Secondary Worlds: Teaching, Technology, and English Language Arts

I Come to Bite Your Neck

By RR | August 15, 2008

This blog has been pretty quiet lately, mostly because it’s summer and I have been trying to unplug as much as possible. But I’ve also been busy creating a new course that I’m teaching this fall: English 330, Studies in Fiction. The course will focus on vampires in literature, which is a fairly strange emphasis I admit.

How did I decide to dedicate a semester to bloodsucking fiends? Well, a number of factors converged: first, I’ve been reading the wildly popular Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, the fourth and final installment of which (Breaking Dawn) was just released this month. I even attended the midnight release party, which tells you a little about how interesting I find these books. I think it’s intriguing to think about how a centuries-old myth can be reinvented time and time again without losing its appeal. Why, after all, should we still be fascinated by blood-drinking monsters? How can they retain their cultural relevance after all of this time?

I also think that vampire literature raises some compelling questions about the nature of fiction–its purposes, the forms it takes, and the way it can change to accommodate cultural and social shifts. Vampire literature begins with ancient oral history and folklore, emerges in the nineteenth century as a legitimate literary genre, and continues today as pure entertainment. That makes it–at least to my thinking–the perfect subject for a course dedicated to fiction. That, and it’s a lot of fun.

Childhood Vampires So, the course will focus on folklore, gothic retellings of the vampire myth (notably Bram Stoker’s Dracula), and more contemporary takes on vampires, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Christopher Moore’s satire Bloodsucking Fiends, the graphic novel 30 Days of Night, and of course, Meyer’s Twilight, among others.

There were nearly endless choices for texts (and television and movies). The pervasiveness and persistence of vampire stories in nearly every culture is amazing. Here’s a couple of examples that should be recognizable from your childhood: The Count from Sesame Street and Count Chocula. I personally find Count Chocula the scarier of the two. You?

Categories: Courses | Tags: English 330, Vampires | No Comments »

Backing Up the Smart Way: Live Mesh

By RR | July 18, 2008

This laptop has crashed enough times over the past few months to make me a bit smarter about backing up my files. There are plenty of ways to do so: sometimes, I use a flash drive; sometimes I’ll back up to disk; sometimes I’ll upload files to this blog; and sometimes I’ll even use our university network. The problem is that all of these processes are time-consuming and none of them are automatic. It gets worse when I work on multiple machines.

Live Mesh by Windows (thanks Life Hacker) is a great solution. First, it allows you to network all of the computers you use over the Web, making it possible to access your home files remotely from work, or vice versa (logmein.com has a similar service for free). But the coolest feature of Live Mesh is the “live desktop” feature, which automatically syncs/backups any folder you choose to the Web. Once you install the program–you need a Windows ID–you can tell Live Mesh to upload a folder to the Live Desktop. There is a 5 GB limit, but that’s enough for me.

Then, whenever you make changes to that folder on your local hard drive, Live Mesh automatically records those changes on the live desktop. In other words, it backs up your work to the Web as you go along, making it darn near impossible to claim that your file disappeared when your computer crashed.

Life Hacker has a helpful tutorial on this new tool. Check it out. And never lose your work again, even if you have a spotty laptop!

Categories: Web 2.0 | Tags: Live Mesh | No Comments »

Google Lively: A User-Friendly but Limited Virtual Environment

By RR | July 12, 2008

OVer the past few years, I’ve been keeping tabs on emerging virtual environments (Multi-User Virtual Environments or MUVES). Second Life has been my main interest, but I am also curious about the new Google Labs project called Lively. When I first heard of this project (October 2007 post here,) I was hopeful that it would correct some of the main problems of Second Life. I wanted Google to:

Make the technology more accessible to average users who don’t have high-end graphics cards.

At the same time, make the virtual world more attractive and immersive with better quality graphics that are closer to gaming industry standards. This sounds like a contradiction with my first request, but I believe Google can do it.

Don’t require users to download updates every week, one of Second Life’s real liabilities.

Be more supportive of educational uses of the platform, perhaps by giving educators free, permanent space.

Make it easier for groups of mixed ages (e.g., high school students and college students) to meet in a safe environment instead of separating into the “teen” (up to 17) and the “adult” (18 and over) grid.

Integrate the Web into the virtual space more completely than Second Life. There is really no reason for me to go into Second Life to check out resources which are more readily accessible on the Web at large. Google might change this by brining in Web content in fluid and uniquely three-dimensional ways.

Make it possible for hundreds of avatars to meet in the same space without crashing the system. Again, this is one of the real limitations of Second Life.

That’s quite a request list, but Google has done pretty well. First, you don’t need a high-end graphics card to use Lively. It also does not require continual downloads to keep the software updated. Embedded a Lively space into a Web site is really simple–you just embed the code as you would a YouTube video. This makes it easy to integrate three-dimensional content into the two-dimensional Web. Finally, Lively is free and theoretically open to everyone, with no age restrictions or prohibitive costs.

Now for the down side: the graphics are still well below gaming industry standards and even worse than Second Life. As of now, you can only create single discrete rooms, not multiple, interconnected rooms needed to constitute an entire world. Room templates make it fun and easy to design your own space, but a limited number of templates really restricts your design choices.

Still, I had fun setting up my own virtual office space (a desert island), where I could potentially meet with students or other faculty members. Check it out: you’ll need to install the software and have a Google account. Both are free.

For a good review of Lively, see this CNET article or this helpful FAQ.

Categories: Simulations | Tags: Google Lively | 2 Comments »

Anne Rice Meets J.K. Rowling

By RR | June 22, 2008

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer I’ve been down with a bad sinus infection for the past week or so, limiting my normally busy summer routine. On the plus side, I’ve been able to do a lot of reading. One of my students recommended the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer and I haven’t been able to put it down. In the first of this series, Twilight, we meet Bella, an insecure and clumsy high schooler who has just moved to Forks, Washington, to live with her divorced father, Charlie. Forks is the rainiest town in the United States, and Bella initially resents having to live there while her mother follows the fledgling baseball career of her new boyfriend.

Things change when Bella meets Edward Cullen, a mysterious seventeen-year-old with a big secret: he’s a vampire. Bella is drawn to Edward–and Edward finds Bella irresistible. The good news for Bella, though, is that she is not his next victim. Edward and his vampire family have learned to resist their blood lust by hunting only animals and blending with the human population of Forks. Soon Bella and Edward are deeply in love, resulting in a few raised eyebrows and more than a few real problems.

This novel, Meyer’s debut, is compellingly told and understandably popular. Meyer’s style can be a little overwrought at times, and the book does present a troublesome view of adolescent relationships (Bella seems all too submissive–literally ready to die for Edward), but overall, I recommend Twilight . I’m going to buy New Moon, the second in the series, this afternoon.

I can imagine using Twilight as a centerpiece for an entire unit on vampires/Dracula. You could supplement Twilight with Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Google Books), for example, or even excerpts from Anne Rice.

Update (July 1): A week later, I am finished with the second of the series, New Moon. When Edward and the Cullens leave Forks suddenly, Bella is left to fend for herself. This installment spends about 400 pages detailing the emerging friendship between Bella, who is heartbroken over Edward’s departure, and Jacob Black, a Quileute Indian who also happens to be a werewolf. Bella is a little slow to realize that her newfound friend runs with a pack of wolves (I was guessing this about halfway through the first book), but her relationship with Jacob definitely makes things interesting–particularly when Edward returns to Forks. You see, werewolves and vampires don’t get along so very well. . .

Update (July 8): Okay, so I count myself among the rabid fans of the Twilight series. I just finished the third book in the series–Eclipse. Like the first two installments, this one focuses on the relationship between Bella and Edward, but there’s a twist: Bella may or may not be in love with the werewolf Jacob Black, who befriended her when Edward abandoned her. Much of this book involves Bella trying to reconcile her feelings for Jacob with her desire to become a vampire and immortal companion of Edward. The plot also involves a larger conflict between the Cullen clan and an army of newly converted vampires recruited to kill Bella. Despite some stylistic excesses on Stephenie Meyer’s part (she never met an adverb she didn’t like), I’m absorbed in this compelling world and am looking forward to the August 2 release of the next installment, Breaking Dawn.

In the meantime, I’m on to Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Categories: Courses | Tags: Twilight, Young Adult | No Comments »

1984 for the Google Generation

By RR | June 15, 2008

One of the most interesting things happening in the field of young adult literature is the “rewriting” of canonical classics for a young adult audience. The most deliberate of these rewrites is probably Jake Reinvented by Gordon Korman, a retelling of The Great Gatsby in high school setting. In Korman’s work, characters parallel Fitzgerald’s in allegorical ways: Jay Gatsby is Jake Garret; Daisy is renamed Didi, and the story is narrated by Rick, not Nick. Other young adult authors have taken up themes inspired by classic works: Feed by M.T. Anderson compares well to Huxley’s Brave New World in its critique of consumerism, class consciousness, and hedonism. In this camp I would also put Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, which owes its existence to 1984 by George Orwell.

In Little Brother, a terrorist attack on the Bay Bridge prompts the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to institute a wide-ranging surveillance system:citizens are tracked through their cell phones, expressway passes, subway passes, and Internet use. The protagonist, Marcus Yallow, is an accomplished hacker and is immediately imprisoned for suspicious activity following the terrorist attack, along with his three friends. The plot revolves around Marcus’ release from prison and covert war on the DHS, waged though a series of ingenious hacks on the ubiquitous surveillance mechanisms.

If you think the book sounds like a critique of the current administration’s war on terror, you are dead on. The novel has a very contemporary feel (with references to Craigslist, Wikipedia, and Doctorow’s own Electronic Frontier Foundation) and provides a great way to bring 1984 into the 21st century–not that it needs any help, of course. I highly recommend this compelling novel as a companion to Orwell’s novel, or on its own merit.

Update: You can download Little Brother here for free. And you can download 1984 from Project Gutenberg Australia. So, theoretically, you could teach a killer unit pairing these two texts without costing your students a penny. I love the Internets.

Categories: Courses | Tags: Little Brother, Young Adult | 2 Comments »

Streaming Video Services: A Review

By RR | June 6, 2008

Over the past few years, I’ve been looking for a convenient and inexpensive host for streaming video files. I have experimented with quite a few options without really finding the ideal service. The grant for the streaming video project has given me a reason to explore a few options–and hopefully, but into a service that will work well for my purposes. If you are planning to use video projects in your teaching, you might look into the following:

YouTube leads off. It is attractive for a few reasons: first, it has the largest video-viewing audience on the Web if you are interested in reaching the most people possible. It also has a nice quick-capture feature–that is, you can plug your camcorder into your computer and record directly to YouTube. Upload and processing is also quick. YouTube allows users to keep their videos private (up to 25 people can watch a video with this designation) via email invitation. The downsides are that YouTube automatically converts videos to 320 X 240 resolution and has no high-definition streaming options. YouTube also limits uploads to 10 minutes or 100 MB–hardly enough for substantial video projects, unless you want to break it into parts, which is tedious. And there is no way to download YouTube videos easily, unless you install the new Real Player. Of course, you’ll still need to covert any downloaded file: YouTube is a Flash-based streaming server.
Teacher Tube is video sharing site for educators. Unlike YouTube, though, there are no size and time limits for uploaded files. You can also keep a video private, set up a teachertube blog, and join forums with other teachers. All of this for free.
Google Video (now merged with YouTube) is another great service provided by Google. It doesn’t have the audience that YouTube itself has, but searching Google Video does yield YouTube results. And there are no size or length limits. Google video provides an easy-to-use desktop uploader for files over 100 MB. The service also imposes the same 320 x 240 format, no matter the original size of your video. A plus is that users can download videos easily.

To be continued.

Categories: Multimedia | Tags: Video | 1 Comment »

Kids Play Games Online? Who Knew?

By RR | May 25, 2008

Over the past few years, I’ve been refurbishing and redistributing computers (mostly laptops) that the university no longer needs and generously donates to good causes. A few weeks ago, one of the donated machines came back to me. Its owner, a 16-year-old girl, reported some problems with the operating system. I booted it up and saw that she had installed dozens of free games onto the rather fragile laptop (circa 2000). All of the games probably didn’t cause the crash, but might have strained the processor a bit. And more importantly, it gave me a glimpse into the kind of digital entertainment that, well, 16-year-old girls prefer: lots and lots of games, as it turns out.

A recent article from eschool news confirmed what I already suspected: kids want to play games online. The article details a recent survey by Thinkronize that found the fifteen most commonly searched terms on school computers:

1. Games
2. Dogs
3. Animals
4. Civil War
5. George Washington
6. Holocaust
7. Abraham Lincoln
8. Multiplication
9. Math Games
10. Weather
11. Frogs
12. Fractions
13. Planets
14. Sharks
15. Plants

Complete article

This is a pretty innocent-looking list–with the exception of the first item, it all looks very educational and wholesome. But that first item–games–says it all. This is precisely why I am still interested in developing video games based on literary texts, despite the very marginal success of my multiplayer game Thoughtcrime .

Categories: Multimedia | Tags: Games | No Comments »

Shameless Self-Promotion: Literature and the Web Now Available for Pre-Order

By RR | May 9, 2008

It was a big thrill for me to discover that our book, Literature and the Web: Reading and Responding with New Technologies (Heinemann 2008) is now available for order on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Its presence online seems a little weird, given that I am still writing the index, but there it is nevertheless.

If you have taken my methods courses (ENG 310 and 311, ED 331) over the past couple of years, you might recognize some of the applications discussed in the book–blogs, podcasts, social networks, RSS aggregators, MOOs/MUDS, Second Life, digital text archives, and more. You might even see yourself in its pages. The goal of the book is to align the goals that many literature teachers profess–teaching students to enter the story world, read the text closely, situate the text in historical and sociocultural ways, and respond in personally meaningful ways–with a range of new Web applications. The book also provides resources for teachers with little or no access to technology and a wealth of Web resources. My co-author Allen Webb and I are very hopeful that it will be a highly useful guide for pre-service and in-service English teachers alike.

Categories: News | Tags: My book | 5 Comments »

Streaming Video Grant, Part Two

By RR | May 8, 2008

Three years ago, I received a small grant from the GVSU FTLC for the purpose of enhancing my course(s) with technology. I used the funding to purchase a media desktop, two mini-dv camcorders and accessories, and some low-end video editing software (Nero and Roxio). The secondary English education faculty have been using this equipment to videotape English teacher assistants in the field. The TAs use their recorded performances to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses. Overall, it’s been a successful addition to the course (ED 331), though I always felt that capturing video, editing, and burning DVDs was a big hassle. Sometimes, as in this past semester, certain brands of DVDs don’t play in all players, so some students weren’t able to view them.

This fall, I applied for the same grant again, and this time, I’m using the money to buy a new hard drive camcorder (either Sony or Canon–advice?), some high-end editing software (Adobe Premier Pro 1.5 or Sony Vegas), and some streaming server space at DivShare. The goal is to eliminate two time-consuming processes: capturing video in real time (that is, a 40 minute performance takes 40 minutes to capture) and burning the DVD, which can take up to two hours, depending on the length of the video.

Instead, I’ll be able to move the data from the data from the camcorder like any file–no real time capture necessary–and upload the files (after edits) to a streaming server–no burning necessary. Most of my students have broadband access, so this should be a good solution. DivShare also seems like a good service, allowing you to password protect videos and plug them directly into your Wordpress blog.

Categories: News | | No Comments »

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