* OWI principle 1 requires Online Writing Instruction to be delivered in a way that can be accessed by "dominant technologies" (mobile devices are clearly now dominant technologies)

*  Owners of mobile technologies are even higher among traditional college-aged students

*  Populations which traditionally were technologically disadvantaged (minorities, low-income, young people, etc) are more likely to have a smartphone and use it as their primary access to the internet

*  BUT, as we all know, smartphones are not really the best platforms for writing long papers, or for many other common assignments

*  "Information Literate" students are used to multi-tasking on several screens.  This doesn't mean that students aren't engaged, they do the same thing when they are watching TV.  

*  Students are also used to doing business activities on phones (like banking, sharing photos, etc)

"With their general functionalities that emphasize various literate practices (e.g., reading, writing, image and video viewing), as well as the growing number of individuals that use mobile devices as their primary access to the Internet, WPAs and OWI teachers should be planning for mobile-learning now" (5).

*  Students may want, or need, to access course materials from their phones or other portable devices

*  BUT educators have to work to reach both the haves and the have-nots

*  We are familiar with notes in a syllabus that the LMS works better with a certain browser; a similar note should be made about whatever apps or LMS exceptions or limitations are necessary on a smart phone

*  We must note that real-time interactions the student to have wifi action or large data plans

*  We must also consider that it could be harder for those students to move around quickly within the platform

*  It may also be more challenging to do complex formatting, such as hanging indents

IT IS EXCEPTIONALLY IMPORTANT THAT WE NOTE THAT WE CAN'T KNOW ALL THE UNKNOWNS.  We likely can't anticipate every technology challenge.

*  It is important to continually collect research, not just about access, but also about data usage and other potential barriers

* Even though our emphasis is teaching writing, not teaching technology, we can still build-in low stakes learn-the-technology assignments

*  Just because students use their smartphones, doesn't mean that they know how to do more than check facebook on it

*  There are advantages to this type of technology that should be leveraged, like it's easy to record stuff

*  As a consequence of these mobile platforms, students have picked up negative behaviors too, like equating googling to "research," or being tempted to immediately find distractions on Facebook, or such

"In short, most of these ideas about building community to support OWI faculty learning about and incorporating mobile learning into their pedagogical strategies, suggest a twist of OWI Principle 11: Online writing teachers and their institutions should develop personalized and interpersonal online communities to foster student and faculty success (CCCC OWI Committee, 2013, pp. 23-24)" (13).

*  BYOD (Bring your own device), means that we can't make assumptions about what devices students will bring

This week's reading was interesting because it addressed lots of barriers that I had not considered.  I still use my laptop for classes, so I haven't had to deal with some of these limitations on other technologies.  It would have never occurred to me that someone might attempt to complete a whole class from a smartphone!  I have an iPad and can do lots of things on it, but it isn't my primary educational tool.  I'm always fascinated to hear AMY talk about her iPAD class and because of her sharing, chose to explore an iPad app for one of my note taking challenge technologies.  It is important to not make assumptions about how students are accessing the information, and to be prepared to adapt when we learn that it is different from how we imagined.

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Colby “Writing and Assessing Procedural Rhetoric in Student-produced Video Games”:

"First, video games are inherently procedural and are thus based on afeedback loop that asks players to participate and learn from that participation if they want to persist in playing (Gee,2003; Juul, 2005). Second, they are media rich; in other words, they require multiple modes, from the underlyingprogram code and the unit operations of the mechanics; to the presentation of visual, text, and audio; to the hapticcommunication of interface, whether mouse, controller, or gesture" (43).

Procedural rhetoric:

* Example-Congo Jones and the Loggers of Doom has a Mario Bros feel, and doesn't really educate about deforestation

* Procedural Rhetoric-"the practice of using processes persuasively" You make a choice, there is a feedback loop, you react to the loop, there is another loop, etc

* Persuasive Games- intend to raise awareness and not simply for entertainment

* Video games in a writing course shouldn't just be for analyzation, students should propose ideas for persuasive games

* Molleindustria makes ideological video games such as the McDonald's Videogame, but students can get mixed messages

* Unlike reading, where students can just stop reading, games entice players to engage and toy with decisions and roles that they might not otherwise explore

Assessing procedurality:

* LOTS to assess, gameplay, the way code was written in, written intentions of programmer, visual representations, its all multimodal

* "...Stuart Selber’s (2004) five parameters of functional literacy: educational goals, social conventions,specialized discourses, management activities, and technological impasses" (47).

* There are issues of unequal access, practice, and interest

* Since most writing classes can't be entirely about games, reflective portfolio is a good companion assignment

The rhetoric of games:  Case studies

* Have students analyze the rhetorical framework

* One student proposed a game where the player assumes the role of a recent Mexican immigrant, he understands procedural rhetoric

* "the true assessment,then, is whether students can detect procedurality (among the other learning goals of the course) in the work of peers" (49).

Gaming matters: Challenges for the future:

* "It is not enough to just say that procedurality is important—we should also assess the motives and effects of proceduralrhetorics as they embody action in a video game or another interactive text" (51).

* Like the ETS prize for the design of a math assessment game, shouldn't their be something similar for writing?