacy Divides --
Warschauer, M. (2003). Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
----------------------------------------------

In my view, the van Dijk & Hacker, and Warschauer texts provide especially good reviews of this divide debate and its discontents.

(2) Yes, my phrase “particular type of interactive text” is extremely vague -- a side effect of my attempt to squeeze my abstract into the 150 word limit :-) -- it’s simply a synonym for critical video games that have been proposed/authored/designed with an eye to the educational potential of the simulational form. I elaborate on the educational potential of simulations in the 2nd section of my paper.

(3) The three design ventures that I site are:
-- MIT’s Games-to-Teach, now ‘The Education Arcade’
-- Mary Flanagan’s RAPUNSEL project
-- University of Wisconsin at Madison’s ‘Room 130’ advocacy and educational efforts

Thanks for the feedback!
I look forward to hearing from you.
[matt]

MattBarton.exe:

Great suggestions! Yes, Gee’s text plays a central role in my paper, and I am familiar with Janet Murray’s work, though it doesn’t have a place in my paper at the moment -- I’ll take another look at it.

And thanks for the Bolter/Grusin rec.!

[matt]

An interesting idea, but ah, how can you pack all the good stuff in only 150 words? One way is to start with the good stuff and ditch the windup. I think your proposal really begins with the sentence, "The last gap, skills and usage, is otherwise known as new media literacy, and represents a problem that technological access alone will not solve." It could be shuffled and flipped to better fit its new, first sentence status.

That aside, at least this process allows for additions and explications later on down the queue. Your works cited clip helps, but even more helpful is the list of three design ventures: "MIT’s Games-to-Teach, now ‘The Education Arcade,’ Mary Flanagan’s RAPUNSEL project, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s ‘Room 130’ advocacy and educational efforts." Now I have a better idea of what knid of thing you mean, but since I'm not as familiar as you are with them, I also wonder what kinds of students are being focused on--K-3? 4-6? 6-8? 8-12? All? College? Then, what literacies are effectively addressed? Techy stuff? Text? Reading? Maybe mentioning one or more of these projects in the abstract as a link would be a good idea. After all, why not use the tools this venue gives?

Best wishes and good luck to you.

Matt--been trying to email you. The messages keep bouncing. Can you verify your email address? I received your email, but can't seem to reply to it...! I'll send you a private message via Knews.

I think that you are off to a good start and I agree with the feedback that you've gotten thus far. Contextualizing you abstract with a pithy quote from someone already doing work in the area will help us to understand where you are working from.

I'd love to know more about the game genres that you are considering. Think about how the specific genres that you choose might break down or contribute to the divide. How are representations of women, minorities, GLBTQ folks, etc. adding to this schism?

Another question that might need to be asked is if all of the new gen gaming consoles, the game cartridges, adequate computer hardware, software, etc. is so expensive that it might bring back issues of material access. Not because they are necessarily too expensive, but that the perceived cost sky rockets when one considers all of the other things that one could purchase for the price of a console and a couple of games.
Dr. B.'s Blog
Blog

Lanette Cadle and Dennis Jerz will respond to this presentation.

Matt,
How are ya? I'm thrilled to see more folks doing work with games, of course, so I figured I'd chime in here. My research is on videogame design as writing and teaching so it's fun for me to get to talk with you about your work in this space.

I agree with a lot of what others are saying, namely that you'll need to better define what kinds of games you're talking about and be a little more concrete with what you mean by "critical gaming design."

As a student of Jim Gee and Kurt Squire, I'll first say a little about what I think that they'd tell you. I think they'd say that it's great you're talking more about race/class/gender/sexuality (I'm guessing that's what you mean by "critical"? I don't know) because there are so few people doing good work on that. As I just read through hundreds of proposals for the conference we're hosting here this summer (shameless plug-- www.glsconference.org) and as I read through the abstracts for this year's second-annual DiGRA conference (www.gamesconference.org) I can tell you that the work is scant and desperately needed, I agree.

My reaction to your post is to say that I'm not sure exactly what you're doing in this paper. Are you saying that games have the ability to bridge gaps? What gaps? How? I'd tend to agree with you in some ways, but it really depends on what game genres you're talking about. As you know, most games are designed to be played socially, but one's social experience with games varies widely, of course. Spend a few minutes on the World of Warcraft boards (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/) these days and you'll see what I mean!

Also, I think that a lot of the best writing on critical gaming is online, not in books. Not that you need more recommendations on what to read, but if you haven't yet spent time with some of the following sites, I'd encourage it:

http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/
http://terranova.blogs.com
http://socialimpactgames.com
http://ludology.org
http://www.game-research.com
http://www.watercoolergames.com
http://www.zang.org

etc.

Looking foward to reading more about how this is going.
-Alice

Alice J. Robison
PhD Candidate, Rhetoric & Composition Studies
Founding Member and Researcher, Room 130 and GAPPS
http://labweb.education.wisc.edu/room130
http://www.academiccolab.org/initiatives/gapps.html
University of Wisconsin-Madison

llcadle,

Thanks for the feedback! You’re right, Kairosnews offers several nifty utilities that can exploit the power of the web - you’ll have to forgive my first link-less post, I am a newbie to this site and its tools and interface.

Regarding your other comments/questions, I’m not specifically addressing any particular institutional grouping of students (e.g., K-3? 4-6? 6-8? 8-12?) because I’m not familiar with how those age differences & educational levels might impact specific content choices. Rather, my paper explores the potential for the video game form to promote critical media literacy. I understand “critical media literacy” as a reading skill which foregrounds questions of social power, and unites (1) an understanding of the processes of cultural production (both material artifacts and discourses) with (2) the need for individuals to produce their own media texts (e.g., photos, audio, moving images, hypertext, etc.).

Again, thank you for your recommendations.

Best,
Matt

Hello Dr. B:

Thank you for your notes. I’m stoked to see that others are interested in this topic… I’d like to reply to your question about gaming genres, and then to the issue of digital access.

(1) I’m not entirely sure what gains one can make by dividing game texts into genres. I realize that there’s some work on the topic, but coming from a film and media studies background, genre studies - at least the way that it’s been conceptualized, deployed, and argued in the fields that I’m familiar with - has a long and controversial history. Genre studies has been criticized for its lack of rigor, its disavowal of questions of power, and its blurry conceptualization - for every rule, there’s an exception (e.g., Is Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner [1982] film noir or a sci-fi flick?; Is noir itself a genre or a style? Can giving poly-generic labels to media texts even be of help?). I believe that genre analysis is good for teasing out broad cultural dilemmas (e.g., American Westerns posit the “order versus chaos” binary, thus raising questions about the role of law in society). The problem, again as I see it, comes with the essentialism that is commonly ascribed to genres. In the case of video games, proponents of a genre-centric perspective might say that first-person shooters (FPS) are good for “X,” while sports titles are good at “Y,” while isometric, resource management games facilitate “Z.” The danger here is that essentialist framing can shut down dialogs over what video games could do. We already see the reductive market logic at work in the FPS genre (How many Doom/Quake/Counter-Strike clones are there?). Yet, I maintain that the FPS, RTS (real time strategy), or any other game genre need not be articulated in the way that it’s commonly sold, yet still qualify as being of that genre. For a subversive isometric “shooter,” see September 12th (http://www.newsgaming.com/games/index12.htm).

(2) Material access has been, and continues to be, the preeminent hurdle for any and all digital divides - after all, there’s no discussion if there’s no gear. With respect to the prohibitive costs, your concern is spot on. Unfortunately, I have to remain silent on how one might get game titles into classrooms. My background is in media production and studies, not policy.

I can say that conservative educators here in Texas are aiming to rewrite textbooks to include both Creationism (but not -isms), and the abstinence-only training in Sex Ed programs … so I think it’s safe to guess that the Lone Star State will not be a pioneer in gaming curriculum. In fact, I just don’t see video games gaining a foothold in any curriculum before they can be rescued from their ugly position as a priori “bad” media. This is where my paper comes in …

Again, thanks for your comments.

--Matt

Hey Alice,

Many thanks for the links, questions and comments! I have most of those sites already bookmarked, but now I have a few new ones. If you don’t have it already, you should add http://www.academic-gamers.org to your list.

Yes, the GLS Conference looks like it should rock hard. I can’t make it because I’m still saving my pennies to go to DiGRA this summer. Are you going as well?

Please check my reply to Dr. B’s post re: my position on game genres. I’d love to hear your opinion of genre analysis, or how Gee, Squire, or any other Room 130-er :-) might defend/rescue genre analysis from its critics. Again, I’m not opposed to genre studies per se, but I am uneasy with employing it without accounting for its pitfalls.

I completely agree that social context means everything for video gaming. For example, I am researching competitive LAN gaming with a fellow grad student, and we’ve found that the various physical and gendered spaces significantly impact how gamers play and communicate.

Thanks again for your helpful feedback.
I look forward to hearing from you and reading more of your group’s work.

Cheers!
Matt

I offer the following revised abstract for consideration.

Again, thanks to all for the feedback.
-- Matt

---------------------------------------------------------
(revised) Abstract submitted for Computers and Writing Online 2005:

According to Douglas Kellner, ‘critical media literacy’ (1) analyzes media artifacts and discourses as cultural products of production and struggle, and (2) emphasizes the need for ICT users to create media texts themselves, to promote self-expression and social activism.

This paper adopts Kellner’s definition, and asks if the video game form can aid educators in fighting the emerging ICT literacy divide by fostering critical new media literacies. First, I provide a literature review of the digital divide discourse, and then review how theorists have positioned video games with respect to learning and literacy. Next, I look at The Education Arcade project (http://www.educationarcade.org/), Mary Flanagan’s RAPUNSEL software (http://www.maryflanagan.com/rapunsel/index.htm), and the Room 130 group (http://labweb.education.wisc.edu/room130/), to see how these recent development and advocacy projects have addressed this question.

This paper argues that video games that fuse textual hermeneutics with media production practices can contribute to new media literacies.