Pro Blog Post #1

    On the topic of social media or digital composition use as a way of connecting with others, I almost drew a blank, but after racking my brain and reaching quite a while back into time, I believe I have a personal experience worth mentioning. Before getting to the point, I want to admit that as I've "matured," aged, gotten older (?) (what's the right word for this? I'm only 22, but I feel old admitting this) I've grown more and more exhausted by the internet. Rather than it being something which I've grown better qualified navigating, I feel like it has grown at a scale in which obscures any kind of understanding and admiration which I initially had of it during my childhood. I struggle to pinpoint exact reasons why this is, but if I had to guess, I think it would be a mix of nostalgia, isolation, overstimulation, and overindulgence. Nonetheless, I really look forward to this class, because I long for ways in which I can reinvigorate my curiosity for the internet, and I know that it has tremendous value which can strengthen lessons inside the classroom.

    Getting back to the blog prompt, I played a video game in my pre-teen/early teen years called Garry's Mod, which essentially acted as a hub connecting players to a series of mini-games. The game is/was extremely modular, giving players tools and resources to make their own game modes using existing assets and building blocks from pre-existing games. Around age 13, I found a community within Garry's Mod which I grew really fond of. It was called "The Cube," and the server curated a community which emphasized a friendly environment and attitude, something that wasn't always the norm for video games in 2013. I spent a large portion of my time from ages 13-15ish on these servers, and interacted with it's community in a multitude of ways. From playing the game itself, to at one point taking on a "moderator" role which gave me a responsibility of weeding out disrespectful and ill-mannered players. Furthermore, The Cube also had an online forum, which was my introduction to anything of that sort, and served as a microcosm for like-minded individuals, interested in expanding the servers footprint and impact. I remember there being a lot of collaboration on the forums, mainly from artists and other creatives, but it also served as a place where regular players could simply chat. A real world impact this server had was a charity that it ran, which raised money to give kids with physical disabilities/health implications computers capable of running the games in which The Cube operated. I tried to search for pictures and other media which illustrated these causes, but unfortunately, a lot of these things have been lost to time due to the forums no longer being up. Alternatively, I found a few pictures relating to The Cube, from screenshots of the maps players interacted on, to the server's logo.

    Relating back to my future endeavors as a teacher, I realize my experience on The Cube laid the groundwork for my desire to nurture small, tight-knit communities, which sustains itself through a common goal. I think a lot of my sentiments and desires for this were illustrated by Jenkins, which found video game players in similar situations in his paper Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Ultimately, his writing argued that teachers need to embrace the internet's ability to encourage collaboration.

https://blogs.hanken.fi/cers/2020/03/03/the-traditional-internet-forum-old-but-not-forgotten/