Rhetorical Peaks Wiki

 

Notes from 3/30 meeting:

The RP Study:

We worked out some problems we've run into and decided on who would collect which forms of data from Matt's course.  Lauren had Hampton create a games group folder to put all the data in a secure location.

Showcase/Trailmeme/C&W Online stuff:

For the presentation Trevor's doing a section on his work in SL

Lauren and Scott will begin doing a general description of the group's activities for the "center" of the trailmeme.

We'll have a section on the work we did preping for Matt's class last semester.

A section on Tekla's research

And sections on Lauren's, Scott's, and Tekla's research this semester. 

We'll also need some preliminary results from the study to report on at the showcase, but maybe just a description of the design of the study will do.

 

By the next meeting each of us need to have a portion of their sections finished, put into the blog. 

 

 

 

Notes from 2/23 meeting:

Everyone is excited about the C&W trailmemes project.  We will begin to actively put together that presentation and the showcase presentation after spring break.  Each of us will consider ideas about how to represent our individual contributions to the group, as well as our collective outcomes.  Question: Does Matt want to or should he be involved in representing what happened with Rhetorical Peaks last semester.  We think our trailmeme will be titled "The Gaming Group," but one of its main branches will refer to our work on Rhetorical Peaks.

Tekla's run into some issues using the narrative games Hampton got for her.  She will probably have to get her own password to play them.

Trevor and Tekla are pumped about their article for Currents!  They discussed when they will meet to begin putting together the work that they've already done so far. 

Scott's going to begin re-arranging and cleaning up the wiki.

Everyone is continuing their individual research.

 

Notes from 2/9 meeting:

Trevor is going to contact Kevin to discuss his ideas for a Currents article.

Tekla and Scott are going to determine how to modify our RSA proposal title to better fit the study on Matt's class.

The IRB has been approved!  However, Lauren has not recieved the consent forms from the IRB people.  She emailed them Sunday to see what the deal is.

Lauren also contacted Matt to begin setting up dates to come in and get his students to consent.  Lauren will be in charge of communicating the dates that we need to be in Matt's class with the rest of the group.

Everyone is going to continue their individual research, with the ultimate goal of producing assignments and/or a bibiliography on the subject.

We decided that at some point this semester we need to clean up the wiki for the people who take over the group next year.

Scott spoke with Hampton and he's going to install some narrative games for Tekla to play on a couple computers.

We told Trevor and Tekla about their attendance numbers; they also have no problem with the showcase being on April 30th at 3 pm.

Scott is going to connect Trevor with the woman from Stanford who may be interested in having their classes meet in SL.

Trevor needs to speak with Matt and/or Kyung to make sure his acitivities in SL aren't getting in anyone's way or will be erased.  Trevor already has his students in SL.

 

 

Notes from 1/26 meeting:

We brainstormed ideas for the projects trajectory.  We had more ideas than are really possible, but here's the full list:

ARGs

Mobile gaming

Second Life

Simultations and role-playing in general

Serious games

Persuasive games (Bogost's work)

Narrative games

Approaching game developers in Austin for collaboration

Should our goal be to create a rhetoric game?  or to use existing games for teaching rhetoric?

 

Here were our research decision: Trevor-Second Life, Lauren-Persuasive Games, Tekla-Narrative Games, Scott-ARGs and mobile gaming.

Our goals for this semester are to research these areas, determine their viability as long-term research areas for the gaming group, and produce some sort of deliverable probably in the form of lesson plans and/or annotated bibliographies.

 

Scott and Tekla are going to work out the details of our RSA presentation (change the title, refocus it on the results of the study, etc)

Lauren and Trevor are going to figure out the article for Currents.

 

Notes from the meeting on 11/16:

 

We had the meeting in Second Life to figure out any bugs that might pop up having an entire class in SL.  One problem is that if there are people on the first and second floors of the parlor, you can hear/read everyone else's conversation.  It's not really a useful space for breaking up the students into groups for discussion. 

 

We tested the amphitheater, and it seemed the some people could be heard while they were on stage and others could not.  We'll have to speak with Kyung about some of these issues.

 

We agreed to meet in SL next week because we have more complex issues to discuss (the Currents article, plans for next semester) and we want to see what it's like trying to have a serious conversation in the space.  Since there's only 6 of us, we're wondering what it would be like to have 20+ students in there at the same time.  It seems important to do initial group activities in class on the computers, so problems with chat and IM can be worked out.

 

The meeting was really fun and brought up a lot of important things for us to consider.

 

We essentailly have the same tasks as last week:

1. Eveyone in the group will turn in a write-up of their ideas for next semester/Current's article. 

2. Tekla, Megan, and Lauren  are working on the IRB slowly but surely.  Tekla's in charge of background/review of literature, Megan's doing Consent forms, and Lauren is filling in the rest.

3. Trevor and Matt are going to correspond about robots that might be useful within the SL space for Matt's class.

4. Scott -- I can keep working on the machinima tutorial. Also, Matt expressed some interest in coming by the Fishbowl to take a look at Camtasia while I work on my project for Lester's class. Hampton got a new device that can be used for creating slow panning shots with less camera shake, so I can try that thing out. Also,  I think I may have figured out how to stream YouTube videos in SL. There's a demo on the platform above the newer RP space.

 

 

Notes from 10/26 meeting and goals for 11/2:

We identified our next goals in terms of setting Matt's class up.  Matt clarified that since he's leaving the students acitivities in terms of community building and finishing the game open-ended, we don't have to have perfectly polished assignments for all the possibilities that we've identified.  We just need to know where you point them if they want to build something or do a machinema, for example.

Soooo,,,,,

1.  We need to figure out how to "record" or export conversations that students have in SL (Tekla)

2.  Continue research into how to use, make, and just the general feasibility of machinemas (Scott)

3.  Put assignment for creating avatars on the RP site. We'll need 2 versions of this assignment: a short one and a longer one for instructors who want to focus on identity formation. (Lauren)

4.  Figure out how set up a screen so that students could potentially post machinemas, podcasts, etc inside the RP space (Trevor' son this one, and we'll talk to Kyung about this at our meetting.)

5.  Continue to develop ideas for our study and collect items for both student and stuy bibliopgraphies.  We'll try to set up a meeting with Matt this week to discuss what sorts of data we could gather from his course--it's a busy week with the book fair, somaybe early next week.  (Megan, Tekla, Lauren)

 

Side notes:

• I've (Lauren) tried to contact Jasmine about which reading she's using for her Rhetoric of Virtual Identity course that might also be useful for Matt's course as well as other courses using RP in the future.
• Scott's trying to set up a meeting with Kyung on Wed.  Matt can't make it, but we've discussed what we'll talk to Kyung about with him.  On the agenda is building a mountain for a town of RP, setting up a screen in RP, and I feel like there's a couple other things, but I can't remember them right now  :)

 

Goals for 10/26

1. Tekla, Megan, and Lauren will meet about research questions.  We have the basic ideas and types of data we'd like to collect.  We'll have to coordinate with Matt to see which assignments and activities he already has in mind or is willing to do.

2. Scott will contact Kyung about getting us permissions to build.  We now have build permissions, and Scott got us a meeting next week with Kyung to talk about things that we want built!

3. Trevor will continue his experimentation with modifying objects and buildings.  He made a cat talk; I don't think I need to say more.

4.  Lauren will continue to perfect the intro material.

 

Goals for 10/19

1.  Tekla--research lit review articles for games, coordinate with Lauren and Megan on our research questions for the study to taylor the lit review. (Tekla found us a great article on best practices for teaching in SL!)

2.  Lauren and Megan--Come up with research questions for the study, these will be tentative and will develop as the Matt's class's assignment becomes clearer. (Update: We decided we can't come up with useful research questions until we have a better idea of how the assignment is going to go; this goal will continue into next week.)

3.  Matt--Ideas about specific goals for this assignment series.  Ideas about the hall meeting structure.

4.  Trevor--Ideas about rhetorical aspects of a town hall structure.

5.  Scott--Research how to make a machinema

6.  Lauren--continue developing the introductory materials and consider how to organize all the clothing/places info for the students. (Update: There's still a couple rough patches in the intro and I'd like to have someone who's new to SL go through it to see how smoothly it works.)

 

Our overall goal for the meeting on 10/19 is to sort out how to structure a possible town hall, any adjustments that need to be made to the game to accomodate that, etc.

;;

 

 

Goals for 10/12

1.  Get everyone access to the RP build in SL.

2.  Gather transferable clothing or sites with lots of free clothes and props to point the students to.

3.  Explore and gather locations of interest for the students to visit to create their identity.

4.  Lauren will create an instruction sheet for creating an account/avatar, getting to the UT islands and the RP build. (Half-done, continuing to work on this).