Gaming, Agency, and Imagination: Locating Gaming within a Larger Constellation of Literacies

Abstract

Compositionists have increasingly devoted attention to how new technologies have informed our understanding of writing and literacy as well as the impli-cations of new media, such as the Internet, for writing. Essentially, these new technologies have forced us to complicate “what it means to write” (Alfano & O’Brien, 2005); how we understand the concept of literacy (Faigley, George, Palchik, & Selfe, 2004); and how new technologies can be incorporated into the classroom environment to enhance the practice and outcomes of writing (Castellani & Jeffs, 2001). Considering that many students have new technologies available to them at home, and that writing is a central feature of these technologies (e.g., text messaging on cell phones, chat rooms, discussion boards, homepages on the Internet, video games) it is important to consider how they are engaging these technologies and how such engagement informs their understanding and practice of writing. Therefore, as Hawisher and Selfe (2004) argue, compositionists should examine what resources and literacies students in the information age are bringing to class.

We fail to build on the literacies that students already have—and we fail to learn about these literacies or why they seem so important to so many students. We also fail, as we deny the value of these new literacies, to recognize ourselves as illiterate in some spheres. And in this intellectual arrogance, we neglect to open ourselves to learning new literacies that could teach us more about human discursive practices.

(Hawisher and Selfe, 2004, Becoming Literate in the Information Age: Cultural Ecologies and Literacies of Technology, p. 676)