https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jZnd 0TKpxury80huhU2mcPmOcEDme3bOTWvQ04GWxI/edit?usp=sharing
Introduction:
For this
assignment I have chosen to profile my 14 year old nephew who has
chosen the moniker, Dr.Spine. He is making the transition from middle
school in Mannington WV to high school in Chattanooga TN.
Dr. Spine is a
member of a middle class family with divorced parents. His mother is
remarried and lives outside of Chattanooga while his father remains
unmarried in Mannington. Dr.Spine and his sister currently split
living time between birth parents. Beginning this fall, Dr. Spine
will spend more time in Tennessee to attend school as his parents
believe the Tennessee education system is considerably better than
it's West Virginia counterpart.
Dr. Spine is a
top tier or A+ student of high intelligence with a natural affinity
for math and science. At the Mannington Middle School he did not have
to work hard to receive high marks for his work, in fact I have
observed that he his closest friends, or gaming cohort, have a habit
of taking sick days at a rate that would have been alarming when I
was in school (actually impossible without being expelled), but for
these students this seems to be de-rigueur and to have no
apparent impact on their grades.
Dr. Spine
enjoys reading and writing and takes pride in his spelling, science
and math acumen. He does conduct research for school and takes
academics seriously in spite of the apparent ease with which he has
moved through his Mannington education career. He wants to attend
college and is working towards the skill sets he believe will serve
him there.
Over the course
of the last year Dr. Spine and I worked together building a computer
from scratch. This shared experience has served to expand our
relationship, creating a bond based on collaboration that eschews the
normal adult/child paradigm. As the experienced adult and digital
immigrant dealing with a digital native, (Prensky, 17) it was
incumbent on me to gauge and steer the discussion and important to do
so in a way that invited him into a safe collaborating environment
(Dowdall, 51). My desire was to create a space where he could
practice the act of collaborative engagement with thoughtful, mature
and relevant ideas without pressuring him to “act like an adult.”
For me it was essential to harness his youthful exuberance as fuel
for my engagement.
The project was
inspired by his desire to have a computer with a CPU and video card
powerful enough to explore and audition games as well as to play his
favorite, Call of Duty.
We began by
discussing the project in terms of realistic goals. Unsurprisingly,
he wanted the computer to be user ready the day after we decided to
build it, so we needed to create realistic timelines. Together we
researched ways of building a gamer-friendly computer and broke the
project into clear, achievable tasks.
I felt it was
important to re-cast impediments to success—what he called
‘failures’—as challenges, necessary elements for achieving
goals. Cannibalizing parts from other computers and purchasing the
few parts we could not find otherwise, we completed the task in 6
weeks. Our biggest challenge was learning about and installing the
right motherboard, which is the home of the CPU and acts as the
negotiator between the operating system and peripherals like video
and sound cards.
We keep in
touch via e-mail and Face-time. My profile will include observations
and discussions we’ve shared while collaborating and our on-going
on-line communications.
Hanging Out:
His game of
choice is Call of Duty,
a first-person shooter, windows-based war game that is now available
for play across at least 18 different platforms and on-line with
multiple players (although it doesn’t fit the strict definition of
an MMORPG).
I think it fair
to say that more than half of D-spine's social interaction with
friends involves gaming, specifically multi-player games. The main
cohort, his tech-posse, is made up of other males of his own age most
of whom attend the same school.
They all have
Steam accounts and regularly audition new games.
D-spine uses a
gamer's headset along with gamer's mouse and meets his buddies
regularly online. I have eavesdropped, with permission, on a few of
these gaming sessions, which can sometimes last all night.
Although the
game is the main focus early on, after a time the conversation tends
to evolve and sounds more like several young men on the telephone
discussing other friends, school and family topics etc. My initial
impression of social interaction brought to mind a 'chat-room'
analogy, but that is too modern or contemporary a comparison.
A more apt
comparison would be an early 20th century 'party-line'
conversation such as those you might see enacted on television shows
like Andy Griffith or The Real McCoys where several
households share the same telephone line and can listen in on each
other's conversations; It's a gossip fest of sorts and the
participants enter and exit the space at various points throughout
the session based on things like dinner, chores and parental
requests.
The amazing
thing is that these young people (specifically his peer group) have
such facility with gaming that they can maneuver with great speed in
the gaming space; destroying zombies, flying lizards, nazis or any
number of other antagonists, and still discuss other friends and
acquaintances or pending classwork while on-line together from
different physical locations.
Messing
Around:
When D-spine explores other digital tech genres it is usually in
service of gaming. For example, he auditions screen capture software
programs to see what will best capture his gaming activity, which he
shares with his friends. He has discussed putting these on-line in
the same vein as pew-die-pie (although without the adult content) or
to create a wiki, but he has yet to do so.
Geeking Out:
Besides the
computer he has an I-phone and an X-box 360. There are also the
skeletal remains of other digital-technology delivery systems around
the house that are either dead or no longer useful or relevant. I
have introduced him to a few of the Adobe Suite products like
Premiere-Pro, After-Effects and Photo-Shop but the learning curve for
these products tends to be too steep for his energy-level.
Schooling:
When we discuss
the use of technology in the classroom he tells me that it is
virtually non-existent; I suspect this is relative (Kerin, 140).
There are a few tech-savvy teachers trying to weave what they can
into their individual curricula, but without a great deal of success.
Teachers do
assign on-line work, but these are mainly meant for home completion.
The school provides a bank of computers in the library; these are
used primarily for research, writing and printing out completed
assignments and for students without home tech resources (Carrington,
70). Most of the students carry personal technology in the form of
I-phones and I-pads or their competitive equivalents along with
laptop computers.
Teaching
Working and
talking with Dr. Spine gave me the imaginative prompt to design a
classroom space specifically intended to be pedagogically digitally
immersive (Levy, 160).
I am using the
final project for another class to prototype the architecture for my
ideal iteration of this classroom for project-based learning, and I
will provide a brief description here.
The physical
space will be centered around a primary CPU with a large (60”+)
extended monitor or desktop. The intention is to cast the large
monitor as the theatrical focus of the classroom.
Students will
rotate in and out on a class by class basis playing the role of
“chief-engineer” for each session. This role will be filled by
each student designated on a rotating basis.
The
chief-engineer will be tasked with carrying out on-line research
based on class participation in order to acclimate students to
computer and internet use as research tools based on questions
resultant from class discussions. The design requires desks or
workstations to be placed in a semi-circle—similar to standing
stones--around the primary computer with the large monitor the
central point of focus.
References
Dowdall,
C. (2009). Masters and critics: Children as producers of online
digital texts. In V. Carrington & M. Robinson (Eds.), Digital
literacies: Social learning and classroom practices (pp.
43-60). Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.
Carrington,
V. (2009). From wikipedia to the humble classroom wiki: Why we should
pay attention to wikis. In V. Carrington & M. Robinson
(Eds.), Digital
literacies: Social learning and classroom practices (pp.
65-80). Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.
Kerin,
R. (2009). Teacher education and multiliteracies pedagogy. In V.
Carrington & M. Robinson (Eds.), Digital
literacies: Social learning and classroom practices (pp.
131-145). Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.
Kennedy,
G. E., & Judd, T. S. (2011). Beyond google and the "satisficing"
searching of digital natives. In M. Thomas (Ed.), Deconstructing
digital natives: Young people, technology, and the new
literacies (pp.
119-136). New York: Routledge.
Levy,
R. (2011). Young children, digital technology, and interaction with
text. In M. Thomas (Ed.), Deconstructing
digital natives: Young people, technology, and the new
literacies (pp.
151-166). New York: Routledge.
Prensky,
M. (2011). Digital wisdom and homo sapiens digital. In M. Thomas
(Ed.), Deconstructing
digital natives: Young people, technology, and the new
literacies (pp.
15-29). New York: Routledge.
Jones,
C. (2011). Students, the net generation, and digital natives. In M.
Thomas (Ed.), Deconstructing
digital natives: Young people, technology, and the new
literacies (pp.
30-45). New York: Routledge.
Mexico,
C. P. (2010). Juegos final call of duty [Digital image]. Retrieved
July 23, 2016, from http://creativecommons.org/license/by/2.0/
