Introduction

New Game Hits Shelves! TeacherTech2K5

Next-Gen Student Domination

You are already freaking out, and you have only read the title.

“But what is TeacherTech2K5?? And what is a next-gen student?! Why are we talking about a new video game, when I was trying to do research on new literacies?!? We’re talking? I thought I was reading!”

Don’t worry; it’s ok. Calm down. From here on out I promise to do my best to present this information in a formal style from which you may gather all the knowledge to all the questions that just exploded in your brain. Unfortunately, the main point is that with a simple title based on new literacies, dozens of questions just exploded in your brain. Let me take a step back and explain who you are; there are pretty much only two options here: (1) You are an educator seeking to better understand the recent buzzwords you keep hearing, “new literacies”, and you are quite unfamiliar with any digital media beyond Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and/or Excel, or (2) you are somewhat in-touch with society and you knew instantly that the title of this paper is a parody of ESPN’s line of sports video games (NCAA, NFL, NBA, MLB2K5, etc.) as well as any number of action video games where a first person shooter saves the world from some kind of imminent doom.

I lost you again didn’t I? (From here on I will assume you are person #1.)

“What is a first-person shooter? I still don’t know what 2K5 means!!”

Alright, listen, 2K5 is an abbreviation for the year 2005. Get it? K is a standard abbreviation for thousand so you read 2K5 as “two-thousand-five”. Now that wasn’t so tough was it? Of course not. ESPN just combined a few common symbols to create a clever, relevant (we’ll discuss this later) title to market their yearly reinvented and renovated sports games to the youngster hooked on electronics. You probably could have even figured it out on your own! The problem is not so much your ability then, so much as your familiarity; however, at this point, I am sure that I am ahead of myself and I still have not even begun to present any kind of formal presentation of material. Plus, you are still freaking out a little bit and I really do want this to be helpful. Alas, welcome to the world of new literacies; a world with few and quite bendable rules, but just enough of the old stuff thrown in that with a few helpful tricks, you will be navigating the new seas in no time.


Questions:
1.) What do you already know about blogs and/or new literacies?

2.) What questions do you currently have about the paper and what I'm about to talk about?

3.) What would you change about the introduction? What do you like or dislike?