Something Light

Okay, so first of all, I got totally distracted after coming up with the title, because I was thinking about something light to read (based on the meme I'm about to do from Lady M), which prompted me to remember a scene from Airplane! Remember the part where the stewardess is offering magazines or something to read, and someone asks if she has anything "light" and she offers a pamphlet on great Jewish sports stars or something? Am I the only one who remembers this? Man, I crack me up sometimes.

Okay, moving away from silly distractions, I thought I'd take just one brief moment to update you all on my organizational insanity regarding the blog. I did, in fact, start up a spreadsheet, to keep an updated record for quickly glancing through. It has date posted, post title, length of post, general tone, how many photos (if any), how many comments (if any), and a summary of the post. I also started keeping Word files of posts arranged by month, and separated finished posts from drafts. Plus I still have my text file of general notes. I also got what Fiance refers to as my "third level offline storage," which is a tiny notebook I keep with me at all times for handwritten notes when I'm away from my computer. Yes, it's getting just a wee bit out of hand here.

That being said, I'm proud to say I'm drafting this post directly to Blogger! See, I'm not hopeless... yet.

Okay, on to the meme. Lady M tagged me for this fun little game: "Tell us the 5th through 8th sentences on page 123 of the book nearest you." Well, I'm being literal here, so I grabbed the book sitting nearest me, even though none of the books nearest me are actually books I'm currently reading. The book nearest me is A Bernadette Mayer Reader, which is a collection of poems by Bernadette Mayer, including the poem to which I alluded in a previous post, "Marie Makes Fun of Me at the Shore." Upon perusal, however, I have deemed the fifth through eighth sentences on page 123 much too... explicit for my delicate readership. So I offer you the next closest book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, by James Paul Gee:

"These are the times - and, as the game progresses, such times become more common - where learners see that their now-routinized mastery, developed earlier in the game and in playing similar games, breaks down. They face a new challenge for which their now-routinized skills don't work. In cases like this, a form of learning happens that is just the sort we want to encourage in school but often have little success doing: transfer of prior knowledge mixed with innovation. Let me make this point with an extended example from my own game playing."

It's a really interesting book, though I don't get a lot of examples he uses because I'm unfamiliar with the games. I've only read part of it - we were only assigned to read part of it for Literacies over the summer - but I'd love to read the rest of it at some point. If education and/or the philosophical discussion of video games is your thing (*ahem* Natalie *ahem*), definitely check it out.

Thanks, Lady M - that was fun. :) Now, I tag Tali, Natalie, Graham, and my long-lost Friend, who, if I believe him, is rejoining the blogosphere any day now... :-P