The Attention Economy

In the past, it would not be a good idea to open my computer while I am doing my homework or projects. If I wanted to ask my classmates about the homework or get in touch with friends, I would simply make a phone call; if I wanted to listen to music, I would turn on the radio or listen to my MP3; if we want to do projects, the best way will be to gather at the library or school. But now, I will totally do in another way round.      

iTunes, Facebook and MSN would be three important aspects while I am doing my assignment and projects. What’s the reason behind? Apart from the requirement of the assignment, the desire of social attention would weight more.

Since I opened my computer, I won’t bother to take out my MP3 or iPod to listen to music. It would be convenience to process my job with only one digital devices - computer. The setting of iTunes help managing my songs according to the categorization like: 90’s music, classical music, my top rated, newly updated…customize my playlist easily.

Facebook is a platform to give and attract attention. If I typed “Hope that I could finish my assignment before 12 yet 300/1000 achieved by now =( ” on my Facebook status, I would like to gain attention of my friends and receive encouragement from them. On the other hand, I would like to keep track the progress on others who got the same assignment with me.

I may write “Add oil together, mate!” on his/her wall if I found that he/she felt depressed and stressed with the assignment. Once we updated Facebook, our intention is to gain attention from the others.   

MSN messenger would be a great tool to exchange information and communicate with my groupmates effectively, “group chat” function help managing conversations simultaneously with different people within the same group. I would type “Busy with my assignment” inside the status box of my MSN, adjust my online ‘status’ to busy mode in order to get rid of causal talk with the others while I am rushing for my projects and assignment.

But a question you would like to ask, why I have to log-in MSN or Facebook while I am busy with my assignment and projects? I think the belief of connection and relationship building constructed deeply in my daily life. For me, I can manage and distribute my attention effectively. Multi-tasking is efficient and even made me feel relax other than stressful. With the companionship of friends and groupmates when interacting with the Internet, I found myself motivated. If I found myself fell behind of my friends, I would speed up my progress and become more concentrated. =) 

Lastly, here's a video for you. It would be a good idea to share your favourite song on Facebook, to express your feeling, relief your pressure, or even ask for love by a particular song dedicated to your dream boy/girl!!! Grab the attention from now on!

Games, learning and literacy

New form of literacies such as video games, blogs, chat rooms, Instant Messages, film creations like machinima created a trend and encouraged writing outside school for students and suggested interaction with non-linear, intertextual and multi-layered text. Moreover, how can a little child master an online video game without much understanding and knowledge of complicated text – commands, instructions, goals within the video game context? The answer will be sound effect and image interpretation, these cues would definitely assist the way that they act and interact with.

Here, I would like to introduce a game or series named Diner Dash launched by PlayFirst. Your job in this game is to help Flo, the main character to run the restaurant, accumulate score to furnish your restaurant, the idea is to train working under pressure and good management of time.  

Although this game didn’t facilitate multiple players around the globe to interact in real time and work together, it connected with social networking sites, and eventually created some kind of new literacies, including blogs, online forums, and wikipedia page.

For example, it created a Page in Facebook, which enabled fans of this game to give comment and interact. I think the attractiveness of this game is: it enabled your design and layout of your own restaurant and the Avator (Flo, the waitress, main character in the game), fans would upload their masterpiece on the page and pull for comments or vote. Fans from this game can exchange their tips, raise questions throughout these sites.

Other than computer-based literacy, this game shooted for iPhone and iPad too, as a result, the APPs circulation enabled a great multimodal text, for example, other than the official video launched on Youtube, Fans from this game also recorded his/her own experience and posted on Youtube. Sometimes, the video game review would ge a great illustration on how to play/master the game successfully. At last, would teachers encourage students to do their book review on this basis too? An interesting way of storytelling. I suggested. =) 

Finally, I think that playing online games would be a good way to practise English too, since Fans should communicate with a common code to learn the tips or complete the goal of their favourite games. English would definitely the best choice although some games embedded the language choice, but if you want to gather walkthroughs about that particular game, you can't stay away from the utilization of English with others on the Net. They pick up new terms, sophisticated vocabularies throughout the process of text-based brainstorming with strategies in the game, communicate with Fans all over the globe!!!!!!!