Hi All,

My sincere apologies to whomever is presenting this week!  I signed on this morning to start engaging in the conversation, and when I looked at the syllabus I realized I was supposed to post on this week’s readings, too!  So sorry I am late with this, but here are my thoughts on Purdy’s Wikipedia is Good For You!?

As you all know by now, I work in a somewhat unique school district.  All of my classrooms follow an inclusion model, where students who need 1:1 aides are working cooperatively with those who are battling to be the class valedictorian.  On any given day, there are 1-2 additional adults in my room co-teaching with me.  In addition, my 9th and 10th graders are preparing to enter a rigorous International Baccalaureate Program once they enter their junior year, so the curriculum in the lower grades is also challenging.  Differentiated instruction has become second-nature, and now I am becoming fluent in the language, theory and practice of the Common Core.  Anything that can make learning a little easier for my students, especially those who struggle, is a plus in my book.  But, Wikipedia?  Really?  Isn’t that the source that we all tell our students to avoid?  The one that is unreliable because anybody can decide to change the information that is presented?  The one that makes educators (myself included) grimace when we see it listed on bibliographies?

Purdy would say, “Yes” to all of this.  In fact, he acknowledges all of the apprehensions I listed above in one felt swoop when he states, “As a result of such changeability, Wikipedia articles are unreliable; the article you cite today may not exist in that form tomorrow.  This variability challenges prevailing understanding of how published texts work so cause some anxiety.  Because print texts are (relatively) stable, we expect texts we read (and cite) to be the same when we go back to them later.  Even Wikipedia contributors express worry about the implications of article changeability for citation…” (208).  So, how can Purdy acknowledge all the flaws we see in a resource like Wikipedia and still advocate for it as a useful research tool?  By showing us how it can be a supplement to, rather than a replacement for, accurate and thorough research.

Purdy goes on to explain the many ways that Wikipedia can be used to assist students with research by giving them a place to start.  For most students, research articles that come from scholarly (read: dense) journals are intimidating and lengthy.  Purdy writes, “Rather than a source to cite, it can be a source of (1) ideas, (2) links to other texts, and (3) search terms” (209).   Wikipedia articles are broken down into easy-to-read segments that give students a basis of understanding for the topic at hand, and provide additional resources for students to explore in relation to that topic.  Instead of looking at the article as the authority, students should be encouraged to utilize the article as a pathway to other, perhaps more reliable, resources.

In addition, students should also be encouraged to use Wikipedia as a way to place themselves in the scholarly discussion.  Purdy explains that by reading the discussion page on a wikipedia article, you can “…identify the debates, questions, and absences you find.  In other words, list what contributors (1) argue about (ie: what ideas are contentious), (2) have questions about, and (3) think is missing from and what should be included in coverage of that topic” (215).  For students who are unsure about how to formulate an argument about a given topic, looking at what others have to say about it can help, and Wikipedia’s discussion pages can be a way for students to identify the thoughts of others and decide where they fall in the discussion.  Ultimately, we want students to engage in the academic conversation instead of just repeating information they have read (215).  Showing them how to utilize the components of a site like Wikipedia in order to assist their work may help them understand the difference.

Earlier this year, my administrator held a department meeting during which he shock us all and actually advocated for the use of Sparknotes in our resource rooms and ELA support classes.  My colleagues and I all looked at each other like we were all waiting for the punchline to some bad academic joke.  We asked the same questions of him that I posed earlier in this post:  You want us to tell the kids that Sparknotes are ok?  Sparknotes?  The site that has become an English teacher’s enemy?  The site that  students think they can use as a replacement to the required reading for class?  No way.  He isn’t serious.  But, he was, and he showed us exactly what Purdy is showing us in this article:  ways that Sparknotes can be used as a suppplement, instead of a replacement.  Having students characterize characters in a work, then checking Sparknotes to see what they may have missed, or what insight they have that Sparknotes missed.  Looking at a Sparknotes “summary” of a chapter versus the “analysis” of a chapter to help students understand the difference.  Ultimately, whether it is Wikipedia, Sparknotes,  or any other source that makes us turn up our noses, the lesson here is that there are ways in which we as educators can make these previously taboo sources work for our students, instead of constantly fighting against them.

The 21st century is a technologically driven springboard of new entities. Every day countless new “digital” babies are born into this world, whether it be in the form of an awe-inspiring videogame, smartphone application, social website, and/or media forum. Human parents often embrace and adopt these digital offsprings into their lives rather casually because we correlate their existence with entertainment, comfort, and convenience. However, the significance of these digital entities goes far beyond the contentment and relief that is garnered from accessibility. Although we are constantly engulfed in a digital world, we may not instantaneously connect it to our education and the education of our students, even though it may be inevitable.

Today’s educational content is no longer confined to the margins of a piece of paper or the borders of a blackboard. In the CCCC Position Statement on Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Writing in Digital Environments it states, “The focus of writing is expanding: the curriculum of composition is widening to include not one but two literacies: a literacy of print and a literacy of the screen. In addition, work in one is used to enhance learning  in the other” (1).  In order to use digital media effectively, the students must be engaged in critical evaluations of information and also be prepared to be reflective practitioners (CCCC 1). James Gee and James P. Purdy, discuss the importance of using digital media to enhance student learning in their respective literary works: “Ch. 2: Semiotic Domains” from What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy and “Wikipedia is Good For You!?” from Writing Spaces.

In “What Video Games Have to Teach Us…,” James Gee offers an alternative perspective on learning and knowing by analyzing the educational validity of children engaging in video games. He believes that many people consider playing video games to be a “waste of time” (Gee 22) because society has constricted ideologies of what is deemed educationally significant. “Important knowledge (now usually gained in school) is content in the sense of information related to intellectual domains or academic disciplines like physics, history, art, or literature. Activities that are entertaining, but that themselves do not involve such learning are just ‘meaningless play’” (Gee 22). To counteract this argument, Gee goes on to explain the true definition of literacy. Literacy goes far beyond being able to decipher the mere meaning of words and images. In order for someone to be truly literate, they must understand the dynamics that are created by multimodal texts, texts that mix words and images. These multimodal texts may also include other components of one’s environment, such as sounds, music movements, and bodily sensations (Gee 17). With Gee’s literacy definition, he recognizes that “language is not the only important communication” (17). Understanding the way language works in semiotic domains, where words, images, and movement are brought to life in ways that are dependent on a group’s particular value system is deemed true literacy (Gee 19).

Upon first glance, it may appear to be a far distinction between video games and understanding the dynamics that exist in the many semiotic domains that encompass reality. However, Gee’s analysis of these semiotic domains is what we as educators categorize as authentic critical thinking. As our students play videogames, they are ultimately learning about “design spaces that manipulate us in certain ways and that we can manipulate in certain ways” (Gee 36). In many of these video games, just as in life, the individual has to learn the social constructs of a world that he or she did not create as well as the rules and regulations that sustain that world. You must analyze, synthesize, and interpret information within the fictional semiotic domain, in order to either get to the next level or  prevent facing your own mortality. Of course, with a video game, you may receive an opportunity to start over and your mistakes may not be finalized; however, Gee goes beyond the simplicity of the game and is able to relate it to the critical analysis skills that one will need to survive in life. As educators, we are supposed to encourage our students to analyze the semiotic domains of various systems, including government, financial structures, group cultures and organizations. The fictional realm of the videogame may give students the opportunity to practice using these skills in various forums, where the stakes are not as high or detrimental.

Due to the saturation of digital media, it is no longer a simple choice whether or not an educator should embrace digital media. If we do not teach students how to filter between the positive and negative aspects of digital media, it will be detrimental to their development. The true question should be how do we as educators teach students the advantages of utilizing digital media to enhance their knowledge, as opposed to stand by and watch them be swallowed up in the pitfalls of nonsensical information. In James P. Purdy’s “Wikipedia is Good for You!?,” he states that students are “going to use Wikipedia as a source for writing assignments regardless of cautions against it, so it is more helpful to address ways to use it effectively than to ignore it” (205). Just as James Gee understands the reality of video games in the lives of students and the dangers in simply dismissing digital media, so does Purdy. The exclamation point and the question mark in the title of his essay (“Wikipedia is Good for You!?) eludes to the positive aspects as well as the questionability of digital media, such as Wikipedia.

Yes, Wikipedia may lack reliability because anyone can contribute to the site, regardless of their background or qualifications and the variabilities in the work offer many inconsistencies (Purdy 207-8). However, Purdy argues that students can be taught how to use the website as a source for ideas and links to texts that may be useful to one’s own research, as opposed to being cited directly (209). Purdy encourages educators to treat the digital media as a tool, as opposed to a setback. Analyzing the distinct qualities of the digital world will help students understand how to make the necessary distinctions in the validity of sources. If we do not help our students to develop this skill, they will remain lost and  unable to successfully navigate a technologically-driven  world. The digital entities never remain in the infantile stages of development, therefore, neither should our students.

*James Gee and James Purdy offer many valid ideas on the power of changing one’s perception about the platform that is used to present knowledge.

Further questions that can be explored are:

1. Should the use of digital entities, such as video games and Wikipedia, be considered educational tools as opposed to educational setbacks, due to the major influence that they have on our students’ worlds? Explain.

2. How would you utilize digital media within your own classroom, so that the educational validity is clearly evident to your colleagues and supervisors? Explain.

Our assigned reading this week, an excerpt from James Paul Gee’s book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, really “spoke” to me.  It brought me back to a part of my educational history I left out of my literacy narrative: my history with video games.  Perhaps I didn’t translate video games as easily to literature as comic books.  Maybe I, too, have my own prejudices, as an adult, about the relevance of video games.  However, Gee’s Chapter 2: “Semiotic Domains: Is Playing Video Games a ‘Waste of Time’?” brought me back–and it brings me forward.

Gee’s chapter opens up with a very good point: “Images, symbols, graphs, diagrams, artifacts, and many other visual symbols are significant, more so today than ever. Furthermore, words and images are very often juxtaposed and integrated”(17).  Gee calls these texts multimodal, that is, they mix words and images.  To this, I pose the question: are people who are better at multimodal literacy “better off” in our increasingly internet and sign/symbol-driven twenty-first century culture?  Are video game nerds and comic book nerds, dare I say, better suited for social interaction than, say, graduate students of English who spend hours in the Rosenthal library scrutinizing Chaucer, Henry James, Barthes and Saussure?

The thesis of Gee’s chapter is “semiotic domains,” which he describes as “an area or set of activities where people think, act, and value in certain ways”(19).  The author gives the reader several examples of these domains: law, rap songs, academic essays, and, yes, even the beloved superhero comics of my youth.  Gee validates these different communities for their different practices.  They require different modalities (language, signs, symbols, etc.) for communication.  Indeed, all of these “semiotic domains” or to use academic parlance-disciplines-has different rules and requirements for membership.  The question I have here is: how do these “semiotic domains” affect your understanding of the word, “literacy,” which we have been using all semester?

Gee makes an another excellent point on pages 22 and 23, where he compares basketball with other domains like math and science.  This analogy illustrates what Gee calls “the problem of content”(22); it’s not that children (or adults, ahem) are not learning when they play video games, but what are these people learning?  Gee lightly touches on the issue that too much focus is placed on content.  If this focus on content were applied to basketball, then a textbook on basketball would be very isolated when read by students who have never seen or played a game themselves.  Gee postulates that we do this with math and physics.  He then describes an extended example involving learning about the theory of Newtonian physics without a practical understanding of said semiotic domain.  I wonder–in our class’ concern about reading and writing, is too much value placed on theory?  What about the practices of reading and writing?  Are we, as teachers, placing too little emphasis on writing in our classes (what of our personal lives)?  What would Sandra Perl, Stanley Fish, and Peter Elbow say about these questions?

Are video games a waste of time?  Gee would have us believe not.  This is just another area of “semiotic domain,” one which requires active and critical learning to be successful–just like the disciplines of English or English education.  I grew up loving RPGs–role playing video games: Final Fantasy games, mainly.  I also liked side-scrolling video games where the player takes on a hero role: Castlevania, Mega Man, and the all-too-familiar Super Mario Bros games.  As I got older, I traded my video game consoles for longer, deeper novels and literary theory textbooks.  Perhaps something is to be said for looking “outside the box” involving multimodal literacies.  Hmm.  After all, how many of you have never seen the following words (and you know you’re fibbing if you have to suppress a chuckle): “I’M SORRY BUT OUR PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE!”?