Girl Wide Web 2.0 Video Review

Here is my video review of Girl Wide Web 2.0. First let me preface this by saying that I don't consider myself a very good speaker, so sorry for all of the "umm"s and the stumbles. Also, I'm sorry for the annoying watermark on the video. The software that I downloaded to make the video was a trial, and it didn't tell me until I was done making the video that it was going to add a watermark to it. Yay for hidden stipulations.

Read my Goodreads review here.

Girl Wide Web 2.0: A Look into Digital Identity

I want to continuing exploring identity, so for my book I chose Girl Wide Web 2.0: Revisiting Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity. I'm hoping this book can explain more about how digital identity varies from different cultures and locations.

Preview

Through the preview of the book, it looks like the book does spend some time defining the differences in which girls determine their digital identities, but it also looks like it spends some time with some of the methods that are used online, such as MySpace and fangirl websites. It seems to spend a lot of time on the online communities that girls participate in, which is helpful for defining their identities.

Early Social Proof

No one responded to my update on Twitter. I was unsuccessful doing searching for conversations about the book as well. I'm going to try to reach out to one of the contributors of the book, because it looks like several of them are on Twitter. We'll see how that goes.

Similar Books

Instant Identity (Mediated Youth) by Shayla Thiel Stern
Growing Up Girls: Popular Culture by Sharon R Mazzarella
Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World by Don Tapscott

It looks like these books are pretty similar in their intent except for the last one Grown Up Digital. This one's intent lies more along the lines of how digital culture is changing and how the "net generation" is changing it.

Understanding the Digital Exodus with Jane McGonigal's Reality is Broken

As somewhat of a social critic and one who at various times has been thoroughly involved in video games, I couldn't resist Jane McGonigal's title: Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. It seems like McGonigal has a lot of great videos online about video games and virtual reality, so I see her work as key in understanding the 'exodus' to digital worlds.

Book Preview

After spending ten minutes previewing McGonigal's book, it looks like McGonigal's central question is this: "What if we decided to use everything we know about game design to fix what’s wrong with reality?" In addressing this topic, it looks like McGonigal will cover how video games can help us to be happier, more successful, and more productive. I really found her reference to Heroditus's concept of games to be compelling and grounding in a sense, and I think I'd like to look more at the sociological and historical foundations of video games.

Meaning in Video Games: Ian Bogost's How to Do Things With Videogames

I'm interested in establishing some ground work for talking about and exploring the ways video games create meaning. Ian Bogost is someone who's been on my radar for awhile but I haven't yet taken the time to dig into his work. This will be a good opportunity to expand on my knowledge and explore new ideas.

Preview:
After an initial view of the first couple pages of the intro and the about the author section, I found some interesting stuff in the back. For one, this book comes from a series called "Electronic Mediations," and the rest of the books of the series are listed in the back, and they all sound amazing. Also, rather than just a list of sources, he has a separate, multi-page "Gameography." It looks like this book is exactly the kind of stuff I've been looking for.

Early social proof:
No one responded on Google+ or Twitter, but I've been talking with my wife for the past couple days about making meaning in video games, and pretty quickly she's gotten on board. She helped me come up with a game idea about a Dad reading stories to his son at night and the player taking over as the dad as the hero of each bedtime story. I can tell there's a lot of potential in this topic and it's easy to get people excited about it.

Similar Books:
Apart from Bogost's other books, some titles that seem to always pop up alongside this one are Jane McGonigal's Reality is Broken, which I've already read and enjoyed, but also some other titles that intrigue me, such as What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee, which I noticed is also on our class's Goodreads bookshelf, as well as Tom Bissell's Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter. The rest of the books in the "Electronic Mediations" series also probably have a lot in common.