My Current Reading: Parenting, Pedagogy and Raunch

I know most people are watching the Oscars tonight but we are not really a TV family.  We cannot exist without high speed internet, Netflix, Hulu, PS3, Xbox and of course of all of our books. 

*Photo of Boone Library 

Kids Books (Harry Potter & Percy Jackson)

We (me and my two kiddos) just finished the first five Harry Potter books.  We have moved on to Percy Jackson because of length and dark material in HP is just too much at this point.  I am okay with discussing death with my little ones but monsters, teenage angst and institutional oppression is a little more difficult to explain at bedtime to my 5 and soon to be 7 year old. 

Percy Jackson is fun, first person and easier to read so that Nara (7) can read the first page aloud each night.  I am still lamenting that I have not found a book with a strong enough heroine that I want to read it to my kids.  It makes me want to write a kids book that is a girl with super power: that is a cross between Buffy, Zoe, and Hermione and is kicking some kind of monster butt. 

Adult Books (I heart Mercy Thompson)

Even titling this section “adult books” seems a little sketchy when I write the words but we all need guilty pleasure entertainment.  For a while I was avidly following the “VaginalFantasy” reading vlog on Google plus with Felicia Day but lately I have been too busy to keep up.  I was also not super happy with the book selection and deviated slightly.  When I start a book I finish it just based on principle even if its end up being total crap. 

I must admit I like a good balance of fantasy and a little bit of romance/borderline raunchy.  There is a fantasy romance continuum with Anita Blake on one end of the spectrum and Harry Potter on the other:  I usually fall somewhere in the middle but end up reading everything people recommend or lend.  This month I cannot wait for the new Mercy Thompson novel to reveal what is going on in the world of my favorite shape-shifting mechanic who married into a werewolf pack.

Pedagogy and Professional books (Teaching Naked)

I am reading two books currently that relate to teaching in Higher Education: One is Teaching Naked and the other is What the Best College Teachers Do.  Both titles provide practical thoughts on how to improve my teaching practice.  Later this week I am attending a symposium where Jose Antonio Bowen is the keynote speaker so I am excited to finish the last two chapter of Teaching Naked, but probably won’t get to it until I am on the train on the way there.  Of course my favorite chapter so far is about “Designing College Courses more like a Video Game.”

What the Best College Teachers Do has been full of surprises like the best teachers on specific subjects are not always those with the longest list of publications (Chapter 2).  I like that this book makes communication a key element of what good teachers do.  Communication and teaching is an inclusive conversation not a solo performance (p. 119).

I know many of you are looking forward to taking in fancy Oscar gowns and listening to moving speeches.  I am getting ready to enter the fantasy of greek mythology followed by a little grading and a pedagogical chaser. 

*I chose to only include only my non-dissertation reading list.  Though most of my life revolves around my dissertation it was fun to reflect on things that don’t. 

*Photo of moving my doctoral/dissertation books into new house 

My Semi-Retired Crusade Against Video Games

My family is in the process of moving. I say “process” because we live in the new house but not everything has left the old.  Unpacking I discovered shirts I had made while a graduate students for my personal crusade.  Yes, I had more than one crusade but this shirt really  exemplified so much of who I am today.

It was almost a decade ago and I was poor grad student working in retail hell aka Game$top. 

The worst part of every shift was when parents came to purchase games for their kids and even after my explicit reasons why they should not they still bought the game.  Grand Theft Auto was the biggest seller and I would regularly remind parents that in this game,

“Your child can have sex with a prostitute and then kill them to get some money back.”

Most parents would avoid making eye contact and handed me their credit card with ID. 

I built a website, went to some industry events in my inflammatory t-shirt, and made a stink with as many parents as possible. 

What is Happening Now

Fast forward to now and one of the most shocking realities for me is that my WAR website still exists.

And in better, more substantial news there are people who are great with new media doing innovative stuff to keep the gaming industry honest.

The problem with parents is still a problem but this industry is getting more accountable, not great but accountable.  In a recent post I referred to Anita Sarkeesian from Feminist Frequency who has made tremendous headway in giving an audience to problematic gaming tropes.  I forgot to mention James Portnow from ExtraCredits who is also doing some really great critical perspectives on issues in games.

In my current reality I am following conversations about video games on many different fronts with different audiences that should overlap.

• Game publishers/industry
• Textbook publishers
• Parents
• K-12 Educators
• Cultural critiques/ bloggers (seriously if you have not checked out Anita or James shame on you)

There are very different dialogues happening in different circles.  But no matter the conversation many of them in the past, present and future will continue to be about games.

Romance and Technology

I have been working on a thoughtful blog post about what area of technology I would most like to investigate as part of a current course I am enrolled in.  If I am being honest the area I will research is pragmatic and overlaps with my current professional research.  The area I would like to research is interpersonal relationships, specifically marriage and technology/ geekdom. 

This blog was created as a place to reflect and honor the awesomeness of my partnership with John Boone.  Technology, gaming and professional wrestling were a large part of our initial friendship.  Our history day project was a website and in 1997 people thought teenagers coding html was hot shit. We celebrate milestones in our life by playing video games and some of the most memorable aspects of our friendship revolve around tech.

Now that we have kids we are forced to recognize Valentine’s day in a new way.  Normally we buy video games and wrap them with flower wrapping paper.

Today my gift is to think about what major moments in our journey make us, well "us." Please click the image bellow for a timeline of some milestones in the Boone story. 

Generation Google

Normally what occurs in my doctoral classes is like Vegas, only in the sense that what happens in our meetings, stays in the vault of the unrepeated.  At our first face-to-face Spring course session we were asked to recall our personal journeys with technology.  Aside from helping me feel very old, it was interesting to discuss how instant message and Google have played a large role in our educational experiences and lives. 

A while back there were some Google commercials that showed the protagonist googling advice on issues that include travel, dating and translating languages etc. I felt that this commercial, and others, encompass my digital history in so many ways. 

  

The Evil Word Processor

In high school, I used a ballpoint pen, typewriter and word processor to construct essays.  Rewrites in my honor classes became almost impossible until I befriended a guy with two computers at his house. When I left for college in the fall of 1999, my grandparents bought me an “e-machine” which is one of the worst computers ever produced but I loved it dearly.  Though I was an adult when I had my first personal computer, I was comfortable with technology before then.

Minors Stealing Passwords

There are two memories I have of using the Internet.  The first is coming to CSU, Bakersfield as a high school student and using the online search engines, specifically Lexis Nexis to research for debate.  Lexis nexis is amazing but as the internet grew, we would also use the campus computers to find research from a variety of sources.  No one taught us, high school debaters, how to use the search engines.

Gaming and then College

When it comes to my first interactions with the internet the second vivid memory is sitting in the living room of my best friends house, which is coincidentally now my husband, with a network port connecting all of the computers to play Diablo. This was in the mid 90’s and I can count on one hand how many people I knew that actually had the internet. 

At the start of the new millennium when I went to college I lived on “instant messager.”  Emails became like a virtual diary where things could be sent off into the virtual world.

Personal Learning Network

I have been married for 11 years and my very geeky partner is my PLN (personal learning community) when it comes to technology.  Over the years anything we might want to know and didn’t, we googled it.   I discourage my students from relying to heavily on google: I cannot imagine life with the ability to search through google. 

It was insightful to share my contact with technology with others. My favorite history of technology was by an artist who drew a visual representation of her journey as a means of sharing her story: I hope she posts the photos on her blog so I can share with you soon.