Kayla, Leslie, (whose explanations about how, specifically, her contribution mattered) are particularly worth noting) and Evan have a draft of their blogging portfolio up already. Good work!

I'll shortly post the J-Web study questions for Koster 3 and the 3 short readings. Meanwhile, the topic I'd like to introduce today is this short passage in which Roger Ebert explains why he thinks games cannot be art.

In other EL250 blogging, Kayla reflected on how boys have affected her involvement with video games. Her brothers got her interested in games, but other boys later attracted her attention away from them! Did you tween knowledge of Mortal Kombat come in handy in that regard, Kayla? ;)

Puff writes, "Gaming is more than entertainment, it is memories and life lessons." Some of you may have noticed in your discussion question work that when you frame games as "entertainment" or "escapism," I'm not content to let it settle there. We entertain ourselves in so many different ways, and reading, eating, running, sleeping, praying and suicide can all be classified as "escapism". Good job, Puff, looking behind the veneer of a very convenient word.

Evan makes an excellent observation about popular culture: "The fallacy is that we assume that things we consider frivilous are not important."

I liked reading Gina's response to the Scott Adams interview,

As you assemble your portfolio and reflect on your contributions so far, here are some thoughts on useful ways of contributing to a class discussion. Note that you don't have to know all the answers in order to contribute usefully!

• asking a good question
• noting that something somebody else said has changed your mind or confirmed a suspicion or answered your question
• offering constructive criticism
• supplying additional support (including links and/or page numbers) for a point someone else said
• politely introducing information (including links and/or page numbers) that works against a point someone else has made
• offering a definition of a term
• offering a link to a related discussion elsewhere on the course blog or somewhere off-site.