Games and Playing

Still in Miami and at the National Reading Conference.

There were so many sessions I wanted to go to, but that were all on at the same time ... wish I could have gone to them all.
But I really loved the session on online gaming today; so interesting thinking about the different types of narrative; about motivations involved in game choices; about the dimensions of ethnicity, social class, income and gender as factors impacting on those choices.

This was the session as described in the programme:

Social Constructions in New Literacy Environments
Chair(s) & Discussant(s): Charles K. Kinzer, Teachers College, Columbia University
With the rise of the concept of “new literacies,” literacy is increasingly acknowledged as including participation in broadly defined communities of practice. Concurrently, literacy has become influenced by new technologies, which incorporate their own social practices. The symposium examines the social literacies surrounding one of these electronic environments: video games.
1. Digital Literacies and Massively Multiplayer Online Games Constance A. Steinkuehler, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2. Agency and Authority: Social Practices in Interactive Storytelling Jessica Hammer, Teachers College, Columbia University
3. Playing the Digital Divide: Video-game-related literacy practices and SES Gillian Andrews, Teachers College, Columbia University Struggling Readers


I was thinking about the way pc games and console games take up so much time. Does this affect who plays them? I don't think I could spend the five hour stretches required to 'get into' a game because I don't have that much time. I could only do little snippets of time on games - so have in the past just done Tetris type stuff...
I wonder if the time factor impacts on gender in some families - e.g. that some girls would be required to do chores while brothers played on games; or that low income families require kids to do other stuff, helping in the home. Dunno. But these things could be areas to investigate. So many of these literacy practices are really complex, involve a lot of learning and skill.. but some kids don't have access to them because of sociocultural reasons.
But also some kids don't play them cos they don't want to. Does that matter? Will they be out skilled by their gaming peers?
Yesterday Guy said we needed to know a bit about why some people don't blog, will never blog, hate blogs. Does it matter.
I think these are all important questions.
There are enough divisions already in society; willl the digital divides (plural) matter more in the future? Or will they matter less?
I am aware though that I need to get into looking at these games; they are so important to certain sectors of our culture. Don't think I want to go on much longer not knowing what it is like to learn about playing these games.

Luckily Anya and I managed to get to do some shopping. We bought some really important stuff:



We take popular culture pretty seriously.

Very weird to see Christmas trees in the sunshine, and parrots close by: