Hooked

The furore over the 'Net Generation' and the controversy surrounding Marc Prensky's Digital Natives theory prompted me to write a poem about gaming addiction that I actually performed at an ALT-C Conference. If for some perverse reason you ever want to repeat the performance, you need to dress up in a hoodie, and the crotch of your jeans needs to be hanging around your knees so that your boxer shorts are fully exposed (if you are indeed wearing any at all). You also need to strike a pose that is reminiscent of an old man suffering from constipation, and rap the words out loud and proud in a slightly nasal Estuary accent while flinging your hands around. Have fun. Er.... I know I did.

Hooked

I’m a digital immigrant, me
And the digital natives will be
Forever a stigma
Wrapped up in enigma
And shrouded in deep mystery

When he got his Nintendo DS
My son very quickly impressed
He linked with his buddies
And soon the young hoodies
Were wirelessly hooked (more or less)

Over time, his Nintendo obsession
Dragged us down to the depths of depression
Each attempt to suggest
A change or a rest
Was met with a wave of aggression

A Dad-imposed mandatory ban
Merely caused him to ‘go underground’
Soon we had to agree
The Nintendo would need to be
Surgically removed from his hand

I decided to check the Nintendo
And I slowly worked up to crescendo
Then it hooked me as well
And I soon looked like hell
I won’t even try to pretend-o

The brain training software was great
And I found myself staying up late
But I’ve now had my fill
And feel over the hill
With a brain age of 78

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Hooked by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 International License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Digital Culture and Education

I was recently invited to join the editorial board of a new and exciting open access journal called Digital Culture and Education. In the words of the journal editors Christopher Walsh and Thomas Apperly: "This new journal is concerned with the changing demands of education and the especially central role of digital culture in preparing students for labor in the context of the ‘knowledge economy’. DCE is a new international, peer-reviewed scholarly journal focusing on research in areas of digital culture which are relevant for education." The editorial board of DCE includes some of my old friends such as Chris Abbott and Victoria Carrington, as well as some of those whose writing I have found extremely engaging, including James Paul Gee, Julian Sefton-Green, Michelle Knobel and Gunther Kress. I'm truly honoured to be listed alongside such luminaries of the digital age.

In their first editorial, Apperly and Walsh provide readers with a clear idea of what they can expect from the journal: "Digital culture has transformed many fundamental parts of our working, public and personal lives in terms of how we communicate and consume, create knowledge and learn and even how we understand politics. The scale and speed at which digital culture has become imbricated in everyday life is unprecedented. Its impact on politics, aesthetics, identity, art, culture, society, and particularly education is thoroughly deictic. In response, we founded DCE to provide a forum for dialogue around the educational, economic, political, cultural, social, historic, legal or otherwise relevant aspects of living in a society increasingly dominated by digital communication and media. DCE is interested in work and scholarship theorizing identity, globalization, development, sustainability, wellbeing, subjectivities, networks, new media, gaming, multimodality, literacies, entrepreneurship and related issues. The journal provides an interactive scholarly context for the uptake of new technologies alongside the emergence of digital culture and its impact on teaching, learning and research across institutional and non-institutional contexts. We are committed to publishing print and digital work that takes a critical approach to the issues raised by the increasing importance of new technologies in all facets of society; in particular, research that examines the uneven uptake of technology, and perspectives on new media that emphasize its materiality, production, or environmental impact."

Well there you have it. An exciting new peer reviewed journal which has engaging and leading edge content for teachers and researchers of the digital age .... and all of it is open access. I hope you enjoy reading it, and perhaps you will also consider contributing in the future.

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