Due: 9/20
Length: 500-750 words
Following up on the literacy narrative that you have already written, now I want you to write a similar narrative essay about your experiences as a player of games.
Pre-writing
Just as you did with your literacy narrative, you should complete the x-pages prewriting assignment described here; however, this time instead of writing about experiences you’ve had with reading or writing, think about any experiences you’ve had playing games. They can be any sort of games at all — video games, board games, memory games, or games you made up on the playground as a child. Remember Mary Flanagan’s argument about hopscoth. The New York Times had a really interesting piece in December about hand-clapping games played by children around the world.
Once you’ve finished that prewriting exercise, you can begin drafting the literacy narrative itself. Spend a good 45 minutes to an hour on the prewriting exercise.
Prompt
Now that you’ve done some brainstorming, write an essay in which you analyze one or two moments from your life as a player. What sorts of skills or ways of thinking or socializing have you learned from playing games?
Take a step back and reread the freewriting you did, looking for any interesting patterns that you surfaced about your history with reading and writing. You do not need to directly address the freewrite or your answers to the questions in the pre-writing exercise, but hopefully in the process of freewriting and thinking about those questions, you’ve recognized some issues or patterns that are interesting enough for you to analyze more carefully.
Nuts and Bolts
Publish your narrative as a page (not a post) on your class website (make certain to add it to the menu, so we can all find it).
As with everything you publish for me this semester, you need more than just words for your narrative — you must have at least one image, video, or audio file with your narrative. You’ll need to provide a caption and give credit to the creator of the image (even if it’s your own). I’ll have some additional resources on Creative Commons and finding CC-licensed images with Flickr.
Reflection Post
Once you have published the page, you need to also write a separate blog post. That post should link to the page you have published and reflect on the process of writing it.
