In our discussion on Thursday, there were various comments about having students study an online community first before they participated within it. While I think this is sound pedagogy on our parts, I wonder if we're having enough discussion with them up front about what exactly a community is. While I realize that time/space limits during the semester may not allow for extensive discussion of community and how they are rhetorical, it does seem to be something that students should begin thinking more about, i.e.

I too was thinking about the trailer for Resident Evil 5 like Ehren, in particular his mentioning of the comment one YouTube poster made regarding the fact that Americans are not who actually created the game. This raises an interesting question for me, as the creation of the game came out of minds that do not necessarily equate to an American sensibility. Put another way, Japanese sensitivities to racism likely are much different than an Americans.

I wanted to pick up on Jeff's earlier question today about what we're leaving out in our discussion of procedural rhetoric and gaming. Something I see that we're not looking at is the way that procedure (or policy, which is procedure reinterpreted) establishes rules, much like the legal system uses procedures to create and enforce rules. These procedures are institutional creations and they persuade us to act in a certain manner. As such, these procedures act rhetorically.

After my presentation yesterday I had the feeling I didn't explain what I meant by the habit of mind or hexia that I saw gaming as having the potential to help students, or rather I should say anyone, develop. By a habit of mind, I am referring to a thought process that a person takes into any situation and figures out what it is that s/he needs to do to in that situation. As I read the articles this week, I got the sense that gaming presents opportunities for people to develop a more enriched habit of mind or thought process.

As I read Gee's articles this week, I found his discussions regarding the applicability/usefulness of gaming to be both interesting and persuasive. I must admit up front that I am not a gamer, and I usually am skeptical about the profuse praising that accompanies the virtues of gaming, but as I read Gee's articles I told myself to hold back on my prejudments and just listen to what the man had to say. What I found most interesting was his claim that students/children playing games is a way for them to develop a new type of literacy.

As I read Blythe's article, "Agencies, Ecologies, and The Mundane Artifacts in our Midst," I found myself trying to contextualize his definition of agency within the group presentations given this week in class. For example, Blythe offers the following descriptions of agency, ""a student's control over self-definition and language" (169-70); "a personal thing; a matter of making informed decisions...the ability to 'communicate' and define one's sense of self" (171); "a lack of constraint" (173); and "something we gain...not by being an autonomous individual" (173).

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In the chapter, "Rewriting Racist Code," Banks discusses the impact of African Americans having to defend themselves first against some allegation or assumption before being able to make their own appeal. The example he uses is of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X having to defend themselves "against charges that they were communist or anti-white before having an opportunity to present their appeals for the right of African Americans to vote or work" (94).

In his discussion of the assessment of the student papers from the Geology course at UCSB, Bazerman describes the differences between the stronger and weaker writers. He writes, "The better rated papers, they found, had far more statements at all levels, with a substantial number of sentences at the middle epistemic levels to bridge between the most concrete and the most abstract...On the lower rated papers, however, there were fewer sentences at all levels, with particular absence at the lower or middle epistemic levels" (105).

I meant to ask about this in class yesterday, but I am curious about the ideas people are thinking about for group projects as well as ask who hasn't yet formed a group. Thus far in class, the readings that have interested me the most are Kolko's discussion of intellectual property and authorship as well as the readings dealing with how computers in composition change/alter power structures for students, teachers, writers, audiences. If any of this sounds of interest to you, let me know and perhaps we could form a group.