ENGL 680M: New Media

I've spent the last couple of weeks figuring out what I want to do for my final project, thinking about other projects that have been done, and getting advice from tech-savvier people than me. I found a space to publish my final project (the OWL, not surprisingly) and even got H. Allen Brizee, fearless OWL coordinator, all worked up about it. Upon the advice of my tech savvy friends and after a little investigating on my own, I've decided to use Adobe Flash for what I want to do. In rhetorical terms, it seems I have it all: a purpose, an audience, a medium, and a situation in which to publish my text. There lies just one teeny, weeny problem: I don't have a damn clue how to use Adobe Flash. In my infinite arrogance, I didn’t think this would be a problem. It is.

I walked over to the DLC in high hopes. I told the friendly dude at the front desk what I wanted to do, he handed me mammoth book on Flash, and invited me to come to him with any questions. Within twenty minutes or so, my hopes were dashed. I mean, there were people around me talking about equations. Like, math. They were talking about math. Have mercy. It seemed like everyone around me knew exactly what they were doing. I was embarrassed to pull out a notebook and pencil to take notes, and I was even more embarrassed to have the thick Flash book—a marker of my ignorance in this technological world—lying in front of me. Anyway, I think I did okay for my first time out. I figured out how to make a rectangle and color it blue. Oh, and I learned how to add text.

My point in sharing this is partially in response to Pepper’s post that making a video game is kind of like playing a video game. Agreed. My experience so far in learning how to use Flash to make what I want very much parallels learning how to play a video game. I have a starting point (knowing what I want to create), and an end point (being able to actually create it), and a whole bunch of obstacles in between (the main obstacle being that I don’t know how to actually use the program, with a whole bunch of related sub-obstacles). There are also issues of access involved: I don’t have the program at home, which kind of parallels how I felt as a kid when I wasn’t as good at Super Mario as the other kids because I didn’t have a Nintendo at home; I have access to a few people who can teach me, but I’m mainly on my own. Finally, learning a new program is similar to entering the new “world” of a specific videogame or gaming generally and feeling like a total jackass for a while (not that I’m not accustomed to that feeling). I mentioned in an earlier blog that a couple of friends of mine have helped me out by showing me videogames and teaching me how to play them; I also mentioned that I feel very out of place when I’m with them, as though I’m just visiting the videogametown for a bit. I feel similarly in learning Flash. There’s a language and an entire way of thinking that I’m not used to, similarly to how I feel when learning a new video game. One of the problems is that I’m sort of stuck in the mindset of other programs I’ve learned in the past and long internalized, like Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. For example, I keep thinking of Flash in terms of slides, which I’m finding is not a particularly helpful metaphor for how Flash actually works.

Despite the problems, I do think what I’m trying to do is worthwhile. What I will create is an interactive game that takes adult students through the process of writing the GED essay. I mentioned early in the semester that I’m writing study materials for a space on the Online Writing Lab that is devoted to the Lafayette Adult Resource Academy. The scariest part of the GED essay, like all timed essay tests, (I think) is that there is so little time to get everything done. So, the materials I’m writing focus a lot on how to go through the process of understanding the prompt, planning the essay, writing, and revising all in 45 minutes. Even though composition’s motto is that everyone’s process is different (and I do agree with that), I think we could also argue that, within the constraints of a timed writing task, there is a certain basic process that works best. For example, I encourage students to take a couple of minutes to underline key words in the prompt and restate it in their own words (at least in their heads) to make sure they really understand it before they proceed). I argue that they need to do this early on in the essay, because if they realize too late that they’ve misunderstood the prompt, they probably won’t have time to go back and start their essay over or even revise it significantly.

The materials I’ve created so far are pretty traditional: they give students advice about the writing process and explain what they should do when writing the essay. What I’m hoping the interactive game will do is actually take them through the process so that they get a better sense of how the steps might play out during the 45-minute essay test. There will be a timer that counts up instead of down so that students can see how long they take to go through the whole process. The idea isn’t to lose the game by taking too long, but instead for students to get an idea for themselves of how long they are spending on parts of the process and on the entire essay. Then, they can try the game again with a new topic and practice going through the process more efficiently. It’s a boring, mechanical view of writing, I realize, but I think it will be helpful for the timed writing situation these students are dealing with.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.