Featured videos: language, literacy, writing

Reading Together

Perusall logoWe’ll use Perusall to annotate and read together. Link here to Perusall. Instructions for joining on the Assignments page.

Calendar: link here

Author: JD

Multimodal Project – JD

Multimodal Project – JD

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So I really loved this whole project! It was a lot of work, mostly added on by my own decisions, but it also felt like it was something that I was challenged by and added to the challenge by my own accord. It took a lot longer than I intended it to and became a much larger thing, but it never came across as something I loathed and more so something I was excited about showing or adding more to. I always felt like I was in control of the project and what it meant for me, and that is the most powerful aspect of this whole thing.

AS for the cabinet itself, I wanted to create something that was almost a physical representation of all the things we had talked about throughout the semester (about growing from certain starts, the idea of failure to a student, how students grow, and how that process allows access). In my cabinet there are three shelves and the top. The bottom shelf (graced by the presence of duct tape from the board breaking in half during cutting) holds old political science books because I had initially begun college wanting to become a political science major. I had learned it was a very difficult class to be in, grade wise and for my own sanity, so I dropped from poly-sci. It was something I did not do well in, and sometimes failed in, but I ultimately learned from the experience and became an English major which leads us to the second shelf. The second shelf includes all the literacies that have inspired me or made me learn more about the subject from becoming an apprentice of English studies to somewhat a master. This study and understanding leads me to the top shelf which is literature that I read and write today. This shelf was allowed access do to the lower two. If it wasn’t for this buildup of literacies I would not be the major I am today and the pieces on top of the cabinet (the mug, Chico alumni flag, etc.) would not be a part of my life. Each of these pieces represents piece of my life that influence me to this day.

 

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Questions for Baron by JD Richgels

Questions for Baron by JD Richgels

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I). What are ‘technologies’ that Baron is referring to?

1). What does Baron mean by technologies and what do they offer in the forms of literacy, or how can they be used to either empower literacy, or stunt it?

2). What are these “stages of technology”, and how do they allow access to students, or in what way do these stages from previous technologies allow accessibility?

 

II). What can the ‘power of font’ offer us as writers?

3). Baron describes different variations of powers that ‘font’ contains, how do they differ and where do they draw their power from?

4). We are told that computer displays hold specific ‘powers’ than typewriters did. What were these ‘powers’ and what did they do to a writer’s presentation of their ideas? How do these technologies affect our views of literacy today?

 

5). Baron describes certain challenges and dangers with a shift to digital literacy, what are these challenges and how does technology create them?

6). How can technological literacies interfere with authoritative authors? How do they make ‘fake authority speakers’ harder to filter out?
“In The Beginning….When The Blog Attacked/The Sequel: Blog Harder” JD Richgels

“In The Beginning….When The Blog Attacked/The Sequel: Blog Harder” JD Richgels

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“My god…Just when I thought it was over…the blog pulled me back in”

WHY HELLO EVERYONE (AGAIN)!!!

My name is Jonathan Richgels, but I go by JD for reasons. Anyways, I come from a ‘small town’ called Roseville. I’m a massive lover of video games, comics, movies, books, and more. Currently I wait for the release of “Metal Gear Solid V” by watching VODs and streams of PAX, or Penny Arcade Expo, until MGSV’s release September 1st. I also look forward to other games that are coming in the fall. I, of course, also like books and reading in general if not entirely, but mostly, because of the book “As I Lay Dying”. William Faulkner and his stories are ultimately what lead me to become an English major, and so far it’s pretty great.

Now you may be wondering why I was talking about video games earlier and that is mostly because video games have been a part of my life for an extremely long time. Video games are also the things that I enjoy writing about the most. I do this because I have a deep love and admiration to video games and what they can bring. Not only do video games provide the best form of story-telling potential, but they also provide some remarkable potential when it comes to Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality.

Video games also have created a massive community and within that community multiple micro-communities surrounded by similar interests from specific games. People who are brought together to learn and build around a central pull, for example “World of Warcraft” which has five million players.

This leads to one of the points from our reading. One specific area discussed the idea of a co-participant learning system,

“Learning is a process that takes place in a participation framework,
not in an individual mind. This means, among other things, that it is
mediated by the differences of perspective among the co-participants.
It is the community, or at least those participating in the learning context,
who ‘learn’ under this definition. Learning is, as it were, distributed among
co-participants, not a one person act.”
(15 Hanks)

In other words the process of co-participant learning creates communities. People who are brought together by a central ‘topic’ that they build around. Ultimately people learn far more efficiently under a community system. It’s far more effective, and common or at least should be, because of people’s desire to be a part of a base. Humans naturally desire a community who share, and are united, by a passion for a specific thing. It’s similar to how millions are united under a common love for “Harry Potter”. These individuals are now, essentially, apart of the ‘Rowling Club’.

This is why video games are becoming such a powerful force with young people. Currently right now a video game called “Minecraft”, which once started out as an individual developer project, has sold seventy million copies. “Minecraft” has unintentionally united, essentially, an entire generation of gamers under one common interest. They are now united in a co-participant relationship of learning and understanding the game and actually influencing them to try other communities, like for example the modification community, or a higher interest in computers and coding in general. There is great power in uniting individuals, who otherwise would never meet each other, under common desires.

-JD Richgels