iStory  

“What we ought to be developing in our schools is not simply an array of literacy skills…but a spectrum of literacies that will enable students to participate in, enjoy, and find meaning in the major forms through which meaning has been constituted. We need a vision…of what our schools should seek to achieve,” – Elliot W. Eisner, Professor of Education and Art at Stanford University

New Media Literacies. Multiliteracies. 21st Century Literacies. I prefer to use the term digital literacy when discussing a vision for schools. The more I work with students around developing stories, either digital or not, the more I see a need to strengthen their story, visual and media literacies. Now, the discussion has expanded to include the social ramifications of what and how we read and write a variety of texts.

Literacy skills changing as a result of swift advances in technology may not be news to you. For the last decade, the Center for Media Literacy has championed their five questions to the deaf ears of a large number of teachers and administrators around the world. I’ve been teaching for nearly twenty years and unfortunately many people still see technical skill or tool literacy as the priority in developing students technologically for the future. The tools for creating/writing our own media have become so easy for students to access that it’s prompted the need to educate students on how to critically analyze the media they consume, but now also the media they produce. This is the “new” part of media literacy.

What are we talking about when we say New Media Literacies?

Henry Jenkins on New Media Literacies

Yes, but what is it really? This video does a great job of spelling out the specific literacies. Spend sometime checking out the resources for teachers on this site, in particular the Strategy Guides. Their Ning site is also one of the most current places on the web for NML info.

Henry Jenkins and his research group from the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT have published the paper Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (Jenkins et al., 2006) which “identifies the three core challenges: the participation gap, the transparency problem and the ethics challenge, and shares a provisionary list of skills needed for full engagement in today’s participatory culture” (http://newmedialiteracies.org/)

What I like most about the work of Jenkins and company is how specifically it relates to the everyday practice of teachers. The buzz on 21st Century Skills may have lost some its din, but its still the go-to phrase when discussing educational change.

Jenkins proposes a set of new media skills:

PLAY – the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
PERFORMANCE- the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
SIMULATION – the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
APPROPRIATION – the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
MULTITASKING – the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details
DISTRIBUTED COGNITION – the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE - the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
JUDGMENT – the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
TRANSMEDIA NAVIGATION – the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
NETWORKING – the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information
NEGOTIATION – the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms
VISUALIZATION - the ability to interpret and create data representations for the purposes of expressing ideas, finding patterns, and identifying trend

Convergence and the Crossroads of the Book, Movie and Electronic Game

Transmedia storytelling is a recent addition to new media discussion that shifts the emphasis to the social implications of creating and consuming media. This year, I resumed teaching middle school language arts. I’m excited about delving into the convergence of the book, movie and electronic game. As a digital storyteller/teacher, I think there’s much to be gained by helping students identify narrative elements across these and other media. I’m glad to see transmedia navigation on Jenkins’ list.

From transmediastoryteller.com -

“Transmedia storytelling” is telling a story across multiple media and preferably, although it doesn’t always happen, with a degree of audience participation, interaction or collaboration.

In transmedia storytelling, engagement with each successive media heightens the audience’ understanding, enjoyment and affection for the story. To do this successfully, the embodiment of the story in each media needs to be satisfying in its own right while enjoyment from all the media should be greater than the sum of the parts.”

Inanimate Alice

From http://www.inanimatealice.com/education/

“Inanimate Alice’ is easily assimilated into learning environments; its use of multimodality (images, sounds, text, interaction) enables students to see storytelling in a new, multi-sensory light. ‘Inanimate Alice’ is a new media fiction that allows students to develop multiple literacies (literary, cinematic, artistic, etc.) in combination with the highly collaborative and participatory nature of the online environment.”

While the episodes of this series do not extend beyond the Flash-based media it’s presented in, I still feel it is one of the best exemplars of the need for transmedia navigation.

Be sure to take a look at the work of Pascoe Vale Elementary School and their students’ use of Inanimate Alice.

]]> http://www.teachstory.org/?feed=rss2&p=535 0 http://www.teachstory.org/?p=437 http://www.teachstory.org/?p=437#comments Mon, 31 May 2010 09:45:30 +0000 Tom Banaszewski http://www.teachstory.org/?p=437 The graphic novel may only take a third of the usual time to read compared to a traditional novel, but that doesn’t mean students get one third of the message of a story. Some stories are just easier to comprehend in a condensed graphic format. The graphic novel Palestine is a perfect example. While not all parts of Joe Sacco’s tale of the Middle East conflict are suitable for the classroom, this graphic novel provided me with excellent excerpts that illustrated key points of tension and disconnect still present in the region.

Classical Comics’ version of MacBeth is a great example of an additional path to understanding Shakespeare. Graphic novel versions of classic stories are not substitutes for reading the original text. I think of them as bridges. If a graphic novel can open the door to Sherlock Holmes, Shakespeare, Greek mythology and much more then it will always have a place in my classroom.

Even though the Cartoon History series isn’t really a graphic novel, I’ve used several sections of these when I taught middle school History and found they were a challenging read for students. When we talk about a need to teach students to read information provided in a variety of formats, graphic novels are an excellent vehicle for practicing this.

Bill Boyd’s blog The Literacy Adivser has a valuable set of reviewed graphic novels/comics/picture books along with a list of glossary terms for graphic novels.

With the rise of electronic entertainment, we are seeing games reach a very prominent status in everyday life. Modern culture is increasingly dominated by electronics, and the new games that electronics have made possible are compelling creations that suck away huge amounts of time. At such a time of adjustment, it’s a good idea to go back to the roots of games, and think about why they exist in every human culture, why children of all ages play them, and what important role they play in the development of our brains. – From Raph Koster’s Theory of Fun

I’ve been to a lot of conferences. And most of them are often disappointing because the presenters are not effective public speakers or the workshop sessions do not really match the description in the conference program. This conference was different. I left inspired to teach with games and with a long list of valuable resources. More importantly, I left with important ideas to share with colleagues and not just a laundry list of links to add to my delicious account. The research around the role of electronic games in learning continues to expand. MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech (GO JACKETS!) Indiana and Wisconsin Universities all recognize that computer games can add to our explorations of determining what works in our classrooms. What’s often misunderstood by many parents and teachers is that there’s a HUGE difference between the games Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty and games such as Civilization, Animal Crossing, Little Big Planet and MYST.

The WOW STUFF: Carnegie Mellon Professor Jesse Schell’s talk. Create situations for students that demand SHARING of ideas, talents, skill-sets. Replace grading system with an Experience Point system. Similar to how video games are structured, students earn points and level-up by completing assignments and tasks. No gray area for how you’re doing in the class.

Gaming Literacy. Ewen McIntosh’s talk. Gaming is its own literacy, part of the New Media literacies. There is a growing chasm between schools that continue the entrenched model of teaching to the test and those that recognize a need to spend more time clarifying what does it mean to be literate in the Digital Age.

Games that support writing development. As an English teacher and digital storytelling facilitator, I’m interested in the grammar of not only quality literature, but also that cross-section between literature, movies and now games. What literacies do we develop by interacting with a game version of a classic novel? By deconstructing a movie, graphic novel or game version of the Odyssey? By creating our own version or a choose your own adventure game version? Tim Rylands has been touring the UK schools showing teachers and students how to use the classic game MYST to spark creative writing as well many other a few other games-based writing projects. There’s a lot potential in the using the Choose Your Own Adventure story model for engaging reluctant writers. I plan to test out a few ideas where students create interactive fiction/CYOA stories using either iWeb, Wikispaces or an online tool that allows you to then make your story available via the iTunes store to be played/read on the iTouch/Phone/Pad.

Scotland’s Consolarium. Maybe because it’s much smaller compared to the UK and US that this country is able to convince so many of their schools that games-based learning is effective practice. The Consolarium site documents clearly the work they’ve accomplished and makes it accessible to all teachers via their national intranet. Spend a few minutes checking out their Sharing Practice section and you’ll get a sense of what “games-based learning” means in a classroom context. Ollie Bray and Derek Robertson were excellent representatives and speakers on the work of the Consolarium. Be sure to invite them to your next edu-tech conference!

Games and Simulations. We’ve come a long way since Oregon Trail, Math Blasters and Carmen San Diego. Or have we? Tom Snyder Productions was the pioneer in the US in this field. The Decisions, Decisions series is still one of the most effective pieces of educational technology software I’ve used in my nearly twenty years of teaching. But they are no longer in business. In their place are companies like Playgen.com that allow free access to their web-based simulations or “serious games” in hopes you’ll hire them to develop a simulation for your company, school or learning need.

TOOLS for making your own games. It keeps getting easier, but that doesn’t mean students are making better games. The same principle applies to Powerpoint presentations, digital stories, podcasts, short films – kids need plenty of practice to proficiently produce anything that makes sense. In addition to programming /game-making tools like Scratch and Alice, you can now use the game engines Unity or Platinum Sandbox. The XBox even has an easy tool for making games – Kodu. Looking forward to testing that out. 2DIY is another set of game-making tools. The Nintendo DS now has a Do It Yourself game-maker called WarioWare.

There’s much more to review here, but for me it was the ideas that I took away that are most important to share. Two of them resonated with me: James Huggins of Made in Me reminded us that too often the emphasis is on the relationship of the child to the software instead of encouraging the child’s relationship with the natural world. His Land of Me game provided an engaging story development tool that then provides items the child can print out that encourages play based on what was created in the game.

The second idea, more an observation of schools’ resistance to adopting practices that clearly work for children, was related to Dorothy Heathcote’s drama in education legacy. For close to fifty years, her work has engaged children in nearly all environments. She’s proven that drama is a powerful tool for helping students achieve meaningful learning, yet drama in education is still only included in 25% of our schools – maybe less. In twenty-five years, will this be the same attitude of games-based learning?

And now the games.

• Farmville – Facebook game that raised over $1 million for Haiti earth quake repairs (yes, there is some controversy too).
• Little Big Planet – PS3 game that has over 2 million user-generated levels from people all over the world
• UK Channel 4 History Games – Trafalgar Origins, Bow Street Runner and 1066 are web-based
• Routes to Better Science – Great set of games and even better mystery to unravel using your science clues
• Nintendo DS Games being used in schools – Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training, Professor Layton

• Games for Health Education? Lots of ‘em online. Smokescreen is much more than a game.
• Scribble Nauts – Anything your imagination can dream up.
• JASON science explorations – All connected to the huge success of the JASON project
• MIT & Singapore Labs Collaboration
• Games for Change – Can electronic games really save the planet?
• National Geographic Games
• Game Review – I use these to help teach students how to write a critique of a game.
• Video games with an agenda – Great examples
• Learning Chinese characters via a game in Korean?
• 221B – The Game is Afoot! Sherlock Holmes actually never says this in any of the stories, but maybe in this game.
• Playing History – Great collection of educational games reviewed by many teachers and students
• Quest Atlantis – Science journeys backed with lots of research

A few other reviews of the conference from other attendees: Dawn Hallybone , Ben Betts

Check Teach Me This for more games-based learning resources.

What do you think? Add your thoughts in the comments.

1. Download this video clip .

2. Open GarageBand and Create a New Project, select Loops.

3. Drag the video clip into the GarageBand project (if you get an error message, just ignore it).

4. Use GarageBand’s many sound loops and effects to create the soundtrack for the video clip.

Download this Pages file and interrogate your main character.

Try one of these Story Templates to get started. They are Pages files. Download and open in Pages.

• Story Template 1
• Story Template 2
• Story Template 3
• Story Template 4