Gaming the Writing Process
What would happen if we rethought the ways that we think and talk about writing and the writing process to use the kind of language and thinking that people use when they play games? That’s the question I’ve been pondering during the several weeks since Katie Salen’s webinar, Making Learning Irresistible: 6 Principles of Game-like Learning. (Please watch Salen’s webinar for a complete explanation of her ideas, which I’ll refer to and summarize in this post.)
Last week I talked about how to make a curriculum relevant by thinking like a game designer when you structure your curriculum. This week I want to take that idea a little further by considering how a game designer might teach writing. How would my teaching change if I reconceptualized writing to apply the same strategies used during game play?
Ten Recent Books of Poetry You Should Read Right Now
Of late there’s been a strong sense in the national poetry community, and not entirely without warrant, that those with the largest megaphones for their opinions — including certain writers for The Huffington Post — have more commonly used their pulpit to bully contemporary poetry and poets than to effectively promote either one. There have been, from this media outlet as well as others,wild claims regarding the demise of poetry in America, each more haughty, vitriolic, and (dare we say) desperate than the last. Don’t believe it; the poetry scene in America is the largest, most diverse, and most vibrant it has ever been, and it’s time for poetry-lovers associated with online media to strike a solid blow against the seedy, nigh-incoherent malcontentism of certain contemporary poetry critics. The robust state of poetry in America is evidenced, in part, by this non-exhaustive, unranked list of superlative books from the past 15 years, all of which are must-reads for those looking to push back against the gloom-and-doom of poetry’s ambient naysayers:
1. The Disastrous Tale of Vera & Linus (2006), Jesse Ball and Thordis Bjornsdottir
2. Push the Mule (2001), John Godfrey
3. 100 Notes on Violence (2009), Julie Carr
4. The Little Red Door Slides Back (1996), Jeff Clark
5. The Last 4 Things (2009), Kate Greenstreet
6. The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway (2010), Jennifer L. Knox
7. War Music (1997), Christopher Logue
8. Up Jump the Boogie (2010), John Murillo
9. Mule (2011), Shane McCrae
10. Poems 1959-2009 (2009), Frederick Seidel
Ashes
The tide comes in; the tide goes out again washing the beach clear of what the storm dumped. Where there were rocks, today there is sand; where sand yesterday, now uncovered rocks. So I think on where her mortal remains might reach landfall in their transmuted forms, a year now since I cast them from my hand —wanting to stop the inexorable clock. She who died by her own hand cannot know the simple love I have for what she left behind. I could not save her. I could not even try. I watch the way the wind blows life into slack sail: the stress of warp against weft lifts the stalling craft, pushes it on out.
Paula Meehan
via Poem-A-Day by Poets.org: http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/345
I have always been a person who is “sensitive,” and I take too long to get over everything. Reading old journals and notebooks, I am reminded that feelings are, in their essence, immediate, and they pass over us like shadows. All the words I collect are artifacts of sentiments that do not exist and could not even be conceived of again — ideas that once desperately needed to be expressed disappear, leaving husks of language that I save, I care for.
Source: thisrecording.com
A Ghost, by Cole Swensen
erodes the line between being and place becomes the place of being time and so the house turns in the snow is why a ghost always has the architecture of a storm The architect tore down room after room until the sound stopped. A ghost is one among the ages at the edge of a cliff empty sails on the bay even when a ship or the house moves off in fog asks you out loud to let the stranger in
via Poem-A-Day by Poets.org: http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/345
Children with short attention spans 'failing to read books'
More than four-in-10 teachers said children failed to read for pleasure at the age of 11, it emerged.
The study – by the publisher Pearson – found that many schools fear children have short attention spans and prefer to spend time online rather than reading a novel.
Teachers also said that books were not seen as “cool” by pupils and raised fears that parents are failing to do enough to promote a love of reading in the home.
» via The Telegraph
Many of our program kids are completely bored by the idea of reading. So far, some of the most successful “gateway” tools to get them back into reading for recreation have been the -ology series of books (Pirateology, Wizardology, etc.), which include little interactive, almost gimmicky pieces to their pages; DK-style guides to fictional universes, which draw the kids in with huge maps and images and lead them to the text with new curiosity; and choose-your-own-adventure books.
Once they discovered those books existed, they WANTED to go to the library. They’re excited about going now. It makes me incredibly happy to see them so eager just to fish through all titles.
A few of the oldest students who have reading difficulties have also started latching on to audiobooks.
Source: infoneer-pulse
Drawing for a Typewriter, 06/23/1868
In 1868, C. Lantham Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and Samuel W. Soule received a patent for their improved type-writing machine. In their application, they wrote that “the type-writer is the simplest, most perfectly adapted to its work…and in every way the best of all machines yet designed for the purpose.”
via DocsTeach
(via todaysdocument)
pronunciation | drap-et-O-man-E-a
a brief history | Drapetomania first appeared in a pseudoscientific article by an American physician in 1851 as a “mental illness” that caused black slaves to try to flee captivity. It supposedly occurred as a result of a master treating their slaves like equals. But though the first usage of the word is deeply rooted in racism, it derives simply from the Greek δραπετης drapetos, meaning “runaway (slave)”, and μανια mania, meaning “frenzy”. I post this word with the knowledge that it has been used as a tool of racism, and I consciously separate it from that origin. I know that words can’t be redefined on whim—but I do think they can sometimes be redeemed.
(via remeanie)
Source: other-wordly
