Ch02 Uses of New Media in Media Education

Module Uses of New Media in Media Education Objectives In completing this module you will be learning to define the characteristics of the new media in terms of the features of digital media understand the literacies involved in using these new media and how users acquire these literacies through their use of new media understand how users acquire these literacies with the example of video games understand how users learn the literacies involved in responding to and using Websites understand how to use the Web as a teaching tool in a media lab approach to teaching media literacy understand how to use and participant in two discussion sites tappedin org and nicenet org As argued in Module understanding media now requires far more than traditional media forms such as film television radio and print texts It also requires an understanding of how new digital media forms have transformed or remediated Bolter these traditional media forms And it requires an understanding of how students can learn to use these new digital media forms as tools for producing their own media and participating in media culture This suggests the value of creating a media lab approach to teaching media literacy in which students are using the Web digital cameras and other digital tools to analyze and share media texts Through the very process of employing these tools they can then reflect on and interrogate their uses of the media tools as a central focus of learning about the media People are increasingly using the Web as one central digital media tool in their lives A report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project http www pewinternet org reports toc asp Report found that percent of adults use the Internet regularly for a range of different personal and business purposes As they become more familiar with use the Web they are more likely to trust it as a means of conducting such things as shopping or paying bills Moreover with the increased availability of broadband connections at of homes in and wireless connections users find the Web to be more accessible At the same time issues of accessibility remain with of the adult population still not using the Web a function of affordability knowledge and lack of access in rural areas And a report The State of the News Media Report Survey conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that people are less likely to obtain news from newspapers daily circulation is down since and network television news viewership is down since and particularly for younger audiences more likely to obtain news from online media sources Although many of the online news sources are still produced by newspapers one issue with the use of online news sites is that people will only pick and choose the information they are interested in obtaining and therefore may not be exposed to information they are not directly seeking to find Full report http www stateofthenewsmedia org Graphics from the report at USA Today http www usatoday com life - - -pew-report x htm The fact that use often varies with social-economic class and region is evident in a study of young people ages in Silicon Valley conducted in by The San Jose Mercury News and the Kaiser Family Foundation http kff org entmedia a-index cfm of young people were using the Web but lower-income and Hispanics were less likely to use the Web in their homes relying more on use of the Web in their schools They spent an average of hours a week online spent less than hours a week online spent to less than hours a week online spent to less than hours a week online and spent hours or more a week online Almost half perceived it as an important resource for homework They also used it to get information about movies music sports or TV shows or purchases get news about current events look for information on colleges jobs or careers and look up health information Use of the Web does not necessarily detract from reading or viewing indicated that it has caused them to spend less time reading and indicated that it has caused them to spend less time watching TV They still rely heavily on the phone but indicated that Instant Messenger is the main way they stay in touch with friends versus e-mail and the telephone indicated that their parents usually know what they are doing when they go online While indicated that their parents generally do not know what they are doing online Given the importance of the Web in students lives students also need to develop digital literacies their ability to understand and use various digital literacies involve in use of the Web and other digital tools such as DVD s and digital photography Understanding the new media In addressing the question What is Media Literacy David Considine http www ci appstate edu programs edmedia medialit article html posits that Emerging technologies the global economy and the Internet are changing what it means to be literate The digital age is transforming the quantity range and speed of information and communication in our lives The mass media affect how we perceive and understand the world and people around us from what we wear eat and buy to how we relate to ourselves and others In the st century the ability to interpret and create media is a form of literacy as basic as reading and writing In the past decade there has been a major shift in media from the old media of television radio and print to the new digital media of the Internet and digital video photography These new digital media are remediating Bolter Grusin the older media which use digital media to change their own delivery and audience involvement http www lcc gatech edu Ebolter remediation index html For example cnn com or msnbc com provide continually updated news information along with multiple hypertext links to related bits of information a digital form that has influenced CNN and MSNBC television news broadcasts in which updated headlines stream across the bottom of the screen or references are made to the websites for more information The transformation of film and television The influence of digital media has had major influences on the production and distribution of film and television The distribution of media content through cable digital and satellite technologies has resulted in an increasing global reach for media conglomerates who now can readily distribute content to all parts of world content that is often highly American European given the fact that these conglomerates are largely American or European Digital technologies have also changed film production through the use of computerized special effects For example in The Matrix a bullet-time set of still cameras and two motion cameras were used to shoot shots at frames per second of actors twirling in mid-air Or in Gladiator and The Lord of the Rings the portrayal of large crowds or armies in battle can be create through digital animation This increased use of digitalization has focused increasing on portrayal of spectacle in space moving away from traditional focus on linear narrative Cubitt Digital cameras and editing serve to reduce the costs of filmmaking allowing for production of lower-budget films And as theaters employ digital display units distribution can occur through satellite reducing costs to theaters And as people outside of the industry produce increasingly sophisticated digital videos and display them on the Web the line between videos produced by the movie industry and amateur productions will blur The distribution of DVD s containing outtakes directors commentary and critics analysis provides audiences with more information about the production itself For example The Lord of the Rings DVD s contain lengthy material on the uses of digitized special effects At the same the distribution of films and music through the Web may in the future may make even DVD s obsolete The uses of digital storage tools such as TiVo that allows television viewers to view whatever programs they wish to watch without commercials has yet to take hold as of but may have an impact on how viewers watch programs according to their own schedules as opposed to the set television schedule Given the highly commercialized nature of television producers would need to determine ways to embed advertising appeals within the program content through product placements and references to uses of products Five Principles of New Media Production Lev Manovich posits that the new media operate under five basic principles numerical representation modularity automation variability and transcoding involved in creating new media texts principles that make these texts quite different to produce than was the case with print drawing or analogue texts The following is a summary of these five principles Numerical representation Because they are based on digital codes new media texts are numerical Converting continuous data into a numerical representation is called digitalization Digitalization consists of two steps sampling and quantization First data is sampled most often at regular intervals such as the grid of pixels used to represent a digital image The frequency of sampling is referred to as resolution Sampling turns continuous data into discrete data that is data occurring in discrete units people the pages of a book pixels Second each sample is quantified that is it is assigned a numerical value drawn from a defined range such as in the case of an -bit greyscale image p This means that the components of new media texts Websites video clips images etc consist of bits of data that can be readily be stored as named files for use in combining with other data bits Modularity These different media samples or data bits stills QuickTime video clips sounds etc can function as separate objects or modules that can be combined together in different ways without losing their independence A website consists of different objects that can be stored independently on a site or network as independent parts that are then combined in different ways They can then be readily added deleted or revised without having to totally redo the overall website All of this makes production of digital texts different than production of traditional texts for example a painting Automation The production and combination of the modular parts is often completed through the use of highly automated systems Digital photos can be automatically edited to improve their quality through editing programs Hollywood filmmakers can employ computer graphic or -D systems to create animation images such as the use of thousands of soldiers in the Lord of the Rings film series A smart camera has been developed at the MIT Media lab that automatically takes pictures according to a script http www-white media mit edu vismod demos smartcam Websites automatically adjust to specific users providing them with information based on their previous visits Variability The same new media texts can also be automatically be created in different versions to suit individual users needs Again due to the modularity principle the different components of the same texts can be varied to create new texts For example hypermedia texts which are created through linking together disparate texts can be varied according to the different combination of links or pathways resulting in different texts Texts are also continually updated creating new more recent versions of texts The size or scale of a text can be varied using zoom close-up features on Mapquest maps or images And different versions of the same media content can be varied as when films are made into computer games or games such as Tomb Raider are made into films Transcoding Transcoding refers to translating something into another format Manovich notes that new media exists on two different layers a cultural layer and a computer layer The cultural layer includes categories associated with types of literary texts genres encyclopedia topics narrative patterns etc The computer layer refers to the processes by which the computer organizes data into packets or databases The ways in which the computer layer organizes data is now influencing how the cultural layer is organized The cultural categories are now being transcoded into computer categories so that media content or cultural texts is being redefined in new ways as evident in the ways in which Websites DVD s or computer games employ new ways of organizing experience and engaging users Central to the new media for Manovich is the role of the computer interface or the cut and paste Graphical User Interface This interface allowed users to store save and open up files on the computer screen as well as click on images and files The same interface code operates across different computer and worlds workplace versus school versus home as a means of organizing inputting searching for or viewing text Cultural interfaces combine together texts from three different ways of organizing text the printed word the cinematic presentation of moving images and the computer interface For example central to the experience of printed text is the concept of the page as found in books Computer interfaces transformed the concept of the page into scrolling down different pages to the created on Web pages into which multiple specific pages are all present on one initial page The cinema camera developed to create -D computer graphics for such things as flight training influenced the computer interface in terms of providing users with -D perspectives on the same object and users with ways of creating computer animation objects Computer games employ cinematic techniques to created -D narrative introductions to game worlds as well as the use of camera-like control buttons on the control hardware Manovich summarizes the ways in which the computer interfaces have incorporated the cinema Cinema the major cultural form of the twentieth century has found a new life as the toolbox of the computer user Cinematic means of perception of connecting space and time of representing human memory thinking and emotion have become a way of work and a way of life for jillions in the computer age Cinema s aesthetic strategies have become basic organizational principles of computer software The window into a fictional world of a cinematic narrative has become a window into a dataspace In shorts what was cinema is now the human-computer interface p The development and comprehension of multimedia texts Manovich s principles are evident in the increased use of multimedia text production in schools in which students rely on a range of different modalities to represent their ideas as well as reading strategies for interpreting multimedia texts all of which entails a different set of literacies than those associated with traditional notions of reading comprehension Gunther Kress cites the example of a young reader reading a online video games magazine such as Playstation Magazine http www playstationmagazine com kc zdf In reading this text as organization as disparate bits of information in a visual space the traditional strategy of linear comprehension with a printed text is now less important than the ability to interpret the various visual cues constituted by color shape font size location on the page configuration and function in order to define a reading path related to where to go next Making these decisions requires a clear sense of relevance regarding what information is most important for accomplishing certain purposes for example to know how to successfully play a certain game Given the large amount of optional information provided on a page a reader needs to apply a sense of relevance to determine which information is most relevant to fulfilling certain purposes for reading Reading a print text required interpretation and transformation of that which was clearly there and clearly organized The new task is that of applying principles of relevant to a page which is relatively open in its organization and consequently offers a range of possible reading paths perhaps infinitely many The task of the reader in the first case is to observe and follow a given order and within that order to engage in interpretation The task of the reader of the new page and of the screens which are its models is to establish the order through principles of relevance of the reader s making and to construct meaning from that p As students acquire these literacies they are more open to and engaged with producing and reading multimedia texts Kress van Leeuwen At the same time from a media education perspective it is important that they recognize the multimedia productions have a long history as documented on the following hypertextual site on the historical development of multimedia that accompanies the book Multimedia From Wagner to Virtual Reality Randall Packer and Ken Jordan http www artmuseum net w vr overture overture html Further information on multimedia in art http www artmuseum net w vr Teachers html Michelle Kendrik The Web and New Media Literacy Hypertext is Dead and There is Nothing New About New Media Anymore http www nmediac net fall kendrick htm argues that any study of new media needs to recognize the ways in which these new ways of reading and writing entails new forms of semiotic processing of the combinations of the visual textual tactile and spatial One of the major requirements for media educators is to help students critically analyze the ways in which the computer interface itself functions rhetorically to engage or persuade users through digital media She illustrates her position by discussing her evaluation of students Web sites developed in her course according to the following rubric Architecture Navigation The structure of the site how information is connected organized and crafted and how navigation works within the site to guide users readers and to aid them in finding content relevant to their purposes Design This is the look and feel of the site -- how colors layout images icons work within the site to create an emotional affective experience Does the design work with or against the written content and purpose of the site Content Usually the text of the site but can include or consist solely of images or diagrams or animations Whatever information is needed to convey the purpose of the site and to enable users readers to experience the site and emerge with knowledge relevant to their needs Code The HTML hypertext markup language and other relevant coding JAVA Flash needed to structure and enable the site to function in an efficient manner and hold each of the other three elements architecture design content In response to one student s plagiarizing of content material from other sites she was concerned that she had taught students to consider imitating or borrowing from other well-designed sites This dilemma for her pointed to the fact that the development of sites is not a matter of individual production but the use of materials developed by others She also notes that users typically read only a small amount of all of the text on a Web site focusing on only specific parts of a site She argues that users construct meaning through environmental interaction a specific moment of code content and visualization -- this interaction is local and situated -- but nonetheless not arbitrary or relative These readings are highly situated in specific contexts Her analysis of several white supremacists sites demonstrate the ways in which these interactions operate in convincing young users to identity with a white privilege appeal in opposition to civil liberties This suggests the need to provide students with critical tools to analyze digital media tools that recognize changes in the ways in which the new media are constructed Acquiring Literacies through Use of New Media Acquiring literacies occurs through people s use of new media Jay Lemke http www-personal umich edu jaylemke webs nrc htm posits that these new media are highly multimedia in that they integrate images sounds animation and video as well as interactive participation They are also constructed around hypertext links that allow users to construct their own trajectory through hypermedia environments Given the user s active role they are therefore highly interactive inviting users to participate in different unique ways He cites the example of websites and digital games that are based on feature films The Lord of the Rings websites http www lordoftherings net --the film series from New Line Cinema http www eagames com official lordoftherings --the Electronic Arts videogames series http www lotr com --the Sierra videogames series The Matrix http whatisthematrix warnerbros com --the main film and DVD site http www enterthematrixgame com --the game site and The Prince of Persia a game in which the user controls the time of the game http www princeofpersiagame com index php He argues that the meaning constructed by active users or fans at these sites involves their active participation in games based on their intertextual knowledge of the original films on which the games are based While these sites may be designed to invite certain defined singular predetermined meanings or what Bakhtin described as monologic as opposed to multiple alternative dialogic meanings For example while The Lord of the Rings games may invite players to adopt certain stances or attitudes towards the good versus evil characters through the implied meanings of certain images sounds and intertextual references to the original films players may not necessarily adopt those implied stances or attitudes At the same time these different media are different and therefore imply different meanings No text tells the full story of an image every image can lead elsewhere than the text demands The more diverse the media included the more opportunities there are to subvert monologic design by foregrounding the divergence among meaning effects from different media I believe this is the most important new principle for critical literacy that multimedia as such offers us In order to understand how to make use of it we need to know much better both how monological design strategies work to keep us from exploiting the different potential messages in each of the component media and how different media really do provide different meaning affordances from one another This leads him to call for further research that examines how designers construct multimedia and work towards monologic or in some cases perhaps dialogic or even deconstructive effects hypermedia allow diverse meaning trajectories to be pursued by users and how users learn to relate these to each other to gain a sense of the overall system of possibilities of a hypermedia web users of educational software and multimedia make meanings across the different modalities and genres which they contain affect and meaning interact as we do so We can study how people make meaning and experience feelings in real time as we move through and across websites and virtual worlds such as those in digital games meanings made in virtual worlds come to be integrated into longer term learning and development as we move back and forth between them and the rest of our lives we integrate meanings across various attentional spaces on different timescales from seconds to hours meanings are made in multimedia through the affordances of space time place pace objects artifacts persons and embedded media For further reading on Lemke s theories of digital learning Lemke J Metamedia literacy Transforming meanings and media In D Reinking L Labbo M McKenna R Kiefer Eds Handbook of literacy and technology Transformations in a post-typographic world pp - Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum http www-personal umich edu jaylemke reinking htm Lemke J L Notes on multimedia and hypertext Online Available at http academic brooklyn cuny edu education jlemke papers hypermodality travels-app htm Lemke J L in press Travels in hypermodality Visual Communication http www-personal umich edu jaylemke papers hypermodality index htm This means that teachers need to consider ways of using digital tools to do more than simply search out and rehash existing information They need to use them as what David Jonassen describes as mindtools as learners who construct their own understanding through use of these tools Jonassen Howland Moore Marra Constructivist teaching requires that learners are confronting problems and issues that require new ways of thinking Rather than simply function as passive recipients of pre-packaged information as is the case with transmission instruction learners operating in constructivist learning sites are engaged in open-ended learning environments that are more consistent with the real life situations they will encounter in the future Open-ended learning environments rely heavily on the quality of learner s task management and decision making processes Perkins These open-ended ill-structured environments can be challenging for novice learners who may bring na ve or everyday understandings to their learning based on a I know what I know attitude This requires that they apply metacognitive reflection to continually determine the need to revise their stances and adopt new ways of thinking and knowing To assist novice learns open-ended environments need to providing scaffolding that assists them within their Vygotsky s zone of proximal development These scaffolds include certain digital tools that can help learners participate in the problem-solving process Dave Jonassen s course on constructivist learning and technology specific examples of using technology to foster constructivist learning http tiger coe missouri edu jonassen courses CLE Digital literacies also include the uses of various social practices involved in online exchanges that occur through e-mail chats bulletin boards MOO s MUD s or blogs These sites can function as communities of practice if they as open-learning environments provide helpful assistance to socialize new members into the community and support to engage members in productive co-inquiry for some larger purpose These sites have made use of digital tools to replicate lived-world social interactions so that participants can engage in meaningful communication on these sites For example Apple s new synchronous video tool ISightTM http www apple com isight a small video camera that attaches to computer monitors so that users can see and hear each other in real time serves to mimic more of the embodied face-to-face interaction that occurs in lived-world contexts If designed effectively these online sites can serve to foster learning through use of reflection and exchange of ideas For example in one study students were compared on patterns of communication found in both face to face and computer mediated group problem solving Jonassen Kwon Results indicated that the computer mediated group had to make greater effort to communicate to other group members but that their efforts to communicate and ability to reflect afforded more opportunities for critical thinking and therefore satisfaction with the course In fact it took six days to complete the group assignments in computer conferencing environment while the face-to-face group completed the same task in about one hour The computer-mediated environment afforded the opportunity to reflect leading to understanding of the course content At the same time there are limitations to online exchanges Synchronous real-time interactions can often be a challenge for learners in terms of being able to keep up with other participants or knowing what are relevant topics in the conversation In some cases chats can often be superficial and lacking purpose without some larger goal or outcome And people may lack the ready access or high-speed connections to participate with high levels of engagement Digital media tools Digital media tools can therefore be used to fostering learning by providing for new ways to construct texts and to communicate with others For example hypermedia functions as a tool by combining hypertext texts linked together by multi-linear nodes and multimedia photos video art audio text etc to produce an interactive media experience for participants Jonassen Landow Storyspace TM HyperStudioTM HyperCardTM and various web authoring programs involves defining intertextual links between a range of different text genres McKillop Myers Myers Beach Myers Hammett McKillop For example high school students represented their experiences with peers through combining photos music video clips and texts to interpret short stories Beach Myers http www ed psu edu k- socialworlds Bolter and Grusin argues that hypermedia challenges the traditional emphasis in literacy instruction on understanding or producing unified coherent texts based on a definitive single perspective He calls for teaching a rhetoric of expectations and arrivals p that helps students understand where certain links may take them and how they should respond to where they arrive Students may often use these tools to simply employ a describing strategy as opposed to an interrogating strategy In one study seventh graders preservice teachers used StorySpaceTM to combine original poems images and Quicktime movies to explain the various literacy devices used in poetry McKillop Myers The types of links employed in the hypermedia productions were analyzed in terms of their functions an iconic function was used to illustrate another text an indexical function was used to extend a text to show shared meaning and a symbolic function was used to question the meaning of a text which resulted in a greater understanding of or a critical analysis of a text Most of the seventh graders links served as iconic illustrations of ideas in poems There were far fewer instances of links reflecting critical analysis for example when students juxtaposed texts to generate contested meanings The undergraduates were more likely to employ links serving a symbolic function that involved critical analysis of texts Ninth graders at State College Area High School used of a range of hypermedia tools to contextualize issues associated with peer relationships http www ed psu edu k- socialworlds Beach Myers For example one student Abby studied peer groups in the high school by taking digital photos of groups in action during the school day Using Adobe PhotoshopTM she edited these images to grayscale and colorized specific objects that signified group belonging or exclusion As she notes In one of my photographs there are a bunch of bottles sitting on a table in the cafeteria One bottle is differently shaped and colored that the rest This is meant to show that there is one girl at my lunch table who doesn t fit with our group She doesn t drink Snapple like the rest of the girls which capitalizes on the fact that she doesn t fit in One of the most striking pictures is one of four girls all wearing the same style of Old Navy Tech Vest in the hallway outside of the bathroom They are talking and laughing and are obviously very comfortable together My favorite picture is one of a group of girls standing together in the bathroom This represents something that I call the bathroom group The bathroom group is an objective group that consists of pretty much anyone who comes into the bathroom to socialize Every girl in there is from a different group and yet the girls all mingle and talk This is one of the best examples of an objective group because although I know this sounds odd no one is judged in the bathroom Beach Myers p Through her hypermedia project she documents the ways in which female adolescents move in and out of different peer group worlds adopting identities consistent with the rules or beliefs operating in these worlds In their study of their video game playing Justin and Brett noted that many young players of video games construct future possible identities through play sometimes a young child will fantasize about being the basketball player or soccer star that they are controlling in the video game and they will learn to love and idolize that player for the rest of their life That is a way that video games shape a person s dreams or identities Beach Myers p In a project on the characteristics of effective versus less effective romantic relationships five ninth grade State College girls-Alyssa Audra Amanda Kim and Alissa created a video drama portraying couples different beliefs about romance In her essay about the video Alyssa explained The relationships each portray their own set beliefs and morals The difference is that the good couple communicated with each other They also had organized places they could go where they could be together outside of school The bad couple never communicated and they didn t go out with each other that much Beach Myers p To explore the ways in which the ideologies or discourses of sports define adolescent identities State College student Stephanie created a Quicktime video containing a montage of images from magazines that portrayed how the media represents ways in which participation in sports is shown as marking one s identity in a peer group or community As she explains For my final project I used the computer and scanned in pictures and added music to it The social world I was portraying was sports teams while linking it to the social world of friends In my final project I chose all the images from magazines for a purpose I went through tons of magazines before I found them When you play on a sports team one thing you should expect is for people to cheer for you and give you team spirit at your games The very first image of the fans in the crowd was chosen because not only do you become friends with your team but you become friends with the fans as well Every ones dream and desire is to win their game they are playing One of my pictures fitted this thought This picture was of a baseball player sitting on the shoulders of his teammates because he won the game Beach Myers p Students also use digital tools to define hypertext links to information about traditions or historical developments allowing them to contextualize current practices in a world or system based on past developments Middle school students used StoryspaceTM Bolter Smith Joyce to construct hypertexts http angelfire com mi patter america html based on research on American history and culture Patterson http angelfire com mi patter america html http faculty gvsu edu patterna ace html For example in writing a collaborative story about a slave captured in Africa the students created hypertext narratives with links to information about slavery In using StoryspaceTM a hypertext authoring tool published by Eastgate Software http www eastgate com for making these hypertext links students went beyond just presenting information about people and events to understanding people and events as shaped by historical and cultural forces Patterson http www npatterson net mid html As Patterson notes working with StoryspaceTM shifted students away from simply rehashing information about persons to understanding people and events as shaped by historical and cultural forces Fiction authors also use StoryspaceTM to create hypertext fiction organized around different optional storyline pathways similar to the Choose Your Adventure novels Readers can select their own optional links to create their own story version Readers click on certain words phrases or images to move to other links There may be certain endings but there is often no set pattern of links This raises the issue of whether author s can control their readers experiences in ways that foster an engaging narrative experience based on traditions of building suspense and inviting predictions of story resolutions Greg Costikyan Where Stories End and Games Begin http www costik com gamnstry html argues that this amounts to an inferior form of narrative Hypertext fiction lacks one of the key ingredients that makes games compelling there is no goal for the reader other than getting to a point where he or she gets the story You're faced with a series of decisions--follow this path or that one--but there is no context for your decision There is no reason other than the desire to explore to choose one path over another Reading hypertext fiction unlike playing a game is purposeless exploration and does not produce the same sense of desire of compulsion to play In other words hypertext fiction is an unhappy compromise between traditional story and game It's game-like in that the player has a variety of options but not surprisingly since it's created by people who by and large have little interest in games it has few of the other aspects that make games appealing Works of hypertext fiction are lousy games For examples of hypertext fiction see the Reading Room at Eastgate http www eastgate com ReadingRoom html For Robert Coover s hypertext fiction http landow stg brown edu HTatBrown CooverOV html Digital tools are also used to create communities of learners who can share ideas and messages in on-line sites The Inquiry Page housed at the University of Illinois http inquiry uiuc edu is designed to help teachers share inquiry-based teaching units teaching successes and collective expertise Bruce Davidson Bruce Easley Teachers engage in mutual inquiry through their access to resources on teaching and learning articles project links curriculum units and content resources Users of the site are themselves the developers who reconstruct the tool as they use it Participants may also share video photos graphics texts showing people engaged in inquiry in different settings and access resources involving a dynamic incorporation using Digital Windmill of the Open Directory category on Inquiry Based Learning This site represents new generation of web design that serves the social needs of teachers to mutually engage them in co-inquiry about problems issues or dilemmas Research on uses of these sites indicates the importance of quality of the social interaction in this on-line co-inquiry For example Barah and Schatz analyzed the development of a web-based learning site designed to foster sharing of inquiry-instruction ideas by Indiana math and science teachers in terms of the components of evolving activity systems This web site was initially designed as a tool by University educators to achieve the object of more discussion sharing about inquiry instruction with the outcome being improved understanding of inquiry-based instruction However given the lack of participation the University educators along with teacher participants shifted the focus of the web site to emphasize participants mutual collaboration at the site around inquiry-based math science instruction This suggests the need for new broader definitions of literacy and texts operating in schools In this course we will be using media literacy to include a range of different types of literacies involving understanding and producing texts These include a range of practices involved in responding to and creating texts film television radio CD s DVD s music the Web e-mail websites hypermedia PowerPoint productions and print texts magazines novels poems etc Each of these different types of texts requires the uses of particular types of literacies For example responding to and creating television involves the uses of televisuality a set of literacies involving understanding and producing television images http www newschool edu mediastudies tv televisuality html Students can use new media to explore issues in their life through multimedia productions about their everyday experience For example in a university-community collaborative after-school summer program in Oakland California DUSTY Digital Underground Storytelling for Youth adolescents create and display multimedia digital stories consisting of a narrative with the author s voice along with photographs video and music Hull http www uclinks org voices vce home html Glynda Hull cites the example of a story by Randy Lyfe-n-Rhyme Mama s only son is mama s only gun with a guillotine tongue rang one rhythmic powerful line as images of Randy and his mother morphed into photographs of the county jail while the music of Miles Davis floated in the background So proceeded Randy s social critique and commentary on life and opportunity or the lack thereof in his city and country One of the multi-media practices that is foregrounded in Randy s aforementioned piece is the recontextualization of images The story has a remarkable opening in which several photographs are juxtaposed including a sphinx and pyramids Malcolm X Tupac Shakur Marcus Garvey and Biggie Smalls all icons that Randy chose to associate with himself and to transcend By removing these images from their particular historical settings and re-purposing them within the context of his own creative universe and his own social world in Oakland Randy demonstrated a very powerful authorial agency This kind of compositional strategy is possible through alphabetic writing alone but it can assume a special performative power and an aesthetic dimension through multimedia at the same time that as in Randy s story it relinquishes some of the precision of claim and evidence associated with traditional argumentation p Hull argues that these productions lead to rethinking traditions notions of literary operating in schools Thinking about multi-media composing like Randy s story other forms of technology-mediated popular culture and examples of youth cultural performances such as spoken word and poetry slams can push us to think anew about theories of literacy In the current context the old debates about orality and literacy as well as long-held distinctions separating the personal and the analytic seem almost quaint in their dichotomous views given the complex combinations juxtapositions and manipulations of spoken and written language and other semiotic systems and designs for meaning presently possible There is much room then to explore and learn from the new formulations of literacy embodied in youth s cultural performances p Literacies Associated with Digital Media Many of the new literacies result from the new digital media Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel identify a number of new literacies associated with participation in a world mediated by ICT s and interactive media - scenario-planning Scenario-planning involves inquiry-based thinking about the future through creating what-if scenarios or narratives that serve to address potential developments and formulate policies for addressing those developments Given potential concerns with changes in environmental health security energy crime education and economic conditions people need to know how to address these changing conditions http www well com mb scenario http edie cprost sfu ca idea scenarios html http www sgzz ch home links scenplan htm One example of scenario-planning has to with predicting the future availability of resources water oil minerals natural gas etc as well as the impact of pollution and environmental changes on climate change Commercial media plays an important role in this process by continually promoting consumption of goods that require using up finite resources Advertising on commercial media celebrate short-term benefits of owning products without consideration of the long-term effects on the environment For an analysis of the role of the media in fostering a consumption society see Advertising and the End of the World with Sut Jhally at http www mediaed org for a written version see Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse by Sut Jhally at http www sutjhally com onlinepubs apocalypse html Computer games such as SimscityTM http www simscityguides com involve players in city planning activities designed to address problems of crime housing transportation employment etc facing urban dwellers requiring players to develop ways to address these problems in the future - Zines Young people actively participate in the production of zines as a means of actively expressing their counter-culture perspectives Through e-zining http www zinebook com http www etext org Zines http directory google com Top Arts Online Writing E-zines they are using on-line zines to challenge what they perceive to be status quo sexist and racist norms in the culture often through parody satire and spoofs Because they can publish these zines on the Web for a large potential audience with little or no expense they are motivated to create material that they assume may have some impact on their audiences multimediating Much of the new digital performance art involves producing art involving a range of different digital media forms on-line chat windows with I-phone websites telnetMUD sessions streaming video PowerPoint Flash learning objects net-radio etc combined together to create multi-media on-line experiences Computer and digital art function as forms of new media that are often highly interactive Museum-goers can now often alter the art work through choosing different options And museums are employing digital tools such as computer kiosks and holography Museum of Holography http www museeholographie com defaultEN htm The following are a few of the many art museums with digital art collections or with on-line resources for studying art Museum of Web Art http www mowa org Museum of Computer Art http moca virtual museum Rhizome digital art http rhizome org artbase Telematics Walker Art Center http telematic walkerart org timeline index html digital art collections http www digitalartsource com pages collect shtml Electronic Art Intermix http www eai org eai New York Museum of Modern Art P S http www ps org cut proj html New York Museum of Modern Art Modern Starts - http www moma org momalearning modernstarts index html Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art Digital Gallery http www moca org museum digital gallery php Whitney Museum Artport http artport whitney org Chicago Museum of Contemporary Arts http www mcachicago org MCA exhibit ex-frameset html San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Espace http www sfmoma org espace espace overview html These computer digital art works involve forms of multimedia combinations facilitated by digital tools As students begin to acquire these tools they are producing multi-genre multi-media written reports and art works that involve complex intertextual links between images sounds video clips and texts Making these links involve literacies associated with perceiving semiotic and cultural relationships between different forms and genres as well as creating novel combinations of links - blogging Blogging involves on-line chat forms containing multiple links to previous messages or resources organized often around current issues or themes in some cases written by professional journalists who are constrained by the dictates of objectivity operating in their news radio or television organizations http blogdex net http new blogger com home pyra http www weblogs com http www livejournal com doc tour http www globeofblogs com As with many of these new literacies the access of people outside of established institutions have resulted in changes in ways of participating in creating one s own forms of media A key aspect of success in blogging is the ability to cite relevant credible links that will function to convince others of a validity of one s claims And users need to be able to attract others attention by being provocative while at the same time not being sensational or inaccurate Module on the News will discuss ways in which teachers use blogs to provide students writing about issues with a greater sense of a shared community with people from outside the classroom Using blogs to Teach Writing http www syllabus com article asp id Educational Bloggers Network www bayareawritingproject org eBN Scott Hatch s webquest on using blogging to teach writing http www tc umn edu hatc webquest blogging Using blogs in education http www weblogg-ed com -culture-jamming Another new literacy involves culture-jamming of establishment often highly commercialized media productions through parody and satire Lasn One of the most familiar examples of culture-jamming is found in the Adbusters magazine and website http www adbusters com As with zines people engaged in culture-jamming alter or modify media texts to create their own critical message about the adverse effects of consumerism on the society and environment Another example of culture-jamming was a contest in October for homemade commercials challenging the Bush administration organized by MoveOn org posted of the amateur commercials on a site http www bushin seconds org Critical Analysis of Culture-Jamming teaching activities http it stlawu edu advertiz jamer TITLEPAG HTML - attention-transacting Another literacy that is inherent in these other literacies is the ability to pay attention to and to receive attention in the midst of millions of alternative bits of information and images One of the challenges of living in a media information saturated culture is the ability to know which bits of important are important or relevant to one s live and which to ignore as less important or relevant Because massive amounts of information are readily available through the Web and on various data bases Lankshear and Knobel drawing on Richard Lanham note that people need to know how to create attention structures that assist them is eliciting and providing relevant timely information as well as interpreting the validity and timeliness of that information The cite the example of Amazon com http www amazon com that uses a highly interactive website to provides customers with relevant useful information about books and other products Because the site stores information about previous purchasing choices it creates customer profiles that then provide a customer with suggestions regarding new choices that are consistent with their previous choices Moreover it now provides customers with reference searches so that they can enter in keywords and information about the uses of those keywords in book indexes are provided Another aspect of attention-transacting has to do with being able to maintain one s attention over time when so much of the media is highly transitory Based on the work of Michael Goldhaber s notion of the attention economy Lankshear and Knobel note that attention itself is an economic recourse in terms given users lack of time they will only pay attention to those sites or information on sites that they consider to be worth paying attention to Success on the Web can therefore be defined in terms of creating sites that will attract and maintain attention in the midst of millions of other competing sites This success can be determined in terms of which sites appear in the beginning of a Google search in that Google lists sites based on the popularity of sites according to the number of hits received being listed on other sites or in blogs or being referenced on listserves or e-mail messages Gauntlett The success of the Howard Dean presidential campaign was a function of not only having an effective website that was used to raised campaign donations http www deanforamerica com but also the listserve support organized by MoveOn http www moveon org that continually reminded contributors about the campaign in order to maintain their attention Another manifestation of attention transacting in a media culture noted by Lankshear and Knobel is the relationship between stars and fans Film music television and sports stars are continually attempting to seek the attention of fans These fans afford the stars real attention through following their careers reading about them in magazines and the news or going to their websites http www celebswebs co uk movies Movie Stars htm http www starseeker com act htm http www celebrity-websites com http www celebritybase net The stars need to continually reciprocate to maintain their popularity through affording their fans and audiences illusionary attention by providing fans with information about their lives being seen in the media participating in or producing new texts or engaging in community celebrity events When fans perceive these stars as withholding their attention they can then discontinue their allegiance to these stars This suggests the need for students to examine the relationships between stars and their fans as a means of understanding how the media constructs audiences as well as their own personal ties to certain stars One example of fans use of digital media to foster allegiance with stars is the construction of their own DVD s that contain material and clips from television series or films particularly series that have been discontinued such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Firefly Nussbaum These DVD s include positive and negative fan commentaries and clips from DVDTracks http www DVDtracks com Attention-transacting also related to attempts to enhance the significance of media events for audiences events such as the O J Simpson trial the death of Princess Diana the tragedy the Iraq War the Super Bowl World Series political conventions etc In some cases cable network news broadcasts suspend their usual formats to provide nonstop coverage of such events coverage that attracts large audiences These broadcasts promote the significance of these events in ways that serve to attract these audiences In cases of events that could be deemed as less significant they may actually attempt to promote the significance of an event through their coverage in ways that serve their own financial interests A local television news station may provide a sensationalized coverage of a local event in an attempt to attract attention to their coverage as opposed to another station s coverage Students could examine these promotion attempts as an instance of attempting to attract attention through hyperbolic construction of media events - searching categorizing and organizing information Another important literacy has to do with searching categorizing organizing and mapping information Related to attention-transacting literacies people are now overwhelmed with the accessibility of information through computers e-mails cell-phones and various media A study by Berkeley scientists found that information created on print film tape and disk in was roughly equivalent to all the text in the Library of Congress multiplied by an amount that has doubled in the past three years Levy http www msnbc com news asp ql c p This means that most all information can be stored in relatively inexpensive digital storage archives This information can also be readily cross-referenced to create novel intertextual connections However the challenge remains as to how to store it in ways that can be readily accessed and organized This means that they need to know how to effectively search for relevant useful information through keyword searches on Google and other search engines Effective searching requires an understanding of one s purposes for searching for relevant information ways of selecting uses of different databases or library indexes and strategies for accessing those databases People also need to know how to categorize or organize that information in files or storage sites and or create visual maps that can then be retrieved at a later date for use Creating maps employing tools such as Inspiration http www inspiration com or the writing organization tool Tinderbox http www eastgate com Tinderbox On the other hand Lev Manovich argues that organizing and storing digital images in some systematic manner remains a challenge As computerization dramatically increases the amount of media data that can be stored accessed and manipulated we are gradually shifting towards more structured ways to organize and describe this data For example we are moving from HTML to XML and next to Semantic Web from MPEG- to MPEG- from flat lens-based images to layered image composites and discrete D computer generated spaces In all these cases the shift is from a low-level metadata the fonts on the Web page the resolution and compression settings of a moving image to a high-level metadata that describes the structure of a media composition or even its semantics What about images Computerization creates a promise which maybe only an illusion that images that traditionally resisted the human attempts to describe them with precision will be finally conquered After all we now easily find out that a particular digital image contains so many pixels and so many colors we can also easily store all kinds of metadata along with the image and we can tease out some indications of image structure and semantics for instance we can find all edges in a bit-mapped image Yet visual search engines that can deal with the queries such as find all images which have a picture of or find all images similar in composition to this one are still in their infancy Similarly the metadata provided by a image database software I use to organize my digital photos tells me all kinds of technical details such as what aperture my digital camera used to snap this or that image but nothing about the image content In short while computerization made the image acquisition storage manipulation and transmission much more efficient than before it did not help us so far to deal with one of its side effects how to more efficiently describe and access the vast quantities of digital image being generated by digital cameras and scanners by the endless digital archives and digital libraries projects around the world by the sensors and the museums Creating online social relationships and identities Another use of digital tools is the ability to create online social relationships and identities in ways that serve one s social agendas In participating in online chat rooms bulletin boards MOOs MUDs blogs or e-mail exchanges people need to know how to employ language to project certain voices roles persona or identities adopt the norms and conventions operating in the online community establish their rhetorical purposes gain others identification with their beliefs and arguments make social connections with others and maintain a continual presence to establish themselves as community members Learning to employ these various literacies requires practice in participating in various online communities which may each have their own particular set of norms and expectations Establishing one s status within these communities requires an awareness of these norms and expectations MOOs One MOO site is called Diversity U http www du org dumoo loginto htm This site contains the following description of a MOO MOOs are virtual online environments designed for live interaction and collaboration MOO stands for Multi-user domain which means that many users can log on simultaneously Object-Oriented which refers to the type of program the MOO core uses MOOs can be used for synchronous communication through a more efficient interface than most chats provide But MOOs are much more than an online place to converse with others Since MOOs are object-based users can create rooms and objects which become permanent elements of the MOO This means that teachers can build online virtual classrooms textbooks slideprojectors and even robots that can be used for delivery of course material Students too can create objects for exciting online learning projects When online educators came across MOOs over five years ago they became very excited about the educational applications of MOOs The roots of MOOs lie with the online gaming community In fact if you've ever played any of those old DOS text-based computer games -- like Star Trek the Hobbit and th Guest -- you're already familiar with the concepts behind text-based object-oriented games But because of the versitility of MOOs their educational applications are limited only by our and our students' imaginations EduMOOs are far from games Through the use of objects teachers can deliver material in an engaging creative and innovative manner For example a colleague at the eduMOO Diversity University has created an online robot who will answer students' questions about writing essays and documenting sources A biology teacher at DU has created a prokaryote which students can look at touch and play with Most students feel that using the MOO is play and researchers note that when an attitude of play is adopted in learning activities engagement and learning are enhanced When it comes to constructivist student projects the MOO excels At Diversity University students have created online simulations of rainforests volcanoes and biology labs and re-enactments of the Years' War Dante's Inferno A Midsummer Night's Dream and Anne of Green Gables with the characters played by online robots The creation of these projects requires little computer expertise as most of the work is done through writing While web and VRML interfaces for MOOs are currently being developed which means that MOOs will be incorporating more and more graphics in the future MOOs are predominantly text-based environments This means that all our interaction with the MOO environment and other MOO users is done through reading and writing Students who MOO wills spend hours reading and writing each day And the reading writing skills developed in the MOO transfer to all areas of their academic lives For reading- and writing-across-the-curriculum then few learning activities surpass MOOing One example of the use of a MOO in a secondary literature class is a MOO developed for studying Brave New World http homepages wmich edu r rozema Fun In this MOO students create their own fictional roles and share discussions of the novel in fictional rooms exchanges that address some of the basic themes of the book MUVE s Multi-User Virtual Environments example Tappedin org http edc techleaders org emerging MUVEarchive readings htm Text-based MOO s MUD s http home swipnet se w- sidor mudar htm For example these are a range of literacies required for participation in online personals and dating sites which have increased in popularity and use In the first six months of Americans spent million on personals and dating sites Egan million Americans visited at least one online dating site in August sites such as Yahoo Personals http personals yahoo com us Match com http www match com search index aspx FriendFinder http FriendFinder com go p subssfav Udate http www udate com default asp pop no czoneR eHarmony http www eharmony com core eharmony ref AID PID Matchmaker http www matchmaker com irresistible rs qDRcP-WxT P Ak HAfcx These sites require the ability to present oneself in a virtual context without reliance on the usual historical culture temporal or physical markers associated with lived-world relationships In constructing their profiles participants need to construct descriptions of themselves that will appeal to others Jennifer Egan cites the example of Lorraine a -year-old mortgage officer and divorced mother of three teenagers who had no photo posted on her original profile with Match com and her descriptions of herself were vague A tepid response spurred her on She uploaded a photo and wrote a lengthy profile whose about me section includes My ideal man is someone who respects a truly good woman and knows how to make her feel special important and loved A man who would give of himself before he gives to himself Ouch I bet that hurt p Participants also learn effective ways to flirt in a virtual world Egan notes that The most obvious are codified right into the dating sites as nonverbal signals people can click at each other winks smiles breaking the ice depending on the site While women are generally more comfortable approaching mean online than in bars man still tend to make the first moves and since women with attractive pictures are usually besieged with responses it behooves a man to think hard about his opening salvo p There certainly have been a lot of issues related to authenticity and deception involved in adopting online identities Burbules Callister Dreyfus Turkle Given the anonymity of the Web people can adopt virtual identities that may bear little relationship to the selves they adopt in lived worlds In chat rooms they can pretend to be identities for the purposes of attracting others in an attempt to create actual live-world relationships Judith Donath MIT Media Lab Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community http smg media mit edu people judith Identity IdentityDeception html They can deceive others about their actual identity because there is little or no accountability for the consequences of deception in these virtual sites While one could argue that such deception is involved in adopting lived-world identities relationships in lived-world contexts are part of local familiar networks of people who know each other while people on virtual sites may be located in all parts of the globe Egan notes that deceptive profiles in personals and dating sites are not uncommon but can have negative consequences For all the fibbing and fudging that go on outright lying about who you are is generally regarded as uncool and self-defeating Think about it if all goes well the person will ultimately agree to meet you at which point they ll discover you re not a race-car driver from Monaco who speaks five languages and owns an island in the Caribbean p People assuming online identities may actually need to consciously adopt to those certain markers or aspects of their identities that can be highlighted or exaggerated by a MUD or virtual world If a MUD requires that people engage in intimate social interactions then participants need to employ those practices required by these interactions emphasizing their outgoing social self Alan Reed Online Identities The Centred vs The Decentred Self http www cariboo bc ca cpj Cpj GorgAR htm INFO About MUDs http www oise on ca jnolan about muds html Curry College of Education University of Virginia MOOs teaching cases http curry edschool Virginia EDU cases ITcase Concerns have also been raised about the ways in which virtual online interactions are seen as replacing actual face-to-face interactions which leads to a loss of the importance of bodily social contact with others Nicholas Burbules argues that adopting online identities should not necessarily be perceived as substituting for or replacing live-world identities But very few people have been talking about virtual engagements replacing ordinary embodied ones and of course by definition virtual engagements will always lack some qualities that ordinary embodied ones have Yet an equally important question is the obverse what qualities can virtual engagements have that ordinary embodied ones lack The advantages aren t necessarily all on one side After all the embodied experience for many people is seriously limited by disability infirmity illness chronic pain isolation or a physical appearance that leads others to prejudge ignore or despise them For many of these people the opportunity for interaction online precisely because it does not require mobility or energetic effort or precisely because it can be relatively anonymous is preferable to ordinary embodied interactions Here as elsewhere in these sorts of arguments claims about which mode of interaction is better must always be tempered by asking better for whom the relatively disembodied space that is the Internet is not by and large regarded by people who live and interact there as a substitute for their real lives but as a supplement to it indeed as part of it In the end it is not the Internet that has raised contemporary questions about the necessity of our bodies for our sense of identity it is a much larger cultural shift that foregrounds the performative rather than essential character of our embodied selves p These issues related to the construction of online identities suggests the value of having students reflect on the identities persona or roles they adopt in online contexts Students could examine their uses of language informal versus formal style or the uses of social practices based on norms operating in an online site aspects of participation that will be further examined in Module Media Ethnography Summary Digital media and literacy practices Through participation in different digital media people acquire these different literacy or social practices The more experience they have with these different media the more adept they become in using these practices By studying the uses of these practices in the classroom students learn ways of reflecting on their practices in ways that may help them become more effective users of digital media One Example Video Games as a New Media One example of these new digital media is the video game now one of the most popular forms of entertainment In people devoted more time to playing video games hours on average for the year than viewing rented videos DVD s Dee Video games are played on Sony's Playstation TM Microsoft s XboxTM Nintendo's GameBoyTM or Nokia's N-GageTM and are produced by Electronic Arts Activision Atari Take-Two THQ and Konami Most Electronic Arts the largest producer has two games Madden NFL Football and FIFA Soccer that each earned more than a billion dollars The total sales for video games in was billion dollars equal to total sales for film video DVD s And for young adult adolescent males video games are now the fourth most popular media form after television radio and the Internet now surpassing newspapers and magazines Mandese - year-old males devote percent and adolescent males devote percent of the time they spend with media each day to playing video games In a New York Times Magazine article on video games Jonathan Dee divides video games into two basic categories ''fighters'' ''shooters'' and God games The ''fighters'' ''shooters'' are sports driving games that involve avoid being destroyed by avoiding dangers in real time through the use of point-and click technology The more violent games have raised issues about their effects on player s attitudes towards and use of violence involved with simulated killing in these games There has been considerable controversy about the impact of playing these games on adolescents attitudes towards or actual use of violence with some charging that playing certain games leads to more violent behavior Parents who want information about the content of certain games are provided with a rating on games developed by the Entertainment Software Rating Board ESRB - Early Childhood Content suitable for children ages and over Contains no violence Child requires reading skills fine motor skills and a high level of thinking skills - Everyone Content suitable for persons ages six and older They may contain minimal violence some comic mischief for example slapstick comedy or some crude language - Teens Content suitable for persons and older Contains all the above plus more animated or realistic violence May have strong language and or suggestive themes - Mature Content suitable for persons ages and older These products may include more intense violence or language than products in the Teen category In addition these titles may also include mature sexual themes - Adult Only Content suitable only for adults These products may include graphic depictions of sex and or violence Adults Only products are not intended to be sold or rented to persons under the age of To rate clips of video games according to each of these ratings click on http www fimoculous com work cfm and the click on rating video games requires RealPlayerOneTM plugin Another issue related to games is the degree to which games are gendered in ways the foster traditional masculine or feminine practices Many early shooter games were assumed to appeal to male adolescents However more recent games particularly simulation games have a high appeal for females Henry Jenkins discusses issues of gender and games Complete Freedom Of Movement Video Games As Gendered Play Spaces http web mit edu fms www faculty henry pub complete html David Leonard in Live in your world play in ours Race video games and consuming the other http www utpjournals com jour ihtml lp simile issue leonardX html discusses the often stereotyped racial representations in video games The gendered and racial representations in games represent a larger interest in the ideological values represented in games Jenkins and Janet Murray discuss the ways in which the Star Trek games reflect certain values http web mit edu fms www faculty henry holodeck html While television's Star Trek must appeal to multiple demographic groups to sustain its popularity the digital market is still predominantly young male and technically oriented the content of the Star Trek games reflect that orientation using technology to facilitate interactions with fictional technologies and emphasizing combat over conversation The ideology of the TV programs is constantly disputed among fans but Star Trek games necessarily takes sides The result is a strikingly militaristic conception of the Enterprise its mission and its relations to alien cultures The games also display paternalism as aliens are most often cast as subjects requiring rescue and assistance and misogyny as powerful women are often cast as dangerously duplicitous No one seems to have hardwired the Prime Directive into these simulated Trek worlds None of these limitations are intrinsic to the technology rather they reflect the current state of the game marketplace and the limitations of corporate understandings of the potential Star Trek audience Another genre of games the God games involve players in creating virtual worlds environments or communities in ways that best serve the inhabitants For example the Atari game RollerCoaster Tycoon involves designing amusement parks in ways that avoid accidents for people on the park rides Another example in the Electronic Art's Sims games requiring players to participate in simulated communities In a University of Minnesota Digital Media Center Tech Talk program on computer games http techtalk umn edu episodes shtml Kurtis Scaletta described a popular older game Myst in which players can move through a vitual environment and note clues for solving certain puzzles often by selecting to go through certain secret doors but largely without interacting with others In more recent games such as Siberia there are more interactions with other characters Scaletta notes that participating in these games involves some problem-solving skills in which people learn to collect documents or keep maps as tools for navigating through a game Scaletta also noted that some of the more recent shooter games such as the online version of Quake involves some social skills because players are player with or against each other The world is open sourced and the people could create components they can create new territory new maps to play the game And so a lot of young people know how to write the programs to enhance the games And so the players became involved in changing the landscape of the game and they created new aspects of the world and they ended up forming because the more experienced players were basically better they would just enjoy shooting the novices And it wouldn t be very much fun for a novice to come in and play They started forming self-protective communities of Let s keep ourselves safe from these predators So even though it s an incredibly violent game it ended up being a lesson in sort-of conflict management whereby working together and forming these communities people were able to protect themselves He also cited the example of the Sims games such as Sims City They ve simulated everything from running railroads running empires in the days of the Roman Caesars building roller coasters my favorite is a simulation golf course where you build a golf course and you can actually play golf on it against famous golfers with names like Tiger Forest But it s not a true simulation in that when I use the term simulation I generally think of it as something that is supposed to be realistic like a flight simulator you re actually going to learn how to fly a plane There is obviously a level of fantasy to that so it s sort of a simulation-type game It s a genre of game The Sims is interesting because it became popular in sort of the age of the Internet and so you can not only play these games where you develop your characters and share those characters with other people So people upload their games that they ve played and people can download them and see what you ve done with your characters and the neighborhoods you ve built And now there s an online Sims where your characters can even interact in real time with the Sims characters that other people have made For Dee a central issue in participating in these games is the ways in which they function as interactive storytelling that draws on traditional narrative forms but with the simulate reality of digital video He describes his own experience of playing one game Max Payne I sit down in my living room to play if that's even the right word anymore Max Payne another popular violent title from Rockstar It's a story-based shooter and Max's story -- set in a nighttime comic-book-livid New York City -- is a sad and vengeful one Max was formerly a by-the-book cop but the agony he suffered when his wife and baby were murdered by junkies has pushed him into vigilante territory The man of law who when the quest for justice becomes personal steps outside the law's boundaries anyone who's ever seen a John Wayne or a Clint Eastwood movie already knows the drill Max is not me but is he a character Do I ever feel the sort of emotional affinity for him I might feel for a grief-demented father in a movie or a book He's more of a narrative puzzle piece an archetype a situation if I walked into the middle of a movie and saw a chase scene I could feel something simple and immediate for both hunter and prey without having any idea who they are and that's how I feel about Max The whole scenario strikes me especially after he dies a few more times as silly and ponderous and overly bloodthirsty and yet there's something there -- a curious tension between control and no-control -- that seems worth feeling solely on the grounds that over a lifetime of novels and plays and movies and songs and paintings I've never felt it before The form is miles ahead of the content and as long as the gold rush is on it'll probably stay that way But as in the first days of television or radio or the movies the form is the whole thrill and it's more than thrill enough p Dee quotes Bruno Bunnell CEO of Atari who argues that that this experience of interactive storytelling in video games will eventually change the movie industry The golden age of movies is gone That's it It's a fact What they do today to survive is they multiply the special effects to catch up with what the kids want because they've seen it in the incredible universes of these video games It used to be 'Well let's make a movie and then make a video game version as a licensed product ' The next step to this will be the collaboration between the stories between the complexity of their stories and the personal expression of the video game This product doesn't exist yet but it will Think about this kind of game where you'll be in a kind of Star Wars environment you'll have X thousand people playing together at the same time you could just spend your day watching the screen and waiting for the stories to happen or else you can decide to enter the game and take your own little path all in real time Or let's say you see a movie and your character is in the jungle there's a snake there you see the snake but he hasn't seen it he's smoking a cigarette talking to his girlfriend You're like 'The snake The snake ' And the character on the screen says 'A snake Where ' But if you choose not to say anything then he just goes on doing what he's doing The movie people don't anticipate this revolution They better watch their back We're right there Big time p Greg Costikyan Where Stories End and Games Begin http www costik com gamnstry html disagrees with the idea that games are forms of narrative given his assumption that narratives involve a linear experience of unfolding events A game is non-linear Games must provide at least the illusion of free will to the player players must feel that they have freedom of action within the structure of the game The structure constrains what they can do to be sure but they must feel they have options if not they are not actively engaged Rather they are mere passive recipients of the experience and they're not playing any more They must not be constrained to a linear path of events unchangeable in order or they'll feel they're being railroaded through the game that nothing they do has any impact that they are not playing in any meaningful sense In other words there's a direct immediate conflict between the demands of story and the demands of a game Divergence from a story's path is likely to make for a less satisfying story restricting a player's freedom of action is likely to make for a less satisfying game To the degree that you make a game more like a story--a controlled pre-determined experience with events occurring as the author wishes--you make it a less effective game To the degree that you make a story more like a game--with alternative paths and outcomes--you make it a less effective story It's not merely that games aren't stories and vice versa rather they are in a sense opposites In considering comparisons of games and films as narrative media Costikyan also recognizes a central principle of this course associated with comparing media that rather than assuming that certain media are superior or inferior to other media that one needs to recognize that media are different from each other On one level it's a status thing Game designers view movies as more legitimate more important than games just as screenwriters view novels are more legitimate more important than movie scripts But it also has to do with the fact that movies and novels are our fundamental storytelling artforms whereas games are the artform we created based on the fundamental human activity of play Neither is superior to the other in any meaningful sense To think that stories are somehow more legitimate than games is like thinking that music is somehow more legitimate than poetry or poetry more legitimate than painting It's comparing apples to oranges It's the merit of the individual product within the form that matters--whether the poem is good or bad the music soaring or trite the game well or ill designed Modularity and game design Games build on one of Manovich s principles modularity Modularity allows developers and users to mix and match components to achieve different goals This has multiple consequences for software developers and users Dubbels Each component works independently of the others allowing each component to be an expert in one specific area Given the complexity of software today it is difficult for any single developer to produce an excellent all-purpose piece of software It allows programmers to build on their strengths and produce a single component that functions well a master of one rather than something that performs in an average manner on many tasks jack of all It allows for combinatorial creativity on the part of the user developer Given a wide variety of components the user developer can mix and match pieces that are relevant to their task at hand and construct a piece of software that performs a variety of tasks seamlessly The component architecture also allows for expansion and modification of the software with changing needs For instance an instructional web site that just had text and images can be very easily adapted to include animations and video Contrast this to a situation where one uses a single piece of large instructional software constructed without taking advantage of the component architecture Adding another media to the mix would require rewriting the entire software from scratch Having a component architecture allows for easier trouble shooting In a component based world a malfunction can be caused by two things malfunction in a single component or malfunction in the manner in which different components talk to each other In either case identifying and rectifying the problem is easy something that would be extremely hard in the previous ways of developing software One does not have to go back and attempt to parse through the entire code The solution is usually replacing a malfunctioning module rather than revamping the entire software Learning different literacies associated with video games For adolescents acquiring proficiency in learning these literacies often serves to define their social identities as experts or active participants in a community organized around media use James Gee describes a range of different literacies learned through playing games For example as active computer game players adolescents are learning a range of practices involved in becoming proficient in playing computer games and in being recognized as a successful game player Rather than learning content students learn to participate in what Gee describes as semiotic domains Video games are a semantic domain which includes an affinity group of insider people who know a lot about a particular game and who interact around shared uses of and knowledge about the game These participants are also a part of a lifeworld consisting of people who share a common set of discourses and social practices associated with a particular semantic domain These game players create fan sites on which they discuss their experiences with games http directory google com Top Games Video Games Fan Pages Video games are designed in ways that involve learners adopting certain identities as virtual characters in the game world who move through a series of steps or challenges in order to succeed in the game In doing so players are learning how to adopt different identities learning that may then transfer to learning to adopt the role of the scientist or historian in school Central to motivating players to successfully adopt virtual identities is whether they are willing to make an effort to succeed in ways that results in success in the game particularly when one s real world identity is that of a fearful newcomer who is uneasy about or reluctant to play a game Video games are therefore designed in ways that support novice players in ways that serve to minimize taking risks or failing and in ways that reward success Gee identities a number of design principles that support novice participants and provide a sense of success Amplification of Input Principle For a little input learners get a lot of output Achievement Principle For learns of all levels of skill there are intrinsic rewards from the beginning customized to each learner s level effort and growing mastery and signaling the learner s ongoing achievements Practice principle Learners get lots and lots of practice in a context where the practice is not boring i e in a virtual world that is compelling to learners on their own terms and where the learners experience ongoing success They spend lots of time on task Ongoing Learning Principle The distinction between learner and master is vague since learners thanks to the operation of the regime of competence p Gee argues that through participation in games children and adolescents also engage in critical learning of how they are manipulated by games as design spaces and how they can in turn manipulate the game for their own ends They are also recognizing how these designs spaces are connected to other similar genres of design spaces and how these design spaces function to engage us And he argues that through participation in video games children and adolescents are learning that meaning is constituted through intertextual links connected to other related texts Having experienced the genre of the fantasy quest adventure in literature film and other games they draw on their knowledge of that genre to navigate through new unfamiliar quest games They are also learning that in addition to words meaning resides in multiple modalities of images actions and sounds that serve to support their learning a new game And because many games store knowledge of a player s previous experience players learn that they can move on in the game without having to worry about what the game already knows about them And because players may be working together on-line as members of an affinity group they are learning that knowledge is distributed different players and tools given their common shared attempted to achieve certain goals And as the player acquires experience with they game they assume the role of insider producer teacher of others as well as an active agent in altering the game itself Games are also designed to help players develop new skills and tactics that can be layered and manipulated to evolve strategies to create the player s desired outcome As Brock Dubbels notes Once a player develops a skill and uses it tactically in many cases the game is designed to make the player change their strategy and use the skills and tactics in novel ways so that pire trial and error is not enough to win These evolving challenges put the players in positions where if they want to beat the game they must develop novel approaches to old problems in matching skill sets in new combinatorial and permutative sets thus players begin to create novel combinations and reductions from the game s skill sets unique tactics and layered strategies are acquired through the experience of applying their problem solving skills to changing events and twists in the story Play like trial and error and planning is a creative process where the player co-creates meaning to navigate towards a game ending scenario based on goals consequence and outcome Video game play seems to be a form of critical literacy where individuals are involved in a narrative where they investigate a problem fantasy or scenario without life or resource threatening outcomes Perhaps what might be helpful in thinking about games and classroom learning is the way games can be broken down into the separate challenges and the player can approach them at different levels of difficulty and in different contexts In this way players can acquire skills and knowledge that allow them to advance and gain skills and perhaps mastery of the game while they are playing p All of these interactive learning experiences with not only video games but also on-line chat sites and interactive websites serve to provide students with experiences that transfer to participation in other media and to schools While games may be designed primarily for entertainment players are engaged in a lot of incidental learning that enhance their sense of agency as active learners They are also acquiring new literacies constituting new ways of experience media This means that schools need to develop learning experiences that provide equally interactive modes of learning that mimic some of the learning principles inherent in games In the long run schools will incorporate more game-like interactive multimedia learning and games will be designed to assist learning in ways that serve to support schools Educators also use games and simulations as learning objects developed with the use of that serve to supplement their instruction with engaging online activities that actively engage students with graphics-based learning Scott Wilson-Barnard of the University of Minnesota Digital Media Center cites some examples of games and simulations developed using Flash MXTM that are designed to foster learning http www tc umn edu scott flash flash-examples html One example he cites is on the PBS NOVA site Build a Rice Paddy http www pbs org wgbh nova satoyama hillside html Kurtis Scaletta s examples of games developed with FlashTM or AuthorwareTM http www tc umn edu kurtis Links related to video computer games Google links to video game sites http directory google com Top Games Video Games Console Platforms Clips trailers of video games http ukclips com Game Nation television program reviews discussions http www gamenationtv com videoclips videoclips shtml Yahoo free games http games yahoo com Computer Games online games http www computergames ro jocuri php Apple game trailers clips http www apple com games Electronic Arts major games producer http www eagames com home jsp The Sims http thesims ea com SONY Playstation http www us playstation com Games Domain http www gamesdomain com indexus html Computer Simulation games http compsimgames about com mbody htm Game Culture articles on cultural aspects of games http www game-culture com articles html Computer Games Magazine http www cgonline com cgm -m html GamesStudies journal of research on games http www gamestudies org Center for Computer Game Research University of Copenhagen http game itu dk Digital Games Research Association http www digra org Digital Games Research Conference http www gamesconference org Game Culture and Technology Lab University of California Irvine http proxy arts uci edu gamelab Discussion of a documentary on video games http web mit edu cms games screening html References on games some provided by Kurtis Scaletta British Educational Communications and Technology Agency Information sheet on computer games to support learning http www becta org uk technology infosheets html computergames html Computer games in education project project profile This and other documents are http edugameforum ngfl gov uk Registration is required but free What aspects of games may contribute to education This and other documents are http edugameforum ngfl gov uk Registration is required but free Cassell J Jenkins H Eds From Barbie to Mortal Kombat Gender and computer games Boston MIT Press Costikyan G I Have No Words I Must Design http www costik com nowords html Crawford C On Game Design New Riders Indianapolis In Crawford C Chris Crawford on Game Design New York New Riders Goldstein J Raessens J Eds Handbook of computer game studies Boston MIT Press Jones K Games and simulations made easy practical tips to improve learning through gaming Stirling VA Kogan Page Kafai Y B The educational potential of electronic games from games-to-teach to games-to-learn Paper presented at Playing By The Rules Chicago IL http culturalpolicy uchicago edu conf papers kafai html Kent S The ultimate history of video games Roseville CA Prima Mount P Gameplay the elements of interaction Master's thesis Liverpool John Moores University http www gamasutra com education Prensky M Digital game-based learning New York McGraw Hill http www twitchspeed com site news html Poole S Trigger happy Videogames and the entertainment revolution New York Arcade Rouse R Game design Theory and practice Plano TX Woodware Wolf M Ed The Medium of the Video Game Austin University of Texas Press Wolf M Perron B Eds The video game theory reader New York Routledge Related sites New Media Studies Institute for New Media Studies University of Minnesota http www inms umn edu html index html Center for Cyberculture Studies http www com washington edu rccs New Media Studies http www newmediastudies com Journal of New Media Culture http www nmediac net Center for History and the New Media George Mason University http chnm gmu edu index html Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning Columbia University http www ccnmtl columbia edu The New Literacies Archive Readingonline org http www readingonline org newliteracies lit index asp HREF newlitindex asp ArticlesWanted Archive Students Find their Voices through Multimedia uses of multimedia to express ideas http glef org FMPro -DB articles fp -format article html -lay layout learnlivekeywords jargonfree Project-Based Learning -max -token Art -token Project-Based Learning -token Innovative Classrooms -find For further reading on new digital literacies Alvermann D Ed Adolescents and literacies in a digital world New York Peter Lang Bolter J D Writing space Computers hypertext and the remediation of print nd ed Mahwah NJ Erlbaum Bruce B C Literacy technologies What stance should we take Journal of Literacy Research - http nrc oakland edu jlr archive v article pdf Everett A Caldwell J Eds New media Theories and practices of digitextuality New York Routledge Harries D Ed The new media book London British Film Institute Herman A Swiss H eds The world wide Web and contemporary cultural theory New York Routledge Hillis K Digital sensations Space identity and embodiment in virtual reality Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press Kolko B Ed Virtual publics Policy and community in the electronic age New York Columbia University Press Lister M Dovey J Giddins S Grant I Kelly K Eds New media New York Routlege Murray J H Hamlet on the holodeck The future of narrative in cyberspace New York Free Press Reinking D McKenna M C Labbo L D Kieffer R D Eds Handbook of literacy and technology Transformations in a post-typographic world Mahwah NJ Erlbaum Shyles L Ed Deciphering cyberspace Making the most of digital communication technology Thousand Oaks CA Sage Tyner K Literacy in a digital world Teaching and learning in the age of information Mahwah NJ Erlbaum Studying and Using the Web Another central and now ubiquitous digital tool and new media is the Web In addition to knowing how to use the Web as a form of media it is also important that students learn to step back and study the Web itself in terms of its functions and value In his introduction to the nd edition of Web Studies David Gauntlett http www newmediastudies com intro p htm notes that the Web should not be confused with the internet The Web a particular type of data consisting of websites created with HTML Hypertext Markup Language is run on the internet which is a network of linked computers Since HTML has its limitations in terms of creating visual images or interactive sites other tools have been designed tools such as ASP for creating databases for online shopping sites or news sites XML a newer form of HTML and Flash for creating interactive graphics or learning objects Based on an analysis of trends in Web use from his first book edition on the Web to his edition Gautlett identifies a number of issues related to the uses of the Web The Web allows people to express themselves the Web offers people an opportunity to produce creative expressive media products or texts or art works if you prefer and display them to a global audience The Web brings people together building communities Now regardless of where they are in the world people with similar interests or with similar backgrounds or with similar attitudes can join communities of like-minded people and share views exchange information and build relationships virtual communities are inevitably different to real-world ones of course Anonymity and identity play in cyberspace Since participants cannot see each other and are not obliged to reveal their real name or physical location there is considerable scope for people to reveal secrets discuss problems or even enact whole 'identities' which they would never do in the real world not even with their closest friends - in some cases especially not with their closest friends The Web and big business Big businesses are scared that the Internet will ruin them Peer-to-peer file sharing via systems like Napster and its successors such as Kazaa has famously upset the music industry which is understandably distressed that pop songs and videos are being acquired for free instead of via the traditional method of paying for them Some file-sharers argue that the music industry has lots of money already and that rock stars are rich so it doesn't matter However since we don't live in a post-capitalist utopia this view is short-sighted and means that promising new bands would have no chance of getting a record deal and indeed the record industry has already become very reluctant to foster new talent unless it has 'instant pop hit' written all over it File-sharing fans also point out that people who download songs are also more likely to buy CDs of the music they like most which is a better argument although the evidence for this happening is mixed The Web is changing politics and international relations The internet has the potential to create links between people and groups with shared political interests - and for them to promote their ideas to others By increasing access to information - or propaganda - it is thought that the internet may bring about a greater engagement and interaction between the individual and larger political processes Increasing numbers of people do have internet access but most of them don't spend any time in online political debates We can hope that the greater engagement with political issues which the Web can bring will mean that more people become interested in politics generally but this is far from guaranteed The Web therefore is having an influence on how people and institutions interact and organize around shared community interests In political campaigns it is playing an increased role in promoting candidates and fund-raising A study found that percent of campaign sites involved visitors by assisting them in making donations signing up as volunteers and subscribing to email lists http www seattlepress com article- html Campaigns Online Center for the Study of American Government Johns Hopkins University http campaignsonline typepad com campaigns online Project Vote Smart analysis of candidates sites http www vote-smart org For a PowerPoint presentation of a research study on the role of the Internet as part in fostering participation in democracy by Linda Jean Kensicki University of Minnesota December th - Democratizing power of the Internet http www inms umn edu convenings researchbreakfast breakfasts html Critical analysis of the Web Given the importance of the Web students need to learn to develop a critical stance as the encounter Websites In many cases web sites present information that is in inaccurate misleading or deceptive Teachers therefore need to help their students to critically examine web sites particularly when they are using the Web to conduct research on certain topics Evaluating web sites can be integrated into media literacy instruction by focusing on having students create their own sites and then examine their uses of language uses of tools for representing topics and groups and rhetorical strategies In creating their own sites for particular audiences and purposes students may consider some of the following as suggested by David Buckingham p The ways in which web sites claims to tell the truth and establish their authenticity and authority The presence or absence of particular viewpoints or aspects of experience The use of visual and verbal rhetorics in the design of web sites How web sites are structured in order to encourage users to navigate in certain ways The kinds of interactivity that are on effer and the degrees of control and feedback they afford to the user The ways in which users can be targeted by commercial appeals both visibly and invisibly How the Web is used to gather information about consumers How different groups of people use the internet in their daily lives and for what purposes The following is a list of criteria for evaluating Websites developed at the University of Southern Maine Library http library usm maine edu guides webeval html Authority Is the information reliable Check the author's credentials and affiliation Is the author an expert in the field Does the resource have a reputable organization or expert behind it Are the sources of information stated Can you verify the information Can the author be contacted for clarification Check for organizational or author biases Scope Is the material at this site useful unique accurate or is it derivative repetitious or doubtful Is the information available in other formats Is the purpose of the resource clearly stated Does it fulfill its purpose What items are included in the resource What subject area time period formats or types of material are covered Is the information factual or opinion Does the site contain original information or simply links How frequently is the resource updated Does the site have clear and obvious pointers to new content Format and Presentation Is the information easy to get to How many links does it take to get to something useful What is the quality of the graphical images Do these images enhance the resource or distract from the content Is the target audience or intended users clearly indicated Is the arrangement of links uncluttered Does the site have its own search engine Is the site easily browsable or searchable Cost and Accessibility Is the site available on a consistent basis Is response time fast Does the site have a text-based alternative How many links lead to a dead-end Is this a fee-based site Can non-members still have access to part of the site Must you register a name and password before using the site Other Tips Check the header and footer information to determine the author and source In the URL a tilde usually indicated a personal web directory rather than being part of the organization's official web site In order to verify an author's credentials you may need to consult some printed sources such as Who's Who in America or the Biography Index Check and compare the web site to others which are both similar and different Yahooligans Evaluating Websites as accessible accurate appropriate and appealing http yahooligans yahoo com tg evaluatingwebsites html Evaluating websites Cornell University http www library cornell edu okuref research webeval html NeTutor Tutorial Evaluating Websites http gateway lib ohio-state edu tutor les index html Resources for evaluating websites Virginia Tech University Library http www lib vt edu research libinst evalbiblio html Citing Websites http www wtamu edu library webguides citingweb shtml Critical Analysis of a Website http www cwrl utexas edu wolff tlc f inventory shtml Critical Analysis of Three Websites http www csis american edu ribiere english classes Creativity Summer review htm David Thornberg Building Critical Thinking Skills for Online Research http teacherline pbs org teacherline resources thornburg thornburg cfm Grokker uses existing search engines to conduct a search on any topic you wish As the search proceeds results are placed on a map consisting of a large circle representing the search topic This circle contains smaller circles named after categories or subcategories into which identified sites are automatically placed http www groxis com cgi-bin grok Centers Organizations on the Internet The Internet Studies Center University of Minnesota http www isc umn edu Center for Digital Discourse and Culture VPI http www cddc vt edu index html Center for Online Addiction http www netaddiction com The Internet and Public Policy Georgia Institute of Technology http www ip gatech edu Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies University of Washington http www com washington edu rccs Association of Internet Researchers http www aoir org Magazines Journals about the Internet Journal of Online Behavior http www behavior net JOB SIMILE Students in Media Information Literacies http www utpjournals com simile Wired Magazine http www wired com wired current html Multimedia and Internet Schools http www infotoday com MMSchools jan index shtml Internet Magazine UK http www internet-magazine com Net UK http www netmag co uk ComputerWorld http www computerworld com Byte http www byte com Internet World http www internetworld com Digital Video Magazine http www dv com PCWorld http www pcworld com For further reading on the Internet Anderson D Internet and Web design for teachers A step-by-step guide to creating a virtual classroom Boston Allyn Bacon Baym N Tune in Log on Soaps fandom and online community Thousand Oaks CA Sage Bell D Kennedy B Eds The cybercultures reader New York Routledge Burnett R Marshall P Web theory New York Routledge Firek H easy ways to use technology in the English classroom Portsmouth NH Heinemann Herman A Swiss T Eds The world wide web and contemporary cultural theory magic metaphor power New York Routledge Holmes M Web usability and navigation A beginner's guide New York McGraw Hill Horton W Designing web-based training New York Wiley Howard P Jones S Eds Society online The Internet in context Thousand Oaks CA Sage Palloff R Pratt K Lessons from the cyberspace classroom The realities of online teaching San Francisco Jossey Bass Levy P Cyberculture Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press Salsom G E-tivities The key to active online learning New York Kogan Page Shank R E-learning New York McGraw Hall Taylor T Ward I Literacy theory in the age of the Internet New York Columbia Univesity Press Wolfe C Learning and teaching on the World Wide Web New York Academic Press Using the Web as a Media Lab Working with Media using the Internet The Web has also had a major impact on schooling Courses and entire degree programs are now offered online Teachers create hybrid versions of courses that supplement face-to-face instruction with online resources They engage students in producing digital media productions chat on class bulletin boards share their work online and have them reflect on their work through e-portfolios One five-year study of the impact of Internet use on relationships between teachers and students Schofield Davidson found that use of the Internet increased student autonomy given increased access to external resources in ways that served to reverse the usual knowledge disparity between teachers and students Teachers also frequently discovered their students use of Internet skills that served to enhance relationships It also created warmer and less adversarial teacher-student relations through the use of small group work which served to personalize student-teacher relations and enhance motivation One problem for teachers was the students experience of technical difficulties arising when students all tried to do the exact same thing on the Internet In this course the Web will be used for teaching media studies methods through a media lab approach In that approach you and or students share samples of media texts for discussion and analysis just as you would analyze a specimen in a science lab For example students may share magazine ads and discuss their analysis of the ads in class and or online Using a media lab approach gives students a role in having to collect examples and prepare analyses of media texts All of this raises the question how can you employ a media lab approach using the Internet particularly if you are sharing media texts online And how can students engage in online discussions about media texts There are a considerable number of Web-based tools you can use to create an on-line media lab classroom In this module we will discuss these different tools as well as show you some examples of how to use these tools In using the Web you are also teaching students about the uses of the Internet as a learning tool how to find material on the Web engage in chat create Web-pages etc Learning to Use Various Technology Tools There are a lot of tutorial sites on the Web to help you learn to use different technology tools One of the more useful one is the Actden site http www actden com There are also useful sites for learning how to create Web pages http www writingproject org Resources websupport htm http www teachers net manual http www teacherweb com As students at the University of Minnesota you each have server space on which you can house your own Web sites To read about your personal web server space go to http www umn edu adcs help webpage html There is also an entire on-line book Web Design for the Mass Media that describes the uses of the Web related to teaching mass media http wdmm net Building Learner Centered Environments through Technology Integration In using the Internet to create a media-lab classroom you need to consider the degree to which students are actively engaged in learning Rather than simply using technology to present information you are using it as a tool to foster interactive participation with media texts as well as constructing their own texts Technology can be a useful tool for --allowing learner control --fostering collaboration --promoting social construction of knowledge --making thinking audible --building understanding --engaging learners in literacy practices --enhancing critical viewing skills As previously noted it is important that you use technology to create open learning environments OLEs OLEs involve processes wherein the intents and purposes of the individual are uniquely established and pursued OLEs support the individuals efforts to understand that which he or she determines to be important OLEs like the Internet for example require an instructional design that harnesses the resources tools scaffolds and enabling contexts for active and meaningful learning Hannafin Land Oliver Web-based tools can be used for providing students with support or evaluating their work For example teachers and or trained peers are increasingly using on-line tutoring to provide students with feedback to their writing or training peers to assist other peers in giving feedback to their writing or in working on reading http www readingonline org newliteracies lit index asp HREF newliteracies choi index html Students are also using e-portfolios to foster reflection on their work over time and for teacher use in evaluation of student growth http www coe ufl edu school portfolio examples htm People can also use e-portfolios to enhance their employability by sharing information about themselves on the Web For example in the state of Minnesota all residents have access to free use of eFolio Minnesota http www efoliomn com which provides an easy-to-use template for creating portfolios that can contain a vita and other information about a person Resources for Technology Planning and Integration To consider the different tools available for use in your classroom the teachers site http teachers org For example the TrackStar Track maker http trackstar hprtec org allows you to organize your searches of URL s something that will prove useful in creating webquests based on a set of related URL s Another useful site is the webteacher site http www webteacher org which contains some useful training modules Revised Module Web Basics Revised Module Communicating Revised Module Multimedia Revised Module Homepage Construction Revised Module Peripherals and Utilities Revised Module The Web in Your Classroom One of the most useful on-line resources for helping you think about technology planning and integration is the GLEF site http glef org On that site there is a - hour technology-integration module that provides you with ideas for how to integrate technology into the classroom http glef org TI index html Another useful site is the ALPS site that provides resources scaffolds and contexts for building unit plans http learnweb harvard edu alps The Apple Learning Exchange site provides examples of various activities and tools http ali apple com And for developing inquiry units and activities the University of Illinois inquiry site http inquiry uiuc edu Another useful site for English teachers is Allen Webb-Carey s site which describes the uses of particular tools relevant for English teachers http vms cc wmich edu careywebb techteach html and the Western Michigan University Teaching English with Technology site http www wmich edu teachenglish And another useful site for English teachers is Jamie Myers s description of how he uses different hypermedia tools such as Hyperstudio and Quicktime to have high school students create hypermedia productions in the classroom http www ed psu edu k- culture Uses of the Internet in Education Internet http www internet org internet html Eductional Uses of the Internet http edservices aea k ia us edtech classroom internet Global School Network http www gsn org web index html Teaching and the Internet http www pitt edu poole internetworld html Weaving the Web into K- Education http www pitt edu edindex WebQuests frames htm The World Wide Web Consortium http www w org Educause Review current developments in higher education uses of information technology http www educause edu pub er Valorie Stokes Exploring Literacy in Cyberspace Learning to critically analyze websites http www readwritethink org lessons lesson view asp id Tech Talk Program produced by Digital Media Center University of Minnesota click on episodes http techtalk umn edu index shtml Teacher Wisdom Stories Cautions and Recommendations for Using Computer-related Technologies for Literacy Instruction from Readingonline http www readingonline org electronic elec index asp HREF electronic rt - Column index html Organizations that Promote Technology Uses in Schools Belvedere http www pitt edu suthers belvedere Global School Net http www gsn org KidLink http www kidlink org Georgia Tech http www cc gatech edu edutech KIE http www clp berkeley edu Computer Learning Partner http www clp berkeley edu EduTech http www cc gatech edu edutech CaMILE http www cc gatech edu gvu edtech CaMILE html CoVis http www covis nwu edu ICLS http www ils nwu icls html INSYS http www ed psu edu insys Creating a Webquest For the final task in this module we re going to ask you to create a simple Webquest using a design tool Filamentality We will take you through the steps involving creating your webquest and then describe an example of one webquest created for this course using Filamentality on teaching the novel Fahrenheit You will then be sharing your webquest with some peers on the tappedin org site something we will be discussing later in this module What is a webquest A webquest is a inquiry-based learning activity in which students address some issue question topic or theme by examining a series of web-based sites In learning to address their issue or question using web-based resources students are learning how to use the web as a learning tool They are also learning how to reflect on and extend the material they acquire from the web And in many cases they are assuming the perspective of a role a song writer detective movie producer scientist city planner etc who must address a problem or issue or who must produce a final product To gain some sense of a webquest go to some of the following sites Webquest collections mostly English http sesd sk ca teacherresource webquest secla htm http webquest sdsu edu matrix - -Eng htm http www james rtsq qc ca webquest htm http www teach-nology com teachers lesson plans computing web quests language Webquests literature Poetry Amanda Bekkum and Michelle Schneekloth www tc umn edu bekk amandamichelle Beth O Hara To Kill a Mockingbird http www tc umn edu ohar mockingbird index html The Great Gatsby http www teachtheteachers org projects AMoore GatsbyQuest wqmain html The Crucible http oncampus richmond edu academics as education projects webquests crucible Of Mice and Men http projects edtech sandi net kearny trial The Scarlet Letter http projects edtech sandi net roosevelt salem Julius Caesar http www lausd k ca us lausd resources shakespeare caesarwebguide html Romeo and Juliet http oncampus richmond edu academics as education projects webquests shakespeare The Bluest Eye http www maxwell syr edu plegal tips t prod bisguier introductionpage htm The House on Mango Street http projects edtech sandi net kearny myhouse Holes http www plainfield k in us hschool webq webq index htm Media literary webquests http cte jhu edu techacademy web kajder medialit mainmedialit htm Advertising http www community k mo us webquest bertels quest htm http et sdsu edu APaxton-smith eslwebquest index htm http curry edschool virginia edu go edis spring webquests prof pkimcolley home htm http projects edtech sandi net brooklyn advertising Radio production http pd impaq com au Talo Online webquests radio index htm What are the different parts of a webquest As you can see from these webquests most webquests particularly those that follow the model of B J Dodge of San Diego State University consists of - an introduction describes the overall activity the purpose for the activity and student s role - task outcome describes the overall final outcome or product formulating a solution to a problem or a position or creating a product an ad song story final report etc - activities linked to web-sites specific step-by-step activities that are linked to web-sites that provide relevant material - guidance help for students in how to organize their material to achieve the final outcome or report - assessment a specific rubric for assessing their work - summary a summary of what they learned from completing the webquest The WebQuest Design Process There are a lot of resources on the Web to help you create webquests http webquest sdsu edu materials htm http www thirteen org edonline concept class month http www spa k sc us WebQuests HTM http www internet classrooms com using quest htm One of the most useful is from the B J Dodge website http webquest sdsu edu designsteps index html Do you really need to create a WebQuest from scratch Read http webquest sdsu edu adapting index html to learn about adapting existing WebQuests Read http webquest sdsu edu project-selection html Pick a topic that requires understanding uses the web well fits curriculum standards and has been difficult to teach well Study http webquest sdsu edu designpatterns all htm Select a design that will fit your topic Download the student and teacher templates for the design you chose Open them up in your favorite web editor Dreamweaver Composer FrontPage etc Write up the Task in the student template and the Standards and Learners in the teacher template Read http webquest sdsu edu rubrics weblessons htm and http webquest sdsu edu rubrics rubrics html Complete the Evaluation section in the student template Duplicate it in the teacher template and add any extra information needed by teachers Read http webquest sdsu edu searching fournets htm and http webquest sdsu edu searching specialized html Flesh out the Process section by finding a focused set of resources to provide the information needed by learners Scaffold where needed with Process Guides http