National Public Radio’s RED Radio Hour from October 2017 was hosted by Guy Raz, and it deals with how we are manipulated through technology. The episode is titled “Manipulation,” and the title image of a hand with strings attached (as if controlling a marionette) is quite appropriate for the subject. The first section has Tristan Harris talk about how modern companies attempt to govern the way we think through the immersive level of technology that we live in. “The internet is not evolving at random… technology is not neutral.” Companies are trying to keep our attention in every way imaginable, and it’s producing an effect that we can’t keep our attention away from technology. Next, Ali Velshi speaks about how “Alternative Facts” and our modern culture about media have damaged journalism and created a culture where it is difficult to distinguish the truth and prove the truth. People base their facts on their existing opinions, rather than basing their opinions on existing facts. Third, Elizabeth Loftus describes how even our memories can be manipulated. She relates stories of people convicted of crimes that they didn’t commit, but they were convicted because of faulty memories of witnesses. She states that she has modified people’s memories by asking leading questions and providing misinformation. But with studying this, Loftus has to face the question of whether we should modify memories, or if we should fight against the modification. Last was Steve Ramirez, who explores the question: “if we could erase memories, should we?” Philosophically, would losing memories change who you are? Ramirez is a neuroscientist, and he describes how it would (very theoretically) be possible to only remove the emotion of the memory and leave the sensory aspect of the memory. But this raises the same question: would the removal of emotion from a memory change who you are? Yet, if memory manipulation can help someone (like someone with PTSD), aren’t we at least obligated to explore it as an option? Ramirez believes that we should at least explore the potential of this technology.

I personally found Trisan Harris’ section the most interesting, because as a Computer Science major, I am soon to be a part of the industry that creates technology that is judged based on how well it captures and keeps attention. With everything coming out about how Facebook was used by a foreign power to sway public opinions, and a president that denies the truth of established media, the manipulative power of tech giants has never been more apparent. I have always held the opinion that technology is neutral, that it is a tool that can be good or bad depending on whose hands it’s in. But I’ve started to see how it isn’t neutral: the creator, the developer, the engineer of the technology gets to dictate the rules by which the technology is used. I think that the idea of modifying memories is a little far for technology to go (right now at least), but the idea that by simply leading people in a direction, a social media giant could alter people’s memories is frightening.

My question to the class is: Can you think of an example in your life where you were manipulated through technology?

I see two major educational possibilities with FOE: history and economics. My last post talked about existing history possibilities, but they could certainly be taken to a new level. If FOE added some more of the same features as Age of Empires or Civ, such as the choice of a particular nation-state, it would provide more educational opportunity. The different choices could have different bonuses and challenges that could be insightful for that particular nation. Also, the manipulation and trade of resources could be studies in economics classes if you added more of a market functionality that is decided by actual people’s decisions for what to sell and for how much.

The game has several different currencies, and I think it is one aspect that ends up as a detriment to the game. There are the base resources, like supplies and gold, but there are also materials like stone and marble. You have to spend a lot of resources just for marble, but you’ll never use it again, so you waste a lot of time and resources. This makes for good commentary on how different resources become popular and useful but eventually go out of style, but it makes for choppy and wasteful gameplay. They could take a note out of Clash of Clans’ book and only have a couple of important resources, or they could go the Civ/Settlers of Catan route and have a set of resources that are of recurring importance. Diamonds are their way of goading players into microtransactions, and medals are their way of trying to emulate the PvP success of Clash of Clans.

I realize that I have titled this post very broadly. But, the pieces this week focused on rather broad topics of general technology use in today’s world, and what it does to us.

First is Sherry Turkle’s TED talk “Connected, but Alone?”, in which Turkle argues that “we are setting ourselves up for trouble” with our ubiquitous use of mobile devices. She believes that it damages our interpersonal experiences and our intrapersonal depth. She talks about how we use technology to keep everybody else at arm’s length – not too close, but not too far. This is because texting and social media are not in real time, and you get to choose how you respond. This allows you to present yourself as whoever you want to be. But, this disconnection results in worse connections between people and a feeling that “no one is listening.” This results in how we are connected with so many people, but we are more lonely than ever, because we are afraid to be alone and to learn to be alone.

Second was Danah Boyd’s “It’s Complicated: Teen Privacy in a Networked Age” at FOSI 2013. She talks about how modern youths handle privacy in a world with public social media as a common form of communication. She tells how certain students will go back and delete everything on their profile that’s more than a couple days old, or how teenagers have started encoding meanings in a way that is nearly impossible for adults to understand (thus allowing them to communicate privately, even if adults can see the conversation). She also talks about the relationship of adults to teenagers with respect to privacy. Since adults have been told to monitor their kids’ internet activities (after all, the internet is a dangerous place chock-full of people trying to catfish you), kids have simply developed more and more complex ways to get around such infringements of their privacy. Boyd claims that teenagers have started to avoid surveillance by not “trying to limit the access to content, [but] trying to limit the access to meaning.”

There’s no denying that I’m a part of exactly the culture that both Turkle and Boyd are speaking about. I go on my phone during some of my classes, I sleep with it right next to my bed, and I have various social media accounts that I switch between depending on what group of people I want to interact with. I certainly get what Turkle is saying about how people nowadays use technology as a shield against loneliness, but end up also shielding a large part of human connection. I definitely think her argument is valid, and that we need to be careful of how and how much we use social media. That being said, the level of connection that technology provides us can be used in extremely beneficial ways, which Turkle does point out but I believe that she downplays it. I use it to stay in contact with people that I went to high school with, making a genuine human connection easier to maintain than otherwise. As far as Boyd’s discussion of privacy, my parents never surveilled my social media (to my knowledge), so I never felt that I had to play with privacy settings to make sure that they couldn’t see anything. However, I know numerous people who have had to do things akin to what Boyd described, and I always felt that the parents’ active intervention in their kids’ social media lives did more harm than good. I personally feel like if the parents have taught their kids adequate knowledge about the benefits and detriments of being online, then the kids usually follow safe practices. Any youth nowadays is certainly knowledgeable enough about technology to practice good digital citizenship, it is simply a matter of whether we want to or not.

My question for the class is: have you ever tried to “unplug” from social media for an extended period of time? How did it go?

The first article this week was “Creating Critical Play” by Mary Flanagan. In it, she describes how modern artists and video game designers are able to “take on social themes such as war, social inequity, and political power” through games (1). According to Flanagan, video games are a way of viewing alternate realities and possible worlds, due to their rules-based but open-ended and interactive nature. Because of the alternate views that video games can present, they are particularly capable of illustrating points about the nature of our real world. The second article was “Political Internet Games: Engaging an audience” by Joyce Neys and Jeroen Jansz. The authors conducted a study of with game developers and game players about the impacts of playing political games. The developers expressed a couple of goals with political games, such as persuasion, engagement with the audience, and expression.
Surveying the players indicated that the political games increase knowledge of and interest in the topics, which illustrates the effectiveness of the games.

Personally, I hadn’t encountered any “serious” games before experiencing September 12th in class. The idea that games have more than just entertainment value is not new, as I have believed for a long time that they can provide education. However, I didn’t consider the possibility to educate through spurring criticism and analysis of our current world, through the medium of video games. Knowing this now, I want to seek out some more political/critical video games, as they are fascinating and informative. As someone who is currently attempting to develop a game as a hobby/side project, it is very interesting to see different goals that games can have, and I hope that it challenges me to explore the medium more than I currently am.

My question to the class is: if you were to create a political game, what topic would you choose? What would the game be like?

The past few days haven’t seen much progress for my city in Forge of Empires. I’ve been struggling to update my older buildings with newer ones, because the older buildings don’t produce as much and I have to wait a while before I can update them. Aside from that, it is interesting to see how the game views the advancement of civilization through research and economic development. I believe that this aspect of the game holds the most potential for education. It doesn’t present any historical figures, and the game mechanics do not function very similar to an economy. However, it does have the progression of civilizations, so a world history class may be able to take advantage of the long-term goals of the game. A teacher could periodically have a lesson that connects to Forge of Empires that illustrates how their progression in time through the course material reflects the progression in the game.

The mobile version of the game is very intuitive, and it has easy-to-use menus that allow you to navigate and reach the same options as the desktop version. It’s actually almost preferable as a mobile game, because you can check more often on a phone, and it is a game that requires periodic “check ups”. The worst aspect of the mobile version, in my opinion, is that rearranging your city is extremely difficult when each building is tiny on a mobile screen. Here they might benefit from Clash of Clans, where you go to a separate user interface when you want to rearrange you city, one that is built specifically for layout. This way, the game doesn’t have to sacrifice any current usability, but it would be able to make city planning easier.

The first article from this week was “But That’s Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.” In it, Gloria Ladson-Billings supports the argument that a culturally relevant pedagogy should be implemented by teachers in order to support the learning of students from all backgrounds, not just those in middle-class Caucasian neighborhoods. She describes this ‘culturally relevant pedagogy’ as requiring academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness from the students. These things must both be expected from and developed in the students, and the author details multiple examples from her study that follow these criteria, specifically with regard to teachers in low-income, predominantly African American communities. The second article was “Teaching Social Studies with Video Games” by Brad Maguth, Jonathan List, and Matthew Wunderle. They describe how the video game Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings can be used to reinforce the concepts in a seventh-grade Social Studies class, as the game has many themes and facts that align with the mandated curriculum. This description is in support of the larger case that video games have value and should be explored as educational tools in an age where nearly all children play video games in some form or another.

I enjoyed reading about the strategies in Ladson-Billings’ work, as I know it will have to be a conscious effort to teach with a culturally relevant pedagogy, as a straight, white male from a middle class background. I especially like that Ladson-Billings included critical consciousness as a criteria for the pedagogy, because I think it is important for students, as they are getting their education, to be able to criticize the status quo. It means that they are able to see what flaws may be in the world, and it usually leads to at least someone trying to figure out how to fix those flaws. I found Maguth, List, and Wunderle’s article very interesting as well, since I have played Age of Empires before. It is interesting to have a background with a game in a non-educational context and see that game used for education. But, I still remember the game being about historical figures, and you could battle through actual historical events. The version I played had less diplomacy and trade than it appears the version in the article had, but I did feel like I learned a bit about historical figures, even playing it outside of class.

My question to the class is: do you think video games can be a part of a culturally relevant pedagogy, and if so, how?

Since last Thursday, I have been playing Forge of Empires, a browser-based resource management and strategy game. Starting the game has been a little slow, due to other time commitments of late. One of the features I noticed right away, however, is the avatars.

I thought it was enjoyable to be able to pick what I look like, but I noticed that there wasn’t very much representation in the avatars. The overwhelming majority was white, and many of the people who I suspected to be POC had very Caucasian features and made it hard to tell. In addition, most of the avatars were men, but the representation of white women was much better than that of any POC. The picture to the right is the first page of the avatar options, and future pages aren’t much better.

As far as the GUI in general goes, it is decent enough to use without major hangups, but it could definitely be better in my opinion. There is a resource bar at the top, and there is a main menu that leads you to many of the other menus and screens that you might need. The other menus are represented by icons that are pretty self-explanatory. The friend and neighbor bar felt a little weird though. It is at the bottom of the screen, separate from the global and neighborhood chat, which I find odd. It seems like it would make sense to have all of the social aspects of the game found in one menu, but they are not. You have your friends list at the bottom, the message center a part of the main menu, and the global/neighborhood chat can be accessed from a seemingly random button at the top. This isn’t too much of a nuisance, but it was annoying to try and find out how to friend and talk to people when it is all disjoint.

Signing up for an account on Forge of Empires was extraordinarily easy. It didn’t require an email address, which is unusual for online games. I gave dritchie1031 as my username. The introduction was pretty standard for resource management games like this, where an “adviser” guides you through the basic buildings and resources. It was difficult figuring out how to switch worlds in order to be in the same world as some other people in the class (Langendorn). In addition, there was no tutorial on how to add friends, send messages, or modify any settings. If I didn’t have experience with games like these, it would have been difficult to understand and find these things. I decided to name my city DanLand, although I am likely to change this in the next week or so.

This week we read two pieces, both of which focused on social justice. First was the graphic novel In Real Life by Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang. It tells an account of Anda, a highschool student that gets introduced to a Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) Role Playing Game (RPG) called Coarsegold by way of the leader of an all-female in-game guild that is trying to get more women to play games as female characters. She begins playing and makes a friend, Lucy, who introduces her to the possibility of paid missions that involve killing “gold farmers,” players who go against the rules of the game to tediously obtain large amounts of gold (in-game currency), and then sell that gold to other players for real money. Anda eventually finds a gold farmer that talks to her, so she doesn’t kill him. She strikes up a friendship with him, and finds out that he is working for a group that gold farms as a way to make money doing something he likes: playing video games. But he has back problems from a previous job, and the employer doesn’t give the employees health coverage. Anda convinces him to strike, but he gets caught and fired. However, Anda eventually spreads the message to the other workers, and they strike for better benefits. The other piece this week was “Awakening Teachers’ Capacities for Social Justice With/In Arts-Based Inquiries” by Amelia M. Kraehe and Keffrelyn D. Brown. It details a study that the authors conducted about teaching social justice to future teachers through an undergraduate course. They describe how many of the students (who were surveyed at the end of the class)

It hadn’t really occurred to me before that teachers can be a driver of social justice, even though I can trace a fair few of my own viewpoints back to inclusive-minded teachers. As someone who hopes to some day become a teacher, it is something that I will have to keep in mind and address, hopefully with the right background and knowledge. I found In Real Life to be extremely interesting because I have played World of Warcraft, an MMO RPG and been a part of a guild before. It wasn’t nearly as formal as Anda’s guild Fahrenheit in Coarsegold, but it still gave me a pretty good idea of what the writers were talking about. I can definitely understand the camaraderie that a person can feel when playing a video game with friends beside you. I have never had an experience like Anda’s, however, even anything as trivially similar as meeting someone in a video game that I didn’t know in real life. This was perhaps influenced by my younger age when I was playing World of Warcraft, which led me to be very wary of strangers on the internet. It was still a compelling story, and it was very interesting to see how Anda was able to mobilize her guild to support a cause that was just.

My question to the class is: Have you had an experience online that impacted real life? It doesn’t have to be exactly similar to Anda’s experience.

Each piece this week was centered around the Arthur Interactive Media (AIM) project. The project itself is an interactive web comic based on the “Arthur” animated children’s show. The specific that was focused on this week was titled “So Funny I Forgot to Laugh,” in which Arthur bullies Sue Ellen due to her coat. Arthur has to acknowledge that he is bullying Sue Ellen, and those around Arthur (specifically Buster) must decide how to react to Arthur so that the bullying stops without adding tension to Arthur and Sue Ellen’s friendship. Multiple endings can be explored, based on the reactions of the three main characters in the story (Arthur, Sue Ellen, and Buster). The “Welcome to AIM!” video, several teachers and students reactions to AIM are shown, with very positive results. This video may be biased, but it still displays at least a portion of people for whom the AIM project worked well. The article “The Arthur Interactive Media Study- Initial Findings” by Edmond P. Bowers et al. studied the effectiveness of the AIM project and found that it is largely successful, although they did note that more research should be done in order to fully conclude its success.

I recall watching and reading about Arthur when I was much younger, although it was too long ago for me to remember much if it had any significant impact on my character. However, I can still vividly picture going to my mom’s kindergarten classroom and playing an Arthur computer game while I was there, as a way to pass the time. I don’t know the exact name or mechanics, but I know that it tested math concepts and at the end you got to “eat” an ice cream cone by clicking on different parts of it. Two major differences between this and the AIM project are the emphasis on social situations rather than curriculum-based content, and the inclusion of interpersonal interaction via the dyad system. Both of these aspects, in my opinion, would have served to improve the overall experience. Having a mentor relationship with a younger students most likely not only benefits the younger student in question, but would also have a positive impact on the mentor because they have to more explicitly acknowledge positive social behaviors and may exhibit better behavior when they know someone is learning from them. Additionally, character education is especially important in this time where almost all of the traditional curricula taught in schools can be alternatively taught online. However, it is very difficult for online learning sources to mimic the kind of interpersonal and character-based learning that occurs in a system demonstrated with the AIM Project.

My question for the class would be: do you think that the AIM project would have been beneficial to you as an elementary school student? Why or why not (or to what degree)?