There’s multiple issues going on here, many of which are reminiscent of questionable high school curriculum. Digitation’s that, ya know? It’s divorced from reality.
1) Just as you don’t go into an Italian restaurant expecting Mexican cuisine, students generally don’t go into first year writing expecting to work with multimedia in the veins of blogging. To those experienced with the platform, that’s a huge plus — for others, it’s a “why do we even need to do this?”
2) Digication isn’t tumblr, wordpress, wix, or any other widely-used blogging site. The experience doesn’t transfer efficiently, and the skills gained are relatively useless.
3) WRD professors aren’t all NMS-savvy — teaching half-assed design principles is worse than not teaching design at all. (There’s graphic & visual design 101 for that).
3.5) Age, “generation gap.” This is a minor quip, but technology advances at a rate that makes it very difficult for non-tech-surrounded individuals to keep up with changes.
This is especially true of literature-related professions. Even Gee with his hundreds of hours invested into gaming cannot realistically keep up with new game genres and platforms, unless he divorces himself from education and literature and delve into a game-related field instead.
However, because Gee has experienced both worlds, he’s got an interesting perspective on the whole gaming literacy affair, so there’s that.
4) Digication’s a gimped platform, that’s for sure. The difficult part — and I think Gee on video games has acknowledged this — is that the process just isn’t entertaining for the majority of students. Rather than trying to fix an overcooked scallop, why not start a new one instead?
