Reluctant Media Participant

I am a twenty-eight year old person who had the internet in high school, video games as a child, and e-mail as a college student and yet I find that rather than being pulled into the vast worlds that are available in the internet age I have resisted a large online presence. This is my first participation in a blog. I am not on Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter. I have never played a Sims game or loaded a video onto YouTube, however I have been challenged to think about the ways that media literacy can effectively be taught in the classroom and how libraries can support this instruction. I looked at some of the elements that I felt could fit a variety of media platforms as a way of bridging the gap between my lack of media experience with the task of working with students in this very realm.

Some of the characteristics that Jenkins attributes to the informal learning that accompanies participation in popular culture is the experimental and innovative aspects. There is a lot of space for exploration and participation that is not always encouraged in traditional classrooms. This asset to media literacy allows for a lot of trial and error and risks without the drama of a failed test. The participants are challenged to question the very core of the game and to take chances with their understandings and expectations. As a best practice for cultivating media literacy, this freedom in the exploration should be encouraged and celebrated.

Another aspect of media literacy education is knowing the student population. Will the students have the equipment and access to effectively carry out a media-based assignment? Does the school have the resources to support an aggressively media centered educational initiative? I worked in a school where students struggled to supply their own pencils, paper and an adequate lunch, so media education will need to be creatively implemented during class time or with the school's computer lab. Jenkins examines the challenges of students who have their primary media experience in the classroom. These students rely on the teacher or other students to learn skills that others students have already learned at home. The educator must be carefully navigate the wide range of skill levels and acknowledge the different levels have more to do with experience than effort.

An important aspect of media literacy and the educational practices that support it is the critical examination of sources. Marlee Asselin in her article entitled "Towards a Transformative Pedagogy for School Libraries 2.0" encourages educators to cultivate student's ability to deeply and critically evaluate information by asking the questions of "what is credible?" and "who decides?" She remarks that many times students' information is found by a quick Google search and then scanning the first search option listed. Students need to be aware that these items found in search results have various levels of commercialism, credibility, and relevance to their intended topic. A huge part of best practices for media literacy is teaching students how to identify and evaluate the information that is presented. As internet resources continue to expand both in quantity and quality, Jenkins argues that new sources will make huge strides in credibility. For example, Wikipedia has been found to be roughly as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica, but lacks the same credibility as the established resource. Renee Hobbs in her article in the American Behavioral Scientist also identified critical maturity and self-confidence when judging texts as a tool that can be applied to media education on a world wide scale. As students continue to be bombarded with texts, images, videos, and audio files they must learn to identify the sources and biases within the information in order to effectively navigate a media saturated world.

Once students have the skills to critically evaluate information, the possibilities and benefits of networking and negotiation in an online environment will be even more apparent. Jenkins defines networking as the ability to "sample and distill multiple, independent perspectives" (Jenkins 2006, 51) as well as the ability to navigate social networking sites in an effective manner. These spaces offer a place for students to share their work with a community and allows the community to respond to the student's ideas. Both aspects of networking are used in this process as the student must wade through multiple perspectives and share their ideals in a social environment.

All in all, the writings of Jenkins, Hobbs, and Asselin have identified skills that students need in order to effectively navigate the media world. Best practices for media literacy should include activities that allow students the freedom to experiment, innovate, and critically examine texts so that they will be able to fully participate in the changing landscape of the public life.

Aussie Internet Filter

Although I realize our discussion on internet fair use and censorship is a couple weeks away, an article caught my eye this week in the Associated Press: US concerned by Australian Internet filter plan. It talks about Australia’s plan to impose a countrywide filter on the internet that would exclude websites containing child pornography, sexual violence and criminal drug use. The filter would be constantly updated based on recommendations and public complaints. Numerous companies (such as Google and Yahoo) as well as the U.S. government have voiced their concern over this action that could become law later this year if the Australian Parliament approves it.

The idea of a national filter imposed by a democratic government shocked me when I initially heard the story. But as I began to think about it, I realized that we are not far from this standard, especially when it comes down to America’s public institutions. Although we have weeks dedicated to the reading of banned books, many schools and libraries think nothing of filtering the internet. Schools and libraries often have internet filters in order to prevent students and patrons from accessing “unsavory” webpages and information. However, even with the most positive of intentions, these filters often block users from accessing information that may not be so heinous. The issue I find with internet filters is that often the first intention often snowballs, so that once one keyword or site is blocked, it is much easier to continue the process. In the elementary district where I work, the filters originally started by blocking sites with profanity, nudity and sex. I’m sure that it stemmed from a desire to shield our youth from images and words that were deemed beyond their maturity level. However, in recent years, the district began filtering many web 2.0 sites including Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. While its true that some of these sites may contain questionable content, the main reason that these sites were blocked was because they were seen as “timewasters.” It seems to me that once censorship starts, it is difficult to contain it.

While I don’t deny that child pornography, sexual violence and criminal drug use should be condemned, is it right to censor and filter our link to the web? It would seem to me that if websites are breaking the law by posting such things that the authors of these pages would be prosecuted and the sites shut down anyway. I realize that with the complexity and vastness of the internet, that policing the World Wide Web cannot be an efficient task. Perhaps it is much easier to simply block keywords across the board. However, the easiest path is not always the most logical one. What are we truly teaching kids when we block their searches at school? Is it simply to just wait until they get home and retry on an unblocked and unsupervised computer? If we as educators and librarians do not get the chance to teach our patrons and students proper use, who will?

I will most certainly be following this story, because it will truly have huge ramifications for the democratic world if legislation passes. I also hope that as the U.S. government stands ready to condemn this action that they in turn take a look at what our public institutions already have in practice. Perhaps it is time that we take a look inward.

Comics and Game-Related Collection Development and Programming Resources for Librarians

A few resources to get you started....Remember to look back on our class notes slides on Moodle for links to other relevant sites.

Comics-Related

Mike Lavin at the University of Buffalo has a great starting point for information about comics. Here you can find resources to broaden your understanding of the history of comics as well as links to best-selling comics and reviews for librarians.

The Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin also maintains a comics-related resource page that lists articles, links to review sites, and names titles useful for collection development.

If you're interested in more historically-focused information on comics, you can't beat the New York Public Library's Comic Books Research Guide.

Games-Related

Although it was included in the readings for gaming, Scott Nicholson's Games in Libraries links to useful information on all aspects of gaming.

It's brief, but this Library Journal blog post offers a good rationale for collecting and programming with games in libraries.

Check out this New York school library system's game library website for a rationale, ties to learning standards, and more.

--Carol

The Creepiest (Humorous) Children's Books Ever

I thought that some of you might find this slideshow called The Creepiest Children's Books Ever humorous. I think the title is a bit misleading as not all of the books are creepy but rather quite funny instead.

Teaching in a Brave New World

Earlier this year, a student sent me this thought-provoking cartoon comparison of the the dystopian visions of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, based on the writings of culture-critic Neil Postman. We discussed it in my senior English class after reading M.T. Anderson’s Feed. In our discussion, students themselves questioned the impact on society of our increased engagement with electronic media and some wondered if they themselves weren’t as “smart” as a result (several gave the example of having trouble with simple math as a result of their reliance on calculators). While they (and I) weren’t saying that we should toss out all our computers and iPods and cell phones and GPS systems, it does make me wonder how to use all of this to our benefit and not to our eventual destruction (not to be too dramatic about it).

So how do we avoid Huxley’s Brave New World? One way, I think, is to realize what the new media can and can’t do. As the Jenkins article suggests, the new media has created a more participatory culture. This has the potential to combat the lack of engagement and “voice” young people often feel in society and as citizens; if they feel like they are empowered, this could encourage them to keep up with current events, for example, more so than the young people of previous generations. As Jenkins also points out, however, the obstacles to this include not only the digital divide, which enables some young people greater access to this participatory culture than others, but also the “transparency problem”: students can access information more readily, but need help analyzing it independently. Young people, according to Jenkins, judge credibility of information, for example, predominately on format and design as opposed to analysis of the content itself. In general, Jenkins points out that these new literacies add to, don’t replace, traditional literacies. He writes, “Before students can engage with the new participatory culture, they must learn to read and write.” He notes that students need reading and writing skills as well as research skills and technical skills in order to fully utilize the potential benefits of the new literacies.

Other writers seem to gloss over these pre-conditions to successful engagement with new media. In Dr. Ross J. Todd’s article, “Youth and Their Virtual Networked Worlds: Research Findings and Implications for School Libraries” in the July 2008 issue of School Libraries Worldwide, Todd initially acknowledges that young people have been given too much credit for mastery of the new media. Todd writes, “According to Jenkins, as reported by Baer, on the Digital natives blog at Harvard University (2007), labels such as ‘digital immigrants’ and ‘digital natives’ increasingly oversimplify and overexaggerate generational differences, and indeed, convey the assumption that young people have innate digital skills.” Todd also cites research that concluded, “that despite increased access to information technology and information sources electronically, behaviours that predate the Web continue to persist.” In other words, students continue to underutilize advanced search options and fail to consider “relevance, accuracy and authority of information," both of which are to their detriment in accessing information. In general, Todd points out that the “Google generation” is no better at research than those who came before them. In doing so, Todd seems to be acknowledging the same needs that Jenkins does for traditional literacies.

However, Todd goes on in his articles to champion the learning potential of social networking, encouraging librarians to rethink the library as a “knowledge commons” as opposed to an “information place.” He argues that young people’s new facility with social networking should shift our focus from students as information consumers to students as knowledge creators. While on the surface, I agree with his enthusiasm for the creative potential of social networking, Todd seems to suggest that students are either information consumers OR knowledge creators, something with which I strongly disagree. I would argue instead, as I think Jenkins does, that in order to create knowledge, in order to have something to share in this participatory culture, students still need to be informed. And, in order to be informed, students need traditional literacies.

The Rice University online media guides we looked at this week for class are great tools, but without traditional literacies, I don’t know how I could get my students to locate them and read them. If we REPLACE our focus on traditional literacies with these new media literacies, our students will not be better prepared for their 21st century lives, as Todd argues, but unable to fully utilize all that their 21st century lives have to offer. The goal, as Jenkins argues, needs to be adding the new to the old and finding how the two can enhance each other. Recently, I was in the library with my honors level American Studies class. One asked if she could ask the librarian if the school library had any books on her research topic. While I was happy to let her do so, I asked first if she had checked the online catalog yet. She had not and, as it turned out, did not know how to do so. She had been at the high school since freshman year. The librarians do a wonderful job, put together excellent electronic resource lists for topics, subscribe to excellent databases, and yet students often miss the best resources because of their poor research skills. In addition to research skills, students’ ability to create with technology is also impaired by poor reading and critical thinking skills. Using iMovie, for example, requires patience, logic, and reading directions to become familiar with it, something which students in our information-rich era don’t seem to be lacking. No one entity at school is in charge of teaching these skills; students receive them piecemeal in their classes, in library visits, but without a clearly articulated vision of where/when/what learning targets/goals are to be achieved and why. With so many choices and so much information, we don’t seem any smarter.

While Todd invokes Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World as a counterpoint to what he envisions as the wonderful opportunity for school librarians to connect to students, he glosses over how we will avoid this fate. Huxley’s fears that giving us so much information will, in Neil Postman’s words, “drown the truth in a sea of irrelevance,” don’t have to become reality. We must not rush to the new media, however, as the answer to all our educational woes, but rather as another tool, one which can only be utilized successfully in conjunction with traditional literacies like reading, writing, and critical thinking.

Is the Media the Message?

After watching Scott McCloud’s talk at the TED conference in 2004, I can’t stop thinking about the ideas he talked about, and how they may apply to libraries. McCloud and other comic book artists are heavily invested in print media—and as he discusses in his talk, everything about a comic, from using panels to present time frame, to using left-right tracking to create storyline, exist because of adaptations creators made to allow comics to fit into the specific media of paper, newspaper, and eventually books.

Libraries, too, are heavily invested in print media. Librarians value print media, specifically books, but also newspapers and magazines, as privileged information sources with good reason. They are durable and portable, go through a vetting and editorial process to ensure their content quality, and have served as the cornerstone of thought and learning for generations. But as McCloud points out, with new media come new opportunities and challenges. For comic artists, this meant discovering that you couldn’t plop print-based comics directly into electronic screens, add sound & interactivity, and expect it to act in the intended ways. He discusses how the linear, time frame based panels start to lose cohesiveness if you take readers out of the in-text timeline by introducing outside media.

To me, this is a fabulous metaphor for what many people (and libraries) are struggling with in using and applying new media—oftentimes we want to plop existing content in its existing form into these new channels. But to really be meaningful, the content needs to be re-conceived in new ways that are specifically designed to exploit the benefits of that new media.

To clarify this a bit, I’d like to take a look at what McCloud says, then discuss some examples. And along the way, I will trace some questions that I had as I listened to his talk. McCloud talks about “a McLuhenesque mistake” that many people make when looking at new technology. This mistake is to appropriate the shape of a previous technology as the content of new technology. Not being super familiar with Marshall McLuhen , I decided to try to look up some of his thoughts to see if I could clarify this for myself a bit more. From Wikipedia, McLuhen, perhaps most famous for the ideas of “global village” and “the medium is the message,” was a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a communications theorist (interestingly, he was also a tutor and friend to Walter Ong, who wrote about the imperiousness of literacy in our of our class readings). In The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, he wrote about how communication technology (from alphabetic writing to printing press to electronic media) affects cognitive organization (a la Proust and the Squid maybe?) and hence social organization.

He wrote in the 1960s about how individualistic print culture would eventually be brought to an end by “electronic interdependence” where electronic media replaces visual culture with aural/oral culture, coming full circle from the much earlier movement form oral to print. I’m guessing that where McCloud differs from McLuhan is in McLuhan’s assertions in Understanding Media (1964), that media itself, and not the messages it carries, should be the focus of study (hence “the medium is the message”).

For McCloud, the medium seems to be only useful as a way by which to more clearly, fluidly, and naturally to pass the message in a way that it can be received by others. I tend to agree with McCloud on this, that it is the content that should be valued. However, I find that quite a few librarians and teachers disagree with me on this, as we heavily value the medium of books. Can the content gotten from a web site really be as valuable or confirmable as the information gotten from a book? What do we lose in a generation of kids that gets their primary information from the Web instead of from books?

These questions are of real concern to librarians and teachers, as I think they should be. Books are valuable, precisely because of the process by which they are created, vetted, edited, and scrutinized. These same processes have not necessarily built up around digital media and web sites. And in the places that they do exist, such as online journals, the information has become so guarded, locked down, difficult to access, and poorly manipulated , that it becomes extremely difficult to use. But I think this proves McCloud’s point. It really isn’t the specific media that necessarily defines the quality of the information, but rather it is the surrounding processes that ensure the quality. And since much of the web doesn’t have these processes built in, it is much more suspect and susceptible to inaccuracies. On the other hand, though, online databases suffer from the opposite problem, the one that McCloud points out. They have appropriated the shape of the previous media (bound print journals) that have to be subscribed to, are limited to libraries and academics, etc. and carried these ideas over as content. I’m not saying they haven’t had good reasons to do this, but it does lead to many problems, including: young people find these databases difficult, inscrutable, not helpful, and hence will go to media such as Google or Wikipedia instead, which have succeeded in making content accessible and usable.

McCloud talks about finding a “durable mutation” in comics to allow for staying power that will marry both form and content in usable, helpful ways. I wonder how this will play out in online representations of information.

These ideas crosses over to ways in which teens interact with media for pleasure as well. I am interested in researching video games, and for me they have really come to represent a new means by which rich storytelling goes on. Without comparing the quality or value of the stories in games versus books, I’d like to just look at some differences in the media. I think games are attractive to so many because they are immersive stories. A game player is not only receiving a story, but is acting within the story, making choices, manipulating the world, solving puzzles, and determining the course of the plotline. To me this is an example of a place where the content was valued, and the media was exploited to full extent in order to support and extend the content.

Now, I’m not saying that the quality of video game storytelling is necessarily as accomplished as that within books. I don’t think it is (yet), as it is a new and developing form that is currently more focused on profitability than artistic accomplishment. However, I do think it has the potential to be extremely high quality and an extremely valuable experience for people who interact with games. However, historically we as librarians have placed extreme value on books, and excluded other media, from TV to movies to games. I understand the range of reasons for this, and I have heard the arguments, and I even myself believe that the media of print and writing is extremely important for success in today’s society. However, I also wonder if we as librarians and educators shouldn’t be thinking about what our youth will need for the world of the future as well. Have we so privileged the “shape” or the “media” that we have started to forget about or neglect content, especially if it doesn’t come in the preferred form?

Another Reluctant Gamer Comes Around

Much of what Sarah posted (Reluctant Gamer, March 14) resonated with me. Video games have long seemed pointless to me. Shooting and avoiding being shot, or moving to the next level, just don’t hold much interest for me. The whole language of using up one or more of your given “lives” has no appeal. But, like Sarah, I am slowly but surely coming to see that there is more to gaming than shooting and fighting and that there might be some fun, and yes, even some value, in playing video games—at least some of them.

Part of my resistance to video games comes from my essential non-competitiveness. I really don’t much enjoy beating people, and because my exposure to video games has consisted almost entirely of listening to people (most often my sons) playing shoot-em-up and fighting games, my impression of video games has been one of violence and fierce competition.

Another source of resistance is that I’m just not physically quick enough to play many of these games. I can’t react fast enough with the little buttons or joystick, I’m vaguely embarrassed at how bad I am at it, and I don’t have the time to play them over and over until I can get good at them.

I am aware, of course, that there are games that aren’t violent and don’t require shooting, such as Oregon Trail, Sim City, The Sims, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Portal, and now Spore. And I can see where they might be more fun for me, but by the time I was aware of such games, I no longer had the time or inclination to learn and play them.

I also was fascinated by Will Wright’s demonstration of his game, and I can imagine I might enjoy playing it (again, if I could only find the time) and I can see where kids might learn from playing it, which has gotten me thinking about why and how video games could be viewed as educational tools, or at least as not being brain-draining, creativity-sapping, time-wasting traps, which is pretty much how I have viewed most video games in the past.

Why might learning about evolution and long-term thinking be more likely to happen from playing Spore than from studying those topics in school? Why would kids prefer to learn about the difficulties of opening the frontier by playing Oregon Trail than by hearing a lecture or reading a book? Because playing Spore or Oregon Trail is fun, of course. And what makes it fun? It’s fun because it’s play. The essence of play according to the Wikipedia article that we read, is that it is both voluntary and intrinsically motivated. I’m willing to accept that this is an excellent definition of play. Something that a young person does willingly will naturally be more successful than something he or she is required to do. I think this principle also explains, at least in part, why attempts to introduce games, whether video games, role-playing games or board games, into classrooms are sometimes not very successful. When a teacher requires students to play a game, it immediately stops being play; it is no longer voluntary or intrinsically motivated.

This concept of intrinsic motivation also underlies Maria Montessori’s method of teaching. She understood that children love to play and that they can and will learn from playing, especially if they are offered high-quality materials in a carefully prepared environment. The Montessori “method”, in my view, is not so much a method, which implies rules and certain steps to be taken, as an approach or way of thinking. She believed that children inherently want to learn and make sense of their world and are remarkably capable of doing that on their own if provided with the tools to do it and the freedom to do it at their own pace.

This belief about how children learn was echoed by John Holt, a teacher and school reform advocate who eventually became a radical advocate of unschooling. He wrote passionately about the ability of children to learn on their own. He believed that: “Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.” In his view, education is more about allowing children to discover than about teaching them what we have decided they ought to know.

I believe that both Maria Montessori and John Holt would have liked Will Wright’s Spore. This game provides children with a chance to learn by engaging in an activity they choose simply because it is interesting to them.

I want to note, also, that I think it is significant that the definition of “play” that I am using here does not include the word “easy”. I can imagine someone reading what I have written so far and thinking that learning can’t always be easy, can’t be all fun and games, and that sometimes it takes good old-fashioned effort to learn something. I agree. My point has more to do with the voluntariness of learning and the motivation for learning. Although I don’t think I could advocate an immediate and complete abandonment of the public school system, I do think that the more that children are trusted to guide their own learning, and move at their own pace, and learn by the methods that they know work best for them, the more they will learn, and the more quickly they will learn. And for that reason, I would hope that parents and teachers alike might maintain an open mind about the possibility that children are not just wasting time when they play video games and about the possibility that they might be learning the skills they need to learn when they choose to play games.

What's all the Twitter about?

Just before classes began this year, I decided to try out Twitter. I’d heard about it for some time, yet kept putting it off. I don’t use my phone for internet/email access, and still don’t (gasp! I know! So outdated!) So I Twitter from the web (using TweetDeck right now – free software, though you can just use Twitter.com). My attitude was quite dismissive about the whole thing. Twitter? Microblogging? Really? So much of what I heard was negative. Yet there seemed to be more and more positive uses of it. At the fall conference of the Ohio Association for Gifted Children, attendees were encouraged to try out Twitter as several organizations in the gifted and education communities were using it. I had the same dismissive attitude toward Facebook before I began using it, and now I love it. I think this is a common initial response in most humans when faced with a new technology: rejection. Do we really need something else? Why? But could I be wrong about Twitter? Was I missing something?

So I jumped in. And it took a while, as most things do, but the more I use Twitter, the more worthwhile it becomes. I have several communities on Twitter : the gifted education community, social media related sites, especially those dealing with education, the library and book lovers community, the Jane Austen fans . My “celebrities” are Mo Willem’s Pigeon (yes, the Pigeon tweets) and halfpintingalls (whose tweets are in the persona of Laura Ingalls Wilder.) There are also a few personal friends, but for the most part my friends are on Facebook, and my colleagues are on Twitter – so Twitter has ended up being the more professional site for me. Quite recently the local school district started tweeting, so I decided to follow them. I was a bit surprised when they decided to follow me! It is always a little surprising, sometimes flattering, sometimes not, when someone decides to follow you. It is a good reminder that your tweets are public. Just like anything else, you need to think before you tweet. You can protect your tweets so that you decide who can follow you, but this doesn’t seem very friendly to me. This did lead me to reflect more and to start a different Twitter account for the educational support group that I’m involved with, which has been good for helping me to organize my interests .
One of the best things about Twitter is that tweets are limited to only 140 characters. Why is this good? You can quite quickly peruse a long list of items and choose those that sound most interesting to explore further. Often there are links to more information/articles, etc. So what good stuff has been tweeted lately? Here is a sampling from the past week of some tweets that seem particularly relevant to libraries and media literacy.

Social Media Best Practices for Libraries: http://ow.ly/1nWmf from Tame the Web: Libraries, Technology and People. This looks like a great blog, bookmarked using Diigo (if you haven’t tried it, I love this bookmarking tool – allows you to highlight and put post-it style notes on webpages: www.diigo.com). This site has many other posts of interests that I want to come back to explore (quickly scanning I see “use social media to connect with teens”, “digital natives”,” the library tweets “ and more.)

How about 9 Great Reasons Teachers Should Use Twitter?

From James Mitchie (. . . a 21st century educator)’s blog, a post on Reading and Twitter: A Crowd-sourced Twitter Discussion about Getting Kids to Read. He writes openly and passionately about his core beliefs in getting high school kids to value reading and proposes the use of the #edread hashtag on Twitter and asks for collaboration on this project. If you want to check in on how it’s going, look here: http://jamesmichie.blogspot.com/p/edread.html

In the New York Times, an article on Reading and the Web, “Texts without Contexts”
I have recently thought of the idea of “cyberbalkanization” but didn’t know what to call it. This article describes it happening when “Individuals can design feeds and alerts from their favorite Web sites so that they get only the news they want, and with more and more opinion sites and specialized sites, it becomes easier and easier, as Mr. Sunstein observes in his 2009 book “Going to Extremes,” for people “to avoid general-interest newspapers and magazines and to make choices that reflect their own predispositions.” I’ve observed it on Facebook – I choose to receive news from NPR, the Christian Science Monitor, and updates from UNICEF, the Children’s Defense Fund, ALA & ALSC. What does my news look like? How about some of my “friends” whose feeds are from Fox News and such? How do the sites we choose to follow, those we select to appear on our news feeds, shape our thinking? How does this shape our view of the world and who we are? Are our choices more limited? What happens to serendipity?

I mentioned Diigo before, and here is what an article I bookmarked this morning, after learning of it on Twitter, looks like:
Young Learners Need Librarians, Not Just Google - Forbes.com
• In addition to learning how to phrase a search query, students need to learn how to protect themselves online, and how to share their work through wikis, videos, and other interactive media. Without a dedicated guide, they end up, in the words of professor Henry Jenkins, as "feral children of the Internet raised by the Web 2.0 wolves."

Feral children of the Internet – wow! Okay librarians, we’re still needed!

Want to give Twitter a try? I'm bkmuse7. Follow me and I'll follow you!

Why not try giving them a shot in the classroom?

While I now appreciate the complexities of comics and graphic novels it wasn’t until recently that I truly became aware of the advanced art. As a child I came across Calvin and Hobbes every so often in the Sunday paper, but never knew anything beyond the mutiple genres that I’m aware of today. Looking back I cannot help but think about the learning experiences that I missed by being unaware of these types of works.

Just like many of my new media interests, my appreciation stems from conversations with students over the last few years. More and more, I’ve seen kids engaged in graphic novels and comics between classes and sometimes, yes, even in class. When asked if reading for school or pleasure the response is typically, “for pleasure”. Of course, this answer would excite any educator (maybe not if the reading took place during class). More so, it provides the opportunity to consider the value of integrating such sources in the classroom.

As educators, whether in a school, library or other information setting, it is our responsibility to try to find ways to meet students’ interests. With increased popularity of comics and graphic novels we have the chance to tap into students’ interests and engage them in new ways of understanding and interpreting the world. That’s right; comics and graphic novels can foster critical thinking!

As some may question the legitimacy of graphic novels and comics in this era dominated by standardized testing, which tests traditional texts, we must consider the benefits of such nontraditional sources to prove these skeptics wrong. As Carol Tilley presents in Reading Comics, these works, just like standard text, share certain structural elements. These elements make comics and graphic novels unique, complex literatures, which entail special skills to read and navigate. These components demand students to have “conversations” with the text and engage in a more active way that requires students to make predictions, connections and inferences. For many students, when confronted with traditional text, these tasks seem daunting but because of increased interest in comics/graphic novels, as well as the openness they seem to create, the tasks become less threatening. As students develop these skills with comics and graphic novels they will transfer such abilities to understanding other types of literature and mediums of information. Although this should not be used as a sole motivator or reason for using graphic novels and comics in the classroom it does provide an important consideration and justification for skeptics.

Although using graphic novels and comics in the classroom may not help ALL students, they especially provide opportunities for struggling readers and English language learners, a growing group in American schools. Curiosity about this led me to the article Using Graphic Novels, Anime, and the Internet in an Urban High School by Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher. The case presented here explored a group of struggling readers and ELL students in an impoverished San Diego high school. With the goal to design an illustrated story, the teachers involved used graphic novels as a tool to engage students in the writing process. The instructors believed that “the limited amount of text would allow students to read and respond to complex messages with text that better matched their reading levels.” Their predictions certainly ended up being correct. As student engaged with the graphic novels the instructors were able to build discussion centering on skills such as determining tone and mood, as well as vocabulary/word choice, sentence structure, and, overall, ways of expressing an idea. Using these discussions and mini-lessons for scaffolding, the instructors were able to get students to produce works that went beyond their reading/writing level—quite a difficult feat. I'd recommend that article to understand the actual process and for ideas about integrating graphic novels in your classroom.

Examples like the one stated above are not unique. As I mentioned, I have been trying to incorporate comics and graphic novels increasingly in the classroom. So far, I’ve used them to help in student understanding of the Neolithic Revolution, political revolutions, and the Holocaust. As we promote student learning we must consider all resources available. A graphic novel or a comic can quite possibly serve as impetus for student inquiry, understanding and success. Why not try giving them a shot in the classroom?

Librariantics and Manga/Anime Reviews

None of the following is my work, but a classmate of mine in Fantasy Literature and Media for Youth created it as an intro to manga and anime for newbies, and he gave me permission to post it here in response to the post about comics' and pop culture's roles in promoting reading. The author is Ted Anderson, and he also just recently started a blog, Librariantics, where he's also intending to review manga and anime series (here's the first, for Peach Girl). He is extremely knowledgeable about this form, so his blog is worth a look!

TED’S ANIME AND MANGA COURSES

Level 101: What’s with the big eyes?
Cowboy Bebop (anime) Action. Some violence and nudity. Teens and up.
Bounty hunters in the year 2071 make their way across the solar system, hunting criminals and running away from their various tragic pasts. Regarded as one of the greatest anime of all time, and the series that got Ted into anime in the first place. Highly recommended. (Also by the same crew, and also highly recommended, the series Samurai Champloo, about wandering samurai in 17th-century Japan set to a hip-hop soundtrack, and the series Michiko and Hatchin, about a fugitive femme fatale and the daughter she gave up ten years ago on the run in South America.)

Yotsuba&! (manga) Comedy, slice-of-life. Nothing objectionable. All ages.
Five-year-old girl Yotsuba has an insatiable love of life and boundless energy, and her infectious curiosity pulls in everyone around her. Effortlessly charming and wonderfully drawn.

Ranma 1/2 (manga and anime) Romantic comedy. Mild violence and nudity, both mostly comedic. Teens and up.
Probably one of the most famous anime exports of all time, Ranma 1/2 follows Ranma Saotome, who has the unfortunate curse of transforming into a girl when splashed with cold water, and back to a guy when splashed with hot water. Very hilarious, completely over-the-top (ever seen figure skating turned into a martial art? how about flower arranging? or tea ceremony?).

Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind (manga and anime movie) Sci-fi, drama. Violence, nudity, dense philosophical musings. Teens and up.
This manga was written and drawn by Hayao Miyazaki, whose Ghibli Studio also produces some of the best-known (and just plain best) anime films of the past twenty years. Centuries after the Earth has been poisoned by man’s wars, the few remaining civilizations eke out a living at the edges of freakish jungles populated by gigantic insects. And when one of those civilizations gets their hands on some of the weapons that almost destroyed the human race the first time, it’s up to the princess Nausicaa to save the world. Gorgeous artwork and heady musings on life, nature, and war make a fantastic combination.

Lovely Complex (manga and anime) Romantic comedy. Nothing objectionable. Tweens and up.
Risa Koizumi and Atsushi Otani have been schoolmates for years, and their constant bickering has made them into the school’s best unintentional comedy duo. But when Risa starts falling for Atsushi, she’s got no idea what to do. Part of the problem? She’s a full half-a-foot taller than he is, and completely self-conscious. Light-hearted and wacky. Look up information on the Kansai dialect before reading or watching—you’ll thank me later.

Kimi ni Todoke (may be called Reaching You or From Me to You) (manga and anime) Romance. Nothing objectionable. Tweens and up.
Sawako Kuronuma’s long black hair and creepy demeanor have earned her the nickname ‘Sadako’, after the ghost-child of The Ring—but deep down she’s just shy, awkward, and unintentionally weird. Everything changes when popular classmate Shota Kazehaya takes an interest and tries to draw Sawako out of her shell. Unbelievably sweet and charming, this new series is one of the standouts of 2009.

Level 201: Oh, those wacky Japanese!
Nana (manga and anime) Drama, romance. Nudity, drug use. Teens and up.
Nana Osaki is an aspiring punk singer who leaves her boyfriend to find herself. Nana Komatsu is a hopeless romantic who comes to Tokyo to find her true love. The two end up sharing apartment 707 (‘nana’ is also the Japanese word for the number 7) and falling into a tangle of fame, love, and rock-and-roll. Possibly one of the finest manga or all time; definitely high on Ted’s list.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagaan (anime) Action. Comedic nudity and some suggestive language. Teens and up.
Simon has lived all his life in an underground village, but the day he discovers a strange robot buried in the earth is the day everything changes. Along with Kamina, his over-the-top, sword-wielding partner, and the busty sniper Yoko, he sets out to save the world. Actually, ‘over-the-top’ is a pretty good phrase to describe this entire show. Imagine giant robots fighting each other. Now imagine them fighting a giant robot that’s the size of a city. Now imagine that robot fighting a robot that’s actually the moon. And it just get crazier from there.

Azumanga Daioh (manga and anime) Comedy, slice-of-life. Nothing objectionable. All ages.
It’s hard to talk about the plot of this series, because there really isn’t one. Six girls in high school and their various wacky interactions. No romance, no crushes, in short, no boys. The manga came first, but the anime might be easier to understand; the musical cues make the subtle humor a little less subtle. (By the author of Yotsuba&!)

Haibane Renmei (anime) Fantasy, drama. Nothing objectionable, but highly abstract and ‘talky’. Late teens and up.
In a walled city in an unknown country, there are the Haibane: young girls and boys born with miniature wings sprouting from their backs and halos above their heads. They are born in cocoons, they live apart from the normal people, and they have no memories of their lives before. And they each have their Day of Flight, when they leave for the world beyond the wall. Highly fascinating series, though very slow-moving—not for action junkies.

Ghost in the Shell (manga, 2 anime movies, anime TV series, movie based on TV series) Sci-fi, action. Nudity and intense violence. Late teens and up.
In the near future, anyone can be a cyborg, the internet is everywhere, and information is everything. The special forces of Section 9 take on terrorists, rampaging robots, hackers so good they can erase themselves from people’s eyes on the spot—the bleeding-edge criminals. The manga is probably a good place to start; the first movie is considered an anime classic and spurred a wave of interest in anime in America, but it’s also densely philosophical and sometimes hard to understand. The more recent TV series is more action-heavy, but doesn’t sacrifice big ideas for the sake of explosions.

Ouran High School Host Club (manga and anime) Comedy, slice-of-life. Nothing objectionable. Tweens and up.
Haruhi Fujioka, student at the ultra-elite Ouran High School, is pulled into the Host Club, where beautiful young men entertain high-class girls with money to burn. One small problem: she’s a girl, too, but nobody knows it. It parodies cliches of anime romantic comedies—each of the other Host Club members cater to a specific audience of young girl—so it’s good to have a background in this kind of material first.

Tekkonkinkreet (manga and anime film) Action. Violence. Teens and up.
The orphans Black and White make a life in the sprawling metropolis of Treasure Town, fighting off gangs and weirdos of all stripes. When the local yakuza come in to turn the city into an amusement park, Black and White are pulled into a dark, strange world where they might have to give up their innocence just to keep their lives. Visually distinctive and wonderful.

Paprika (anime film) Sci-fi, drama. Nudity. Late teens and up.
When an experimental device that lets the user travel into others’ dreams is stolen, the dreamworld and the real world start to blur together, with dangerous consequences. It’s up to the icy Dr. Atsuko Chiba and her impish alter-ego Paprika to keep reality together. A visual tour de force from revered director Satoshi Kon. (Also check out his psychological thriller Perfect Blue and comedy Tokyo Godfathers.)

Level 301: No, seriously, what’s with the eyes?
Neon Genesis Evangelion (anime) Action, psychological thriller. Violence, nudity, sexual situations, suggestive language, intense psychological weirdness. Late teens and up.
Fifteen years after the world was almost destroyed, the futuristic city of Tokyo-3 can only be defended from the alien Angels by the gigantic Eva robots and their teenage pilots. But as these teenagers start to crack under the pressure, and as an enormous conspiracy comes to light, things start to get weird. Enormously complicated: this series has had academics puzzle over its mysteries for years. Personally, I think it’s overrated, but it’s definitely had an impact on the anime industry.

Revolutionary Girl Utena (anime and manga) Fantasy, drama, romance. Nudity, mild violence, psychological weirdness. Late teens and up.
The teenage girl Utena is attending Ohtori Academy when she gets pulled into the strange world of the Duelists’ Club, where the winner of the duels gets the honor of being ‘engaged’ to the mysterious Rose Bride, a silent, seemingly passive young girl. A strange, gender-bending, post-modernist take on the Western fairy tale, if you put in the effort, it’s endlessly interesting.

Genshiken (manga and anime) Comedy, slice-of-life. Mild nudity and mild suggestive language. Teens and up.
The college students of the pop culture club have their infights, their crushes, their relationships and their interactions like any other group, but they see it all through the lens of anime and manga. For that reason, it’s good to have a thorough grounding in the tropes and cliches they reference, though anyone can get the relationship aspects of the show.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (anime) Sci-fi, comedy. Suggestive language. Teens and up.
Haruhi Suzumiya is an overexcited, obsessive teenager searching for the mysteries of the universe: time travelers, aliens, and psychics. She forms a club of mostly unwilling ‘volunteers’ to search for them, but there’s a twist: the other club members are time travelers, aliens, and psychics. And Haruhi, unbeknownst to her, is God. She can change reality on a whim, and it’s up to them to keep her from accidentally destroying the universe. One of the most critically and commercially successful anime of recent years, in both Japan and the US.

FLCL (may also be listed under Furi Kuri or Fooly Cooly) (anime) Sci-fi, action, comedy. Suggestive language. Teens and up.
When Naota is hit in the head by a guitar-wielding, Vespa-riding woman with pink hair, that’s weird enough. When strange alien robots start sprouting from his forehead the next day, things start to get downright psychotic. Prepare for mile-a-minute pop culture references (a whole sequence animated in South Park style? why not?) and inexplicable wackiness; dropping acid before watching would be redundant.

And here's his addendum for librarians:

Also, I should mention two more series, only because they're of interest to library students.

Read Or Die (three-episode direct-to-video series, followed by a 26-episode TV series with a different set of characters) Action, comedy. Some mildly suggestive costumes. Teens and up.
Yomiko Readman is the world's greatest bibliophile, spending every last cent she has on books. But she's got two secrets: first, she's a Paper Master, able to telekinetically control sheets of paper and turn them into any kind of weapon or tool imaginable; second, she's a secret agent for the British Library, helping to track down the rarest manuscripts in the world. The first, three-episode series is about her adventure facing down a group of clones of historical figures who want to make the entire world commit suicide using Beethoven's secret masterpiece. The second, 26-episode television series is about a different set of characters, three Paper Master sisters who operate a detective agency out of Hong Kong and get embroiled in a secret war between the British Library and their Chinese counterparts that could destroy space-time itself. In case you can't tell, it's pretty weird.

Library War (anime) Action, comedy. Violence. Teens and up.
In an alternate-history Japan, the Media Betterment Committee is legally authorized to perform censorship raids on bookstores and libraries throughout the country. However, libraries are also legally authorized to defend their collections--if necessary, by force. Iku Kasahara joins the library militia in order to protect intellectual freedom, accidentally falling in love with her commanding officer along the way. Worth seeing just for the idea of gun-toting librarians. Don't miss the episode where Kasahara goes on a secret nighttime mission to acquire the last remaining Japanese-language edition of Farenheit 451.

Civ III and Multimodal Literacy

Alright, I’ll admit that my view of literacy is very narrow. It’s probably my age, not that that is an excuse, just fact. I am open minded enough to admit that through reading others’ responses to my blog on video games (Civilization III and the Classroom) and through the readings for this class, I’m getting a clearer picture.

I was startled to read in NCTE’s Summary Statement, part of our readings for this week that, “Multiple ways of knowing” (Short & Harste) also include art, music, movement, and drama, which should not be considered curricular luxuries.” That registered with me, more than other articles on this subject did. If I think of literacy as a “way of knowing”, then it can encompass music, art, video games, and comic strips. I can know a variety of things from any of those mediums.

I am beginning to see that people have various talents and express themselves in ways that best display those talents. The understanding of the consumers of those products also varies. If literacy is a way of knowing something, then one can gain literacy by using or producing in any of these mediums. In addition, if we develop our critiquing skills in each medium, we can better understand those who “speak” through those various mediums.

I also read this week that exclusive emphasis on digital literacies is not the answer either. It’s too limiting. Using digital technology all the time just for the sake of using it is counterproductive. This kind of emphasis would limit students’ access to other modes of expression. A better approach is to use the medium that will best express what the producer is trying to convey.

So, for instance, maybe the subject matter of a complex video game is not the only valid reason for it to be in a classroom. I am starting to see the value of role playing as a literacy in itself. Through play, one can try out different personas and work out differences with others who are playing the game. In a game like Civilization, moral and ethical values can be worked out as well as developing decision-making skills. When I think of literacy as “ways of knowing”, my view of being literate opens wide.

Today, in the Chicago Tribune Live! Section (yes, I still read my news in paper form), Christopher Borrelli wrote about a new genre of books, the mash-up. This specific book is called Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. Seth Grahame-Smith also wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, another mash-up. Now, this does not exactly fit into the multi-modal category but it is a mix of genres – biography and vampire stories. And furthermore, this is just the kind of book that I would have dismissed out-of-hand before this class. The obvious value, one of many, I’m sure, is that teens and adults that would not read straight history, might pick up a mash-up simply because it has zombies and vampires in it. I am starting to see, however, the literary value of the mash-up simply because it is one “way of knowing” for the producer and the consumer.

Me...a comic book creator?

As a graduate school student for the past three years, I have been required over and over to write. This process has been about stating a point and backing it up with research. However, this semester I have been immersed in stories. I get to take a storytelling class as well as a young adult literature class and these classes have activated a creative side of my brain that has been dormant for a long time. As I approached the task for this week to create a storyboard/comic of a life experience, I felt much more excitement for this assignment than the standard scholarly essay.

I saw the benefits of Mutlimodal Literacies firsthand. As I created the comic strip I thought of my writing in an entirely different way. I was visualizing the event, imagining the arc of the story, and enjoying the process. The National Council for Teachers of English Multimodal Literacy statement has this as their first point: "integration of multiple modes of communication and expression can enhance or transform the meaning of the work beyond illustration or decoration." My little sketch of dogsitting for friends is scribbled on a piece of scrap paper and the illustrations are of the quality that it is hard to determine who is the person and who is the dog, but this form of expressing an idea really enhanced and framed my story in a new way. When I tell stories, I usually can create a good setting and draw the listener into the tale, but the ending always falls apart. However, with this story created in comic strip form, I am communicating a whole complete strong idea with a solid beginning, middle, and end. Creating comics is a brand new experience for me, and I can how it would have been beneficial in classes like social studies or English. Overall, the visual and narration aspects combined engaged me in the creative process and allowed me to create something that had more interest and meaning for me.

Reluctant Board Gamer

While Sarah wrote about her resistance to video games, I have to admit that, before some of our readings and the great talk by Professor Dubin, I was snobbish about not all board games, but certain kinds. I have some friends who are extremely into board games (one of them attended a big board game convention called Gen Con in Indianapolis last year). These friends have introduced me to some great games, which I love, including Liebrary (like Balderdash, but you try to trick your friends by writing the best fake opening lines of actual books) and Dixit (a French game with beautiful, fantastical pictures, which you write captions/titles for) and Ticket to Ride (a game where you build train routes between cities in Europe or the U.S., depending on the version you are playing) and Pandemic (there’s a pandemic starting in Beijing! Hurry! Stop it!). These are fun and re-playable and work well with lots of different people (my friends, my parents, etc.).

For me, I like games that are quick to learn and don’t take hours to play. Perhaps that has changed as I have aged; as a kid, my sisters and I used to play marathon games of Payday (one round through the board is a month, and we would decide to play several years in one sitting), for example, and not have a problem with it. On the other hand, maybe it is just my natural impatience with complicated tasks (the reason why I never learned to play bridge, despite several attempts by my mom and uncles to teach me). Whatever the reason, I have trouble getting on “board” (sorry) when my friends want to play more extended/complicated games like Livingstone (which I also didn’t like since you have to play the part of a British/Scottish imperialist/missionary robbing Africa of its precious resources – politically/morally icky, even though it’s “just a game”), Power Grid (I know Professor Dubin said it was good and so did my friend who went to Gen Con, but building a power grid in Germany? I’m sorry, but to me, even the cover looks boring! Check it out!), Arkham Horror, or any other game where I have to learn the rules for a whole entire world in order to play and every game lasts for hours and hours.

Although I personally don’t know if I will ever totally get into games like these, I started to understand the interest in them more after reading the Buckingham article (Buckingham, David. "Game Literacy in Theory and Practice." Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia 16: 3 (2007)) and hearing Professor Dubin’s talk. I guess I hadn’t thought much before about the social world created in playing these games and the richness of the narratives that are central to so many games. As an English teacher, you’d think I would be drawn to the games with multiple characters and complicated narratives; I was struck by Buckingham’s observation that in games there is the added component of being able to manipulate the characters and, in some cases, change the narrative, making us not just observers in this world (as we are when we read a novel) but also actors in the world. In addition, I think I was also discounting the social aspect of game playing; as Buckingham reminded me, “Literacy practices [of all kinds] are embedded in social contexts and social relationships; they involve forms of social action that have social purposes and consequences. . . individuals do not create meanings in isolation, but through their involvement in social networks, or interpretive communities, which promote and value particular forms of literacy.” In game-playing (whether online or in person), this social element – this community learning together – is so much more transparent than the social network required for me to understand The Great Gatsby when I read it. I could see where the transparent dependence on a group in game-playing to learn and understand and progress could be a really positive developmental experience for students and adults. Also – since, as Buckingham says, “literacy is not merely critical but also creative” – I love the idea of exploring what you could learn by creating a game yourself – some of the skills would be similar to those required to write a story, but it draws on so many other skills as well (the spatial set-up of the board itself, the rules, the logic, etc.).

In other words, I think I need to give Power Grid a try. I can’t promise I’m going to start hanging out with my friends at Chicagoland Games (also known as the Dice Dojo) where, according to a Chicago Tribune article, “they don’t close until the game is over,” but I do have a newfound appreciation for the relevance and richness of game-playing.

How Comics & Pop Culture Make a Reader

At a teacher conference the year my son was in kindergarten, the teacher expressed concern over his reading ability and talked of a possible referral to a reading specialist. He was learning, but at a slower pace than others. Of course all sorts of alarm bells went off, but I tried to not to overreact. This was also the year that Mo Willems' Elephant and Piggie books were making their debut -- what great timing! These books are simply the best early readers I've ever seen. They are true early readers, with very limited text, very simple illustrations and usually blank backgrounds (less distractions I think). Plus, the stories are funny and clever, with loads of child appeal. The illustrations are cartoon style, and the characters speak and think in balloons -- just like comic strips use. The background colors of the balloons correspond to the color of the character (pink for Piggie, gray for Elephant). This is simply brilliant – it makes is so clear to a young reader who is saying what. The typeface is large and larger or expressive when needed to convey emotion. Motion lines and emanata are frequently used. It seems so obvious when I review these books, but yes, they are comics. And if it wasn’t clear enough, when searching for an illustration so that everyone could see this for themselves, I found an Elephant and Piggie comic in comic strip form from Mo Willems’ blog:

Post Mo Willems, where does a young reader turn? I’m not sure, as mine has taken a varied and probably unusual path. Pokemon was allowed in our house because it was a game my son could play with his older brother and they did play it together for extended periods of time. To play the game, one has to be able to read. On a car trip over Christmas break in first grade, my son read the Pokemon Handbook for several hours. I mean total absorption. I’m pretty convinced that Pokemon was a major step on his way to literacy. Peer pressure was a great motivator as well. He was aware that others were reading the Magic Tree House books and really wanted to try them. Yet his speed of decoding didn’t always allow for full comprehension. So we checked out the audio version and the print version and he listened first (something you can do in the dark of those early winter days stuck in a car) and then read the books. This repetition wasn’t boring for him, but rather facilitated his reading them on his own.

Currently he’s in second grade and one of his favorite series this year has been Jeff Smith’s Bone books. He discovered these in his elementary school library, though in the public library he has to go to the YA section two floors up from the children’s section to get them. He knows he can’t just pick up any books from the YA Graphic Novel section though! This has led me to start searching for graphic novels and comics for younger readers. My Neighbor Totoro was a wonderful discovery – accessible, enjoyable, age-appropriate (he is only 7) and it keeps the Japanese format – reading from back to front, right to left. This feature only added to the appeal for my son and is great at raising an awareness of another culture, another way of doing things.

If you know of great graphic novels for the elementary age, I’m still looking for titles and always welcome suggestions. I have found two great websites for educators/teachers/librarians on graphic novels and comic books. One is The Graphic Classroom, which is created by a teacher and is all about incorporating graphic novels into the classroom. Another is the Good Comics for Kids blog from School Library Journal. I feel like this is only the tip of the iceberg though . . .

The Poetry of Comics

I had never thought about comics as analogous to poetry before reading the article “Reading Comics,” by Carol Tilley. After the very first mention of poetry, though, where she compared the variation of panels to the poetic line breaks and punctuation, I saw how reading comics and reading poetry have so very much in common. Perhaps my analysis is too simplistic, and maybe some ideas are stretching the connection a bit much, but this is where my mind went!

First of all, you need either training or a lot of reflective experience to really understand them. I remember reading poetry for class in school; a lot of it seemed pretty dumb to me (much like many comics do). Some of it probably was (just like some comics likely are), but some of it I probably just didn’t have the training or experience to really understand, and I probably missed out on some insightful stuff because of it. I never took a class just on poetry, and the smattering of instruction I did have dealt mainly with conventions of poetry, not the language or art of it. There is probably common symbolism I have misunderstood, styles I rejected out of hand, methods I didn’t comprehend—things that have kept me from not only understanding the poem itself (or the poet who wrote it) but similar techniques and references in other forms of literature and media. Comics are much the same way. I never got into comics as a child (beyond the “funny pages” my grandmother saved for us out of her Sunday paper every week—which we read and then used for wrapping paper!), and, although I have become interested in graphic novels in particular through my youth literature classes, I still struggle to read them as fluently and with as deep of comprehension as I am able to do with other forms of writing. They look easy—simplistic—just pictures, just words—but they are not (at least, not the good ones).

Additionally, there are a variety of types, and just because you appreciate and understand one type doesn’t mean you like them all. I like haikus, rhyming verse (generally funny), and poetry about nature. I don’t like sappy poems, poems with unfamiliar rhythms, and poetry so vague that I think the author must have been on something. Then there are comics: Mary Worth, for example, or Rex Morgan, M.D. (both still going!-- http://www.seattlepi.com/fun/comic.asp?feature_id=Mary_Worth, http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/rmorgan/about.htm). Weekly comic strips that were, frankly, soap operas. I hated them. They were boring. And I only read them if I ran out of cereal boxes and shampoo labels and –really- needed something to read. The colors were dull, the people were too realistic, the storylines unbearably slow to unfold, and, frankly, not funny. Not at all. That’s what I liked in comics at the time, although now I’ve branched out to appreciate clever comics and graphic novels about a variety of topics (but mostly history with which I’m already familiar—The Murder of Abraham Lincoln, for example—and current issues—like Persepolis and American Born Chinese). I liked The Far Side, Garfield, Zits…and now Baby Blues and Unshelved. The art is different, the contents are different—but so am I. My tastes have changed not only as I have aged and have new experiences but also as I have been exposed to and taught about what is available out there. I still have comics and graphic novels I don’t like, but I am now able to read them and (usually) understand what’s going on!

Finally, there is the comparison between different devices they each use. Like the article said, poetry has line breaks and punctuation where comics have a variety of panels. Comics have frames where poems have stanzas. Where poems use imagery to produce visuals that aren’t there, comics have gutters. Balloons show character’s thoughts and speech in comics, and poems often use different punctuation or fonts to signify those words. In a poem, you may have to pay attention to verb tense or point-of-view to decide if the narrator is interjecting, and comics have narrative boxes for information not contained in the dialog. Just like comics, poetry often also uses typography to enhance a mood or convey an idea, most specifically in concrete poetry. (But can you imagine the difference between a love poem printed in soft, curvy script and the same one printed in bold, angular letters?) A comic has motion lines, and poetry uses line breaks and page placement to convey motion. Where a comic might use emanata (some of her examples were the light bulb or the anger cloud), poems use imagery again--this time in the form of language about color, rhyming, assonance, or alliteration—to give us ideas about the characters. And, of course, there are style differences within the form that create different feels and looks and appeal to different people.

So, comics are like poetry. Who would have thought?

The Reluctant Gamer

I have to say that before this class, I had a very negative view of video games. I saw them mostly as time wasters and destroyers of creativity. I think that it was because I had never been successful playing most video games even going back to my family’s first system, Nintendo (jealousy perhaps?). In my mind, traditional tabletop games and video games never seemed to have the same merit. Again, I believe this was because I spent my childhood playing traditional board games and having great success and fond memories of these toys. So I recognize now that my viewpoint was skewed by my own personal experience and failure to find my own niche within the gaming world.

This being said, I have grown to see a different side of video games. It started when I viewed the video of game creator Will Wright, describing his video game called Spore. This creator of The Sims and SimCity definitely sees the power that video games can have, when done mindfully. Spore is essentially a video game that explores the topic of evolution through player created creatures in a fictional universe. At the beginning of his speech, he brings up his Montessori schooling and how it inspired him to create toys that sparked discovery. His video game Spore essentially is a 21st Century Montessori toy which helps players explore and discover extremely profound philosophical questions and advanced scientific principles. I love the goal that Will Wright had when creating this game: to help players better understand long-term thinking and planning. This is a complex idea for more than just kids. I know plenty of adults that can barely think past their own impulses when they should be able to self-control and think about their future (know anyone that has thousands of dollars in credit card debt, but simply must have that new pair of shoes?). In this game, players become invested in their characters because they have created them. They get to see how the world evolves by changes to the flora, fauna and environment.

I love the idea that Will Wright has employed Montessori methods in his game design. I first became interested in Montessori principles after my cousin was sent to such a preschool. At a family party, I began to have a discussion with him, expecting the typical responses of a four year old. I was shocked to find him extremely articulate, polite and inquisitive (He described in detail his love for the Star Wars movies and favorite characters, his preference for the horchata at El Famous Burrito and used please and thank you more times than I could count!). When I questioned his mother about her secret powers in parenting, she responded that Montessori was the main reason for his success. I began to research like crazy. If only all of my students could become so well-rounded as this child! I learned that essentially, the Montessori method was a pedagogy that emphasized student independence in learning. The goal of the teacher is not to preach concepts and memorization, but rather to facilitate individual learning and discovery within each student. Games and toys specifically designed for teaching concepts help students discover knowledge on their own terms and in their own time frame. The goal is to help students fall in love with process of learning and teach them that focused attention and perseverance pays off in the end.

Although I was never raised in a Montessori setting, I feel that I have grown up with that same desire to learn more about the world. I think that perhaps the reason I loathed so many video games was because they seemed so pointless. Simply getting to the next level did not interest me. I did not care about winning this way. I wanted games that challenged to think, and most games went too fast for careful contemplation. However, at the on-campus day, I began to find a world of puzzle games that have truly intrigued me. My new favorite is Red Remover which forces the player to figure out how to remove the red squares while saving the green ones. Part of the learning process of the game is failure (and I have failed many, many times!), a process which Montessori recognized was essential to learning. This game requires such concentration and planning on my part that when I pass a level I feel immediately elated and cannot wait for my next challenge. It has also forced me to reconsider my position on gaming. Although I still believe that some games have more merit than others, I no longer believe that all games are evil. Baby steps...

Thoughts on digital media

New Media Exemplar Library
On this site, I watched the videos of ‘TAT’s cru’ from the newmedialiteracies.org web site and I saw a perspective on media and art that I had failed to appreciate in the past. Graphitti to me has always meant vandalism and therefore carried a negative connotation. The one man in the ‘crew’ said that others have seen them that way and he and the others he works with have had to explain that they don’t do this criminally, though that may be the nature of what they were doing when they were younger spraying their art on subway trains. Now, they are courted by businesses and other organizations both locally and internationally to paint big murals which surprised me and showed to me that many more others are viewing media expressions like this as true art. Proof that its true art to me although I admit I have a novice’s point-of-view, was the explanation the guys in the group gave regarding the quality and different types of spray paint cans which they use, how one from Germany is good in one situation and another from Spain is better in other ways. They also discussed the different types of nozzles on the spray cans and how that affected their work. Further evidence of this being a legitimate expression of art was the works themselves which were shown throughout the video clips and how each artist applied just enough paint and with a certain technique that you understood the control which was required. In other words, not just anyone I think could walk up off the street and produce the kind of quality these guys did with this media. They also talked about the various ways one could write letters and how each of these had its own label, such as hand style, throw-up (or at least that’s what I think the guy said), wild style, and simple. This was really a good insight into a world which I knew little about.

Literacy, ELL, and Digital Storytelling21st Century Learning in Action, Life Academy, Oakland
This video to me was a reaffirmation of the things we were learned in ‘teacher school’ about learning styles and multiple intelligences. It makes sense that you should give students opportunities for different forms of expression as they themselves may communicate and learn better in a certain way or ways. Also, it isn’t just a few students who have a particular learning style or intelligence as there are others like them and they appreciate material being presented in a variety of ways as well. The video stated at one point that digital storytelling was especially beneficial to ELL learners as it helped them with literacy skills in many ways. I imagine that is the case as people in that situation may have little or no verbal or written skills for the new language they’re learning and new media with their user-friendly nature make expression possible for these individuals. I wonder though, how are modern media technologies being used to teach traditional literacy skills such as reading and writing? These certainly shouldn’t be overlooked as they are essential skills for everyone. The students in the class from this video certainly seemed more engaged than those who sit through traditional lectures or who are filling out worksheets. Use of emerging technology should be encouraged since it does make the material covered seemingly come to life for many of the learners in a classroom. It’s no longer a static display or a bunch of spoken words which fail to cause one’s brain to conceptualize what’s being communicated instead it’s in front of your eyes or it’s dynamically introduced to your ears and you really learn it. I do have to agree with some of the critics at my school to the extent though that these things are fine and good but, you have to have the technology or the means to get the technology in the first place and with many states Illinois included, that isn’t as easy to do as it once was or will be in the future. There are free or cheap options and we could find alternative sources of funding such as grants too.

Digital Storytelling web site
This again confirms the usefulness of media in conveying the meaning of material one wants students to learn. The media presented here would also be powerful in their effect of producing confidence in those who use it and that would be an awesome additional benefit of using things like digital storytelling. Looking at this web site, I think how great it would be for the staff at my school to use for these for the above reasons. It has just about everything I think someone would want to and need to know about using these technologies. I have to admit though, I was a little intimidated by all the copyright information you have to consider first before making anything. I thought at one point that I might want to send out the link for this web site in an ‘all staff’ email at my school. I think a few would be bold enough to at least check it out and maybe a few of those would look into it further and possibly apply the ideas presented. However, I also hear those critics again saying it would be too difficult to teach the students some of these things and that they already don’t have enough time in the year to get their required material covered in the first place. To be honest, I understand what they’re saying to a point, but I think learning to utilize this kind of media is important enough that it merits the effort. It would be a step in preparing students for the world they will be encountering, not the one of our youth.

Google & Privacy

I saw this article in The Onion (a brilliant and satirical newspaper if you aren't familiar with it) and it seemed applicable to many things we are discussing.

Google Responds to Privacy Concerns with Unsettlingly Specific Apology

It's pretty funny . . . but also a little scary.

Response to Civilzation III and the Classroom

I couldn't get my post to work as a comment, so I just put it here.

Right away I have to state that I am not a video game player. My boyfriend is and I leave the room every time he starts to play. But sometimes he stops me and tells me what his task is in the game. I have been shocked at the different historical aspects that are part os what I call his "blood and guts games". In one such game there is a character that must face Aries, the god of war. I remember the test that I took in high school where I had to memorize the different Roman and Greek gods and now I have no recollection of who they are, but my boyfriend knows them all from his game.

All this to say that I think that video games can and do cover some content areas that have historically been a part of traditional scholarship in an interactive, memorable, and exciting way. My boyfriend's engagement with the material is much greater than mine and his recollection is instantaneous.

Buckingham and Burn, in their article entitled Game Literacy in Theory and in Practice, place additional value on gaming not as a teacher of curricula or to re-engage learners, but as a valuable entity unto itself as a cultural medium. As Buckingham and Burn describe gaming literacy, I am definitely illiterate. I find other ways to play that have not included the video game scene. So I wonder how prevalent gaming literacy is currently and how popular it will become. Is it a valuable literacy to teach in the classroom?

Video Games and Literacy: More Than Meets the Eye

I've been doing a lot of thinking about video games and literacy, and I just want to put a couple of ideas and questions out to the group to both extend my own thinking, and maybe to frame the conversation a bit, moving it outside of the "video games are not as good as books" argument that I hear a lot.

First, I think that it's really important to define terms in a discussion like this one. One central term is literacy. Are we thinking of literacy as being able to decode symbols to create meaning (functional literacy) or are talking about literacy as the ability to understand, critique, and question text, media, or other things interacted with (critical literacy)? Or are we saying the ability to read and comprehend books (print literacy)? Another central term is video game. Is the discussion around "mini" games such as Tetris, MarioKart, BrainAge, or around "complex" games, games that require players to take on a new identity, play for more than 10-100 hours to complete the game, problem solve and face consequences for their decisions, such as Final Fantasy, Spore, Sims, DragonQuest, etc? (BTW, I borrowed these terms from Marc Prensky, who talks about them in his book Don't Bother Me Mom, I'm Learning.)

From the reading and studying that I have done, I think that complex games can probably improve critical and perhaps even functional literacy. James Paul Gee makes a case for this in What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, in which he argues that educators can study games to observe extremely effective teaching techniques. (Whatever you think of the content of games, they are very good at both motivating people to keep playing them, and teaching them an internalized implicit set of rules so that they can understand and play the game.) One example of Gee's arguments about how games can support even print literacy (there are many, and I really encourage you to check out his book if you are interested!) is that games teach players "to learn about and come to appreciate interrelations within and across multiple sign systems (images, words, actions, symbols, artifacts, etc.) as a complex system, [which is] core to the learning experience." To paraphrase, learning to read at its most basic is really a process of learning how to decode and understand a symbol set. While games may be teaching players to understand a different kind of symbol set (not the English language), they are honing the same underlying skill.

In addition games provide a unique chance for players to immerse themselves within narrative structures, becoming part of the story creation itself. Some games have better stories than others, true, but they also do something that books can't (even Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books!): they give the "reader" / player agency and power over shaping the story line.

Finally, I'm borrowing from Steven Johnson's book Everything Bad Is Good for You to make this little chart about the differences between books and video games. While books do many things very well, and we have invested them in Western culture for hundreds if not thousands of years because of the things they do well, video games do other things very well, and I don't know that it has to be an either/or dichotomy. Maybe print literacy is not the main benefit of video games, and maybe it shouldn't be. But perhaps there are other, just as valuable, skill sets that video games have to offer. Take a look and see what you think.