Readings - New Media Consortium

Transcription

Readings
A collection of articles and chapters submitted by participants
21 st Century Literacy Summit
April 26-28, 2005
San Jose, California
Readings
Table of Contents
24 Hours in Cyberspace
Craig Cline with Mark Walter ............................................................................................. 1
A Mad-Tea Party No More: Revisiting the Visual Literacy Definition Problem .................................................... 13
Maria Avgerinou
A Selection of Writings from Technology Review ........................................................................................................ 27
Henry Jenkins
As Good as the Governor’s Word? .................................................................................................................................. 45
Mary Jane Burke
Beyond Boxes and Wires: Literacy in Transition ......................................................................................................... 47
Kathleen Tyner
Defining the Visually Literate Individual ........................................................................................................................ 67
Adele Flood
Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants ............................................................................................................................... 77
Marc Prensky
Digital Visual Literacy: A White Paper .......................................................................................................................... 83
Anne Morgan Spalter, Andy van Dam et al
Engage Me or Enrage Me: What Today’s Learners Demand ................................................................................... 93
Marc Prensky
Global Studies and Media Education: Survival Skills for the New Millennium ..................................................... 99
Carolyn Wilson and Barry Duncan
Making It Move, Making It Mean: Animation, Print Literacy and the Metafunctions of Language ............. 107
David Parker
Media Literacy: Essential Survival Skills for the New Millennium .......................................................................... 117
Barry Duncan
Meeting the Rising Tide of Information Technology Literacy ................................................................................ 121
Joyce Mayln-Smith
Mobilizing Fun in the Production and Consumption of Children’s Software ...................................................... 135
Mizuko Ito
Narrative Construction as Play ...................................................................................................................................... 155
Brenda Laurel
New Directions for Media Education in the United States ...................................................................................... 159
Kathleen Tyner
Readings
Table of Contents (continued)
New World Kids ................................................................................................................................................................. 187
Susan Russell Marcus
Power Users of Technology ............................................................................................................................................ 209
Joyce Mayln-Smith
Piercing the Spectacle: A Situationist Critique of Computer Games ................................................................... 213
Brenda Laurel
The Practice and Principles of Teaching Critical Literacy at the
Educational Video Center ............................................................................................................................................... 217
Steven Goodman
Technologies of the Childhood Imagination: Yugioh, Media Mixes, and
Everyday Cultural Production ........................................................................................................................................ 241
Mizuko Ito
Visual Language and Converging Technologies in the Next 10-15 Years (and Beyond )................................. 257
Robert Horn
Visual Literacy ................................................................................................................................................................... 269
Ron Bleed
The Visual Literacy White Paper .................................................................................................................................... 273
Anne Bamford
What Kinds of Writing Have a Future? ........................................................................................................................ 281
Robert Horn
Readings
21st Century Literacy Summit
Page 1
24 Hours in Cyberspace
THE SEYBOLD REPORT
Craig Cline in San Francisco
and Mark Walter in Media, PA
Real-World Prototype For a Surreal Market
IN A BREATHTAKING collision of photojournalism and technology, Against All
Odds Productions, led by photographer Rick Smolan, pulled off February 8th its
latest daring project, 24 Hours in Cyberspace: Painting on the Walls of the Digital
Cave.
We went to Mission Control to see for ourselves not only the content but also
the system and the process—to find out how Smolan and his star-studded cast
managed to pull off this feat. We were rewarded with a look at a one-of-a-kind
publishing system that may well be a groundbreaking prototype of ones we’ll
see commercially in the very near future.
Collaborative demonstrations of technology are always interesting, but rarely
are they tied to real business ventures and seldom are they staged in public
without full dress rehearsals beforehand. This project not only broke new
ground; it did so in full view of millions of people. Using a barely tested system
stitched together at a breakneck pace before the event, the sleep-deprived crew in
Mission Control nevertheless managed to pull together the site, and see it
survive the deluge of tens of thousands of people pouring through its pages,
leaving their signatures behind. As Eric Schmidt, chief technology officer at Sun
Microsystems, wryly noted, “This is R&D without a safety net.”
24 Hours in Cyberspace: Real-World Prototype for a Surreal Market
NO ONE can ever accuse Rick Smolan of being an underachiever. Ever since 1992,
when he produced the first coffee-table CD-ROM, he’s pushed the edge of the
technology envelope in photojournalism. Last year’s superb Passage to Vietnam,
for example, extended the concept of multimedia publishing on CD-ROM to new
heights of accessibility and elegance.
So when we got wind of Smolan’s latest project, 24 Hours in Cyberspace, we
were curious. We found out he was going to use the Web to document the Web,
inviting the whole world to upload their stories, photos and signatures to a
snapshot of cyberspace, and we became intrigued by his vision. We were excited
at the prospect of seeing, once gain, the results of dozens of world-class
photographers fanning out to their one-day assignments. But when we learned
that, true to its name, Smolan’s Against All Odds Productions was going to try to
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pull off this feat with a hastily constructed, barely tested system based on
software that wasn’t even finished—well, we just knew we wanted to be there to
see it.
The project
24 Hours is the latest in Smolan’s ongoing Day in the Life adventures. Smolan, a
former National Geographic photographer, began the series with his bestselling
Day in the Life of America coffee-table book, which was subsequently followed by
other Day in the Life books. In doing these projects, Smolan developed a
reputation for galvanizing renowned photographers into collaborating on
interesting projects.
In recent years, Smolan has become increasingly interested in technology. His
first published multimedia effort, From Alice to Ocean, broke new ground in its
use of Photo CD. Audio narrations of still photos, stored on the CD, were
bundled with the coffee-table book that described a woman’s journey across Australia.
In his second multimedia effort, Passage to Vietnam, Smolan spent half a
million dollars producing a CD-ROM that wove still photography, audio and
video together in compelling fashion. Although the photography shoot took only
a week, the resulting editorial and production process took many months, typical
for rich multimedia titles.
Primitive snapshot. This time, Smolan has turned the cameras onto technology
itself in an effort to document the effect the Internet is having on people’s lives.
He dispatched more than 100 professional photographers across the globe to
photograph and tell pictorial stories about how the Internet is changing people’s
lives. The focus of the project was to use photojournalism to put a human face on
cyberspace.
Because the Internet is so new, Smolan’s crew dubbed their effort “Drawings
on the Walls of the Digital Cave”—in years hence, this snapshot of cyberspace
could look as primitive as the paintings of prehistoric man.
Smolan expects to make a CD-ROM and coffee-table book from this project, but
to up the ante, Against All Odds decided to publish some of its content the same
day it was gathered, compressing the editing time from months down to minutes
and hours and then pumping the stories back out over the Internet to millions of
potential viewers. Because of the happy oddity of the International Date Line
providing the team with 48 clock hours in which to produce their snapshot of
Feb. 8, the editorial and production system required to handle this kind of load
was a nontrivial undertaking.
In some ways, the publishing model for the project is similar to broadcast
journalism, in this case using the Internet as a way to beam taped coverage of an
event quickly all over the world. The difference, though, is that in this case the
viewers have complete control over the speed and sequence of the action and are
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able to replay it over and over again in different ways if they like. For publishers
wanting a peek at news reporting of the future, it is a very interesting
experiment.
Snowballing support. To broaden interest in the project, Against All Odds issued
an invitation for schools to participate in the project. Tom Melcher, COO of
Against All Odds, said that what began as a simple message E-mailed on a
Friday to a few people quickly snowballed: “Eighteen schools signed up over the
weekend.” In the end, more than 100 schools and scores of amateur
photographers participated, uploading their pages and photographs to judges
who rated the submissions to determine prizewinners.
Big guns. One of Smolan’s talents is attracting big-name help, and close to 50
companies chipped in support, donating or loaning an estimated $3 million
worth of equipment, as well as scores of talented staff. Adobe, Sun and Kodak
served as primary corporate sponsors. Adobe provided Photoshop, PageMaker
and staff to Mission Control and donated PageMill and Acrobat to schools.
Kodak provided film, scanners and its new DC-50 digital cameras. Sun supplied
servers, networking software and lots of expertise in wiring the site. Why would
a firm underwrite such a project? For Sun, it was an excellent test of its Web
servers and mirroring expertise. “We believe it will recover our costs in better
products and in supporting the growth of the Internet,” said Eric Schmidt, Sun’s
chief technology officer.
Building the site
“Mission Control,” where the Web pages were built, was a specially constructed
6,000-square-foot space in San Francisco’s China Basin Landing building. When
we arrived, it looked like a cross between a daily newspaper at deadline and
Mission Control for a NASA space flight (one perpetually stuck at the anxiety
level portrayed in the film Apollo 13 after the command module blew up). As in
the film (or at a daily newspaper on deadline), there were moments of frenetic
activity interspersed with longer moments of waiting for the screen to unfreeze,
for the database to release the page back to the editor, or for more stories and
photos to be filed. The place was crawling with editors trying to do their job, as
reporters, analysts, TV crews and even what appeared to be a few groupies
swarmed about trying to record the action and, in most cases, simply to be part
of it and score one of the souvenir golf shirts that were distributed toward the
end. For many, seeing the finished product live on the Web, with each person
working to produce the next additions to it, was an epiphany. Talk about
immediate gratification—it was as if every story a reporter wrote for a
newspaper were immediately published and distributed as part of a newspaper
edition centered around that reporter’s story. And in the end, the whole
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experience was validated by feature stories on the project that ran on NPR and
network evening news.
The plan. The plan was for a team of 80 editors, programmers and designers per
shift to build the Web site over the course of several days. To manage the chaos,
a careful workflow was designed in advance, based around custom Web layout
software from NetObjects as a front end to Illustra’s object-oriented database,
with gobs of Sun and PC clone hardware (and a few Macs) thrown at the problem
(see illustrations, pp. 4, 6 and 7).
The Web site (www.cyber24.com), which will be returning March 17, featured
six themes. Each began with an essay written by a noted personality and then
was complemented by photo-essays laid out like page spreads in a coffee-table
book or a photo magazine like Life.
The six teams worked somewhat independently to create the six theme areas.
Each pod team had a text editor, a photo editor and a Photoshop technician. In
addition, there were a traffic pod, which routed photos to the amateur and
professional queues, and a TOC pod that prepared the overall contents pages.
Pages were based on HTML 2.0 coding. The working assumption was that
they could be viewed with Netscape Navigator 1.1.
Collecting. The photographers in the field that had digital cameras were able to
upload ten low-resolution (256 KB) images as E-mail messages that were sent via
modem into Mission Control. Captions, following the IPTC header conventions,
were keyed using a special Photoshop plug-in from Atlanta-based Software
Construction Company. About half the professional photographers, however,
shot with film. They will be scanning their images, at high resolution, with either
Kodak or Polaroid scanners, and sending them in one way or another over the
course of the next few weeks.
Designing and editing. Most of the design work was done well in advance by
designers under the direction of Clement Mok. They created 30 layouts and
saved them as templates using a prerelease version of NetObjects’ software.
As material began pouring in, judges examined the professionally shot
photos, assigned them themes and rated them. They stored the images in the
Illustra database, and a desk editor then assigned them to specific pods.
The editorial team, consisting of top story and photo editors on loan from
national publications, took the photos and captions, picked the ones they wanted
to use and then selected a page design from the templates prepared in advance.
Stories were written using a prerelease version of HTML authoring software from
NetObjects.
Each editorial team also had a Photoshop technician, working on a fast
Sparcstation, to crop, size and compress the photos.
Complementing each story were audio clips of photographer commentary or
interviews with the photographer by National Public Radio commentators. As
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the audio was fed to Mission Control, it was digitized. The material was then
edited into clips that were attached to the page spreads using RealAudio’s
technology.
Once the “spread” was ready for publication, proofers and testers reviewed
the pages, checking links and looking for errors. As soon as they were through,
the new material was placed in the “ready” queue.
Publishing. Every 30 minutes, the NetObjects software swept through the
mounting server and collected the new pages. It then rebuilt the entire Web site,
not only adding new content but also testing and forging new hyperlinks.
At Mission Control, the 24 Hours Web site rotated among five Sun Netra
servers. But each half-hour, as the site was revised, it was copied to “mirror”
sites around the globe.
Trying to avoid gridlock nightmare. For most firms, the danger in promoting a
hot site is that you might succeed only to find your humble server trampled by a
stampede of surfers cruising around for something neat to look at. The concept of
mirroring (in databases, it’s called replication)—copying the Web site to other
machines—is one way to reduce the load on one machine.
The 24 Hours project was one of the largest tests of mirroring to date. It
received in excess of 3 million hits in 24 hours—not a record but certainly a
tremendous amount of traffic. The mirroring, set up by Sun, included three sites
in the U.S.—Sun’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA, MCI in Atlanta and BBN
Planet in Rockville, MD. Internationally, it was carried by the Internet 1996
World Exposition, which automatically funneled the material to the Exposition’s
eight “Central Park” servers located around the world.
IWE, in cooperation with a variety of other ventures, is helping to construct
the “Internet railroad,” a network of satellite and high-speed land lines designed
for carrying high volumes of data over Internet protocols. The first of these links
were put into place just before the 24 Hours project. It is claimed that IWE’s
servers effectively tripled the international capacity of the Internet on that day.
As with all best-laid plans, the efforts designed to avoid gridlock broke down
at times. We on the West Coast have recently noticed that the Net nearly comes
to a screeching halt every day at about 3 p.m. PST. This corresponds to the time
Easterners go home and fire up their AOL browsers. Toward the late afternoon
on the 8th, traffic slowed access to the cyber24.com site to a crawl more than
once, which in turn made updates to the live site difficult.
The editorial system
The heart of the system was an Illustra database. Illustra, a new name in the
database arena, has an object and relational hybrid engine that uses relational
tables but has built-in support for hierarchical object structures. Among its
special features are “data blades,” object libraries that provide views into the
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database. One of the blades is the Web DataBlade, a tool that allows a Web
browser to see into an Illustra database.
The second unusual component was NetObjects, a new Web authoring tool
that hasn’t even hit the market.
For a company trying to make a name for itself in online publishing, the 24
Hours project was a killer live demo that we expect will draw tremendous
interest in both Illustra’s and NetObjects’ products.
Custom prototype. Illustra, which is focused on managing multimedia and
Internet publishing information, has been selling its product commercially since
1994. We saw an early version last fall at Seybold San Francisco; clearly it has
come quite a way since then. It also has since been acquired by Informix.
For this project, Illustra whipped up a custom application that amounted to a
brand-new editorial system. Built over the course of just a few months, it had a
couple of very interesting features:
1. A front-end parser took the incoming transmissions, cracked open the IPTC
header and populated the database with slug lines, photos, credits, captions
and so forth. The application looks attractive for wire-service agencies and
large publications that have photographers in the field.
2. Using the frames-enabled 2.0 version of Netscape Navigator as the viewing
tool and the Web DataBlade to plug into its database, Illustra presents several
views of the database. Editors can view the photos and captions by a single
photographer or view all of the material associated with a story. The 24 Hours
user interface was developed specifically for this project, but the Web
DataBlade makes it easy to tailor the look of the view.
Illustra plans to take the system it built for 24 Hours and use it as the basis for
a commercial product. It has already sold its underlying database to publishers
such as Hearst and Time; now it hopes to expand to a broader market of
commercial publishers, prepress shops and advertising agencies looking for
multimedia databases that support online publishing.
Through different applications of its core database technology, Illustra also
plans to target financial publishers that want to publish real-time changes and
assemble the results on the fly in custom ways. A third target market is large
engineering organizations that will be publishing engineering documentation
online and want to take a database-driven approach to managing the changes to
the source material.
NetObjects’ debut. NetObjects was formed this past November by high-tech
design guru Clement Mok and Samir Arora and David Kleinberg, executives at
Rae Technology, a provider of interactive applications. Its software is still
undergoing development; a special version was created for this project.
NetObjects expects to be announcing in March a timetable for a commercial
release.
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Although the version of its software for Web publishing is brand new, the
core technology behind NetObjects has been refined at Rae over the past three
years. Even before the 24 Hours project, the company was attracting considerable
interest; it just raised a walloping $5.4 million of venture-capital funding, an
impressive figure for a three-month-old firm.
In this project, NetObjects tried to create an application that would allow
editors to avoid some of the handcrafting typically associated with building
good-looking Web pages. It also wanted to support the dynamic changes that
would take place throughout the day. Not only the content, but also the structure
would change. For example, stories might appear in different places under
different themes.
A third challenge was that editors would be coming in from all over the
world and have very little time for training.
The result was rule- or template-based Web composition from a database (see
illustration). It was very much like flowing standard paper pages from a
database, but with a fairly basic template format (HTML’s formatting
requirements are still pretty easy to do). What is interesting about NetObjects is
that it takes care of all of the navigation elements, as well as formatting. In the 24
Hours site, all of the navigation elements—including TOC pages and “next” and
“previous” link buttons, were generated automatically each time the program
rebuilt the site.
Executive VP Kleinberg claims the NetObjects software will work with a
variety of structures and any particular data type. The technology can interface
to almost any database through ODBC or SQL connections, said Kleinberg.
Trial by fire
Not all that was hoped for was accomplished. There were the usual number of
technical glitches to be expected in what amounted to a prototype system being
fired up for the first time in real time in front of millions of people. And there
were bottlenecks that cropped up as the workflow was put to the test and found
wanting in places. Toward the end of the day, Mission Control started up a new
round of story editing and production by physically turning on each pod in turn
to force a de facto workflow on the various teams. Earlier, teams tended to get out
of sync with each other, their timing problems compounded by the lack of
training that preceded their 48-hour shifts.
Despite attempts to automate, many pages had to be tweaked by hand.
Whether the tweaks were required because the system didn’t flow the stories
right or because the editors couldn’t resist the temptation to improve a
colleague’s layout, we couldn’t tell. A handful of HTML programmers applied
further tweaks to render the site just as the team wanted it to look; whether this
was due to HTML’s inherent deficiencies or the limitations of the NetObjects
system wasn’t clear to us—and perhaps to the designers. The final look and feel
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of the site was first-rate, well above what’s usually found on the Net, so it’s
difficult to begrudge the producers their tweaks. Everyone was flat-out tired, and
it was clear that job one was getting a first-class site online, and keeping it up.
Armchair quarterbacking would be reserved for the coming weeks.
The implications
Everyone in publishing is looking at the Internet as the hot medium of the
moment, and the 24 Hours project certainly was an example of a site that was
both attractive to look at and interesting to read. But we doubt that that will be
its legacy, for in terms of compelling content, this site has plenty of company.
From our vantage point, this project was memorable for its demonstration of
a new breed of Web-based publishing systems. We’ve been writing for two years
now about Web-related tools—HTML editors, Web servers, document
repositories—but the 24 Hours project attempted to put it all together into an
editorial system, one that would scale from a small group at least up to a
department with dozens of collaborators and would cover the full end-to-end
process of creating, gathering, editing and publishing. The effort was a little
overly ambitious—the system was tested in front of a live audience by people
who had had only a few hours of experience with it—but even so we think a few
key points were made.
Next-generation client. First, the system showed the potential to use a Web
browser as the front-end viewing tool for an editorial database. Until recently,
the presumption was that to view a database you used a database client, or an
interface developed with a high-level programming tool like PowerBuilder.
Today, the Web is drawing everything to itself. Its browser is becoming at once
both universal and protean, a single chassis that changes according to the driver
and the trip’s purpose. For years, pundits have predicted that databases would
soon be explored by looking at documents, which are easier for us to understand
than tables. That day has arrived.
If this idea catches on, it will have a profound impact on the way we build
publishing systems. In this case, material was authored in HTML using
NetObjects software interacting with an Illustra database. But we believe similar
systems will be built around other tools and other data formats.
Automating production. Second, the project demonstrated the advantage of
taking a database approach to online publishing. Everyone talks about
repurposing and automating; few are able to do it for magazine-style illustrated
stories. This site looked good, and there was a fair amount of hand-tweaking and
writing to fit that went on. But editors did not have to fiddle around fixing work
they had already done, just because a page was being updated. The system took
care of building all the generated navigation links (next page, previous page,
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etc.), freeing the writers to focus on their stories instead of on repetitive
navigation buttons.
While they did not publish as much as they had hoped, editors, some of
whom were more comfortable with Atex keyboards than a PC mouse, and most
of whom had spent at most a few hours learning the system, were still able to
pull together a handful of well-written, nice-looking stories in a day. Melcher
believes database-driven Web sites will become enormously popular because of
the ease with which the links can be managed. “What’s really cool about
NetObjects is that it keeps all the links hierarchically, updates all the references,
even ‘next’ and ‘previous,’ using its own data structure, integrated with Illustra. .
. . With most other programs, even Vermeer, many of these links would have to
be updated by hand.” Melcher believes the automation provided by marrying
Web authoring to a database will result in “most Web sites being hooked to
databases by this time next year.”
For NetObjects, which has not yet announced a commercial version of its
software, the whole project has been a tremendous publicity boost. Look for its
announcement in March to be a media event.
High-profile demo. Third, the online test proved Illustra’s viability as a database
vendor to a publishing community that, for the most part, has been reluctant to
pick up new database technology. The time is ripe for change. Bill Ray, director
of Illustra’s Digital Media Publishing group, explained, “The Internet is driving
the need for a new information management technology . . . one that can model
dynamic content.” A few forward-thinking publishers have already taken the
leap of faith, whether it be with UniSQL, Illustra or Object Designs, but most
have preferred to stick with Oracle, Informix or Sybase. When it comes to
databases, the pack has been waiting for something at once irresistible and
seemingly safe.
Illustra is not yet at a stage we would call safe, but it certainly has progressed
to the point where it is compelling, and demonstrations like this go a long way
toward silencing critics and converting skeptics. With this test under its belt,
Illustra has a very public benchmark it can use as a reference. (Some of its
installed customers aren’t comfortable talking with potential competitors.) With
Informix’s backing, Illustra also has the potential to become a well-known name
in the publishing business.
A grand experiment
At the end of the day, what appeared at first to be a bit of a one-off kludge had
worked—after all, the site did go online as promised, and it was updated
throughout the day. Even if the finished product was a bit light on stories, those
that appeared were interesting. From nearly every angle, it was certainly a
project everyone could be proud of having produced.
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The bottom line is that this was a grand experiment in the best tradition of
such experiments, uplifting the spirits of all who worked on the project, as well
as those who dialed in to check it out. It is difficult to tune in to any Rick Smolan
project and not leave it with a smile; this unassuming man and his work breed an
enthusiasm that is highly contagious. In previous assignments, Smolan has
traveled to many places, but in this one he touched the far corners of the globe all
at once. The only thing better than watching the project unfold on Feb. 8 will be
to visit the final site next month, and to see the CD-ROM that inevitably follows
this fall, containing many more photos and stories that tell how the Net is
affecting the lives of citizens worldwide. We can’t wait!
Craig Cline in San Francisco
and Mark Walter in Media, PA
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Bird’s-Eye View of the Project
The publishing system assembled at Mission Control was a feat of
engineering. Sun set up the 100 Base-T network, with dozens of
Sparcstations and PCs and two Sparc 1000 servers with their own monster
RAID disk array devoted to the database. There were separate Sun Netra
servers for E-mail, FTP and Web publishing. Collectively, the machines in
Mission Control had more than 11 GB of RAM and almost 300 GB of disk
storage.
To automate the collection process, photographers wired in their digital
photos as attachments to E-mails that followed the IPTC header convention
for captions. Illustra wrote an application that cracked open the E-mail at the
other end and stuffed the elements into the database. The traffic team
categorized the incoming photos and sent them on to the editorial process.
The staff assembled in “pods” focused on specific functions and parts of the
site. Each of the six feature sections had its own pod, which selected the
photos it wanted to use, assigned them to layouts and then wrote the story,
using templates and special software created by NetObjects (photo on page 7).
The pages were then handed off to teams that made table-of-contents pages
and proofed the stories before they were posted for updating.
At the same time, an audio team collected and edited audio interviews that
were digitized. Resulting clips were assigned to their stories and attached to
the Web pages of stories that made the final cut.
To avoid a bottleneck at Mission Control’s home page, the site was copied
every half-hour to MAE West, the world’s largest Internet hub, operated by
MFS Communications. MFS then passed the sites on to Internet World Expo,
MCI, BBN Planet and Sun Microsystems. Users logging in around the globe
typed one URL but were directed to the server nearest to them.
The amateur submissions added a very interesting dimension to the site. Judges
pored over photos, messages and complete Web pages submitted by schools,
amateurs and the military; several photo-essays were so compelling that they
were posted alongside professionally commissioned ones.
Extending the Revolution to the ’Hood
Toward the end of the day, when the success of the 24 Hours project seemed
assured, it was time for some of the sponsors to get a word in about other
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projects near and dear to them. Sun’s John Gage, who is almost as
irrepressible and audacious as Rick Smolan (made even more audacious by
being a corporate employee—but hey! this is Silicon Valley, where anything
goes if you’re bright and successful), plugged a project that is designed to
put every school in California online on March 9, 1996. (We wonder: Are 24hour happenings on the Net the defining social gathering of this revolution,
comparable to the be-ins and rock concerts of previous generations?)
On NetDay96, as it’s called, tens of thousands of volunteer parents, teachers
and engineers from California’s high-tech companies will install wiring in
California’s 12,000 public and private schools. Each school’s team will
connect at least five classrooms, computer labs and a library to a central
point in the school. Sponsoring companies will contribute both equipment
and skilled installers, who will design the school installation in cooperation
with local school organizers. Local school sponsors and organizers will raise
the funds.
Organizers of the “happening” come from Sun, KQED (public TV and radio
in San Francisco), W3 (Tim Berners-Lee’s company), The Well (one of the
first—and funkiest—Bay Area Internet-acccess providers) and Jack of All
Trades, a local design house. People can sign up by going to
www.netday96.com and selecting a school to sponsor, organize or volunteer
to help. It is grass-roots activism in action, leveraged by the Net’s ability to
connect people all over the state to a shared, central information resource. If
you live or work in California—or wish you did—check out this site and
vote with your keyboards to make our schools a somewhat better place in
which to learn.
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Avgerinou, M.D. (2003). A mad-tea party no-more: Revisiting the visual literacy definition problem. In R.E. Griffin, V.S.
Williams, & L. Jung (Eds.) Turning Trees (pp. 29-41). Loretto, PA: IVLA *finalist for IVLA Editors’ Award 2003*
A Mad-Tea Party No More: Revisiting The Visual Literacy Definition Problem
Maria D. Avgerinou
Abstract
This paper focuses on the problem of defining the term ‘Visual Literacy’ (VL). It first sketches out the profile
of the VL definition problem while at the same time considering the meaning of the concept of Literacy (old
and new). Then, a discussion of the most influential VL definitions occurs followed by a presentation of the
various attempts at seeking consensus among the VL scholars concerning the constituting, theoretical elements
of VL. In addition to providing a VL definition overview, I shall attempt a synthesis of the specific
assumptions underpinning the presented definitions’ rationale. It is anticipated that emerging points of
convergence among seemingly different perspectives, will demonstrate that what the various definitions share
in common is greater than what separates them. Issues raised through the VL definition overview will also be
briefly discussed.
“Definitions,
however,
are
arbitrary
conveniences- neither true or false- it is the privilege
of any theorist to establish his own definitions
hopeful that his readers will find them not discordant
with their own thinking and of equal convenience.”
(Berrien, 1976) i
Visual Literacy: The Definition Problem
“The definition of visual literacy has been an
elusive goal since the early days of the association”
[IVLA] “and even before that.” (IVLA, 1997, p. 4)
Defining visual literacy is comparable to the
contradictory among themselves; or have induced
discrepant interpretations. Undoubtedly, this has
aggravated the definition problem, as different
theoretical departures have caused VL to be
perceived and interpreted in different ways.
Figure 1
It’s Always Tea-Timeii…
problem the six blind men faced when
describing an elephant. The man who felt
just the side of the elephant described the
animal as being like a wall, while the man
who felt the tusk said the elephant was like a
spear. The men who felt just the trunk or tail
“It’s always tea-time, and we’ve no
time to wash the things between
whiles.”
or ear or leg were certain the elephant was
like a snake, a rope, a fan, or a tree. Their
description depended on the part they were
examining. Visual literacy is also different
things
depending
on
one's
viewpoint.
(Burbank & Pett, 1983, p. 1)
Understandably, the coexistence of so many
disciplines which underlie the concept of visual
literacy (VL) is the major problem that one will
encounter when attempting to define it. Identifying
the relations of VL with the theory and practical
applications of all those areas has proved to be quite
perplexing (Figure 1). Even though the findings
deriving from research associated with those areas
might be supportive, they eventually lead to
confusion since in many cases they have been
Old And New Literacy
Before delving into the body of literature which is
dedicated to the several attempts at defining visual
literacy, let us turn first to the concept of Literacy, its
evolution over the passage of time and its meaning
for today’s Western world.
There was a long period of time spanning many
centuries, when literacy was solely interpreted as the
ability to read and write. With the arrival of the
industrial as well as the technological revolution, this
perception changed dramatically.
During the latter part of the 20th century, to be
literate involves basic reading, writing, but also basic
computing. In the Western world context, we are
witnessing an “increasing refinement of the skills to
which the term” [literacy] “refers.” (Yonge, 1998, p.
43) In other words, literacy may also include a range
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of various abilities, hence the expansion and
subsequent compartmentalization of the term into
verbal literacy, media literacy, computer literacy,
visual literacy, technological literacy, aesthetic
literacy, and environmental literacy.
Seels (1994) reports that scholars of diverse
subject areas have explored the relationship between
these different types of literacy, and investigated the
transferability of skill from one type to another (see
also Salomon, 1982). Others claimed that as today’s
education has placed emphasis on the development of
verbal literacy, albeit the reality is that our world has
clearly become visually-oriented, promoting visual
literacy must be seriously considered (DeSousa &
Medhurst, 1982). Another point is that verbal and
visual literacy cannot be separated and enjoy
independent status for they both belong to the
broader concept of literacy. (Seels, 1994)
Williams and Snipper (1990) provide a definition
of literacy as it is currently perceived by educators:
Educators recognize functional, cultural and
critical literacy. Functional literacy is often
related to basic writing (coding) and reading
(decoding) skills that allow people to
produce
and
understand
simple
texts.
Cultural literacy emphasizes the need for
shared experiences and points of reference
country s/he lives. Finally, critical literacy “denotes
not only the ability to recognize the social essence of
literacy but also to understand its fundamentally
political nature.” (Williams & Snipper, 1990, p. 11)
In other words, a critically literate individual is aware
of the ideologies that permeate communication
within a particular cultural context. This is a higher
order skill which allows the individual to construct an
informed personal viewpoint; and, consequently, to
fight against any kind of manipulation emanating
from institutions, convictions and attitudes associated
with communication in a given cultural context.
After drawing a distinction between the terms
literacy and new literacy, Dale (1973) gives a
reasonable account of the qualities of the latter in the
following passage:
What do I mean by the term “literacy” and
the “new” literacy? I mean by literacy the
ability
component inherent in reading and writing.
(p.1)
This is a generic definition which undoubtedly
implies that literacy is not an easily defined concept.
At the same time it reflects the significance of the
cultural context in shaping the perception, as well as
the applicability of the term. Functional literacy is
viewed as the basic literacy one should possess in
order to cope with demands such as understanding
signs, reading newspapers, filling in job applications,
signing checks and producing shopping lists.
(Williams & Snipper, 1990) The impact of
technology on almost all aspects of everyday life,
however, necessitates that the individual expands
his/her basic reading and writing skills to include
basic computer skills. According to Hirsch (1987, p.
31) cultural literacy refers to “the specific knowledge
required for each country’s notion of literacy”. The
individual acquires this type of literacy through
participation in and interaction with the
manifestations of culture which are particular to the
communicate
through
three
modes: reading, and writing, speaking and
listening, visualizing and observing- print,
audio, and visual literacy. This literacy,
broadly speaking, can be at two levels. First,
… we communicate the simple, literal
meaning of what is written, said or
visualized…
to fully comprehend texts. And critical
literacy is related to identifying the political
to
Or second, we can have creative
interaction, can read between the lines, draw
inferences, understand the implications of
what was written, said or spoken. … And
finally, we learn to read beyond the lines, to
evaluate, and apply the material to new
situations.
… The new literacy involves critical
reading, critical listening, and critical
observing. It is disciplined thinking about
what is read, heard, and visualized. (pp. 9293)
However, it is not only the greater concept of
Literacy that has been described as new, as opposed
to the previous (old) perception of the term. For the
concept of visual literacy too, although considered
from an idiosyncratic perspective, a similar
differentiation has been made. In their book “Reading
images: The grammar of visual design”, Kress and
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van Leeuwen (1996) state that writing is part of
visual communication. So understood:
Indeed, and paradoxically, the sign of
the fully literate social person is the ability
to treat writing completely as a visual
medium- for instance, not moving one’s lips
and not vocalizing when one is reading, not
even ‘subvocalizing’… Readers who move
their lips when reading, who subvocalize,
are regarded as still tainted with the
culturally less advanced mode of spoken
language. This kind of visual literacy (the
‘old’ visual literacy) has, for centuries now,
been one of the most essential achievements
and values of Western culture, and one of
the most essential goals of education, … (p.
15)
Thus, it may be deduced that the ‘old’ visual
literacy has for long time been subservient to verbal
language. Regarding the ‘new’ visual literacy which
is engraved in “a complex interplay of written text,
images, and other graphic elements,” (p.15) and
where “these elements combine together into visual
designs, by means of layout” (p.15), the authors
proclaim that the education system “produces
illiterates” (p.15).
Attempts At Defining VL
In this section I will consider some of the VL
scholars’ attempts to define visual literacy (Figure 2).
From the plethora of the existing VL definitions, this
author has selected not only those that have proved
the most influential in terms of advancing our
perception of the concept; but also those that have
served as a platform on which subsequent definitions
were constructed.
The term “visual literacy” was first coined in
1969 by John Debes, one of the most important
figures in the history of VL (Fransecky & Debes,
1972). Although Debes (1969b) believed that is was
rather premature to give a definition of VL, he
offered the following:
Visual Literacy refers to a group of visioncompetencies a human being can develop by
seeing and at the same time having and
integrating other sensory experiences. The
development of these competencies is
fundamental to normal human learning.
When developed, they enable a visually
literate person to discriminate and interpret
the visible actions, objects, symbols, natural
or man-made, that he encounters in his
environment. Through the creative use of
these
competencies,
he
is
able
to
communicate with others. Through the
appreciative use of these competencies, he is
able
to
comprehend
and
enjoy
the
masterworks of visual communication. (p.
27)
Debes already knew that the foregoing was a
tentative definition. His perception of the concept
was based on a powerfully imaginative comparison.
He paralleled VL with an amoeba, the pseudopods of
which reach towards many directions (1969b). The
meaning of this metaphor was that “visual literacy is
a multi facetal subject with many unexplored
parameters.” (1969a, p. 14). Undeniably, to perceive
VL as being in such an ill-defined status, was
perfectly aligned with the fact that the concept had
just emerged. In the light of the then circumstances,
Debes’ attempt to delineate and delimit the concept,
contributed considerably to VL proponents’
understanding of the matter’s gravity.
Figure 2
Then We Keep Moving Around…
“Then we keep moving
around, I suppose?” said Alice.
“Exactly so,” said the Hatter:
“as the things get used up.”
According to the “Guide for IVLA Board
Members and Officers” (IVLA, 1997, p. 4), the most
important points made in Debes’ definition are that
“1) visual skills can be learned, and 2) visual skills
are not usually isolated from other sensory skills”.
However, “this definition is not completely
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satisfactory for most practitioners. It fails to mention
the specifics of education, communication, human
observation and interaction, and the design of the
materials of our civilization.” (p. 4) Nevertheless, the
definition does suggest that aspects of visual literacy
that are linked to creative behavior and aesthetic
appreciation skills, can be developed on provision
that acquisition of basic vision competencies has
been attained.
On the other hand, as Bieman (1984) states “the
definition does tell us what a visually literate person
can do, but not what visual literacy is.” (p. 1) In
addition, it appears to the author that Debes’ early
definition is too expansive; and, somehow misleading
since it emphasizes the way (senses) the stimuli are
received without mentioning anything about their
form (symbolic). That is why Levie (1978b) writes,
“... the key problem with Debes’ definition is not that
it includes too many or inappropriate stimuli, but that
it defines the stimuli of interest in terms of a sensory
modality rather than a symbolic modality.” (p. 26)
Levie’s criticism leads us to think that a
definition of VL needs to be articulated in such a way
that the line between the interests of verbal and visual
literacy is as clearly drawn as possible. Since the
visual symbols are not only non-arbitrary, iconic and
representational, but also arbitrary, digital and nonrepresentational, a distinction between them has to be
made as to which of them falls within the scope of
verbal, and which ones fall within the scope of visual
literacy. Symbols are of paramount importance for all
expressions of human communication since they are
our devices to facilitate transmission and reception of
messages. Consequently, symbols are meant to be
used as media of intentional communication.
Another point to be noticed in Debes’ definition
is that it reflects Ruesch and Kees’ (1970) nonverbal
forms of visual communication. Having studied in
depth the expressions of visual communication,
Ruesch and Kees suggest three main forms of visual
language; that is, sign, action, and object language.
“The commonality among these three nonverbal
categories is that they transmit information through
analogic representation.” (Sinatra, 1986, p. 52)
Despite the problems surrounding Debes’
definition, the conviction that it has been very
influential is confirmed through the fact that part of it
can be traced in the following group of four official
definitions of VL which the IVLA offered in 1989
(Pettersson, 1993):
1. a group of vision competencies a human being
can develop by seeing and at the same time having
and integrating other sensory experiences;
2. the learned ability to interpret the
communication of visual symbols (images), and to
create messages using visual symbols;
3. the ability to translate visual images into
verbal language and vice versa;
4. the ability to search for and evaluate visual
information in visual media. (p. 140)
Notably, IVLA’s view of the concept seems to
have taken Levie’s criticism into consideration.
Furthermore, it has incorporated the critical notion of
learning, be it guided or not, regarding the acquisition
and development of the VL ability. Yet, this
definition is not clear-cut either: no further
clarification has been made as to what constitutes
these competencies/abilities; no distinction has been
drawn referring to the use of terms ‘competence’ and
‘ability’; and there is no legitimate reason to infer
that the meaning of ‘competence’ and ‘ability’
respectively, can be equated in particular when
subtlety of expression is so crucial. Although it is
more than certain that there would still be VL
scholars who do not affirm IVLA’s definition as
either adequate or comprehensive, navigation of the
literature covering the definition problem will reveal
that, in retrospect, IVLA’s effort has been sustained
and propelled by the many, conscientious attempts
that preceded it.
To return to the early endeavors to provide a VL
definition, Dondis (1973) proposes a broader
definition which transcends human visual
perception’s potential for making visual decisions; as
well as any idiosyncratic factors that may affect these
decisions:
Visual literacy implies understanding, the
means for seeing and sharing meaning with
some level of predictable universality. To
accomplish this requires reaching beyond
the innate visual powers of the human
organism, reaching beyond the intuitive
capabilities programmed into us for making
visual decisions on a more or less common
basis,
and
reaching
beyond
personal
preference and individual tastes. (p. 182)
Despite the fact that the foregoing extends VL to
include understanding and shared meaning, it
represents a somewhat general, and perhaps ‘neutral’
description of the term since precise reference to
abilities/skills has been avoided. Besides, Dondis
(1973) warned that the greatest danger would be
trying to over-define VL. Whereas this attempt
should be classified as a description and not as a
definition of VL, it is interesting to see Pettersson’s
(1993) critique on Dondis’s view:
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“The ‘universality’ Dondis calls for is actually
insight, which is the highest goal of education.
Contrary to the misconceptions of some people,
being visually literate does not at all require a person
to be an artist, skilled in drawing, painting, or film
making.” (p. 137)
Pettersson’s perception of VL clearly transcends
any narrow interpretation of the term which would
condemn VL as strictly, and as unilaterally linked to
the area of art. Hence, VL may comprise aesthetic
appreciation and enjoyment, but this should by no
means be seen as a quality possessed exclusively by
professionals in any art related field. Admittedly, this
is a rather liberating standpoint which, again, is not
unanimously agreed by the entire VL community.
Ausburn and Ausburn (1978b) form their version
of VL definition by basing it on the notion of
intentional communication. Therefore, they suggest:
“Visual literacy can be defined as a group of
skills which enable an individual to understand and
use visuals for intentionally communicating with
others.” (p. 291) (emphasis added)
First of all, the introduction of VL as a group of
skills as opposed to abilities/competencies is quite
revealing of the authors’ perception of the concept.
The Modern English Oxford Dictionary (1995, p.
1021) defines skill as “expertness, practised ability”;
that is, as something that can be developed. Thus, the
notion of training is strongly implied here. But what
is more important, understanding and using visuals,
that is decoding and encoding visual messages as part
of an intentional type of communication, brings a
vital dimension of VL into light for the first time.
This has apparently been originated from the analogy
between verbal and visual language, which the
authors defend later in their article. They indicate
(1978b) that
“People
do,
of
course,
often
communicate
messages
unintentionally-
sometimes in contradiction to their intended
message- by means of both visual and
verbal channels. However, visual literacy is
primarily concerned with intentional visual
communication, just as verbal literacy is
concerned with intentional communication
via words.” (p. 291)
This definition of VL has influenced many
people’s perception of the concept, as for instance
R.. Braden and J. Hortin who developed their own
definition of the term by adding to the foregoing a
third principle, that of visual thinking:
“Visual literacy is the ability to understand and
use images, including the ability to think, learn, and
express oneself in terms of images.” (Braden &
Hortin, 1982, p. 169)
Note again the use of the word ability seemingly
taken as an entity divided into three sub-abilities. As
Pettersson (1993) observes inclusion of any
controversial terminology has been bypassed too.
Especially as far as visual thinking is concerned,
McKim’s (1980a, 1980b) theory seems to have
provided the platform for its embodiment in the VL
concept. According to McKim, three types of
images are employed in visual thinking: those we
see, those we imagine, and those we draw. Seeing,
imagining and drawing operate without our
conscious acknowledgment of their functions, and
when they interact, visual thinking reaches its full
potential.
Having incorporated the critical factors of visual
language, visual thinking and visual learning,
Braden and Hortin’s attempt(s) to define the scope
of VL seems to be the most complete one in terms of
both form and content. However, it has been accused
of not addressing the issues of design, creativity, and
aesthetics which one might expect to be part of the
concept (Baca & Braden, 1990); and therefore it has
not been widely accepted so that the problem of
defining the term could be regarded as achieved.
This author ascribes little value to the
aforementioned allegations, assuming that Braden
and Hortin’s definition implicitly points at the issues
of design and creativity- precisely because it
introduces the concept of visual thinking which by
nature is associated with creativity. In addition, if
used within a particular contextual framework, this
definition can be expanded so as to provide for the
development of aesthetic appreciation too.
As a variation of the above, Curtiss (1987) offers
the following definition which, albeit thorough and
well expressed, is unnecessarily lengthy, and
sophisticated to the point of defeating its purpose;
that is to define a construct rather than to describe it:
Visual literacy is the ability to understand
the communication of a visual statement in
any medium and the ability to express
oneself with at least one visual discipline. It
entails the ability to: understand the subject
matter and meaning within the context of
the culture that produced the work, analyze
the syntax - compositional and stylistic
principles of the work, evaluate the
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disciplinary and aesthetic merits of the
work, and grasp intuitively the Gestalt, the
interactive and synergistic quality of the
work. (p. 3)
It is worthwhile mentioning here Braden’s
(1996) comment on the above, stating that Curtiss
“took a wide-ranging look, but primarily from the
point of view of the fine artist.” (p.10)
Sinatra (1986) considers VL as a prerequisite
indispensable to human thinking, as well as to the
evolution of other kinds of literacy. So, his
proposition is that “Visual literacy itself is defined
as the active reconstruction of past experiences with
incoming visual information to obtain meaning.” (p.
5)
Sinatra’s argumentation evolves from the view
that VL is strongly connected to thinking, reading,
and writing. For such cognitive functions as
understanding and composing, which underpin
writing and reading, to operate efficiently a
developed VL ability is required. In the
aforementioned definition, VL is seen as a
reconstructive thinking process by means of which
our past knowledge and experience are activated in
order to accommodate the incoming visual
information. This information is processed so as to
fit an already existing pattern. Pettersson (1993, p.
138) indicates that Sinatra’s viewpoint appears to be
consistent with Piaget’s theory postulating that it is
the non-verbal, visual-motor reconstruction ability
of children 0-2 years which serves as the basis for
implementing thinking processes.
Another significant definition encountered in
their influential and widely employed Instructional
Technology textbook, comes from Heinich, Russell,
Molenda and Smaldino (1996, p. 67). They describe
VL as “the learned ability to interpret visual
messages accurately and to create such messages.”
Although there is much controversy concerning
whether VL is a learned ability, in the above
definition Heinich et al. maintain that it is. Focusing
exclusively on the interpretation and the creation of
visual messages, they have apparently tried to offer
an epitome of the concept which covers the whole
spectrum of visually mediated communication. Yet,
the problem lies with the inclusion of “accurately”:
this author feels that it contradicts the very notion of
interpretation. Interpretations are of subjective
nature, and thus they cannot follow the right-wrong
rule. Perhaps replacing interpretation with analysis
would strengthen the validity of this definition.
Schiller (1987) advances the theory that visual
media are characterized by distinct qualities. These
qualities are particular to each medium, and related
to its format, type of message it is meant to convey,
mode(s) of communication it represents, etc. As a
consequence, learners need to acquire different skills
to deal with different media. If this assertion is true,
then perhaps we ought to adopt a less holistic
approach towards VL. In other words, may be we
should abandon any effort towards constructing a
broad definition for VL, and instead concentrate on
the different visual literacies that correspond to
different visual media. Schiller’s (1987) definition
reads as follows:
“Visual literacy is an ability to interpret by
means of trained perceptual capacities feelings,
ideas, and information; and to communicate them
imaginatively with compositions created via a
diversity of visualizing mediums.” (p. 276)
With regard to defining, describing, as well as
delimiting VL, other aspects have been considered
as germane to the concept. Lamberski (1976)
associated VL with the teaching-learning process,
whereas Whitsitt (1976) maintained that VL covers
the whole spectrum of communication except from
the print mediated communication. Conversely,
some VL scholars have claimed that print media
should form part of VL as the printed word has
visual qualities too, and besides it is transmitted and
received through the visual sensory channel
(Wileman, 1980; Curtiss, 1987). Regarding a more
technologically oriented aspect of print media,
Knupfer and McIsaac (1989; 1990) concentrate on
the relationship between text and graphic elements.
Finally, Messaris (1994a; 1994b) associates VL with
the communications field; particularly, with
advertisement, film, and television studies.
While the advocates of VL still concentrate their
efforts on creating a plausible definition of the term,
there have been some very negative reactions
against the viability of the concept. Among the
people raising doubts about the rationale underlying
the whole VL movement, is Johnson (1977) who
suggests the abolition of the term “Visual Literacy”,
and its replacement by the term “Media Literacy”but this seems to create as many problems as it is
designed to solve. In his doctoral thesis (1977), he
explains, “I was disappointed to discover that visual
literacy is really nothing more than a ‘confluence of
theories’, brought together to form a vague,
unorganized concept that tries to explain the notion
of ‘visual sequencing’”. (p. 141)
To appreciate Johnson’s standpoint, we must
bear in mind that his professional interest lay in the
area of English Language and Teaching. Such a
conceptualization of VL as merely visual
sequencing, can stand only for one of the many
aspects of the concept. “The point of view of the
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researcher is critical, of course.” (Braden, 1996, p.
12)
In a similar way, Cassidy and Knowlton (1983,
88) supporting the idea of “abandoning this term
because of its misleading connotations”, as well as
claiming that VL skills are inherent to everybody,
suggest that “... the VL metaphor is phonologically,
syntactically, and semantically untenable.” (p. 88)
However, Sless (1984) in an attempt to defend
the term against the aforementioned allegations,
argues:
If Visual Literacy is to be rescued as a term
(and I think it may still have some life in
it), we need to interpret it more generously.
... VL is any sustained activity that treats
visual material and its uses as worthy of
intelligent consideration. This is the heart
of the matter and the reason for retaining
the metaphor. (p. 226)
Braden (1996) explains that Cassidy and
Knowlton fell in the trap they themselves had
created “because Knowlton (1966)” in particular
“had set for himself an exclusive definition.” (p. 9)as though VL dealt solely with images, and
especially with images in isolation, detached from
any visual sequencing. It is precisely due to such an
unproductive, or even distorting approach, that VL
advocates (e.g. Seels, 1994) currently “favor a more
inclusive attitude toward what constitutes the area of
visual literacy.” (p. 9)
Wescott (1998) revisits Cassidy and Knowlton’s
(1983) controversial article from a more balanced
perspective. His view is that the article has not
rejected VL, either as a phrase or as a concept.
“Instead, it merely questions the felicity and the
utility of VL.” (1998, p. 121) In addition, “Most of
Cassidy and Knowlton’s criticisms of VL are matters
of emphasis or opinion rather than of fact or
congruence.” (p. 122) He concludes:
… I find two strains of argument interwoven
throughout Cassidy and Knowlton’s article.
The first seems to give promise of fruitful
dialog with VL proponents, while the
second does not. The first is a questioning
attitude, which prompts all those interested
in visual communication to rethink their
concepts and refine their terms. The second
is a disparaging attitude, which … first
‘suggests’ but then ‘shows’ that VL is
beyond redemption. I welcome the first
attitude and trust that, if both VL advocates
and their critics can avoid polarizing
polemics, each group can learn much from
the other. (p. 124)
This author believes that Wescott’s view is
legitimate considering the VL scholars’ ongoing
strive to attest the theoretical viability of the concept,
as well as its validity in practical terms. Indeed, the
only way forward should be to avoid “polarizing
polemics” as this has proved not only futile, but also
counterproductive.
Finally, Suhor and Little (1988, p. 470) confuse
the issue further by writing that VL is “not a coherent
area of study but, at best, an ingenious orchestration
of ideas.” Again, it should not be difficult to detect
that the source of such a contention lies in the
absence of a cohesive theory for visual literacy.
For experimental research purposes, this author
initially adopted Braden and Hortin’s (1982)
definition. The selection was made out of the
recognition that their definition, more than any other
one, was closely related to and therefore better
mirrored this author’s perception of the VL concept.
Notably, this occurred in this author’s full
knowledge of the definition’s perceived drawbacks.
There are some points, however, that ought to be
emphasized. Firstly, any VL definition should
include the context within which visual literacy
operates. In other words, the term “human,
intentional visual communication” ought to be
featuring in all, allegedly comprehensive VL
definitions. Secondly, those scholars who trust that
VL is an acquired ability, should also expose this
stance through their definitions of the concept.
Lastly, using the verb “to be” seems a rather drastic
and categorical approach for a concept as little
explored as VL. Through electronic discussion (email) with Lida Cochran iii, this author found out
why J. Debes (1969b) had used “to refer to” for that
first VL definition; and why both he and Prof.
Cochran had ostracized the verb “to be” from any
definitional attempt. Prof. Cochran emphasized that
“the verb ‘is’ demands the ‘essence of something’. It
is almost impossible to give the essence of anything.
This is especially true of an idea as unexplored as
was visual literacy at that time.”
In the light of this remark, and considering that
VL is yet to be fully investigated (Figure 3), this
author became convinced that “refers to” should
replace “is” in a VL definition. Thus, she eventually
came to propose (Avgerinou, 2001) and employ for
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her research a variation of Braden and Hortin’s
definition, which reads:
In the context of human, intentional visual
communication, visual literacy refers to a
group of largely acquired abilities, i.e. the
abilities to understand (read), and to use
(write) images, as well as to think and learn
in terms of images.
Seeking Consensus
In 1976, Professor L. Cochran, one of the
organizers of the Lake Okoboji Educational Media
Leadership Conference, asked delegates to define
the VL term. 62 definitions were received and
analyzed indicating that 52 different phrases were
used to define the adjective ‘visual’ and that three
major meanings evolved for the word ‘literacy’, as a
group of competencies, as a process or method of
teaching, or as a movement. Even though that
attempt was not entirely successful, there was
eventually a consensus upon the three categories that
VL refers to; namely, human abilities, teaching
strategies and the promotion of ideas.
A more recent, and undoubtedly more profitable
effort to develop a comprehensive description of VL
is the application of the Delphi Technique to VL.
Baca and Braden (1990) describe this technique as:
a research method which is used to elicit
the input of a group of individuals and to
pool their collective knowledge in an
attempt to formulate a group judgment or
statement of opinion. ... The Delphi
technique
is
commonly
situations
in
which
applied
there
in
exists
knowledgeable opinion rather than specific
correct answers. (p. 101)
The above mentioned study was part of Baca’s
(1990) doctoral thesis according to which 88
participants were finally selected on the basis of
their contribution to the International Visual
Literacy Association’s Conferences and Journal
(JVVL) between the years 1984 and 1988. The
major aim of the project was to investigate the
apparent lack of agreement concerning critical
components of the concept of VL.
Surprisingly enough, among the conclusions of
this research, there was an assertion that the
consensus regarding the basic tenets of VL, was
considerable: “There is a great deal of agreement
regarding the basic tenets of visual literacy among
the scholars who study it.” (p. 74); and therefore,
“The apparent lack of agreement upon the elements
which constitute visual literacy may not exist to the
extent previously believed.” (p. 75)
Figure 3
What Happens When You Come To The
Beginning… AGAIN?!
“But what happens when you
come to the beginning again?”
Alice venttu
ured tto
o ask.
VL
Definition
Overview:
Points
of
Convergence
Having considered the most significant, in this
author’s opinion, VL definitions, examined their
nature both in terms of form and content, and
discussed their adequacy with respect to describing
the concept of visual literacy, let us now attempt a
synthesis of the specific assumptions underpinning
their rationale. It is anticipated that emerging points
of convergence among the seemingly different
perspectives, will demonstrate that what the various
definitions share in common is greater than what
separates them.
1. A Visual Language exists. As in the case of
Verbal Language, visual grammar, syntax and
vocabulary have been ascribed to Visual Language,
while their particular functions have by and large
been identified.
Language
parallels
Verbal
2. Visual
Language. However, this is accepted only up to a
point. The reason for this resides in that verbal
language is sequential in nature, whereas visual
language is simultaneous in nature.
3. Visual Literacy is a cognitive ability but
also draws on the affective domain. In other
words, VL involves cognitive functions such as
critical viewing and thinking, imaging, visualizing,
inferring as well as constructing meaning; but also
communicating as well as evoking feelings and
attitudes.
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4. The terms “ability”, “skill”, and
“competency” have been invariably and
interchangeably used to describe Visual Literacy.
Yet, it is not always clear whether the terms refer to
a group of “abilities”, or to one major ability only.
5. The VL skills have been specified as (a) to
read/decode/interpret visual statements, and (b)
to write/encode/create visual statements. A third
VL ability, namely to think visually, although it
could be argued that it has been implied in most
definitions, has been added to and explicitly stated
in more recent definitions.
6. The VL skills are (a) learnable, (b)
teachable, (c) capable of development and
improvement. Although research has not always
substantiated these allegations, most VL definitions
are centered around them.
7. The VL skills are not isolated from other
sensory skills. It is generally believed that there is
exchangeability of information received and
transmitted by all sensory channels. Given this,
visual literacy is thought to improve the
development of Verbal (written and oral) Literacy.
8. Visual Communication, Visual Thinking,
and Visual Learning are inextricably linked to
VL. These are the three main constructs comprising
VL theory and, consequently, their thread running
through the various VL definitions is usually
straightforward to identify. However, it is not
always clear whether all three are concurrently
present in any given definition.
9. VL has accepted and incorporated
theoretical contributions from other disciplines.
Psychology, Art, Philosophy, and Linguistics are
assumed as the cornerstones that VL theory has
dwelled and drawn on since its beginning.
10. Visual Literacy’s main focus is intentional
communication in an instructional context. This
loops back to points 4, 5 and 7. VL’s pragmatic
value for education has been strongly manifested by
its advocates. Thus, VL has been systematically
directed towards education. Indeed, over the years,
determined efforts have been made so as to put VL
into practice despite the undeniable difficulty that a
missing comprehensive VL definition and theory
have presented educators with.
Issues Raisediv
Although there seem to be many, rather
important similarities amongst the definitions in
discussion, when we explore separately the
theoretical departures of the authors many, equally
important issues are raised. These are:.
(a) VL: ability, skill, or competency?
Close examination of the definitions mentioned
earlier in this paper, reveals that VL is referred to as
either an ability, or a skill, or a competency. One
may claim that since these terms have been used
interchangeably, perhaps there is nothing significant
to be considered regarding their use. This author,
however, believes that the use of the above terms is
undoubtedly indicative of the way VL is perceived
by different scholars. Important as this observation
may be, no document exists in the body of VL
literature which probes into how these terms are
utilized, and consequently how they reflect their
users’ stance with respect to VL.
Older definitions of visual literacy seem to have
employed the terms competence (competency) and
skill. More recent VL definitions evolve around the
term ability. This has partly to do with the evolution
of the meaning of skill which, especially in
professional jargon, is now used as a synonym of
ability- for instance, psychologists refer to cognitive
skills or abilities without drawing any distinction
between the terms; and partly with the fact that
perception and understanding of VL has developed
considerably over the last 30 years. In retrospect, it
can be said that the initial course of thought about
VL was inductive from the fragmented, narrow
scoped yet diverse natured applications of VL
towards construction of the general theory of VL.
As the body of information grew, and the
exchange of ideas became more compelling, a
clearer picture of VL theory emerged. This, in turn,
led to a change of direction in the thinking process
in order to adapt it to the new situation. The new
situation demanded a more scientific approach to
VL so that its theory could subsequently be
sustained and justified. As a consequence, a
deductive scheme of thinking replaced the earlier
tradition of induction, whereby newly emerged
components of VL theory were sought in the
practical expressions of the construct, with the aim
to validating or rejecting their existence. Therefore a
broader term such as ability was needed to
encapsulate the concept of developed ability (skill),
but also the cognitive/meta-cognitive processes
believed to be involved.
(b) VL: one ability or a group of abilities?
As we have seen, some definitions refer to visual
literacy as a group of abilities stating this either
explicitly (Debes, 1969b; Ausburn & Ausburn,
1978b; IVLA, 1989 in Pettersson 1993), or
implicitly (Braden & Hortin, 1982; Hortin, 1983).
Others (Dondis, 1973; Sinatra, 1986; Curtiss, 1987;
Schiller, 1987; Heinich et al., 1996) mention that VL
is ‘the/an ability to…’, and by so doing they imply
that VL is one, major ability behind which other,
sub-abilities can be identified.
In theory, the perception of the state of being
visually literate, considered or not from a
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comparative perspective between verbal and visual
literacy, ought not to oscillate between a major
ability and a group of abilities. The reason for this
assertion resides in the fact that VL has consistently
resisted definition and, consequently clarification
over the course of its study. Thus, before
crystallizing any contention as to what VL
eventually may be, research on the practical
expressions of the VL construct is needed so as to
ensure whether we are concerned with a single
factor underlying all VL related abilities, or indeed
with a cluster of abilities.
Furthermore, VL is a theoretical construct and
therefore it is expected, at least in an experimentaltype research design, to manifest itself in a number
of behaviors/abilities. On this basis, we will have to
accept the VL construct as being comprised of
different, possibly separable abilities. In other
words, for VL to present itself in real terms, diverse
VL abilities capable of distinct definitions must be
demonstrable through performance.v
(c) Nature and Degree of Verbo-Visual
Connections
There seem to be many, extremely powerful
links between Visual and Verbal Language. The
very concept of VL emerged from, and drew
significantly upon perceived parallelisms between
Verbal and Visual Language. In general, most VL
advocates endorse this connection. Yet there are
some issues that have caused considerable debate,
and thus deserve particular attention. These are
outlined as follows:

the extent to which identification and
differentiation are possible between symbols that fall
under the province of Visual Language, and the ones
falling under the province of Verbal Language

the extent to which Visual Language
parallels Verbal Language, and how this affects our
perception of the VL associated skills, and
ultimately

the implications of Visual Literacy for the
development of Verbal Literacy
(d) Identification of VL skills
As Baca’s (1990) research demonstrates, there is
a high degree of consensus among VL scholars in
relation to critical components of visual literacy,
such as visual thinking, learning with and from
visuals, creating visuals, critically viewing and
interpreting visuals. What is equally important to
observe here, is the VL scholars’ agreement upon
the manifestation of each of the aforementioned
skills at different levels. Hence, at the core of this
unanimous perception of the VL skills in general
terms, it can be detected that:
VL skills are cognitive
VL skills range between lower and higher
order skills
the lower VL skills are inextricably linked
to visual perception
the higher VL skills are related to critical
viewing, thinking and reasoning
Despite the considerable consensus among VL
proponents regarding the nature and general
description of the skills germane to visual literacy,
precise
and
comprehensive
identification,
organization and classification of those skills has by
and large remained elusive. This is partly due to the
fact that no unanimously agreed upon definition has
been generated; but also due to the recognition that
different visual media being characterized by
different features, call for different skills on the part
of the user. Another major contributing factor seems
to be the lack of experimental research on VL which
would lead to acceptance or rejection of the
theoretical assumptions the VL scholars have made
in relation to reading, writing and thinking in terms
of images. This is not to imply, however, that
identifying and classifying the VL skills is a matter
which defies solution.vi Applied VL projects have
specified the VL skills needed to carry out their
purposes. Understandably, wherever this has
occurred, it has had context-specific value which
however in the long run could advance
generalizability of the VL skills.
(e) VL skills: Inherent or Acquired?
Although there is no doubt that the VL skills are
cognitive, much controversy exists as to whether
they are inherent or acquired. The majority of VL
advocates assumes that apart from the normal vision
related skills, the VL skills are acquired through
experience, as well as guided learning- a belief that
is inextricably linked to and sustains the ultimate
purpose of the VL movement, that is, the notion of
VL training. On the other hand, some scholars
postulate that the VL ability must be inherent since
it is based on the sense of vision which is natural to
all not vision deficient individuals,. Hence it should
not be regarded as a subject in need of training. The
pragmatic value of this debate, which obviously has
severe implications for the very raison d’ être of VL,
is encapsulated in the following questions:
are VL skills teachable and learnable?
which VL skills are teachable?
which VL skills are learnable?
to what extent are the teachable VL skills
teachable?
to what extent are the learnable VL skills
learnable?

(f) What is the VL status?
Despite accenting that “for a relatively young
area of study and movement much progress has been
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made” (1994, p. 102), Seels argues that VL has not
moved forward towards establishing itself as an
autonomous area of knowledge by reason of its
unclear status. She investigates the VL status
through both a pragmatic (field, profession,
discipline) and a theoretical perspective (concept,
construct). Regarding the former, her position is that
although the existence of the VL movement is an
undeniable fact, there is no field, profession or
discipline of VL. Rather, it could be said that there is
a VL area of study.
The above line of thought is shared by Heinich et
al. (1993) who state that “Visual literacy has …
become a ‘movement’ within the field of education.”
(1993, p. 64); and, elsewhere, “Interest in visual
literacy has grown to the point that it has become a
professional interest area.” (1996, p. 67) It must be
noted here that the latter holds true only in the sense
that the VL area has attracted the interest of
professionals from other disciplines.
Indeed, if the term ‘discipline’ refers to “a
branch of knowledge or scholarship” (Penguin
Dictionary of Psychology, 1985, p. 204), particularly
within the context of instruction or learning (Modern
English Oxford Dictionary, 1995, p. 298) it could
then be argued that VL does not consist a discipline
as our knowledge about it is rather scattered and still
under debate. In addition, the limited efforts to apply
VL in educational contexts have not been adequate
insofar their starting point is theory deficient. On the
other hand, if by “profession” we understand “a
vocation or calling, especially one that involves
some branch of advanced learning or science”
(Modern English Oxford Dictionary, 1995, p. 855),
and “a body of people engaged in a profession”,
again VL cannot be qualified as a profession
because no visual literacist has so far practiced VL
in this context. Finally, sufficient evidence exists to
defend VL as a field or area of study without any
particular need to distinguish between the terms
used. Engagement with the VL associated literature
demonstrates that the VL status falls somewhere
between the categories of “field” and “area of
study”. VL cannot fully qualify as a “field” of
integrated knowledge, research and practice;
conversely, it cannot be reduced to a vague “area of
study”.
(g) Towards an inclusive or an exclusive VL
definition?
As demonstrated before through the case of
Cassidy and Knowlton (1983) who had set an
exclusive definition for VL, the definitional
controversy is likely to perpetuate itself to the point
of reaching an intellectual ‘cul-de-sac’, if literal
translations of what applies to Verbal Language and
Literacy, are forced upon visual literacy.
Admittedly, generic, inclusive definitions appear to
be less counterproductive and more fruitful. A
definition model to illustrate the above point is the
one Hortin (1983) produced where the concept of
visual thinking/visualization was placed alongside
reading and writing in terms of images. As Braden
(1996) put it, the prevailing tendency of most VL
scholars at this time reveals that they “favor a more
inclusive attitude toward what constitutes the area of
visual literacy.” (p. 9) Consideration of the widely
diverge views as to what potentially constitutes a
topic of interest for the VL area, confirms that at
present we cannot afford to dismiss any of the
suggested VL components as irrelevant or unrelated
to VL. This can perhaps occur as a result of
subjecting the VL skills to yet more experimental
research procedures.vii
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design, science & technology (17-26). Selected
Readings of IVLA.
vi
See endnote v above.
vii
See endnote v above
i
Quoted by Reiser and Ely (1997, p. 63)
Picture retrieved from
http://www.ruthannzaroff.com/wonderland
(accessed 9/29/2002)
iii
L. Cochran, professor of instructional design and
technology, is one of the foundation members of
IVLA, and honorary editor of JVL. She was also
director for the Visual Scholars Program at the
University of Iowa. Our electronic discussions took
place on May, 31st 1998, and June, 1st 1998.
iv
For a comprehensive discussion of these issues see
Avgerinou, M. (2001). Visual literacy: anatomy and
diagnosis. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. The
University of Bath, UK.
v
See Avgerinou, M. (2001). Towards a visual
literacy index. In Griffin, R.E., Williams, V.S., &
Jung, L. (Eds.), Exploring the visual future: Art
ii
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A Selection of Writings from Henry Jenkins
Videogame Virtue
By Henry Jenkins August 1, 2003
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/03/08/wo_jenkins080103.asp
Frank Lantz, the head of game design at New York GameLab, demonstrated
Arcadia at the Game Developers Conference a few years back. Astonishingly,
Lantz played four basic Atari-style games on the screen at the same time. In one
window, he was arranging puzzle pieces. In another, he was making a funny little
man run through a scrolling maze. In another, he was defending the Earth
against alien invaders. And in a fourth, he was moving his paddle to deflect a
Pong ball. His mouse circled between windows, always seeming to be in the right
place at the right place at the right time to avert disaster or grab an enticing
power-up. Each game created a different spatial orientation-in and out, up and
down, right and left. To anyone who respects skilled game play, Lantz gave a
virtuoso performance.
As Lantz played, Eric Zimmerman, GameLab's cofounder and resident game
theorist, offered explanations for what we were seeing, demonstrating the fusion
of insightful and innovative design that has been the group's hallmark. The folks
at GameLab create games that make you think about the nature of the medium. I
want to use their provocation to explore some key questions at the intersection of
games, attention, and learning.
I am old enough to have played Pong and to have spent whole evenings
mastering some of those Atari games when they first appeared. Those games
used to be hard. Now, gamers like Lantz can handle four of them at a time and
not break a sweat. What happened?
When I spoke to him by telephone, Zimmerman reassured me that there was a
trick-the games had been simplified and slowed down from the originals. As soon
as any one game got interesting enough that you wanted to play it on it on its
own, it was probably too complicated for Arcadia. Yet, when I tried to play
Arcadia, even on its easiest setting, I found myself constantly losing lives,
frantically racing from place to place, and always, always, always arriving too
late. To use a technical term, I sucked. Arcadia is set to launch at
Shockwave.com in early August, so you can see how you stack up.
GameLab works outside the mainstream industry, designing games for the Web,
not for the PC or the various game machines. Zimmerman, who recently finished
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a book, Rules of Play, with Katie Salen, sees each game as an experiment in
interactive engineering. Much as punk rockers tried to strip rock music down to
its core, GameLab embraces a minimalist retro aesthetic, shedding fancy
graphics to focus on the mechanics of game play. In one of its games, Loop,
there aren't even mouse clicks: you simply encircle butterflies by moving your
mouse across the screen. Another GameLab title, Sissyfight 2000, was a staging
of Prisoner Dilemma as a multiplayer game set in a schoolyard. All of the
emphasis is on social interactions-the choice to tattle, tease, bond with or abuse
your classmates.
Arcadia began as a game about minigames-small, simple games that are
increasingly embedded within larger and more complicated games. It evolved
into a game about multitasking, one that links the management of game
resources with the management of one's own attention. That's actually a core
issue for many of us right now-how to manage our perceptual and cognitive
resources in what digital community builder Linda Stone characterizes as an age
of continuous partial attention.
Stone argues that there is a growing tendency for people to move through life,
scanning their environments for signals, and shifting their attention from one
problem to another. This process has definite downsides-we never give
ourselves over fully to any one interaction. It is like being at a cocktail party and
constantly looking over the shoulders of the person you are talking with to see if
anyone more interesting has arrived. Yet, it is also adaptive to the demands of
the new information environment, allowing us to accomplish more, to sort through
competing demands, and to interact with a much larger array of people.
For my generation, this process feels highly stressful and socially disruptive. But
for my son's cohort, young men and women in their late teens or early twenties, it
has become second nature. I am amazed watching my son doing his homework,
chatting online with multiple friends, each in their own chat room window,
downloading stuff off the Web, listening to MP3s, and keeping an eye on the Red
Sox score. My parents couldn't understand how I could do homework and watch
television. My students sit in class discussions, take detailed notes, and look up
relevant Web sites on their wireless laptops.
Our classic notions of literacy assume uninterrupted contemplation in relative
social isolation, a single task at a time. Some have characterized the younger
generation as having limited attention spans. But these young people have also
developed new competencies at rapidly processing information, forming new
connections between separate spheres of knowledge, and filtering a complex
field to discern those elements that demand immediate attention. Stone argues
that for better or worse, this is the way we are all currently living. Therefore, she
claims, we had better design our technologies to accommodate continuous
partial attention, and we had better evolve forms of etiquette that allow us to
smooth over the social disruptions such behavior can cause.
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Contemporary aesthetic choices-the fragmented, MTV-style editing, the dense
layering of techno music, the more visually complex pages of some
contemporary comic books-reflect consumers' desires for new forms of
perceptual play and their capacity to take in more information at once than
previous generations. Think for a moment about the scrawl-the layering of
informational windows-in today's TV news. Like Arcadia's minigames, there is a
trick: any given bit of text is simplified compared to previous news discourse.
Such graphical busyness also has an advantage-we can see the interrelationship
between stories and pay attention to simultaneous developments. We probably
don't read everything on screen, but we monitor and flit between different media
flows.
All of this brings us back to games like Arcadia. Much as earlier civilizations used
play to sharpen their hunting skills, we use computer games to exercise and
enhance our information processing capabilities. Researchers at the University of
Rochester found that kids who regularly play intense video games show better
perceptual and cognitive skills than those who do not. It isn't just that people who
had quick eyes and nimble fingers liked to play games; these skills could be
acquired by non-gamers who put in the time and effort to learn how to play.
Zimmerman argues that what makes playing Arcadia possible is the degree to
which each of the minigames builds on conventions. We take one look at these
games and we know what to do. Yet, the Rochester research suggests
something else-that people over time simply become quicker at processing game
information and can play more sophisticated games. In a new book, What Video
Games Can Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, James Paul Gee argues that
games are, in some senses, the ideal teaching machines. Gee suggests that
educators can learn a great deal about how to sequence a curriculum from
watching how game designers orient players to new challenges and how they
organize the flow of activities so that players acquire the skills they need just in
time for the next task; the goal is for players to find each level challenging but not
overwhelming. Games teach us, Gee argues, without us even realizing that any
education is taking place.
All of this research points in the same direction. Leaving aside questions of
content, video games are good for kids-within limits-because game play helps
them to adapt to the demands of the new information environment. Surgeons are
already using video games to refine their hand-eye coordination for the ever
more exacting demands of contemporary procedures. The military uses games to
rehearse the complexity of coordinating group actions in an environment where
participants cannot see each other. And all of us can use games to learn how to
function in the era of continuous partial attention.
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These multitasking skills will be most developed in those who have had access to
games from an early age. Our sons and daughters will be the natives of the new
media environment; others will be immigrants. Educators have long talked about
a hidden curriculum, things kids absorb outside of formal education that shape
their thoughts, tastes, and skills and that enable some groups to advance more
quickly than others. The same pattern is developing around new media
technologies-those who grow up with them as part of their recreational life relate
to them differently than those who only encounter them later at school or work.
While the skills derived from playing video games expand human creative
capacity and broaden access to knowledge, they should not come at the
expense of older forms of literacy. The challenge is to produce children who have
a balanced perspective-who know what each medium does best and what kind of
content is most appropriate in each, who can multitask but can also contemplate,
who play games but also read books.
So, get thee to Arcadia but also get thee to a library.
Media Literacy Begins at Home
By Henry Jenkins December 5, 2003
In October, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a startling new study of media
consumption in early childhood. Based on telephone interviews with more than a
thousand parents, Kaiser found, for instance, that children under six spend about
the same amount of time each day consuming media (118 minutes) as they
do playing outside (121 minutes). This finding raised great public outcry among
those who see media consumption as a social problem.
I was reminded of W. Russell Neuman's 1991 prediction in The Future of the
Mass Audience that the transformative potential of new media would be blunted
by the continuation of mental habits developed through decades of relating to
mass media. We are taught to see media in passive terms rather than to
develop the selectivity, creativity, awareness, and agency needed for the new
media age. Most current parenting advice adopts a protectionist or even
prohibitionist perspective, urging parents to unplug their sets. It takes for granted
that there can be no constructive relationship between child-rearing and popular
culture and that we must therefore seek only to minimize the damage; most
adopts a double standard, stressing the importance of parents shaping their
children's encounters with literary stories but seeing popular culture purely as a
negative influence; most depicts parents and children as passive victims rather
than empowered media users.
Such advice clearly has had an impact. The Kaiser study found, for example,
that 90 percent of parents have rules about what their kids watch and 69 percent
have rules about how much they watch. Such restrictions are not bad as a first
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step, but most parents end there. With a media literate child, such restrictions
may be unnecessary. Fortunately, many of today's parents-especially those in
their 20s or 30s-came of age as avid game players and full participants in online
communities. They have an instinctive grasp of what is required to prepare their
children for the new media environment.
Media literacy refers to the full range of capabilities children need if they are
going to be full participants in a more participatory media culture. It includes skills
in using new media technologies, cultural competencies in understanding how
stories are constructed and what they mean, aesthetic vocabularies that heighten
their appreciation of diverse forms of expression, and critical frameworks for
thinking about the power big media companies exert even in an age of expanding
options. Though we often trivialize the intellectual demands of popular culture,
these skills are acquired over time and depend upon informal instruction. Parents
provide such mentoring, both by modeling patterns of media consumption and by
developing and enforcing guidelines for how they want their children to relate to
media content.
We would not regard our children to be literate if they could read and not write.
We should similarly not feel that our children have developed basic media
literacy if they can consume but not produce media. Creating media content can
range from the traditional, such as writing stories, to the high-tech, such as
programming original computer games. Just as reading and writing skills feed on
each other, production and consumption skills for other media are also mutually
reinforcing.
Parents often complain that popular culture threatens their ability to shape their
children's values. In practice, though, parents have more control than ever
before-if they treat media as an ally rather an enemy. Given the sheer range of
media available in an era of 200-plus cable channels-not to mention countless
games, DVDs, videos, and Web sites-it is much more likely that parents can find
media that reflects their own values and cultural background if they learn how to
look for it. The disturbing images in some contemporary video games bear more
than a passing resemblance to the pictures we used to draw with our crayons
when we were kids-images of Army guys getting their heads blown off. The
difference is that we often hid those pictures from adult view, whereas they are
now consumed, out in the open, in the living room. Such open consumption need
not imply endorsement of the depicted actions. What parents can see, they can
monitor and shape.
To intervene effectively, parents need to know what media their kids are
consuming and why. Parents should spend time watching shows, playing games,
listening to music, and scanning the Web with their children. As parents do so,
they should model active engagement-asking the child to predict what is going to
happen next, helping her to understand how one event is connected to previous
and subsequent developments, and discussing what each event means for the
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characters. (Just don't do it sitting next to me in a movie theater, please!) Do not
be too frustrated if the child's attentions wander. Kids younger than five or six
tend to watch media in short spurts, rather than processing entire stories. VCRs,
TiVos, and DVD players support such viewing practices, allowing kids to skip
over the dull bits and zero in on the most meaningful segments. And parents
shouldn't be afraid to hit the pause key themselves occasionally if it seems that
the child has missed something important.
Media Literacy Goes to School
By Henry Jenkins January 2, 2004
Several years ago, I told a sixth-grade class that I often consulted with games
companies and asked what they would like to tell the people who developed their
favorite games. All around the room hands shot up. The kids asked hard
questions about the influence of game violence, the impact of technological
developments, how and why games tell stories, the nature of interactive
entertainment, and the economic motives shaping the games industry. The girls
challenged the boys to explain why so few games appealed to girls. The students
spoke with confidence and passion; they made compelling arguments; they
supported their positions. The astonished teachers told me that the most
articulate kids here had not opened their mouths all term.
I've thought a lot about what made this a "teachable moment." I gave the
classroom discussion real world implications. What they said mattered beyond
the classroom walls. I respected their expertise. They were telling me what they
knew and in the process, learning from each other. They had spent much time
thinking and talking about games but the adults weren't listening and they didn't
see how that talk connected to anything they were learning in school. Ethical and
social issues emerged organically from the task I set them-rethinking what
games could be. As I responded to them, I introduced a vocabulary and
framework for pushing those ideas to the next level.
Last month, I wrote about the important role parents can play throughout early
childhood in preparing their kids for a media-saturated world. This month, I want
to focus on what schools can and should do to promote media literacy.
Media literacy education must be integrated into our curriculum from kindergarten
through college. But to succeed, educators need to update and rethink the
assumptions shaping many existing media literacy programs.
Not everyone would agree. Many feel that school time is too vital to be wasted in
helping students understand content that they will encounter on their own and
that schools owe it to their young charges to present them with alternatives to
popular culture. Even among those who think that media literacy should be part
of the U.S. educational system, there are crippling disagreements. As Bob
McCannon, the leader of the New Mexico Media Literacy Project, notes,
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"whenever media literacy educators get together, they always circle the wagonsand shoot in!" Much media literacy education is actually anti-media indoctrination
rather than an attempt to develop the skills and competencies needed to function
meaningfully in the current media environment.
Frankly, the rhetoric of the media literacy movement has so turned me off that I
have only recently become active in writing and speaking on this topic. Too often,
media literacy advocates depict kids as victims. We are told that advertising is
"killing us softly," that we are "amusing ourselves to death," and that the only real
alternative is to "unplug the plug-in drug" (to quote a few phrases often bandied
about). These approaches emerged from an era dominated by top-down
broadcast media. Increasingly, kids are demonstrating the capacity to use media
to their own ends and adult authorities are holding them accountable for their
practices. Schools are suspending students for things they post on their Web
sites; the recording industry is suing kids and their parents for the music they
download. The problem of media power hasn't disappeared, but it operates very
differently in an age of participatory media. The new media literacy education
needs to be about empowerment and responsibility.
Throughout the 1990s, we fought to wire the classrooms. Educators now must
give kids the skills they need to fully participate in cyberspace-not just technical
training, but also cultural and social skills (including traditional literacy).
Ellen Seiter, a media scholar at the University of California, San Diego, has
written about the challenges she confronted in developing a school-based Web
journalism program. Kids had difficulty distinguishing reliable from unreliable
information; they often did not recognize the commercial or political motives of
sites; they often did not distinguish between professional and amateur sites; and
they didn't recognize what perspectives were not being represented within the
range of available data. In truth, schools should always have taught students how
to assess information rather than taking for granted that what appears in print
must be true. The new media culture makes critical reading practices even more
urgent.
Last month, a reader questioned my use of the term, "media culture," contending
that most media content has little or no cultural value. I am using culture here not
in an evaluative sense, but rather to refer to a shared way of life. "Media culture"
refers to the way that we use media technologies to achieve everyday goals. It
also refers to the way we draw on media content as a resource for making sense
of the world and the way we choose which channels to use to communicate with
important people in our lives. In that sense, the media culture that emerged from
the Gutenberg Revolution was very different from the media culture in the Edison
era or from our own digital age.
This concept of media culture needs to be built into our arts, social sciences, and
humanities curriculum-not as something extra that teachers have to cover but
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rather as a paradigm shift that changes how we teach traditional materials. The
study of the American Revolution, for example, might consider the multiple
means by which revolutionaries and loyalists gained access to information (oral
networks, committees of correspondence, royal decrees, official newspapers,
political pamphlets, stump speaking, etc.). Students might consider who
controlled each of these channels. They might learn about the speed by which
information moved up and down the Eastern seaboard, or from America to
Europe, and how this influenced the struggle for independence. Students might
then apply this framework comparatively to think about what would have
happened if these same events and debates had played themselves out in our
current environment-one where information flows globally in microseconds. Such
discussions are not a distraction from learning American history. They provide
students with powerful new tools for connecting the past to the present.
Why Heather Can Write
By Henry Jenkins February 6, 2004
When she was 13, Heather Lawver read a book that changed her life: Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Inspired by reports that J. K. Rowling's novel
was getting kids to read, she wanted to do her part to promote literacy. Less than
a year later, she launched The Daily Prophet, a Web-based "school newspaper"
for the fictional Hogwarts. Today, the publication has a staff of 102 children from
all over the world.
Lawver, still in her teens, is its managing editor. She hires columnists who cover
their own beats on a weekly basis-everything from the latest Quiddich matches to
Muggle cuisine-and edits each story. She encourages her staff to closely
compare their original submissions with the edited versions and consults with
them on issues of style and grammar as needed.
Heather, by the way, is a home schooler who hasn't set foot in a classroom since
first grade.
My last two columns have centered on what parents and schools can do to help
kids develop media literacy. This month, I will reverse directions and examine
how participating in popular culture may help kids to master traditional literacy
skills. We often act as if schools had a monopoly on teaching, yet smart kids
have long known not to let schooling get in the way of their education.
Teachers sometimes complain that popular culture competes for the attention of
their students, a claim that starts from the assumption that what kids learn from
media is less valuable than what schools teach. Here, however, much of what is
being mastered are things that schools try-and too often fail-to teach their
students. (It has been said that if schools taught sex education the same way
they taught writing, the human race would die out in a generation.)
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I will focus on high school aged kids who are reading, writing, editing, and
critiquing Harry Potter fan fiction online. But keep in mind that such informal
teaching occurs across a range of other online communities. We could, for
example, talk about the important role the Riot Grrl subculture played in the early
1990s in helping teenage girls to develop technical competency at a time when
cyberspace was still seen as a predominantly male domain; we could talk about
young anime fans who are teaching each other Japanese language and culture
in order to do underground subtitling of their favorite shows.
University of Wisconsin-Madison education professor James Gee calls such
informal learning cultures "affinity spaces," asking why kids learn more,
participate more actively, and engage more deeply with popular culture than they
do with the contents of their textbooks. As one 16-year-old Harry Potter fan told
me, "It's one thing to be discussing the theme of a short story you've never heard
of before and couldn't care less about. It's another to be discussing the theme of
your friend's 50,000-word opus about Harry and Hermione that they've spent
three months writing."
I have studied and participated in fan communities, off and on, for more than two
decades. Yet much of what I found when I recently turned my attention to Harry
Potter fandom took my breath away. Ten years ago, published fan fiction came
mostly from women in their twenties, thirties, and beyond. Today, these older
writers have been joined by a generation of new contributors-kids who found fan
fiction surfing the Internet and decided to see what they could produce.
Consider, for example, the girl known online as Flourish. She started reading XFiles fan fiction when she was 10, wrote her first Harry Potter stories at 12, and
published her first online novel at 14. She quickly became a mentor for other
emerging fan writers, including many who were twice her age or more. Most
people assumed she was probably a college student. Interacting online allowed
her to keep her age to herself until she had become so central to the fandom that
nobody much cared that she was in middle school.
What difference will it make, over time, if a growing percentage of young writers
begin publishing and getting feedback on their work while they are still in high
school? And what happens when those young writers compare notes, becoming
critics, editors, and mentors? Will they develop their craft more quickly-and
develop a critical vocabulary for thinking about storytelling?
FictionAlley, the largest Harry Potter archive, hosts more than 30,000 stories and
book chapters, including hundreds of completed or partially completed novels. Its
(unpaid) staff of more than 200 people includes 40 mentors who welcome each
new participant individually. At the Sugar Quill, another popular site, every posted
story undergoes a peer-review process it calls "beta-reading." New writers often
go through multiple drafts before their stories are ready for posting. "The betareader service has really helped me to get the adverbs out of my writing and get
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my prepositions in the right place and improve my sentence structure and refine
the overall quality of my writing," explains the girl who writes under the pen name
Sweeney Agonistes-a college freshman with years of publishing behind her.
Like many of the other young writers, Agonistes says that Rowling's books
provide her with a helpful creative scaffolding: "It's easier to develop a good
sense of plot and characterization and other literary techniques if your reader
already knows something of the world where the story takes place," she says. By
poaching off Rowling, the writers are able to start with a well-established world
and a set of familiar characters and thus are able to focus on other aspects of
their craft. Often, unresolved issues in the books stimulate them to think through
their own plots or to develop new insights into the characters.
Literary purists, of course, might question the wisdom of having kids develop as
creative writers in this nontraditional way. But while there is certainly value in
writing about one's own experiences, adolescents often have difficulty stepping
outside themselves and seeing the world through other people's eyes. Their
closeness to Harry and his friends makes it possible to get some critical distance
from their own lives and think through their concerns from a new perspective.
And writing about Harry offers them something else, too: an audience with a
built-in interest in the stories-an interest that would be difficult to match with
stories involving original fictional characters. The power of popular culture to
command attention is being harnessed at a grassroots level to find a readership
for these emerging storytellers.
Harry Potter fan fiction yields countless narratives of youth empowerment as
characters fight back against the injustices their writers encounter everyday at
school. Often, the young writers show a fascination with getting inside the heads
of the adult characters. Many of the best stories are told from a teacher's
perspective or depict Harry's parents and mentors when they were school aged.
Some of the stories are sweetly romantic or bittersweet coming-of-age tales;
others are charged with anger or budding sexual feelings, themes that could not
be discussed so openly in a school assignment and that might be too
embarrassing to address through personal narratives or original characters. As
they discuss such stories, teen and adult fans talk openly about their life
experiences, offering each other advice on more than just issues of plot or
characterization. Having a set of shared characters creates a common ground
that enables these conversations to occur in a more collaborative fashion.
Through online discussions of fan writing, the teen writers develop a vocabulary
for talking about writing and they learn strategies for rewriting and improving their
own work. When they talk about the books themselves, the teens make
comparisons with other literary works or draw connections with philosophical and
theological traditions; they debate gender stereotyping in the female characters;
they cite interviews with the writer or read critiques of the works; they use
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analytic concepts they probably wouldn't encounter until they reached the
advanced undergraduate classroom.
Not surprisingly, someone who has just published her first online novel and
received dozens of comment-filled letters finds it disappointing to return to the
classroom where her work will be read only by the teacher-whose feedback may
dwell more on comma splices than character development. Some teens have
confessed to smuggling drafts of stories to school in their textbooks and editing
them during class; others sit around the lunch table talking plot and character
issues with their classmates or try to work on the stories on the school computers
until the librarians accuse them of wasting time. They can't wait for the school
bell to ring so they can focus on their writing.
It is not clear that these successes can be duplicated simply by incorporating
similar activities into the classroom-though some teachers are using fan fiction
exercises to motivate their students. Schools have less flexibility than the fan
community does to support writers at very different stages of their development.
Moreover, schools impose a fixed leadership hierarchy (including very different
roles for adults and teens); it is unlikely that someone like Heather or Flourish
would have had the same editorial opportunities that they have found through
fandom.
Even the most progressive schools set limits on what students can write
compared to the freedom they enjoy on their own. Certainly, teens may receive
harsh critical responses to their more controversial stories when they publish
them online, but the teens themselves are deciding what risks they want to take
and facing the consequences of those decisions. The Harry Potter books are not
universally welcomed into U.S. schools; they have been at the center of more
textbook and library controversies over the past several years than any other
book. The teen writers are acutely aware of those censorship struggles and
many have decided, not to talk with parents and teachers about what they are
writing. What the grown-ups don't know can't hurt them.
Some students say teachers have ridiculed them for the time they put into their
fan writing; others complain of parents trying to protect them from the "demonic"
influence of the books. But some teachers do care enough to read and give
feedback on these stories. And there are supportive parents who fly with their
sons and daughters to conventions where the young writers speak to rooms full
of people about the story-writing craft. These teens don't need adults taking over
their spaces-but they do need adults to respect and value what they are trying to
do.
Many young fan writers aspire to professional writing careers; many are getting
accepted into top colleges and pursuing educational goals that stem from their
fan experiences. Fandom is providing a rich haven to support the development of
bright young minds that might otherwise get chewed up by the system, and
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offering mentorship to help less gifted students to achieve their full expressive
potential. Either way, these teens are finding something online that schools are
not providing them.
The Christian Media Counterculture
By Henry Jenkins March 5, 2004
Senator Zell Miller was spitting mad about the Super Bowl. In his "Deficit of
Decency" speech, the Georgia Democrat compared watching the broadcast to
driving over a skunk-"the scent of this event will long linger in the nostrils of
America." Miller claims the event embodied the "culture of far left America" as
served up by "Value-Les Moonves" (that would be CBS Television president
Leslie Moonves) "and the pagan temple of Viacom-Babylon." Miller's speech is a
classic example of "culture war" rhetoric, which pits Christians against
Hollywood, as if either could be understood in such simple and monolithic terms.
This same culture war rhetoric has helped to frame the release of Mel Gibson's
The Passion of the Christ. Fundamentalists (both Protestant and Catholic) crow
that the movie's $125 million opening weekend gross represents the triumph of
the Christians over Hollywood, while media pundits scratch their heads and
wonder how this film can double or even triple the industry's estimates of its likely
box office yield.
Over the past several decades, (hyperventilation about cultural alienation) has
served both to estrange evangelical Christians from the American cultural
mainstream and to blind liberals to just how many people are consuming
Christian media. Just dropping the word "Christian" in many online discussion
lists sends some people into a frenzy and others running for the exit. Many
liberals act as if the complex history of Christian debates about the relationship
between spiritual and secular matters can be reduced to a glib dismissal of Jerry
Falwell's "campaign" against the Teletubbies. But not all conservative Christians
wish to censor others. Many want simply to protect and promote their own
traditions in the face of what they see as the onslaught of contemporary media.
Call it the Christian Counterculture. Rather than rejecting popular culture outright,
a growing number of Christians are producing and consuming their own popular
media on the fringes of the mainstream entertainment industry. Still others are
gathering in church basements and living rooms to promote their own brand of
media literacy-seeing commercial culture as a "window" into the culture of
unbelievers. What we see here is consistent with what media scholars have
found within other subcultural communities-a desire to make and distribute your
own media and the desire to challenge and critique mainstream media.
While many Christians have felt cut off from mass media, they have been quick
to embrace new technologies-such as videotape, cable television, low-wattage
radio stations, and the Internet-that allow them to route around established
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gatekeepers. The result has been the creation of media products that mirror the
genre conventions of popular culture but express an alternative set of values.
In Shaking the World for Jesus, to be published next month, media scholar
Heather Hendershot offers a complex picture of the kinds of popular culture
being produced by and for evangelicals. Frustrated by network television, cultural
conservatives have created their own animated series and sitcoms distributed on
video. They have produced their own science fiction, horror, mystery, and
romance novels, all of which can be purchased online. And alarmed by
contemporary video games, they have produced their own-such as Victory at
Hebron, where players battle Satan or rescue martyrs.
The emergence of new media technologies has allowed evangelicals some
degree of autonomy from commercial media, allowing them to identify and enjoy
media products that more closely align with their own worldviews. Technology
has also lowered the costs of production and distribution, enabling what remains
essentially a niche market to sustain a remarkably broad range of cultural
products. Of course, as "niche markets" go, this one may be astonishingly large.
According to a recent ABC News poll, 83 percent of Americans consider
themselves to be Christians, and Baptists (only one of the evangelical
denominations) make up 15 percent of the nation.
As commercial media producers have realized the size of this demographic, the
walls between Christian and mainstream popular culture are breaking down.
VeggieTales videos are finding their way into Walmart, Focus on the Family's
Adventures in Odyssey records get distributed as kids' meal prizes at Chick-fil-A,
the Left Behind books become top sellers on Amazon.com, and Christian pop
singer Amy Grant breaks into top 40 radio. In the process, some of the more
overtly religious markings get stripped away. Network television has begun to
produce some shows, such as Touched by an Angel, Seventh Heaven, or Joan
of Arcadia, that deal with religious themes in a way designed to appeal to the
"searchers" and the "saved" alike. Predictably, some evangelicals fear that
Christianity has been commodified and that Jesus is becoming just another
brand in the great big "marketplace of ideas."
And it's in that context that we need to understand the staggering success of The
Passion. The Christians knew how to get folks into the theaters to support this
movie. Taking lessons from the blogging community and MoveOn.org, one
website, Faith Highway, urged local churches to raise money to sponsor local
television advertising for the movie. Many churches loaded up school buses full
of worshippers to attend screenings. Some church leaders have acknowledged
backing this film in the hopes that its commercial success will get Hollywood to
pay more attention to them.
Despite the presence of such a diverse alternative media culture, evangelicals do
not live in some kind of protected bubble, sealed off from the rest of popular
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culture; the residue of popular culture enters their homes even if tainted videos
do not. How do they prepare their kids to confront a world where Janet Jackson's
fetishwear is just one strong tug away? Some evangelicals have organized to
offer their own ratings of contemporary media products based on what they see
as Christian principles (see, for example, Christian Spotlight on Entertainment).
In some cases, these ratings are purely negative, helping families filter out
profanity, nudity, violence, or content tagged as occult or new age. In other
cases, groups such as HollywoodJesus.com promote works that they feel raise
spiritual and philosophical questions, even if they do not necessarily adopt
Christian perspectives. Increasingly, such sites are encouraging what they call
"discernment." One such group, the Ransom Fellowship, defines discernment as
"an ability, by God's grace, to creatively chart a godly path through the maze of
choices and options that confront us, even when were faced with situations and
issues that aren't specifically mentioned in the Scriptures." The discernment
movement draws inspiration from a range of Biblical passages that speak of
people who maintained their faith even when living as exiles or captives in an
alien land. Christians, they argue, are living in "modern captivity," holding onto
and transmitting their faith in an increasingly hostile context.
In "Pop Culture: Why Bother?," Ransom Fellowship founder and director Denis
Haack advocates engaging with popular culture, rather than hiding from it.
Discernment exercises can help Christians to develop a greater understanding of
their own value system, can offer insights into the worldview of "nonbelievers,"
and can offer an opportunity for meaningful exchange between Christians and
non-Christians. As Haack explains, "If we are to understand those who do not
share our deepest convictions, we must gain some comprehension of what they
believe, why they believe it, and how those beliefs work out in daily life." Their
site provides discussion questions and advice about how to foster media literacy
within an explicitly religious context, finding ideas worth struggling with in
mainstream works as diverse as Bruce Almighty, Whale Rider, Cold Mountain,
and Lord of the Rings. The site is very explicit that Christians are apt to disagree
among themselves about what is or is not valuable in such works, but that the
process of talking through these differences focuses energy on spiritual matters
and helps everyone involved to become more skillful in applying and defending
their faith.
Somewhere between the production of new forms of popular culture and the
discernment of values within existing commercial media lies a movement to
adopt live action role-playing and computer games as spaces for exploring and
debating moral questions. The Christian Gamers Guild (which titles its official ezine "The Way, The Truth and The Dice") emerged in the midst of strong attacks
from some evangelical leaders on role-playing and computer games. As the
group's collective statement explains: "Role-playing games allow people to make
choices, to make wrong choices, and then watch them unfold into the painful
consequences, without ever taking any real risk. In this way it gets players to ask
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the important moral questions, and weigh the answers-and all in the context of
having fun." There is even Project X, a Christian effort to develop games with
overtly Christian themes. And Christian gaming groups, such as Men of God, go
into military or shooting games and witness on the virtual battlefield. They are, to
borrow the name of another group, "Fans for Christ."
Confronting the proliferation of cable channels, the diversification of media
content available on video and DVD, and the sheer expanse of the Internet, we
all struggle to make decisions about what kind of popular culture we want to bring
into our homes. We can respond to that challenge with fear or with courage, with
minds open or minds closed. The culture war rhetoric closes off discussion: its
metaphors of sewage, pollution, or dead skunks imply that some forms of
expression are indefensible (and it is easy for this contempt to get directed
against the people who consume such media). What I respect about the
Christian discernment movement is that it is educating people to make
meaningful choices and giving them a conceptual framework for talking about
what kinds of ideas get expressed through the media they consume. These folk
have been willing to defend popular media against others in their same religious
denominations who would denounce them. They hold firm in their own beliefs
and they have not renounced their desire to see such beliefs become a more
powerful force in our culture, but they have created an approach that respects
diversity of opinion and civility of expression.
Playing Politics in Alphaville
By Henry Jenkins May 7, 2004
The Alphaville presidential elections attracted national and even international
media attention. National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation hosted a joint
appearance of the two candidates, complete with an array of pundits pontificating
about cyberpolitics and virtual economies. The best coverage came from the
Alphaville Herald, the small town newspaper serving the needs of the virtual
community. The Herald is run by Peter Ludlow, a professor of philosophy and
linguistics at the University of Michigan. In the game realm, Ludlow goes by the
moniker Urizenus.
Alphaville is one of the oldest and most densely populated towns in the Sims
Online, a massively multiplayer version of the most successful game franchise of
all time. The game's creator, Will Wright, has often said that he did not have any
idea what would happen when he put the Sims online. He knew players would
become deeply invested in their characters and their communities. He could not
have projected that organized crime would run rampant, that community leaders
would organize against con-artists and prostitutes, or that the elections would
devolve into mudslinging and mutual accusations of manipulation.
Much of what has been written about cyberdemocracy has focused on structures
and procedures, elected official and organized political parties. But the Alphaville
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elections raise larger issues about the culture of democracy. Underlying any
democratic system must be some notion of social contract between the
participants and some sense that their participation is meaningful. And those are
the things that were at risk as the drama surrounding the Alphaville presidential
elections unfolded.
When the votes were counted, the incumbent, Mr. President (the avatar of Arthur
Baynes, a 21-year-old Delta Airlines ticket agent from Richmond, VA) had beaten
Ashley Richardson (the avatar of Laura McKnight, a middle schooler from Palm
Beach, FL), 469 to 411. Ashley has cried foul play, contending that she knows of
more than 100 supporters who were not allowed to vote.
Mr. President's defenders initially claimed that the undercounting resulted from a
bug in the system that made it hard for America Online users to accept the
cookies used on the election website. And in any case, they say, many of
Ashley's supporters were not actually "citisims" of Alphaville. Mr. President
argues that he campaigned among hardcore participants in the game, while
Ashley brought her off-line friends and family members (many of whom are not
subscribers) into the process. While the Alphaville constitution makes clear who
is eligible to be a candidate, it doesn't specify who is permitted to vote. Nobody
actually "lives" in Alphaville, of course, but many call the online community
"home." Should one have to interact there for a specific period of time to earn the
right to vote, or should voting be open to everybody-including those who
have never before visited the community?
Some argue that participants are taking things way too seriously, confusing a
game with real life. The Alphaville Herald's Urizenus concedes that Mr. President
may simply be role-playing the part of a corrupt politician and that he himself may
simply be acting the part of a "muckraking newspaper editor who likes to root out
virtual corruption in virtual elections." Others see Mr. President as someone
deeply committed to bringing good government to the online community. It was
Mr. President, after all, who had first proposed and developed this virtual
government, and he had done some good things during his first administration.
There are certainly signs that the participants didn't always take things too
seriously. The first online debate ended abruptly at 9:00 p.m. when Ashley
claimed she was feeling ill. Mr. President suggested that the timing made him
suspicious that she simply wanted to watch the Sopranos; the middle-schooler
later confessed that she had to finish her homework. Ashley's campaign slogan
was "Everybody Wang Chung Tonight," suggesting that having fun may be
Alphaville's highest social good. Yet, if this is play, it is hard play-the kind of play
that emerges from serious investments and that shapes real world
understandings.
Important issues are at stake here, both in the world of the game and the world
beyond the game. Within the game, the candidates represent different
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perspectives on what would be best for their community; the choice of leaders
would affect the way players experience the game world. Ashley wanted to set
up information booths at the city limits to warn newcomers about some of the
ways scammers might trick them out of their cash. It is significant that one of the
leading candidates here will be five years too young to vote in the actual
presidential elections this fall and that participants in the online debates keep
accusing each other of playing the "age card." Consider what it means to
exercise power in a virtual world when you have so little control over what
happens to you in your everyday life.
The age of at least some of the participants invites comparisons with older
traditions of student government, which had emerged from a belief that the
culture of democracy needed to be instilled into the everyday life of children. But
Alphaville has an estimated population of 7,000 and its government employs
more than 150 people (mostly in law enforcement). The virtual town's leaders
have to negotiate with Electronic Arts, the company that creates and markets the
Sims franchise, to shape the policies that impact their community. And the
debates and elections occur in the glare of a national media spotlight.
The situation blew up when the Alphaville Herald published what it claims is a
transcript of an Internet chat session between Mr. President and mobster J.C.
Soprano (the avatar of a player who presumably lives a law-abiding life in the
real world). The chat suggested that the election process may have been
compromised from the very beginning and that Mr. President may be the silent
partner of the organized crime family. If this was play, then not everyone was
playing by the same rules.
Writing under his real world name in the Alphaville Herald after he broke the
story, Ludlow raised the question, "What kinds of lessons were we teaching
Ashley and other younger players about political life?" Yes, he wrote, the Sims
Online was a game, but "nothing is ever just a game. Games have
consequences. Games also give us an opportunity to break out of the roles and
actions that we might be forced into in real life. I decided to take advantage of
that opportunity. I freed my game."
Reading through the reader responses in the Alphaville Herald, it is clear that, for
many, the stolen election forced them to ask some fundamental questions about
the nature of democracy. The odd coincidence that many of those who tried and
were unable to vote came from Palm Beach, FL, invited comparison to the
dispute in Florida four years ago. Ashley, a John Kerry supporter, evokes the
specter of Bush-Cheney and the "stolen election" while she has herself been
called a "crybaby" and compared to Al Gore. As one participant exclaimed,
"Where is the Alphaville Supreme Court when you really need them?"
Even in play, American democracy feels broken.
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It is not surprising, given the drama unfolded everyday in our real-world
newspapers, that cynicism about democratic processes has spread into the
games we play or the fantasy roles we adopt online. Will the players leave the
game disillusioned, or more involved with political life? Is the online game world a
distraction from "serious" activism? Is that even the right question to ask, given
that many of the key players here will not be able to vote this November and
would probably not be taking seriously if they directed these same energies
toward politics in their own communities?
Before we write this all off as a "learning experience," we should ask some more
fundamental questions about the ways that game worlds do or do not model ideal
online democracies. For starters, I wonder what it will mean that many young
people first experiment with democracy not through any civic institution but
through what is the virtual equivalent of a shopping mall. What happens to free
speech in a corporate-controlled environment, where the profit motive can undo
any decision made by the citizenry and where the company can pull the plug
whenever sales figures warrant? What happens to free press when the town
newspaper editor can get thrown off-line in a dispute with corporate
management? What happens to notions of "character" or reputation when a
candidate can change his or her identity at will and may well be playing multiple
roles in the process? What happens to rules of law when one of the candidates
codes the program determining the election results? And can you have a social
contract when nobody is quite sure who's role-playing and to what degree?
Can't we just let these people play in peace? After all, even with political
corruption thrown into the mix, The Sims Online is relatively wholesome in
comparison to what goes on in most other online games. Yet, it isn't an accident
that after Florida 2000, we now play at corrupt elections, just as after September
11, many people built amateur games where you could blow up Bin
Laden. Nothing is ever just a game.
The healthiest thing that has come out of the Alphaville election is that people,
online and off, are talking about what happened and through this conversation,
they are asking questions about the future of democracy. If we are taking a game
too seriously, it is because these questions have not been taken seriously
enough in the offline world.
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Defining the Visually Literate Individual.
Dr. Adele Flood
RMIT University Melbourne.
Abstract
This paper investigates ideas of visually literacy. It suggests that while we may use the words quite freely there
is little evidence that the term means the same to all who use it. There has been a rush to own the terminology
and it is now being used within areas of curriculum by educators who have not received any training in the
understanding of both the perceiving and making of imagery. Usually the former rather than the latter is the
understanding of a visually literate person.
This paper argues that to be visually literate one must be able to make as well as see. It investigates the practice
of the visually literate from the perspective of three practitioners and then applies Bloom's taxonomy to those
processes. It argues that theories such as Bloom's need to be applied within a current context and that such
theories have much to offer us in terms of understanding visual literacy in a contemporary digitally based
learning environment.
This paper provided the impetus and the methodology for the current research project being undertaken by Drs
Adele Flood and Anne Bamford and Assoc Professor Ian Brown in association with ADOBE International.
This paper was originally published in Australian Art Education Volume 27, No. 1 2004.
When we use the term Visual Literacy there is an assumption that we know what a visually
literate person is and does. Often we draw upon our own experiences and practise to identify
such characteristics. The recent commandeering and ownership of visual literacy into areas
other than the visual arts means that skills and performance are based upon a construct of
practice that is in itself not primarily reliant on visual imagery, and particularly is not
connected to the creating of visual images.
There are also very strong calls for us to now talk in terms of visual culture and many
prominent are doing just that. I am suggesting that visual literacy, while inextricably linked
to both understanding and critically evaluating the visual culture that the individual
experiences, importantly is also about the individual’s response to that culture through the
making or creating of images and/or objects.
Reading the Text
In order to understand and then speak about visual literacy it seems highly appropriate that
we identify practitioners as experts in the field; they are the individuals who contribute to the
visual culture that others then observe and discuss. Through careful listening and by using
appropriate narrative methodology we can hear the words of practitioners and we can allow
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their voices of experience to inform our understanding of making spo that our teaching of art
making can adjust to the learning and technology of the times in which we live, learn and
teach.
The use of the word ‘reading’ when discussing a visual text implies that the form of
deconstruction that an individual undertakes is similar in nature to the act of reading a written
text. However, artistic works and visual imagery are not read in the same way as a written
text might be. In a traditional written text, the reader commences at the beginning of a
page/paragraph/sentence and meaning is captured as the reader travels through the text
usually in a sequential and ordered fashion. There is normally an introduction, a middle
explanatory section and then a conclusion in which some or all issues are resolved.
When one “reads” a visual text, there is no prescribed beginning or starting point. The image
is constructed with one or more focal points and the artist anticipates (or hopes) the viewer
will commence an exploration of the image from one or other of those points. Often the
construction of such focal points will be intuitive in the first instance and may or may not be
subsequently enhanced.
The artist usually desires to communicate a particular message via the created image, but the
success of that communication is co dependent on the understanding and interpretation of the
viewer. Therefore, the visually literate viewer of an image, brings to the experience, their
own knowledge. The visually literate viewer is informed by their own experiences which are
then projected onto the image or object they are viewing. The viewer brings meaning to the
constructed image from their own prior meaning. If there have not been experiences that
make the image immediately accessible then the visually literate person will make
connections through association; the experience most closely allied will be applied to create
understanding.
In a written text the reader can pursue further texts to gain information. If the substance of
the text is not understood, the reader can find other references to provide a stronger base of
knowledge and can also seek to broaden understanding by pursuing subsequent texts.
When a viewer engages with a visual image the pathway to understanding is not so easily
pursued. Do they seek understanding by exploring other images by the same artist? Do they
look to the period in which the artist created the work, or do they look to the identified
themes within the image and seek further explication of the message through both written and
other visual texts? This latter action is dependent on the viewer being able to identify
underlying themes and ideas within the imagery; a higher order of thinking.
While these ways of observing and understanding can be applied to both visual and written
text, how does the viewer “read” a digital text and how does the visually literate viewer
observe and extract understanding from a combination of visual constructions and text as
found within the www imagery. The web offers a multitude of constructions and modes of
expression from which the individual can choose. Pathways are followed or forged that may
come from former experiences or knowledge, or they may be random perambulations through
a field of interconnected thoughts or hunches based on visual cues.
It is essential that the individual is provided with opportunities to employ as many learning
skills associated with extracting conceptual understanding from the varied texts that appear
before them. While deconstructing the visual image, the viewer can be reading the written
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text for further understanding. During this activity, there also may be moving graphics that
can do any or all of the following alert, annoy entice, interrupt, distract and so on.
The ability to take in or reject content requires levels of discrimination and judgement that is
highly challenging . The young person is confronted with the need to make judgments and
choices in split seconds, to make choices that will lead them on journeys of discovery through
visual texts and written texts that are melded together. They have access to all areas of
knowledge and they are free to roam throughout the most democratic realm of learning we
have ever encountered.
Bloom’s Taxonomy
To further inform our understanding of knowing in terms of visual literacy, I suggest that
Bloom’s (1964) taxonomy may be an appropriate tool to assist us in describing the
characteristics of and processes used by a visually literate person. Bloom’s taxonomy
comprises the following categories within learning: Knowledge, Comprehension,
Application, Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation.
Using these categories we can explore ways of expressing visual literacy characteristics in
terms of competencies. Knowledge and comprehension are linked to understanding through
viewing and making. Application within visual literacy would encompass making,
manipulation and accessing information while analysis engages the individual in further
understanding through close investigation and deconstruction. Synthesis is the absorption of
knowledge to the extent that the individual can use it as part of a body of knowledge and
from this comes the resultant ability to evaluate and reflect upon the image or constructed
image.
Taking these categories further, I suggest the following five broad statements, expressed as
core competencies of visual literacy, help to identify the visually literate person.
Core Competencies
1. A broad understanding of image viewing, and making (knowledge, comprehension
and application)
2. The ability to access information through visual media (knowledge and
comprehension)
3. The ability to deconstruct imagery (application and analysis)
4. The ability to reconstruct, to form new individual imagery (application and synthesis)
5. The ability to understand the purpose and meaning of imagery; to provide validity and
verification of imagery (synthesis and evaluation)
The essential element of being visually literate is the ability to engage with an image or
object under scrutiny and derive further understanding from that imagery. This engagement
involves an ability to identify elements within images or texts and an ability to interpret those
images from an informed personal position. Once an individual has observed and interpreted,
the processes of application then should occur. The visually literate viewer will make
understanding explicit either through conversations with others or through their own
constructions; written or visual.
To encourage and develop visual literacy in individuals, a valuable learning program should
include all the categories of learning, rather than relying solely upon the first two categories
of knowledge and comprehension. All too often learning is restricted to those levels and the
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important realms involving higher order thinking are ignored. These higher order realms of
thinking are the interpretative and aesthetic judgment spheres that I identified as
reconstructing and validation in the list of five core competencies. These categories of
synthesis and evaluation are essential and it is here that the individual introduces metaphor;
and in doing so, extends and employs knowledge to where the realm of self connects with the
wider world, in an original and creative way.
In the following matrix I have applied Bloom’s taxonomy to ideas of visual literacy. Each
category forms part of the processes required for effective and informed visual literacy. The
categories should not be seen as hierarchical but rather they should be seen as interconnected
and evident in all learning activities.
Blooms Taxonomy Applied to Visual Literacy Core Competencies
Category
Knowledge
(Competencies 1,2&3)
Comprehension
(Competencies 1&2)
Application
(Competencies 3&4)
Analysis
(Competency 3)
Synthesis
(Competencies 4&5)
Evaluation
(Competencies 4&5)
Description
Identifiable Actions
recall of
specifics
and
universals,
methods and processes,
patterns structures settings.
The process of remembering
type of understanding that is
revealed
from
specific
communication. Not dependent
on any further information or a
need to relate to other material.
–use of abstractions in particular
circumstances
concrete
or
imagined.
Recognising,
remembering,
identifying, describing images
putting together elements and
parts to form a whole, arranging
and /or combining them to
constitute either known or new
patterns and structures.
Interpreting, translating images,
retelling in one’s own words the
substance –both overt and
underlying, reproducing visual
responses
Applying
information
to
produce a result, problem
solving,, using art works to
define and resolve issues
Identifying elements, underlying
themes, ideas, principles and
showing how they fit together,
identifying motives, aims to
develop
personal
creative
outcomes
Combining ideas and features to
create unique original whole, to
create own creative works based
upon known or intuitive
elements
judgments both qualitative and
/or quantitative about the
manner in which content meets
criteria.
Making aesthetic judgments,
expressing own opinion, value
decisions about personal works
and creative works of others
breaking down into elements or
parts so that the relationship
between parts is made clear and
explicit
(see Bloom1964 pp 205-207)
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Eliciting the Data Through the Narrative Approach.
To further explore ideas of what constitutes a visually literate person it seemed appropriate to
ask individuals who work in fields of endeavour closely associated with practice dependent
upon a high level of visual literacy. I interviewed two professional photographers and an
architect who works in the field of digital rendering. Each of these individuals have taught or
are teaching in the tertiary sector; teaching students who in turn will require visual literacy
skills in their future professions. I asked each of them to reflect upon the ways they
approached viewing an image and their subsequent responses. From those responses it
becomes evident that their practice reflects the categories as identified by Bloom and
encompasses the core competencies as listed.
The architect is 29 years of age and has had access to computers since the age of 5. He
remembers playing games of ladder that consisted of crosses and circles on the Kaypro
computer. His father has worked with computers since the late seventies so the computer was
always seen as a tool to enable solutions and resolution. He describes this immersion from an
early age as the means of acquiring the “language”. This involves the understanding of how
pathways can be traversed and solutions found within the technological structures. He
suggests it is like any language, if learnt at an early age it becomes absorbed, known and
understood. He uses the mouse as a drawing tool and can execute finely rendered images
with strong confident line and colour. He suggests that young children today are even further
immersed at an earlier age and describes his own child who from the age of 4 can manipulate
his way through sophisticated 3D maps. The architect works primarily in the rendering of
imagery and creating virtual images of designs for new buildings. He “constructs” the new
reality of form using state of the art technology and his images are used extensively in both
advertising and as illustrations for competitive tenders.
Photographer 1 is aged in her fifties. She has been a tertiary educator for most of her
working life. Her practice is mainly in the evocative pictorial style, using imagery that
induces a contemplative response from the viewer. Photographer 2 is in her mid forties. She
works mainly in analogue and has worked as a professional photographer but is now
concentrating on her teaching.
To establish the processes, each practitioner was asked initially to describe the manner in
which they viewed an image. Following this they were asked to expand upon how they
believe they approach understanding both the content and the perceived purpose of the image
they were viewing. The architect approached images in terms of the tasks he undertakes
when rendering images and his responses were related in the main to electronic images. The
photographers related mainly to analogue imagery however both acknowledged that the
needs of the industry were changing at a rapid pace and photography was becoming more
digitally oriented both in professional practice and in education.
Photographer 1.
When viewing an image she follows the following processes:
1. looks at the parts of the image, and identifies the elements
2. identifies the relationships between the elements
3. finds the message of the image
4. examines the techniques employed
5. evaluates and makes judgments in terms of competence, likes or dislikes
6. reflects upon personal response and personal interpretation
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Photographer 2
When viewing an image she follows the following processes:
1. looks at overall image
2. identifies with image – the whole and the elements
3. looks at the parts and type of image
4. investigates image for placement of elements
5. personally evaluates whether she likes or dislikes the image
6. If it has value – she returns to contemplate, and questions personal response
The Architect
When viewing an image he identifies the following steps as being essential in his process
of observing and manipulating visual imagery.
1. Makes an immediate assessment of image – JPEG? Is it a photograph, illustrative,
rendered
2. Observes the narrative of the image the substance/ story/ message/ representation
3. makes judgments of the quality of image – composition, light, colour etc
4. Ascertaining whether there is opportunity for application – visual meaning
approximating real time (can make movement in less than minute), navigating 3D
environments
5. Subsequent to this comes manipulation of image if appropriate, ie to render a desired
brief.
Each of the individuals undergoes a process of identification of the whole (A broad
understanding of image viewing, and making) and then the components of the imagery
presented (The ability to access information through visual media.) Each then investigates
the content in terms of the message (The ability to deconstruct imagery or content ). They
then evaluate and make judgments regarding the aesthetic qualities (The ability to
understand the purpose and meaning of imagery; to provide validity and verification of
imagery and personal response). They then reflect upon the image in terms of using or
interpreting content.(The ability to reconstruct, to form new individual imagery )These
processes support the competencies I originally suggested and have again noted here.
This highlights and affirms the importance of talking with practitioners to establish the ways
in which individuals approach such practice. By understanding show others undertake their
practice, we can inform our teaching and come to understand how best we can enhance
learners’ abilities in responding to visual imagery.
Application of Bloom’s Taxonomy
As an exemplar of applying theory to practice, in the following matrix I have taken the
architect’s recorded processes and applied Bloom’s taxonomy to them. In doing this it
provides us with clear ways to interrogate visual literacy through the processes as made
explicit in the practitioner’s explanation of process. The Architect works solely within the
digital realm and he constructs and creates images of buildings and landscapes primarily from
written briefs. He creates the visual realisation of a set of plans or text instructions. He uses
a raft of images both his own and others he has adapted or enhanced. He understands the
manner in which images can be manipulated and suggests that the web is a landscape to be
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traversed. He suggests that he has grown up with the idea that change is constant and that the
digital landscape is the ultimate example of the changing patterns in life.
Assessment
of image
Narrative
of image
Quality of
image
Knowledge
Understand
whether
JPEG etc
(this is the
language
referred to
as lang of
technology)
Interpret
the story or
content
based upon
image
as
viewed
Comprehension
How is it made
(JPEG/whatever)
and
how
it
functions
Application
How image
is to be
manipulated
Analysis
Understand
how image
works and
is able to be
used
Synthesis
Using
components
of
image
with others
to
form
new image
Evaluation
Aesthetic
decisions
re finished
image
Reflects
understanding of
the narrative by
recounting ideas
of
narrative
contained
Using
imagery as
stimulus to
develop a
creative
response
that echoes
or extends
content
Deconstruct
the message
or content
(in relation
to a set of
criteria)
Judgement
on
the
success of
the image
using
existing
criteria
Ability
to
interpret
the
image
and
express
ideas
that
make
evident content
specific ideas
Reinterpret
image:
changing
identified
effects and
techniques
such
as
change
mood
through
colour
Discuss
image
in
terms
of
identified
criteria
such
as
balance,
line colour
or content
driven
criteria
Using
content of
images to
explore
particular
themes and
create new
images that
further the
conceptual
content
Reinterpret
image:
recreating
image using
similar
techniques
style
or
associated
content
Aesthetic
response
to created
image(s)
and
self
evaluation
of
perceived
success of
the created
imagery
Aesthetic
response
to image:
exploring
ideas
of
quality
both
in
technique
and
content
From the content within each intersection of category and process we can pose questions or
create activities that will allow the desired skill or competency to be identified.
When using these categories in this way we can then begin to construct a series of learning
activities to support the development of such skills.
For example in the first stage of the architect’s processes the following activities would
provide opportunities for learners to explore processes of assessing an image and thereby
adding important experiential learning to inform future viewing and manipulating of images.
It would provide the learner with a fuller understanding of how others might have
manipulated and used images for particular purposes, thereby allowing discrimination to be
enhanced.:
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Assessment
of image
Learning
Activities
Knowledge
Understand
whether JPEG
etc
(this is the
language
referred to as
lang
of
technology)
The learner is
provided with
a series of
images
and
asked to
identify
the
type of image
they see and
what
the
characteristics
of the image
are evident..
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Comprehension
How is it made
(JPEG/whatever)
and
how
it
functions
Application
How image
is to be
manipulated
Analysis
Understand
how
image
works and is
able to be
used
Synthesis
Using
components
of
image
with others
to form new
image
Evaluation
Aesthetic
decisions
re finished
image
The learner will
inform, through
use
of
appropriate
terminology
what
is
the
function of the
image
The learner
will
use
knowledge
gained
to
change and
vary image.
The learner
makes use of
the
image
within
a
context that
will
make
clearly
evident their
understanding
of its content
and purpose
The learner
chooses
elements
from given
or selected
images to
create a new
image
learner is
asked
to
comment
on
or
revise
finished
product
Eg,
manipulate
a scanned
image and
create
a
new
and
different
composition
using some
of the given
components
and some
new
or
found
elements
eg,
can
you
explain
why you
chose to
change
certain
parts
of
the image,
what
effect did
you hope
to achieve,
how
successful
were you?
eg, create a
jpeg file and
indicate
its
specifications
what do these
mean.
Eg, using
this image
can
you
create
3
images
where you
have
changed
the
appearance
or mood of
the image
Eg, Take the
given image
and create a
meaningful
construction
within a web
design
Each subsequent stage would provide further opportunities to develop worthwhile and
appropriate learning activities that would have understood specific outcomes.
To understand how we must go about teaching and using the visually based learning space
that we refer to as the web we must understand how we perceive and use the content but more
importantly we must come to understand how the younger learners see and respond to the
ever changing and ever evolving landscape of text and imagery. To do this we must talk to
those we teach, engage with their understanding and then apply learning constructs we know
have merit, such as Bloom’s Taxonomy, but we must apply them in new and different ways.
We need to understand the ongoing nature of learning; that spiral motion of hermeneutic
knowledge gathering that depends on and consolidates the known while moving ever
forward. This we can do by providing learning experiences that build one upon the other.
Also importantly, we can provide through the knowledge and expertise of others who have
travelled the pathways, valuable insights that may inspire young learners to engage with
learning that will provide them with knowledge and skills to both engage with and create
within media both old and new.
I believe that,
“As an educator, I am in the business of providing the means by which
people can find ways of knowing and learning that will enhance their own
life journeys. I have always believed that this learning can be enhanced
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through establishing a sense of connection with others who have had similar
experiences.”
(Flood. 2003. p.29.)
In conclusion, I suggest that the following broad identifiers can be listed as being crucial to
identifying the visually literate person..
A Visually Literate Person Can:
x
x
x
Recognise an image and can name or identify the subject or content
for example “this is a picture of a cat ?
Formulate questions and answers based upon the imagery,
for example Q What colour is the cat?
A. White with black whiskers and nose
Can identify image(s) as source(s) of knowledge
For example All cats have two pointy ears
x Can make comparisons/observations about images to elicit information
For example: some cats have stripes, others have splotches of colour
x Can evaluate knowledge gained from visual imagery
For example: Q.What can be seen in the picture? A.Cats are four legged animals, covered
in fur. They have long tails and whiskers.
x Can organise/arrange/combine elements and or motifs to form a
cohesive structure or image.
For example: from the given components re create the image of a cat.
x Can apply compositional ideas to create a desired image.
For example: Create a picture of a cat and where they like to sleep.
x Can develop and/or relate narrative within image making and viewing.
For example: The cat is sleeping in the basket beside the fireplace.
To have a list of identifiers is valuable and worthwhile. However we must not allow
our own experiences (or lack of same) within the immense variety of modes of
learning and expressing to hinder the ways forward. We must engage with all modes
and we must become the powerful voice within the field. As art educators we are
the people who have been engaged in developing visual literacy, and we are the
people who understand best the ways in which we can enhance and develop visually
based learning. I ask, who else but those actively engaged in the work of educating
within the visual realm should define and develop the future visually literate
individual.
References
Bloom, B.(1964)
Flood, A. (2003)
Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The
transformation of educational goals. New York:
David McKay Company.
Common Threads: A discursive text, narrating ideas of
memory and artistic identity. Unpublished Thesis,
RMIT University Melbourne
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Marc Prensky
Digital Natives Digital Immigrants
©2001 Marc Prensky
_____________________________________________________________________________
Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants
By Marc Prensky
From On the Horizon (NCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001)
© 2001 Marc Prensky
It is amazing to me how in all the hoopla and debate these days about the decline of
education in the US we ignore the most fundamental of its causes. Our students have
changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system
was designed to teach.
Today’s students have not just changed incrementally from those of the past, nor simply
changed their slang, clothes, body adornments, or styles, as has happened between
generations previously. A really big discontinuity has taken place. One might even call
it a “singularity” – an event which changes things so fundamentally that there is
absolutely no going back. This so-called “singularity” is the arrival and rapid
dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century.
Today’s students – K through college – represent the first generations to grow up with
this new technology. They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using
computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other
toys and tools of the digital age. Today’s average college grads have spent less than
5,000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games (not to
mention 20,000 hours watching TV). Computer games, email, the Internet, cell phones
and instant messaging are integral parts of their lives.
It is now clear that as a result of this ubiquitous environment and the sheer volume of
their interaction with it, today’s students think and process information fundamentally
differently from their predecessors. These differences go far further and deeper than most
educators suspect or realize. “Different kinds of experiences lead to different brain
structures, “ says Dr. Bruce D. Berry of Baylor College of Medicine. As we shall see in
the next installment, it is very likely that our students’ brains have physically changed –
and are different from ours – as a result of how they grew up. But whether or not this is
literally true, we can say with certainty that their thinking patterns have changed. I will
get to how they have changed in a minute.
What should we call these “new” students of today? Some refer to them as the N-[for
Net]-gen or D-[for digital]-gen. But the most useful designation I have found for them is
Digital Natives. Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of
computers, video games and the Internet.
So what does that make the rest of us? Those of us who were not born into the digital
world but have, at some later point in our lives, become fascinated by and adopted many
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or most aspects of the new technology are, and always will be compared to them, Digital
Immigrants.
The importance of the distinction is this: As Digital Immigrants learn – like all
immigrants, some better than others – to adapt to their environment, they always retain,
to some degree, their "accent," that is, their foot in the past. The “digital immigrant
accent” can be seen in such things as turning to the Internet for information second rather
than first, or in reading the manual for a program rather than assuming that the program
itself will teach us to use it. Today’s older folk were "socialized" differently from their
kids, and are now in the process of learning a new language. And a language learned later
in life, scientists tell us, goes into a different part of the brain.
There are hundreds of examples of the digital immigrant accent. They include printing
out your email (or having your secretary print it out for you – an even “thicker” accent);
needing to print out a document written on the computer in order to edit it (rather than
just editing on the screen); and bringing people physically into your office to see an
interesting web site (rather than just sending them the URL). I’m sure you can think of
one or two examples of your own without much effort. My own favorite example is the
“Did you get my email?” phone call. Those of us who are Digital Immigrants can, and
should, laugh at ourselves and our “accent.”
But this is not just a joke. It’s very serious, because the single biggest problem facing
education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated
language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks
an entirely new language.
This is obvious to the Digital Natives – school often feels pretty much as if we’ve
brought in a population of heavily accented, unintelligible foreigners to lecture them.
They often can’t understand what the Immigrants are saying. What does “dial” a number
mean, anyway?
Lest this perspective appear radical, rather than just descriptive, let me highlight some of
the issues. Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to
parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than
the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when
networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games
to “serious” work. (Does any of this sound familiar?)
But Digital Immigrants typically have very little appreciation for these new skills that the
Natives have acquired and perfected through years of interaction and practice. These
skills are almost totally foreign to the Immigrants, who themselves learned – and so
choose to teach – slowly, step-by-step, one thing at a time, individually, and above all,
seriously. “My students just don’t _____ like they used to,” Digital Immigrant educators
grouse. I can’t get them to ____ or to ____. They have no appreciation for _____ or
_____ . (Fill in the blanks, there are a wide variety of choices.)
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Digital Immigrants don’t believe their students can learn successfully while watching TV
or listening to music, because they (the Immigrants) can’t. Of course not – they didn’t
practice this skill constantly for all of their formative years. Digital Immigrants think
learning can’t (or shouldn’t) be fun. Why should they – they didn’t spend their formative
years learning with Sesame Street.
Unfortunately for our Digital Immigrant teachers, the people sitting in their classes grew
up on the “twitch speed” of video games and MTV. They are used to the instantaneity of
hypertext, downloaded music, phones in their pockets, a library on their laptops, beamed
messages and instant messaging. They’ve been networked most or all of their lives. They
have little patience for lectures, step-by-step logic, and “tell-test” instruction.
Digital Immigrant teachers assume that learners are the same as they have always been,
and that the same methods that worked for the teachers when they were students will
work for their students now. But that assumption is no longer valid. Today’s learners are
different. “Www.hungry.com” said a kindergarten student recently at lunchtime. “Every
time I go to school I have to power down,” complains a high-school student. Is it that
Digital Natives can’t pay attention, or that they choose not to? Often from the Natives’
point of view their Digital Immigrant instructors make their education not worth paying
attention to compared to everything else they experience – and then they blame them for
not paying attention!
And, more and more, they won’t take it. “I went to a highly ranked college where all the
professors came from MIT,” says a former student. “But all they did was read from their
textbooks. I quit.” In the giddy internet bubble of a only a short while ago – when jobs
were plentiful, especially in the areas where school offered little help – this was a real
possibility. But the dot-com dropouts are now returning to school. They will have to
confront once again the Immigrant/Native divide, and have even more trouble given their
recent experiences. And that will make it even harder to teach them – and all the Digital
Natives already in the system – in the traditional fashion.
So what should happen? Should the Digital Native students learn the old ways, or should
their Digital Immigrant educators learn the new? Unfortunately, no matter how much the
Immigrants may wish it, it is highly unlikely the Digital Natives will go backwards. In
the first place, it may be impossible – their brains may already be different. It also flies
in the face of everything we know about cultural migration. Kids born into any new
culture learn the new language easily, and forcefully resist using the old. Smart adult
immigrants accept that they don’t know about their new world and take advantage of
their kids to help them learn and integrate. Not-so-smart (or not-so-flexible) immigrants
spend most of their time grousing about how good things were in the “old country.”
So unless we want to just forget about educating Digital Natives until they grow up and
do it themselves, we had better confront this issue. And in so doing we need to
reconsider both our methodology and our content.
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First, our methodology. Today’s teachers have to learn to communicate in the language
and style of their students. This doesn’t mean changing the meaning of what is important,
or of good thinking skills. But it does mean going faster, less step-by step, more in
parallel, with more random access, among other things. Educators might ask “But how
do we teach logic in this fashion?” While it’s not immediately clear, we do need to figure
it out.
Second, our content. It seems to me that after the digital “singularity” there are now two
kinds of content: “Legacy” content (to borrow the computer term for old systems) and
“Future” content.
“Legacy” content includes reading, writing, arithmetic, logical thinking, understanding
the writings and ideas of the past, etc – all of our “traditional” curriculum. It is of course
still important, but it is from a different era. Some of it (such as logical thinking) will
continue to be important, but some (perhaps like Euclidean geometry) will become less
so, as did Latin and Greek.
“Future” content is to a large extent, not surprisingly, digital and technological. But
while it includes software, hardware, robotics, nanotechnology, genomics, etc. it also
includes the ethics, politics, sociology, languages and other things that go with them.
This “Future” content is extremely interesting to today’s students. But how many Digital
Immigrants are prepared to teach it? Someone once suggested to me that kids should
only be allowed to use computers in school that they have built themselves. It’s a
brilliant idea that is very doable from the point of view of the students’ capabilities. But
who could teach it?
As educators, we need to be thinking about how to teach both Legacy and Future content
in the language of the Digital Natives. The first involves a major translation and change
of methodology; the second involves all that PLUS new content and thinking. It’s not
actually clear to me which is harder – “learning new stuff” or “learning new ways to do
old stuff.” I suspect it’s the latter.
So we have to invent, but not necessarily from scratch. Adapting materials to the
language of Digital Natives has already been done successfully. My own preference for
teaching Digital Natives is to invent computer games to do the job, even for the most
serious content. After all, it’s an idiom with which most of them are totally familiar.
Not long ago a group of professors showed up at my company with new computer-aided
design (CAD) software they had developed for mechanical engineers. Their creation was
so much better than what people were currently using that they had assumed the entire
engineering world would quickly adopt it. But instead they encountered a lot of
resistance, due in large part to the product’s extremely steep learning curve – the software
contained hundreds of new buttons, options and approaches to master.
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Their marketers, however, had a brilliant idea. Observing that the users of CAD software
were almost exclusively male engineers between 20 and 30, they said “Why not make the
learning into a video game!” So we invented and created for them a computer game in the
“first person shooter” style of the consumer games Doom and Quake, called The Monkey
Wrench Conspiracy. Its player becomes an intergalactic secret agent who has to save a
space station from an attack by the evil Dr. Monkey Wrench. The only way to defeat him
is to use the CAD software, which the learner must employ to build tools, fix weapons,
and defeat booby traps. There is one hour of game time, plus 30 “tasks,” which can take
from 15 minutes to several hours depending on one’s experience level.
Monkey Wrench has been phenomenally successful in getting young people interested in
learning the software. It is widely used by engineering students around the world, with
over 1 million copies of the game in print in several languages. But while the game was
easy for my Digital Native staff to invent, creating the content turned out to be more
difficult for the professors, who were used to teaching courses that started with “Lesson 1
– the Interface.” We asked them instead to create a series of graded tasks into which the
skills to be learned were embedded. The professors had made 5-10 minute movies to
illustrate key concepts; we asked them to cut them to under 30 seconds. The professors
insisted that the learners to do all the tasks in order; we asked them to allow random
access. They wanted a slow academic pace, we wanted speed and urgency (we hired a
Hollywood script writer to provide this.) They wanted written instructions; we wanted
computer movies. They wanted the traditional pedagogical language of “learning
objectives,” “mastery”, etc. (e.g. “in this exercise you will learn…”); our goal was to
completely eliminate any language that even smacked of education.
In the end the professors and their staff came through brilliantly, but because of the large
mind-shift required it took them twice as long as we had expected. As they saw the
approach working, though, the new “Digital Native” methodology became their model
for more and more teaching – both in and out of games – and their development speed
increased dramatically.
Similar rethinking needs to be applied to all subjects at all levels. Although most attempts
at “edutainment” to date have essentially failed from both the education and
entertainment perspective, we can – and will, I predict – do much better.
In math, for example, the debate must no longer be about whether to use calculators and
computers – they are a part of the Digital Natives’ world – but rather how to use them to
instill the things that are useful to have internalized, from key skills and concepts to the
multiplication tables. We should be focusing on “future math” – approximation, statistics,
binary thinking.
In geography – which is all but ignored these days – there is no reason that a generation
that can memorize over 100 Pokémon characters with all their characteristics, history and
evolution can’t learn the names, populations, capitals and relationships of all the 101
nations in the world. It just depends on how it is presented.
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We need to invent Digital Native methodologies for all subjects, at all levels, using our
students to guide us.
The process has already begun – I know college professors
inventing games for teaching subjects ranging from math to engineering to the Spanish
Inquisition. We need to find ways of publicizing and spreading their successes.
A frequent objection I hear from Digital Immigrant educators is “this approach is great
for facts, but it wouldn’t work for ‘my subject.’” Nonsense. This is just rationalization
and lack of imagination. In my talks I now include “thought experiments” where I invite
professors and teachers to suggest a subject or topic, and I attempt– on the spot – to
invent a game or other Digital Native method for learning it. Classical philosophy?
Create a game in which the philosophers debate and the learners have to pick out what
each would say. The Holocaust? Create a simulation where students role-play the
meeting at Wannsee, or one where they can experience the true horror of the camps, as
opposed to the films like Schindler’s List. It’s just dumb (and lazy) of educators – not to
mention ineffective – to presume that (despite their traditions) the Digital Immigrant way
is the only way to teach, and that the Digital Natives’ “language” is not as capable as their
own of encompassing any and every idea.
So if Digital Immigrant educators really want to reach Digital Natives – i.e. all their
students – they will have to change. It’s high time for them to stop their grousing, and as
the Nike motto of the Digital Native generation says, “Just do it!” They will succeed in
the long run – and their successes will come that much sooner if their administrators
support them.
See also: Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part 2: The scientific evidence behind the Digital Native’s
thinking changes, and the evidence that Digital Native-style learning works!
Marc Prensky is an internationally acclaimed thought leader, speaker, writer, consultant, and game
designer in the critical areas of education and learning. He is the author of Digital Game-Based
Learning (McGraw-Hill, 2001), founder and CEO of Games2train, a game-based learning company,
and founder of The Digital Multiplier, an organization dedicated to eliminating the digital divide in
learning worldwide. He is also the creator of the sites <www.SocialImpactGames.com>,
<www.DoDGameCommunity.com> and <www.GamesParentsTeachers.com> . Marc holds an MBA
from Harvard and a Masters in Teaching from Yale.
More of his writings can be found at
<www.marcprensky.com/writing/default.asp>. Contact Marc at [email protected].
.
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Anne Morgan Spalter ([email protected]), Brown University
Andy van Dam ([email protected]), Brown University
Pinny Sheoran ([email protected]), Mesa Community College
Oris Friesen ([email protected]), Future Information Technologies
Digital Visual Literacy: A White Paper
April, 2005
Visual digital literacy is the ability to understand computer-generated images and use them to
communicate effectively, an ability increasingly essential for information technology (IT) and other
knowledge workers. This paper outlines the need for increased digital visual education in both twoand four-year institutions of higher education and discusses strategies for a modular framework for
curricular materials.
Overview
George Lucas has said, “If students aren’t taught the language of… images, shouldn’t they
be considered as illiterate as if they left college without being able to read or write?”
[Marriott 2003]. It has not been clear exactly how today’s colleges and universities should
address the call for visual and multimedia literacy [Burmark 2002, Elkins 2003, Mirzoeff
1999, Stephens 1998, FITness], although some institutions, such as USC’s Institute for
Multimedia Literacy [IML], are leading the way with their innovative programs. What is
clear is the emerging consensus that two- and four-year higher educational institutions
must teach visual digital literacy (VDL) skills if they hope to graduate competitive 21stcentury technicians and knowledge workers. Further evidence lies in efforts by
corporations such as Adobe Systems to provide the necessary educational materials
themselves [AdobeCurr]. Most schools currently pay little attention to the visual aspects
of technological literacy, other than visual design courses such as graphic design and
multimedia production. This is due partly to the dominance of textual and mathematical
thinking in academia and partly to a lack of understanding of how crucial digital visual
skills have become in today’s workplace.
It is time to integrate visual education with the textual and mathematical. With the
advent of computer graphics and the Web it has become almost as easy to make and
distribute images as to make and distribute texts. This technological shift is marked most
dramatically by the computer, but also builds on the host of image-making technologies
developed in the 19th and 20th centuries, from offset printing to still and motion cameras to
television, and from the telescope to the scanning tunneling microscope.
The challenge facing designers of introductory IT and design curricula is to ensure
a systematic and effective approach to the VDL skills crucial to 21st century knowledge
work. Current introductory IT and design curricula rarely include, much less integrate,
the necessary multidisciplinary threads (from design concepts to the liberal arts to
perceptual psychology to, in particular, basic concepts in the science of computer
graphics) that are essential to using graphics software effectively and interpreting
computer-generated visual materials made by others.
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Visual Digital Literacy White Paper
The Pervasiveness of the Digital Visual Environment
Today’s knowledge workers are increasingly performing tasks mediated by visual
computing. All fields in which professionals must handle large quantities of data now use
computer-based data visualization and therefore require a host of VDL skills. The same is
true of virtually all scientists and engineers, who must have VDL skills not only to
understand large quantities of data, but to simulate and thus predict everything from
effective drug design to the results of plastic surgery to the astronomical effects of
gravitational lensing. These visual simulations often play as important a role as “wet labs”
and in some cases replace real experimentation or make possible impractical or otherwise
impossible experiments, such as simulating atomic explosions.
All fields of visual design, from architecture to graphic design and from video
production and games to many aspects of engineering, now require some level of VDL. So
do areas that may at first seem unrelated to visual computing. These include fields such as
archeology, where virtual reconstructions have come out of the lab and into the field [Vote
2002] [ACM 2000], as well as ecology, where visualization and geographic information
systems are helping technicians manage scarce resources [NOAA]. The following are just
a few of the many examples.
Imaging is the basis for more and more medical diagnostics, from CAT scans to
MRIs and beyond. A hospital near one of the authors has a billboard with the saying
(accompanied by a CAT scan image): “The doctor will see you now.” And she will. But
she will need VDL skills to understand what she is seeing. Professionals in healthcare,
medical and EMT increasingly train on virtual cadavers [Virtual EMS], nurses learn
venopuncture skills with “a virtual reality hand, complete with vital veins, that ‘feels’
[and] could help trainee nurses practice their jabs” [Twist 2004]. Dentists use sophisticated
imaging for routine procedures such as root canals. Technicians in areas from automotive
repair to manufacturing use visualization technologies, from diagrams for vehicle
diagnostics to visual tools for managing the manufacturing process.
Reconstruction of appearances after death also requires workforce VDL, from
policing to mortuary sciences. Eos Systems advertises its product Photomodeler as “…the
professional’s choice for 3D modeling and measurement throughout many industry
sectors such as accident reconstruction, archaeology & anthropology, architecture &, film,
video & animation, forensics and plant & mechanical engineering” [Eos]. Beyond
gathering data, computer graphics is used to simulate entire time-based events. For
example, companies like 21st Century Forensic Animations create animations for legal
cases on aviation, product liability, patent infringement, motor vehicle accidents, and
more [21st Century].
In short, one is now hard-pressed to find an industry untouched by visual
computing or one in which knowledge workers do not need some significant set of VDL
skills. From business presentations to flight simulators, from movie special effects to the
evening news, from monitoring the internals of the human body to monitoring the
internals of vehicles, from calibrating complex manufacturing instrumentation to
calibrating critical bio-technical devices, the 21st-century workforce must every day create
and critically interpret visual content.
The challenge for educational institutions, from high schools to community
colleges to four-year colleges and universities, is how to give students the VDL skills they
need to effectively create and interpret computer-generated visual content.
4/8/2005
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Integrating Visual Digital Literacy into Current Curricula
The chief driver of ubiquitous visual communication has been the computer and the
commoditization of 2D and 3D computer graphics. However, the wealth of instructional
material in this area is developed for highly specialized students and taught chiefly in
computer science or engineering departments; most students are not exposed to it, nor is it
appropriate for them in its current form.
Some of the relevant VDL skills are taught in art and design departments, but their
application to most of today’s jobs is not immediately obvious. Similarly, media theories
are taught in visual studies and visual culture courses, but the emphasis is highly
theoretical. Schools and departments of communication develop both theory and handson skills, but the focus is almost exclusively on mass media and jobs in related industries,
such as advertising and journalism, rather than on addressing the broader role of visual
communication in today’s IT-based job place.
Courses on visual literacy are becoming increasingly common but rarely combine
more than two of the six chief areas we believe are necessary. (These areas are itemized in
the next section.) Notable examples of relevant courses include those following in the
steps of Prof. Bob McKim’s “Visual Thinking” course [McKim 1980]; courses using Prof.
Edward Tufte’s widely read series of books [Tufte 1997]; interdisciplinary design and
technology courses at schools such as Brown University and MIT’s Media Lab, and
multimedia literacy programs such as that at USC [IML].
Modules and Module Groupings
The form factor of available materials is an important practical issue: even if full,
interdisciplinary courses on VDL are developed, few programs could adopt them without
substantial customization and many would not require a full course at all. What is needed
is a more flexible alternative that provides a range of content in easily adaptable modular
forms. Introductory curriculum modules for digital visual literacy would let instructors
choose only the materials relevant for their topic and would require only slight
modifications for use in existing classes, in particular the introductory computer science
and literacy courses required in many two- and four-year colleges. The addition of such
modules would help prepare students for more advanced use of computer-based visual
communication in a wide range of disciplines.
A too fine-grained approach, however, will produce many small modules and
make the task of creating materials for connecting content from different disciplines
overwhelming. In order to provide some preset materials for creating and assessing
connections between modules, some likely groupings can be made. For example, popular
groupings might include modules from graphic design and perception or from computer
graphics technical concepts and design.
Standards and Large-scale Deployment
Integration of such modular curricular units and unit groups would be aided by
alignment with emerging national and state standards in K-12 and beyond. High schools
and even middle schools are rapidly adopting standards that include multimedia and thus
some VDL [Arizona Stds, New York Stds]. Even some lower school and early childhood
standards now include multimedia proficiency. For example, the K-5 standards in Georgia
include in the kindergarten section: “Uses multimedia tools to express ideas with teacher
guidance” [Georgia Stds]. Standards for institutions of higher education are being
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influenced not only by developments in K-12 but also by workforce analysis such as that
conducted by the Northwest Center for Emerging Technology (NWCET), which has
charted some of the job skills requiring digital media literacy [NWCET].
Community colleges are particularly sensitive to changing workforce needs and
set de-facto standards that impact thousands of students. They are thus ideal venues for
introducing VDL modules. One of the authors is Executive Director of the Business and
Industry Institute at Mesa Community College (MCC) in Mesa, Arizona, near Phoenix.
This is the largest (~48,000 students) of the 10 community colleges in the Maricopa County
Community College District of Arizona, which serves roughly 250,000 full- and part-time
students. Unlike introductory courses at many institutions of higher education, which
vary widely in content and expectations between schools and even instructors of the same
course, the courses taught at each of the 10 Maricopa County community colleges have
common titles, descriptions, syllabi, assessment, and outcomes. Students from a wide
variety of technical specializations enroll in the computer literacy courses, e.g.,
automotive, biotechnology, manufacturing, pre-engineering, business, nursing, health
occupations, construction, and mortuary science. For example, approximately 10,000
students take one of two main computer literacy courses each semester across all 10
Maricopa colleges. The colleges offers these courses in three delivery formats: teacher-led,
teacher-led/Internet-enabled, and full online distance learning.
Curricular Modules ņ Content
We have made a preliminary categorization of the skills desirable for visual literacy in the
21st century. Other areas could well be included. Not all areas are necessary or even
appropriate for all students, and within each category modules would range from brief
overviews of an area to more in-depth exploration of concepts and usages. Teachers will be
able to mix and match modules and module linkages and sequences for a range of courses.
1. Visual Culture: Critical discussion of visual materials and history, including topics
in art history, media culture, and visual history.
2. Art and Design: Basic concepts in 2D, 3D, and time-based visual art and design with
a focus on both understanding and creating visual art and design materials.
3. Vision Science: Basic concepts in neuroscience, perception, cognitive science, etc.,
including relevant advances in the brain sciences and design rules based on tenets of
visual perception.
4. Computer Graphics and Visualization: Basic concepts in the computer science of
computer graphics, from different types of 2D and 3D data representation to
visualization and simulation.
5. Image Economy: The economic implications of creating, distributing, purchasing,
and exchanging digital visual materials, including issues in image rights
management, digital watermarking, and image archiving and conversion challenges.
6. Philosophy: How new visual and simulation technologies change our
understanding of reality.
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Each module should include some standardized components, such as:
x Background materials and examples of relevant applications
x Descriptions of the skill set being developed
x Explanation of the module’s relevance to computer literacy
x A list of required materials (with sources if not obvious)
x Interactive multimedia software, such as simulation visualizations, time-based
scenarios, demonstration projects, and laboratory experiments (including lab
exercises)
x Detailed activities that help teach module content
x Assessment tools
Teacher modules should also include:
x Materials for context and positioning
x Suggestions for introducing the module
x References, including Web site links, to related skills/bodies of information
x Descriptions of how to present included demonstrations and software
x Preparation tasks for lab assignments (set-up and tear-down )
x Lab preparations, solutions, and alternative labs
x An assessment rubric
In addition to assessment within individual modules, an overall assessment of module use
in any curriculum must be made. Some key questions for any such assessment should
include: Are general competencies in VDL skills increased by students’ use of modules?
Does increasing VDL among students in computer literacy classes increase their
competency in both evaluating and using information effectively? Is the impact of using
these modules different among underrepresented populations of students? If so, why,
and how could the modules be modified to increase the VDL of underrepresented
populations? What teacher-preparedness issues arise from introduction of these modules
and how can they be addressed through such means as refinement of teaching materials
and teacher-training workshops?
Experimental Course at Brown
The two Brown authors have been teaching an experimental VDL course in Brown’s
Department of Computer Science entitled Visual Thinking/Visual Computing. This liberal
arts course (no programming or mathematical equations involved) includes lectures, in-class
activities, use of custom-made software for teaching computer graphics principles
[Exploratories][GTT], discussion sessions, take-home projects, and a number of guest
lectures by experts in various relevant areas. The syllabus and materials, including lecture
slides, assignment sheets and examples of student work, are available for viewing [CS24].
The course’s 25 students were selected by brief questionnaire assessing interest and
come from all years (freshman through seniors) and a wide variety of majors, including art
history, cognitive science, computer science, engineering, English, music, psychology, visual
art and others.
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Ideas Confirmed
Our experience to date in the course has confirmed some ideas and made us rethink
others. The course has confirmed that, although some faculty and industry thought-leaders
find the issue of visual digital literacy either confusing or unnecessary, the students find it
an important and natural area of interest. They come to the university completely
comfortable with computers and many visual aspects of computing and are eager to express
themselves visually even if not involved in a design-related major. Many students had
already created independent study courses or even independent majors combining visual
computing with computer science, multimedia, literature, and other areas. We also found
that students cared much less about disciplinary boundaries than most more mature
practitioners; they thought nothing of studying filter kernels one day and semiotics the next
and shifted easily between different modes of thought. A nice byproduct of this has been
that some of our previously non-technical students are now planning to take courses in the
computer science department. Courses in VDL may prove an effective way to attract
woman and other underrepresented groups to math and science courses.
Student participation in the course has been enthusiastic and the projects and
discussion show evidence of a growing understanding of the multidisciplinary impact of
visual computing.
Ideas Called Into Question
The course has also prompted us to rethink some assumptions and reassess some of the
challenges of teaching VDL. In particular, issues of granularity, scope, and interconnection
have been quite challenging. One of our goals was to test the concept of a full-semester
introductory VDL course. Another goal was to identify ways to present the material in
stand-alone modules that instructors could integrate into a range of introductory courses in
both the arts and sciences. Our current feeling is that the ideal level of granularity lies
somewhere between these two options, with predefined groups of modules available for use
in select introductory courses.
The scope of each module or area of study proved more difficult to delineate than we
initially expected. Determining the crucial concepts and vocabulary of a field is not simple
and most guidelines are given in terms of semester-long courses (at least). But what if one
only has a week to explain the basic concepts of perception or graphic design? We found
that the involvement of experts with deep understanding of the subject matter was essential.
Our consultations with faculty in different areas and the guest lectures by different domain
experts were crucial to the academic validity of this undertaking.
Finally, making the connections between areas like computer graphics in CS and design
rules or perceptual science was more difficult than we anticipated. The connections are
there, and we assumed they would emerge naturally for the students during discussion and
homework assignments. While students did make numerous connections this way, we now
believe it is helpful to address many types of connection explicitly in the course materials
and in assessing of student work.
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Author Background
Anne Morgan Spalter combines art and science through artmaking, technical research, and
writing. She is a Visual Computing Researcher in the Brown University Computer Graphics
Research Group and an Adjunct Faculty member in the Department of Computer Science.
Spalter is the author of The Computer in the Visual Arts, a widely used textbook that
integrates technical concepts, art history, and art theory. She has also written numerous
articles on both art and technology. Spalter is the Director of the Exploratories Group, a
project to create Web-based educational content and document effective development
strategies. She designed the first computer art course at Brown, which she taught jointly
there and at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).Her own computer art work has been
exhibited in the US and abroad.
Andries van Dam (Andy) is Vice President for Research and also Professor of Computer
Science at Brown University. His research has concerned computer graphics and
hypermedia systems, focusing on electronic books with interactive illustrations for use in
teaching and research. Van Dam is the author or co-author of many books, including
Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice (co-authored with J.D. Foley, S.K. Feiner, and J.F.
Hughes) and Being Fluent with Information Technology, a report of the Committee on
Information Technology Literacy, Computer Science and Telecommunication Board of the
National Research Council. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the ACM
SIGGRAPH Steven A. Coons Award, the ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator
Award, the IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal, and the ACM SIGCSE Award for
Outstanding Contributions to Computer Science Education. He is a Fellow of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences and of the National Academy of Engineering. He holds honorary Ph.D.s
from Darmstadt Technical University and Swarthmore College.
Pinny Sheoran is Professor of Computer Information Systems at Mesa Community College
and Executive Director of its Business and Industry Institute and the Network Academy.
She is also the Director of the Cisco Academy Training Center (CATC) program for the
Mountain States.
Dr. Sheoran has been an educator and innovator in information technology for over
twenty years, developing programs for both education and industry in areas ranging from
application development, database technologies, information assurance, cyber security and
bioinformatics.
Oris Friesen has been involved in Information Technology as an engineer, scientist and
Fellow in industry for more than 30 years with General Electric, Honeywell and Groupe
Bull. As an independent IT consultant, a Research Professor at Arizona State University and
Chair of several Industry Advisory Boards at Mesa Community College (MCC) he is
currently focusing on projects dealing with telecommunications, cyber security and
bioinformatics. He has been instrumental in leading the effort to develop a new curriculum
at MCC dealing with network security, information assurance, cyberforensics and
bioinformatics.
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References
[21st Century] http://www.call21st.com/
[ACM 2000] Association of Computing Machinery, Graphics and Archeology Campfire.
http://www.siggraph.org/~fujii/campfire/archaeology/html/photo.html
[AdobeCurr] http://www.adobe.com/education/curriculum/main.html
[Arizona Stds] Arizona Technology education Standards,
http://www.ade.state.az.us/standards/technology/default.asp.
[Burmark 2002] Burmark, Lynell, Visual Literacy (Learn to See, See to Learn), Association for
Supervision & Curriculum Development, 2002.
[CS24] Brown University course cs0024, Visual Thinking/Visual Computing, Spring 2005.
see http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs024/
[Elkins 2003] Elkins, James, Visual Studies, A Skeptical Introduction, Routledge, New York and
London, UK, 2003.
[Eos] http://www.photomodeler.com/app01.html
[Exploratories] http://www.cs.brown.edu/exploratories
[FITness] Being Fluent with Information Technology, Report of the Committee on Information
Technology Literacy, Computer Science and Telecommunication Board of the National
Research Council. National Academy Press, 1999.
[Georgia Stds]
http://www.glc.k12.ga.us/passwd/trc/ttools/attach/techinteg/QCCCurrTechInteg.p
df
[GTT] The Graphics Teaching Tool,
http://www.cs.brown.edu/research/graphics/research/gtt
[IML] Institute for Multimedia Literacy, Annenberg Center for Communication, University
of Southern California. http://www.iml.annenberg.edu/
[Marriott 2003] Marriott, Michael, “It’s a Multi-Multimedia World (but few students know
how to do a term paper in the ‘language of screens’),” The New York Times, Education
Life, November 9, 2003, p. 17.
[McKim 1980] McKim, Robert, Experiences in Visual Thinking (General Engineering), Robert
McKim, Brooks/Cole Publishing Company; 2nd edition, 1980.
[Mirzoeff 1999] Mirzoeff, Nicholas, An Introduction to Visual Culture, Routledge, 1999.
[New York Stds] New York State Learning Standards,
http://www.nysatl.nysed.gov/standards.html.
[NWCET] Northwest Center for Emerging Technology, http://www.nwcet.org/.
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[NOAA] Coastal and Ocean Resource Economics.
http://marineeconomics.noaa.gov/socioeconomics/tools.html
[NSF] The 2002 User-Friendly Handbook for Project Evaluations (NSF 02-057)
[Tufte 1997] Tufte, Edward R., Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and
Narrative, Graphics Press, 1997.
[Stephens 1998] Stephens, Mitchell, The Rise of the Image, The Fall of the Word, Oxford
University Press, Oxford, New York City, 1998.
[Twist 2004] Twist, Jo, “Virtual veins give nurses a hand”
http://3dgraphics.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/
hi/technology/3576664.stm
[Vote 2002] Vote, Eileen, et al., “Discovering Petra: Archaeological Analysis in VR,” IEEE
Computer Graphics and Applications, IEEE Computer Society Press, 2002.
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Marc Prensky
Engage Me or Enrage Me
_____________________________________________________________________________
“Engage Me or Enrage Me”
What Today’s Learners Demand
By Marc Prensky
[1774 words]
“Today’s kids are not ADD, they’re E0E”.
– Kip Leland, LA Virtual School
Anyone who’s taught recently will recognize these three kinds of students:
1. The students who are truly self-motivated. These are the ones all
teachers dream about having (and the ones we know how to teach
best.) They do all the work we assign to them, and more. Their motto
is: “I can’t wait to get to class.” Unfortunately there are fewer and
fewer of these.
2. The students who go through the motions. These are the ones who,
although in their hearts they feel that what is being taught has little
or no relevance to their lives, are farsighted enough to realize that
their future may depend on the grades and credentials they get. So
they study the right facts the night before the test to achieve a passing
grade and become at least somewhat successful students. Their motto:
“We have learned to “play school.”
3. The students who “tune us out.” These students are convinced that
school is totally devoid of interest and totally irrelevant to their life. In
fact, they find school much less interesting than the myriad devices
they carry in their pockets and backpacks. These kids are used to
having anyone who asks for their attention – their musicians, their
movie makers, their TV stars, their game designers – work really hard
to earn it. When what they offer isn’t engaging, these student’s truly
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resent their time being wasted. In more and more of our schools, this
group is quickly becoming the majority. The motto of this group?
“Engage Me or Enrage Me.”
While our schools and education system today deal with the first two groups
reasonably well, the third group is a real challenge. In fact for educators
today, it is THE challenge. “Engage Me or Enrage Me,” these students
demand. And believe me, they’re enraged.
But why? That’s a question that needs a good answer.
When I was a novice teacher in the late 60’s in New York City’s East Harlem,
things were different. Yes, we had our college bound students, our “doing
timers” and our dropouts. In fact, far too many dropouts. Certainly a lot of
kids then were not engaged. Many of them were on drugs. Some were
engaged in trying to affect society – it was a time of great turmoil and change
– but many weren’t.
The big difference from today is this. The kids back then didn’t expect to be
engaged by everything they did. There were no videogames, no CDs, no
mp3’s, none of today’s special effects. Those kids’ life was a lot less rich – and
not just in money. It was less rich in media, less rich in communication,
much less rich in creative opportunities for students outside of school. Many,
if not most of them never even knew what real engagement feels like.
But today all of them do. Every single student we teach has something in his
or her life that’s really engaging – something that they do, that they are good
at, something that has an engaging, creative component to it. Some may
download songs, some may rap, lipsync or sing karaoke, some may play video
games, some may mix songs, some may make movies, and some may do the
extreme sports that are possible with 21st century equipment and materials.
But they all do something engaging.
A kid interviewed for Yahoo’s 2003 “Born to Be Wired” conference said: “I
could have nothing to do and I’ll find something on the Internet.” Another
commented: “Every day after go school I go home and download music – it’s
all I do.” Yet another added “On the Internet you can play games, you can
check your mail, you can talk to your friends, you can buy things, and you can
look up things you really like.” Many of today’s third graders have multiple
email addresses. Today’s kids with computers in their homes sit there with
scores of windows open, IM’ing all their friends. Today’s kids without
computers typically have a videogame console or a GameBoy. Life for today’s
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kids may be a lot of things – including stressful – but it’s certainly not
unengaging.
Except in school.
And there it is so boring that the kids, used to this other life, just can’t stand
it.
“But school can be engaging,” many educators will retort. “I don’t see what is
so much more engaging about this other life, other than the pretty graphics.”
To answer this, I recently looked at the three most popular (i.e. best selling)
computer and video games in the marketplace. They were, as of June 2004:
City of Heroes, a massively multiplayer online role playing game, Harry
Potter and the Prisoner of Askaban, an action game for the PlayStation 2,
and Rise of Nations, a real-time strategy game for the PC. On their boxes
and web sites, these games promise the kids who buy and play them some
very interesting experiences: “There’s a place we can all be heroes.” “The
Dementors are coming, and this time Harry needs his friends.” “The entire
span of human history is in your hands.”
Not exactly what we promise our kids in school.
And the descriptions of the games? “Create your own heroes” “Thrilling
battles!” “Encounter…” “Engage…” “Fly…” “Explore…” “Take on your
friends.” “Exciting!” “Challenging!” “Master…” “Amass…” “Build…”
“Perform…” “Research…” “Lead…” “Don’t work alone.”
Not exactly descriptions of today’s classrooms and courses!
What’s more, the games deliver on these promises. If they didn’t, not only
wouldn’t they be best sellers – they wouldn’t get bought at all.
In school, though, kids don’t have the “don’t buy” option. Rather than being
empowered to choose what they want (200 channels! Products made just for
you!), to do and see what interests them (log on! – The entire world is at your
fingertips!) and to create their own personalized identity (download your own
ring tone! Fill your I-pod with precisely the music you want!), as they are in
the rest of their life, in school they must eat what they are served.
And what they are being served is, for the most part, stale, bland, and almost
entirely stuff from the past. Yesterday’s education for tomorrow’s kids.
Where is the programming, the genomics, the bioethics, the nanotech – the
stuff of their time? It’s not there. Not even once a week on Fridays.
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That’s one more reason the kids are so enraged – they know their stuff is
missing!
__________
But maybe, just maybe, through their rage, the kids are sending us another
message as well – and in so doing, offering us the hope of connecting with
them.
Maybe – and I think that this is the case – today’s kids are challenging us,
their educators, to engage them at their level, even with the old stuff – the
stuff we all claim is so important, i.e. the “curriculum.”
Maybe if, when learning the “old” stuff, our students could be continuously
challenged at the edge of their capabilities, and make important decisions
every half second, and have multiple streams of data coming in, and be given
goals that they want to reach but wonder if they can actually can, and beat a
really tough game and pass the course, maybe then they wouldn’t have to, as
one kid puts it, “power down” every time they go to class.
In my view, it’s not “relevance,” that’s lacking for this generation, it’s
engagement. What’s the relevance of Pokémon, or Yu-Gi-Oh, or America’s
Idol? The kids will master systems ten times more complex than algebra,
understand systems ten times more complex than the simple economics we
require of them, read far above their grade level – when the goals are worth it
to them. On a recent BBC show “Child of our Time,” a 4-year-old, who was a
master of the complex video game Halo 2, was being offered so-called
“learning games” that were light-years below his level, to his total frustration
and rage.
The fact is that even if you are the most engaging old-style teacher in the
world, you are not going to capture most of our students’ attention the old
way. “Their short attention spans,” as one professor put it, “are [only] for the
old ways of learning.” They certainly don’t have short attention spans for
their games, movies, music, or Internet surfing. More and more, they just
don’t tolerate the old ways – and they are enraged we are not doing better by
them.
So we have to find ways to present our curricula in ways that engage our
students. Not just to create new “lesson plans.” Not even just to put the
curriculum online. The BBC, for example, has been given £350 million by the
British Government to create a “digital curriculum.” They have concluded
that almost all of it should be game-based, because if it doesn’t engage the
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students, it will be £350 million down the tube, and they may not get a
second chance. But they are struggling in this unfamiliar world.
So how can and should they – and we – do this? As with games, we need to
fund, experiment, and iterate. Can we afford it? Yes, because, ironically,
creating engagement is not about those fancy, expensive, graphics, but rather
about ideas. Sure, today’s video games have the best graphics ever, but the
kids’ long-term engagement in a game depends much less on what they see,
than on what they do and learn. In gamer terms, “gameplay” trumps “eyecandy” any day of the week.
And if we educators don’t start coming up with some damned good curricular
gameplay for our students – and soon – they’ll all come to school wearing (at
least virtually in their minds) the t-shirt I recently saw a kid wearing in New
York City: “It’s Not ADD – I’m Just Not Listening!”
So hi there – I’m the tuned-out kid in the back row with the headphones. Are
you going to engage me today, or enrage me? The choice is yours.
Marc Prensky is an internationally acclaimed thought leader, speaker, writer, consultant, and game
designer in the critical areas of education and learning. He is the author of Digital Game-Based Learning
(McGraw Hill, 2001) and the founder and CEO of Games2train, a game-based learning company, whose
clients include IBM, Bank of America, Nokia , and the Department of Defense. He is also the founder of
The Digital Multiplier, an organization dedicated to eliminated the digital divide in learning worldwide,
and creator of the sites www.SocialImpactGames.com, www.DoDGameCommunity.com , and
www.GamesParentsTeachers.com . Marc holds an MBA from Harvard and a Masters in Teaching from
Yale. More of his writings can be found at www.marcprensky.com/writing/default.asp . Marc can be
contacted at [email protected] .
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From Popular Literacies, Childhood and Schooling, Routledge, London,
Forthcoming, Ed. Marsh, J and Millard, E.
CHAPTER 8
MAKING IT MOVE, MAKING IT MEAN: ANIMATION, PRINT LITERACY
AND THE METAFUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE
David Parker
In this chapter, I want to outline research findings from an arts and media project,
funded by the Arts Council England’s New Audiences programme. Most members of
the research team had had some previous experience researching media and literacy
work in schools; much of their work undertaken jointly with the British Film Institute
and King’s College, London under the auspices of the Centre for Research on
Literacy and the Media.
The project, which will be described in greater detail below, teamed a poet- and
animator-in-residence with a school-based researcher and revolved around the
adaptation of a fictional narrative, firstly into an episodic poem and then into an
animated film. The research element constituted an exploration of the relationships
between the adaptation process and literacy. We wanted to unpick how traversing
across genres and media with a single core text as a touchstone might enhance the
learning experiences of the young people involved. We were particularly interested in
the movement between print and moving image media and were looking to explore
through this a series of hypotheses that arose from previous work (Parker, 1999;
Oldham, 1999).
Before we move on to discuss the work in more detail, I will offer a brief overview of
some recent research that focuses on the relationship between moving image and
literacy, including our own earlier work. I do this primarily in order to contextualise
the project within a broader field, but additionally because it is necessary to provide
some of the findings from separate studies across disparate fields that, in combination,
seem to aggregate up into a set of similar and significant conclusions.
The relationship between media and literacy has a relatively long and fiercely
contested history. This is unsurprising, given that it acts as a conduit for aspects of
broader educational debate — primarily notions of standards, and a perception of
those standards falling in relation to previous rates of literacy attainment. The longheld popular theory that a correlation exists between a decline in literacy standards
and a concomitant rise in the consumption of media by young people has been
endorsed by the press for many years, despite there being little or no hard evidence to
support the claim. Brooks (1997) has shown through a rigorous comparative study
that, despite public perceptions to the contrary, in real terms, there has been no
significant decline in literacy attainment in the UK since 1945. While Brooks found a
fall in average performance among eight-year-olds in the late 1980s which could have
been attributed to large numbers of experienced teachers taking early retirement, he
also found that reading standards in Britain had remained almost static throughout the
past half century. This is despite the rise and fall of radically different teaching
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methods throughout that time. Neither traditional phonics teaching nor the 'newer'
techniques have significantly improved or worsened average performance.
Nevertheless, simplistic correlations continue to be made between many social
problems and the popular media, especially film and television. In reality, within
schools a somewhat different story emerges. For many years a compelling body of
research has built up from within university education departments, especially within
the Anglophone countries, which suggests powerful links may exist between the kinds
of narratives children and young people enjoy as consumers and the kinds of learning
expectations schools and parents hold as desirable in relation to literacy Marsh and
Millard (2000) compellingly show how ‘top-down’ models of literacy can fail to
connect with what is popular in terms of valued texts among young people and
thereby exclude rather than engage. They also illustrate how uses of media can unlock
a renewed motivation within learners and create the necessary conditions for reengagement with literacy and the acquisition of print based skills.
Similarly, Robinson (1997) has described how a ‘social reading practice’, one which
draws film, TV and video into the ambit of what is ‘acceptable’ in terms of reading
texts, can be enormously empowering for emergent readers. Children, it seems, are
able to draw on connections and parallels that are natural to their growing
understanding of story and story constructions, moving freely across media and
modes, but which the adult world, perhaps through it’s need to compartmentalize
knowledge and experience, seem invisible.
Mackey (1999) has pointed out the multiple levels of reader engagement with film
and televisual texts. Her work has shown how it offers a bridge into structural aspects
of narrative - conveyed visually through the medium of the moving image it can be
remade conceptually to fit print-based skills.
At the British Film Institute (BFI), a range of research and development projects, and
particularly those that arose out of collaboration with King's College , have examined
some of the links that can be exploited by teachers when media is incorporated within
literacy teaching. My own work (Parker, 1999) has suggested ways in which
structural similarities and differences of films and books can be used to compare
between moving image texts and written texts as part of a media production process.
And (with Julian Sefton-Green, 2000) how, specifically, the process of animation can
promote through a staged interaction with plot, theme and narrative, an incrementally
‘framed’ engagement with print texts. In an accompanying research project, Oldham
(1999) has shown how reading multiple film adaptations of a source print text can
raise levels of critical literacy amongst groups of readers, illuminating both the book
and film versions of a single narrative. Her work suggests embedded understandings
of narrative structure along with important skills such as prediction, may be
developed through moving image media, but that they would need teasing out through
teacher mediation in order to fully inform understandings of print media. In the US
Van den Broek (2001) illustrates in an online paper ithe positive relationship between
TV viewing and the development of reading comprehension.
Overall, then, there is a growing body of research worldwide that suggests the
simplistic notion of a negative relationship between media and literacy is not
substantiated by grounded research studies. The research suggesting other more
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positive relationships between moving image culture and print literacy forms the
context for the findings of the Animated English project.
The New Audiences ‘Animated English’ Project
The project, funded by the Arts Council England’s New Audiences programme, was
undertaken at a co-educational, multi-ethnic comprehensive school in West London in
2002. New Audiences was a £20 million initiative which ran from 1998-2003. It
aimed to encourage as many people as possible to participate in and benefit from the
arts.
The Animated English project was devised jointly by the BFI and the School of
Education at King’s College, London, involved two mixed-ability Year 7 English
classes who aimed to create an animated film version of episodes from a comic horror
novel, Groosham Grange, by Anthony Horowitz. Each class was split into six groups
of four or five children, and each group was tasked, while working in conjunction
with a poet-in-residence with adapting a section of the novel into a short narrative
poem, The rest of the work, which consisted of ten 50 minute lessons per class, was
carried out under the guidance of the BFI’s Animation Officer. Each group, after
being introduced to some key concepts of film-making and visual design, created a
storyboard for their poem, produced the necessary backgrounds, characters and props
(using coloured pens and paper) and then filmed their section of the story, shot by
shot, refining their approach in relation to the particular affordances of the medium.
The finished films were edited using the software package iMovie. The pupils were in
control of the editing of their material, cutting it, adding sound effects and voiceovers, and employing cross fades.
Beyond noting changes in language use - wider vocabulary, greater powers of
description with regard to space and time - which might occur in children’s speaking
and writing as a result of storyboarding, filming and editing, this project also aimed to
elucidate the narrative links between print and moving image media. It attempted to
demonstrate how an engagement with the different conceptual and technological
demands of each medium might lead to enhanced comprehension of storytelling in
general. At a more tentative level, it explored how the explicit demands of
composition required by the creation of an animated film (ideas of focus, audience,
planning, arrangement and editing) might be used as a scaffold for the less evident
compositional demands of writing. Finally, it addressed the definition of literacy
itself, and asked why the conceptual and compositional skills that can be developed
through intelligent use of the new media should not be regarded in themselves as an
inherent part of literacy rather than as merely playing a subordinate role. Each of
these elements will be outlined and discussed below.
Summary of main findings
Our key findings were, in some ways, counter-intuitive. They were based on evidence
from a wide range of sources, including our own detailed observation and analysis.
These key findings are summarized below in bullet form, and will be discussed in
more detail later.
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x
The Key Stage 3 research project, using animation as a means of promoting
writing and a richer understanding of print narrative, reinforces some key
aspects of previous research. Most importantly, the notion that children are
quicker to come to an overall understanding of a complete story when they
have an opportunity to engage with it through more than one medium, and this
is especially true if moving image media is used.
x
The role of the poet-in-residence, which had been hypothesised as a possible
way of structuring the writing of the children, became, at times, too
constrictive, in the sense that poetical form overrode the eventual goal of
moving image structure and narrative. A writer-in-residence with a more
narrative focus may have offered a smoother transition between each media.
x
The students’ compositional skills with regard to structuring a narrative in film
were far ahead of their written compositional skills. Those elements that have
been identified as key areas of narrative development in children —
orientation and coherence — were, through the explicit demands of
focalisation and sequencing in film-making, significantly improved. If we add
‘content’ to these two categories, as a narrative feature that is made explicit
through moving-image, then we have there terms that correlate to Halliday’s
(1978; 1985) metafunctions of language the ideational (content), the
interpersonal (orientation) and the textual (coherence).
x
There is strong evidence from this project to suggest that mediating literature
through structured teaching of the moving image creates a cultural bridge that
can foster new communities of practice by drawing from childen’s existing
funds of knowledge of these texts (Moll et al., 1992). Reluctant or emergent
readers may become more positive about books when they are enabled to talk
about and conceptualise one medium in terms of another.
Yet the development of these key concepts is predicated on long term planning and
recursive opportunity. Using moving image media production as a catalyst for
introducing and reinforcing the general principles or metafunctions in such a way that
they may ‘cross over’ and be of use in strengthening reading and writing print texts,
can only occur if sessions using media can be regularly timetabled. This leads to a
central paradox. In an already overloaded curriculum we need to carve out the space
and time necessary to achieve a greater, more inclusive impact on literacy attainment.
Animation can be a time consuming process and so we need to either make the time
by conflating mutually achievable learning aims (ICT and Art and Design are both
curriculum ‘spaces’ that could logically ‘dovetail’ with this approach to literacy) or,
reduce the time by looking at moving image alternatives to animation – i.e. live action
filming and editing or the use of archive material through editing work. Some of these
pressing problems may be addressed by potential changes to the curriculum in the
face of increased awareness of personalized learning and multiple intelligence theory
(Gardner, 1999) learning across subjects and through less traditional modes and media
may become a top-down directive in the medium term.
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Theorising the findings
So far I have outlined some relevant literature, a description of the Animated English
project and a summary of our key findings. Here I want to explore in a little more
detail some of the theoretical interpretations that may account for the relationships
between moving image media and literacy that appear to emerge from the project. It
has been useful for the research team to look at possible connections between M. A.
K. Halliday’s (1978) metafunctions of language and research into the development of
literacy in children. Halliday’s three metafunctions, present in any communicational
act, are the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual. These are further refined in
relation to visual grammar by Kress and Van Lueween (1996).
However, research and exploration into children’s literacy begins, almost inevitably,
with Piaget. The areas in which he identified a more limited development in younger
children - order, causality and orientation - have been refined but not challenged by
subsequent research. Clearly, order and causality correspond to Halliday’s textual
function and the need for coherence within a text; orientation corresponds to
Halliday’s interpersonal function and the clear establishment of relations between
participants in any communicative act. The content of children’s narratives corresponding to Halliday’s ideational function - has received less attention. Recent
research highlights the influence of personal and situational context on content (Burn
and Parker, 2003), but at a simpler level one is looking, in literacy, for imaginative
and expressive development; that is, advances in breadth of reference, depth of detail
and use of figurative language. The definition of literacy is under much debate, but
perhaps it can be agreed, with reference to studies of children’s narrative
development, that three main criteria by which literacy attainment can be measured
are: depth/breadth of content and expression; understanding and use of
perspective/orientation/audience awareness; improved coherence. These three, it is
possible to suggest, correspond to Halliday’s metafunctions of language: the
ideational, interpersonal and textual. It should, in fact, be no surprise that
developments in literacy equate to a more developed understanding and use of the
three essential functions common to all communicative acts.
In further support for this contention, it can be shown that many of the requirements
for Writing, Reading, Speaking and Listening in the National Curriculum can be
sorted under the same three categories. Furthermore, specific differences between
Attainment Levels correspond to development within these three categories,
concentrating on varied vocabulary, the extent to which the reader has been borne in
mind and clarity and complexity of expression.
If these three areas constitute literacy, and their development constitutes a valid and
important part of the English curriculum, it is necessary to discover the best ways in
which such development can be taught and learned. Reference is now made to
Gunther Kress and multimodality. Following his adaptation, or extrapolation, of
Halliday’s metafunctions for all meaning-making modes (such as gesture, visual aids,
speech, materiality, printed words) it is here not presumed that language is alone the
best way to communicate/explore ideas and information. This is true even - or
especially - when language itself is the subject of study. There may, indeed, be many
ways to foster knowledge, skills and understanding with regard to content, orientation
and coherence, but the particular focus of this study is the controversial and relatively
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new mode of moving-image. (This is a mode unexplored and untheorised by Kress.)
The research question, therefore, is: In what ways can work with moving-image
media help to develop the content, orientation and coherence of children’s writing
(and their comprehension of these elements with regard to their reading).
Two things must now be established. First: are there elements of the grammar of
film, as identified by theorists in that field, which correspond to content, orientation
and coherence (that is, which correspond with the areas identified as central to the
development of literacy)? Second: what, in Kress’s terms, are the specific functional
affordances of moving-image media? In other words, can we distinguish the
ideational, interpersonal and textual affordances of moving-image media and then
demonstrate how these can be used to convey/explore the elements of literacy
(content, orientation and coherence)?
It turns out that not only are there clear correspondences between literacy criteria and
the grammar of moving-image media but that a single - very interesting and
potentially useful - quality characterises the affordance of moving-image media:
explicitness. Theoretical accounts of narrative and film, though they differ in
emphasis and interpretation, agree upon certain elements that distinguish all film
narratives. There is the representation of states of affairs in the world (the
representation of character and setting). This is ideational. There is the matter of
perspective, point-of-view, focalisation (the relation between the events/characters
shown and the audience). This is interpersonal. And there is the question of time
(sequence, causality, continuity, coherence). This is textual. Working with movingimage media it is impossible not to deal with these elements. But where, in writing,
the ideational, interpersonal and textual demands of narrative can go un-noticed,
receiving relatively little critical attention from writers and readers, the explicit nature
of film makes it all but impossible for any film-maker or spectator to ignore
anomalies, faults and gaps in composition. It is through this quality of explicitness
that moving-image media might prove to be most useful in supporting various
schemes of work for literacy development. (It will not be argued that explicitness is
always a virtue; but it remains true that even where it fails - in nuance, say, or in
conveying abstractions, ideas, affections - it fails explicitly and is therefore still
valuable as a learning tool.)
In the school-based research carried out for this project, it can be shown that the work
produced using moving-image media consistently exhibited higher levels of
correspondent literacy than that shown in the same children’s writing. In other words,
areas identified as central to the development of conventional print literacy are
confronted and understood much more easily using moving-image media. There is, of
course, no direct transfer of these skills straight from one mode to another. Much
depends on an appropriate pedagogy. But such clear contrasts in attainment with
regard to the same basic elements of literacy point the way towards much future
research. With the ideational function, specificity and concreteness of representation
were far higher in the films than in the poems With regard to orientation, awareness
of audience was evident in every shot, and there was much discussion and revision as
a consequence of the camera acting as ‘reader manqué’ for the film texts. Point of
view was more consistent and precise compared with written work and imaginative
alterations of perspective were used for dramatic effect. With regard to coherence,
the storyboarding and filming ensured that causality was a priority in the structuring
of these narratives. There were clear representations of action within a consistent
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time frame, and no - or at least no unacknowledged - disruptive jumps, loose ends,
divisions or confusion. All the films were economical in their telling, unlike much of
the written work.
These are achievements that in themselves constitute literacy attainment, if we take
the broad view of literacy. But the central aim of research in this area must be to find
ways in which the skills and levels of understanding in one mode can be used to
support and complement those of another. How can the explicitness of moving-image
media be used to improve conventional print literacy? Can explicitness be used to
reveal some of the seemingly hidden elements of literacy? And can moving-image
media demonstrate, through its own shortcomings, some of the qualities peculiar to
the art of writing? Vygotsky’s suggested Zone of Proximal Development could be
brought into play here (Vygotsky, 1980). Just as there is a progression, for Vygotsky,
from the interpersonal to the intrapersonal, one might posit that a child could be led
from the explicit discovery of certain concepts of narrative and literacy to the
internalisation of those concepts.
Aside from the metafunctional relations suggested by this research project, there are
other, more ‘obvious’, benefits to literacy from the use of moving-image media in the
English classroom. Put simply, there are many elements of the film making process
that correspond to specific requirements of the National Curriculum. The group work
on devising narrative poems, creating storyboards and making films clearly involved
group giscussion and Interaction; the need to follow detailed instructions in all these
areas required work on listening skills. The need to scan a narrative for plot summary
and for details of action, character and setting in order to create a storyboard
incorporated reading skills and encouraged greater familiarity with the text. The
listing of events and the narrative poems involved writing skills, and the choice of
words used within each film involved suiting writing to a particular medium.
Moreover, there were ‘obvious’ benefits in terms of composition. The careful
preparation of materials for the storyboards and filming demanded development of
planning skills. And the refinement of work, through the filming process and when
editing the filmed material, encouraged revision and criticism of work in process. All
these elements can be simply itemised and backed up with evidence from written and
spoken data, along with observational notes. But the complicated, expensive and
time-consuming nature of film making means that these benefits alone, though they
rebut claims that moving-image work is mindless play and detrimental to literacy,
would not be enough on their own to make a claim for the importance of using this
technology widely in the English classroom. The focus, therefore, should be on
correspondence at a more fundamental level.
The key element in the transference of skills from one area to another resides in
pedagogy. As it stands, research into the relations between moving-image media and
print literacy can verify certain accidental or coincidental benefits, and can posit
analogues between the two modes with regard to narrative and communicational
development. What cannot be demonstrated is that simply using the new technology
will systematically benefit print literacy across the board. This is because there is no
such thing as ‘simply using’. The desired learning outcomes, preferred methodology
and inherent (or cultivated) ideology of any teacher and teaching system will
determine the way in which the established relations develop.
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At the far end of this research one can bear in mind the theorising that is currently
going on in academies with regard to humanities and computing. Scholars like
Richard Lanham (1993) and W J Mitchell (1986) have considered how hypertext, the
electronic word and Imagetext are altering the very notion or essence of literacy.
More immediately, however, there are many potential research projects using movingimage media that spring to mind, based upon more conventional definitions of literacy
and its development; projects that focus upon similarities and differences between
moving-image and print with regard to content, orientation and coherence; projects,
indeed, that focus on the processes of composition (ranging from draft to edit) without
necessarily demanding a finished (film) product. What is essential to this, however, is
a deep understanding of the relationship between signs, meanings and media, an
understanding that moves beyond semiotics and begins to embrace grounded accounts
of pedagogy, too.
References
Bazalgette, C and Buckingham, D (1995) 'The Invisible Audience', in
Brooks, G, Trends in standards of literacy in the United Kingdom, 1948-1996, Paper
presented at UK Reading Association conference, University of Manchester, July
1997, and at British Educational Research Association conference, University of
York, September 1997.
Buckingham, D (1996) Moving Images: Understanding children`s emotional
responses to television, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Buckingham, D (2001), New Media Literacies: Informal learning, digital technologies
and education’, London: Institute for Public Policy Research.
Buckingham, D, Harvey, I & Sefton-Green, J (1999), The Difference is Digital?
Digital Technology and Student Media Production, Convergence, Vol 5, No 4, Winter
1999, pp 10-20.
Gardner, H (1999) Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century.
New York: basic Books .
Halliday MAK (1978) Language as Social Semiotic, London: Edward Arnold.
Halliday MAK (1985) An Introduction to Functional Grammar, London: Arnold.
Hodge, R, and Kress, G (1988) Social Semiotics, Cambridge: Polity.
Hodge, R and Tripp, D (1986) Children and Television, Cambridge: Polity.
Kress, G (1993), ‘Representational Resources and the production of subjectivity:
questions for the theoretical development of Critical Discourse Analysis in a
multicultural society’, London University Institute of Education, unpublished paper.
Kress, G and Van Leeuwen, T (1996) Reading Images: the Grammar of Visual
Design , London: Routledge.
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Kress, G and Van Leeuwen, T (2001) Multimodal Discourse, London: Arnold.
Lanham.R, (1993) The Electronic Word : Democracy, Technology, and the Arts;
Chicago; London : University of Chicago Press.
Marsh, J., & Millard, E. (2000). Literacy and popular culture: Using children’s
culture in the classroom. London: Paul Chapman.
Metz, C (1974) Film Language, Chicago L: Chicago University Press.
Metz, C (1982) The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema,
Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.
Marsh, J. and Millard, E. (2000) Literacy and Popular Culture: Using Children’s
Culture in the Classroom, London: Paul Chapman.
Mitchell,W.J
(1986)
Iconology:
image,
Chicago;London:University of Chicago Press.
text,
ideology;
Parker, D (1999) ‘You’ve read the book, now make the film’: moving image media,
print literacy and narrative, English in Education.
Parker, D and Sefton-Green, J (2000) Edit-Play, London: bfi.
Sefton-Green, J (1995) `New Models for Old? English Goes Multimedia`, in
Buckingham, Grahame & Sefton-Green, Making Media - Practical Production in
Media Education, London: English & Media Centre.
Robinson, M (1997) Children Reading Print and Television, Falmer.
Sefton-Green, J (1999) ‘Media Education, but not as we know it: Digital Technology
and the end of Media Studies’, The English & Media Magazine No. 40, Summer 1999
Sinker, R (2000) ‘Making Multimedia’, in Sefton-Green & Sinker (eds), Evaluating
Creativity, London: Routledge
Van Leeuwen, T (1985) ‘Rhythmic Structure of the Film Text’, in van Dijk (ed),
Discourse and Communication, Berlin: de Gruyter
Van Leeuwen, T (1999) Speech, Music, Sound, London: Macmillan
Vygotsky, L.S. (1980) Mind in Society: Development of Higher Psychological
Processes. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Williams, R (1981) ‘Communications, Technologies and Social Institutions’,
republished in Williams, R (1988) What I Came to Say, London: Hutchinson
i
http://www.ciera.org/library/archive/2001-02/04OCT99-58-MSarchive.html
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SECTION 1 STATE OF THE ART IN MEDIA EDUCATION
Media Literacy:
Essential Survival Skills for the
New Millennium
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Media Education:
— the process and teaching
of and learning about media.
Media Literacy:
—the outcome, the
knowledge and skills learners
acquire.
Media Studies:
—the courses teachers teach.
Barry Duncan
e live in a mediated world, a “global village,”
as Marshall McLuhan famously described it.
Events such as 9/ 11, the war in Iraq, teen pop idol
Britney Spears’ 24-hour marriage, Janet Jackson’s
“wardrobe malfunction” at the 2004 Superbowl, and
the latest “reality” television all blend into a strange
media brew. In this article, Barry Duncan outlines
the place of media education and media literacy in
the classroom.
W
W
e have to reckon with new and evolving communication
technologies: from cellphones to digital cameras, from
internet chat rooms to the mind-boggling information resources
available on the World Wide Web. The expanded communication
territory and the blurring of boundaries between entertainment,
popular culture, consumption, and communication suggest that we
include within out understanding of media such sites as shopping
malls, pop icons like Barbie dolls and Pokemon, and the buzz
about brand-driven fashions. According to Canadian culture critic
Naomi Klein, “brands are today’s new rock stars.” Mass media and
popular culture represent multi-billion dollar opportunities for
global marketers peddling the latest goodies for teens and tweens,
and a major concern for parents and caregivers. It should be no
surprise that media literacy has finally entered our schools. While
its reception has been grudging at times, media Literacy is no
longer seen as a superficial frill, but as an essential component of
the curriculum.
Media Literacy Defined
In 1989, the Ontario Association for Media Literacy (AML) offered
this definition for the Ministry of Education’s Media Literacy
Resource Guide:
“Media literacy is concerned with developing an informed and
critical understanding of the nature of the mass media, the
techniques used by them, and the impact of these techniques. It
is education that aims to increase students’ understanding and
enjoyment of how the media work, how they produce meaning,
how they are organized, and how they construct reality. Media
literacy also aims to provide students with the ability to create
media products.”
Media literacy also includes media production: writing detailed
TV scripts, creating satiric collages, or editing complex video
material.
We use media for a variety of purposes and contexts in the
classroom. It is important to distinguish between “teaching about”
and “teaching through” the media. Many teachers use media as
audio-visual aids to support subject content—teaching through—
while teaching about media presupposes a critical approach,
where media texts themselves are explored in terms of their form,
strategies, organization, referents, points of view, and so on.
However, there is no reason why both approaches can’t co-exist to
generate a more thoughtful, culturally relevant curriculum.
Watching a media literacy class in which students, armed with
digital cameras, tell their stories is an exhilarating educational
experience. Messy at times and seemingly chaotic, creative media
projects demonstrate that theory and practice must support each
other.
Origins
Without going on a crusade of media
bashing fuelled by moral panics, the
media classroom deserves openness,
intellectual rigor, loads of enthusiasm,
and a willingness to take risks.
Readings
The first wave of media education emerged in the 1960s, catalyzed
by the U.S. civil rights movement, influenced by feminism and the
questioning of media coverage of the Vietnam War. In Canada,
cultural nationalisms and the emergence of a Canadian film and
television industry shaped early media education efforts. Alarming
TV viewing statistics of young people helped motivate teachers and
parents. Until recently, when Internet usage surged ahead, the
average teen had logged 15,000 hours of television by the end of
Grade12, in contrast with spending 11,000 hours in the classroom.
Initially a “movement” of enthusiastic classroom teachers, it was
not until the 1990’s, largely due to the proliferation of digital media,
that Canadian media education began to be taken seriously by
education policy makers.
In 1986, Ontario was the first jurisdiction in North America to
make media literacy a mandatory part of the curriculum, from K to
Grade 12. Following that decision, the widely recognized Media
Literacy Resource Guide was published in 1989 by the Association
of Media Literacy. By 1997, the rest of Canada had followed and
media literacy was embedded in provincial policy guidelines for
all English/language arts programs.
Typically, media literacy is established as a “strand” assuming
25% of the expectations set out in provincial guidelines for the
English/language arts curriculum. While some teachers may pay
only lip service to these requirements, at least they are contained
in mandated guidelines. As more teachers receive in-service
training, enrol in Additional Qualification courses, or conduct their
own research, they welcome media Education in their classroom,
not as an add-on but as a creative and culturally relevant
opportunity for learning. In several provinces, media studies is
offered as a complete stand-alone credit, usually at the Grade 11
level.
Key Concepts
Media literacy is drawn from many fields, including sociology,
psychology, political theory, gender and race studies, as well as
cultural studies, art, and aesthetics. The work of Marshall McLuhan
and others in communication studies is also important. The field is
dynamic, with different approaches, yet there is considerable
international consensus on important concepts and areas to be
covered in media analysis.
CODES AND CONVENTIONS
Consider how different media communicate messages. In learning
about film, for example, we look at the technical codes of closeups, zooms, dissolves, pans, and tilts and the effects created by
sound and special effects. Further investigations in codes and
conventions might address the use of the TV news anchor’s desk as
a symbol of authority or the images of death and satanic
destruction in CD covers of heavy metal music.
VALUES AND IDEOLOGY IN MEDIA
We all have a set of beliefs about the world which shapes our fears
and aspirations, from the roles of schooling, attitudes to same sex
marriage to the role of police. Typical questions when analyzing a
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media text or image: Who is in a position of power? Who is not?
Does the text exclude any groups of people or their beliefs?
MEDIA AND INDUSTRY
The commercial organization and implications of the mass media
need to be recognized; otherwise, we are culturally naïve and
socially irresponsible about the basis of our systems of
communication. Most of our entertainment and communication
technologies are owned by a small number of global corporations,
e.g., Time Warner, Disney, and Viacom. Issues around concentration
of ownership and control also apply to merged media corporations
in Canada, such as Bell /Globe Media and Canwest/Global. Does
this level of control influence what stories get told and how, and
how different groups are represented? Lest the topic seem too
abstract, consider available documentaries on Coca Cola,
McDonald’s, and Nike. Help students investigate monopolies, the
extent of corporate resources for advertising, and the incredibly
powerful role of public relations’ initiatives. Critical marketing has
become the most important aspect of modern media. (Consult
Naomi Klein’s invaluable book No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand
Bullies, Random House, 2000.)
MEDIA AND AUDIENCE
Audience is used in two different ways
How are we consumers of media products or “target audiences”?
How as active participants we make sense of the media.
TEACHABLE
MEDIA MOMENTS
Almost every week there are media events which
students wish to talk about—“teachable media
moments.” The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the
war in Iraq, the Oscars, the Superbowl, the impact of
9/11, are but some examples.
As a follow-up to September 11, for example, teachers
had their students investigate some of the following:
• “Time has ceased, space has vanished. We live in a
global village, a simultaneous happening.” Discuss
McLuhan’s insight in light of our experiences of
9/11.
• Use key concepts from discourse analysis to
explore the representations of patriotism, grief,
social justice, resistance, and protest.
• Who was marginalized after 9/11 and why?
• Compare and assess network news coverage with
alternative news sources on the Internet.
Readings
Target Audiences: On television and commercial radio, the media
serve to deliver audiences to sponsors. In a highly watched
spectacle such as the Superbowl, a 30-second commercial will cost
at least a million dollars.
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Without going on a crusade of media bashing fuelled by moral
panics, the media classroom deserves openness, intellectual rigor,
loads of enthusiasm, and a willingness to take risks.
Teachers can begin by acknowledging their own problematic
and contradictory passions and by being prepared, when
Active Audiences: Audience theory suggests that audiences are
appropriate, to share them. Playing “spot the stereotype” is limited
active participants, and that enjoying or making sense of media is a in itself. Why not encourage students to write thoughtful papers on
complex process; moreover, each person negotiates meaning,
their media pleasures and encourage them to use media logs for
depending on his/her gender, race, class, and age.
open-ended responses? Encourage mainstream readings of
popular television texts and then model some oppositional
Examples of Media Literacy in the
readings. Encourage students to transfer insights developed in the
Curriculum
media classroom into other areas: the politics of schooling, the role
English—adapting a short story or novel into a film; creating
of authority in the family, and the world of work.
multimedia thematic units; script writing
History—detecting bias in news coverage and so-called historical
References
truth; points of view in documentaries; representing historical
Buckingham, D. (2003). Media education: Literacy, learning and contemporary
events in feature films
culture. London: Polity)
Civics—investigating opportunities for democratic access to social Masterman, L. (1989). Teaching the media. London: Routledge.
and political power, as well as access to the public space of media
Bio:
representation
Barry Duncan is an award-winning teacher, author, consultant,
Geography—assessing the form and impact of images of the Third
and past president of the Association for Media Literacy (Ontario).
World
He is co-author of Mass Media and Popular Culture (Harcourt
Health Education—critiquing gender representation, especially
Canada, 1996) and has presented workshops and keynote
the pervasive ultra-slim models and actors who glamourize teen
addresses to teachers in Canada, the United States, Japan, Brazil,
anorexia
China, Spain and England.
For elementary school teachers who inevitably cross subject
borders, media literacy approaches can shape and unify several
curriculum strands. Articles elsewhere in this issue of Orbit will be
of great help (see especially Section 2).
In the Media Classroom
In the media classroom, we want to pursue thoughtful media
analysis in which it is understood that class discussions and
reflection are the basis for constructing new knowledge. In this
context, the classroom is a “site of struggle” in which meanings are
negotiated. U.K. educator Len Masterman insists that media studies
should be inquiry-centred, co-investigative (it does not seek to
impose a specific set of values), and egalitarian (teachers and
students share media experiences, but may have different
interpretations).
Early models of media education denigrated young people’s
popular culture. The media were seen as bad and students needed
to be taught how to discriminate and resist. There are still teachers
who believe that such approaches are appropriate and that
students need to be culturally inoculated. More recent models
presume a richer and more diversified vision of society, where
popular culture plays a key role in our everyday lives. Such models
recognize dynamics of power, pleasure, and politics and consider
media as a significant influence on identity formation. Along with
the liberating elements implicit in audience theory, as well as
student-directed media production, such models empower
students to make up their own minds about challenging ideas and
classroom debates, fostering conditions for critical autonomy.
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Meeting the Rising Tide of Information Technology Literacy: The
Changing Role of the U.S. Education System in Producing Skilled IT
Workers
Introduction
This paper draws attention to the potential impact on IT workforce development of connecting IT
skills for learning already required in schools with IT skills required for work. The National
Center for Education Statistics reports more than 2 million students graduating annually from
high schools in the United States. By 2003 there will be 13,951,000 students enrolled in grades
9-12.
What would it take to cultivate the talent of these youth and build their potential to access the
high skill, high wage jobs in Information Technology? This paper traces the research on career
development that shapes our current education and training policies and practices, and poses
questions about the relationship between career development and workforce development for IT.
Furthermore, this paper shares the details of a Pathway Pipeline Model for ITi. The model
addresses the disconnect between education and employment in Information Technology and
proposes an education strategy to increase opportunities for all students to access high skill, high
wage IT careers and significantly expand the available pool of IT talented in the United States.
The Importance of Career Development in Workforce Development Policy and
Practice
What is career development? What role might it play in IT workforce development? During the
last century there were many significant attempts made to understand and explain how and why
we choose careers, and what it takes to succeed in careers. These have translated into national
education and training policies and practices that have structured workforce training systems for
most of the last century, from the Vocational Education Act of 1917 to Perkins III, and have
become embedded in our education institutions.
The first three-quarters of the last century were greatly influenced by the Trait Factor theory ii iii,
which described career decision-making as a process that matched interests, aptitudes and
abilities to occupations. Up to the mid-1970’s, Trait Factor profiles were the most often used in
career counseling. They were integrated with career information and implemented in commonly
used career resources such as the Kuder Form E, the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB), the
Dictionary of Occupational Titles, the Occupational Outlook Handbook and the Guide for
Occupational Exploration of the US Department of Labor. Since the Trait Factor theories, we
have moved through several important belief sets that have helped us to further understand career
development. Socioeconomic theories, for example, explained the influence of certain
socioeconomic factors on career decision-making. These factors included the social status
ranking of careers, the influence of the social class of our birth families, and the relationship of
education and training to status and incomeiv.
Copyright EDC, 2000.
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As we have progressed in our search for predictors of career choice and success, we have learned
that career development is a lifelong process that begins in the home, is nurtured throughout
school life and is manifested in changing adult career choices. Post World War II developmental
theorists such as Roev, Supervi, Ginzbergvii viii, Havighurstix, Hollandx, and Critesxi concur that
career development proceeds along a continuum of experiences and that occupational decisionmaking is a developmental process that addresses complex issues of social and psychological
development. They agree, as well, on how this development leads to adult career choices. These
career development theories have shaped the education and training reform of the last quarter
century, including the Career Education movement of the 1970’sxii. This movement redefined
elements of effective education to employment systems and set the groundwork for both the
“new vocationalism”xiii and the School-to-Work Movementxiv of the 1990’s.
What do these trends in career development research mean for the development of an education
to employment system for Information Technology?
1. Career development can be guided.
2. Whether intentional or unintentional, providing educational technology learning experiences
in schools contributes to the career development of youth.
3. Research on women and girls indicates that by high school, females turn away from
technology career pathways.
4. Youth without significant IT role models or personal and family connections to the IT world
of work need support in order to connect the IT skills they are learning in schools with their
own interests and values, and with potential IT careers.
These lessons challenge IT educators and IT workforce development advocates to take specific
actions in order to maximize the IT workforce potential of students in the K-12 systems. These
include:
x developing a sequence of IT career development interventions to support the IT skill
development of students throughout elementary, middle and high schools;
x making up-to-date and accurate IT career information public and accessible; and
x keeping interest in technology alive for females and cultural and economic minorities to
retain them in career pathways in IT.
National IT Issues and Goals
The following IT issues emerged over eighteen months of discussion with IT employers and
educators. These discussions focused on what it would take to develop a pathway/pipeline
model that would satisfy both employers’ need for a skilled pool of talent, and educators’ need to
build the capacity of students to succeed in the world beyond school.
Issue 1: There is a severe IT skills gap and worker shortage, and a very unreliable job pipeline.
Goal 1: To create a reliable labor pool of skilled workers, with the required knowledge and skills
in technical IT areas, foundations for IT success (math, science, communications), and the soft
skills (problem solving, teaming) needed in the workforce.
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Issue 2: IT education in the U.S. today is very fragmented; many students do not receive the
career information they need to pursue IT careers.
Goal 2: To provide students and educators with the information, career awareness, education and
training when and where they need it for an information age economy with IT at its core.
Issue 3: The current structure of IT workforce education in schools is not aligned with the IT
world. IT career awareness and exploration programs in the K-8 system are limited to
occupational information and assume that there has been no technical skill/knowledge
experiences prior to entering industry targeted workforce preparation programs. In the world
outside of schools, IT is becoming ubiquitous. People are becoming sophisticated users of IT at
early ages without intentional career training.
Goal 3: To connect IT learning standards with IT skill standards for work, and to provide IT
career development support to help learners connect their developing IT interests and skills to IT
careers.
Recognized IT Skills Shortage: Over the past five years there have been significant attempts to
identify and quantify the IT skills shortage felt by our national industries.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics reported that the US will require more than 1.3 million new
IT workers in the three core occupations: computer scientists and engineers, systems analysts
and computer programmers.xv ITAA’s Help Wantedxvi reports 346,000 vacancies in these same
occupations. Neil Evans, Executive Director of the Northwest Center for Emerging
Technologies, says that for every IT professional there are 9 IT technical workers. In 1998 the
IT industry lobbied to increase the ceiling on temporary H1B visas for workers from 65,000 to
98,000 per year to help meet this rising need. In 1999 it was raised to 140,000, and there is
currently a bill that aims to push the number to 190,000. In addition to those who work
specifically in the IT industry, a 1999 NAB study found that 38 million Business and
Administrative Services Workers required IT skills to do their jobs.
How many students are in the U.S. education system and how great is their potential impact on
the numbers of IT workers needed? In 1996 the United States graduated 2,281,317 students. By
2003 there will be 13,951,000 students enrolled in grades 9-12. In 2003 there will be 34,124,000
students enrolled in grades Pre-K-8. What would it mean to our world of IT workforce
development if the potential pool of IT workers could be framed with these numbers?
A Disconnected System: The Fragmented Career Pathway
Currently in the K-Lifelong learning system, the pathway to IT careers is fragmented as
illustrated in the chart below. Although there are places in our communities for people to develop
IT skills for living, learning and working, these IT initiatives operate independently of one
another. It is possible that an individual might move through the educational system in a
community without access to technology and without developing IT skills. Another student
might develop IT skills for living in the community, learn word-processing at a Community
Technology Center, and develop IT skills for learning in his or her academic classes. A third
student might develop IT skills for living and learning, develop IT skills for all work in high
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school occupational or vocational programs, and choose to go on to work in the IT industry after
post secondary training in an IT specific program.
The way our system is currently constructed, each of these levels operates separately and
independently of one another. No previous learning is expected or required. For example, the
best high school and technical college IT training programs begin at ground zero, presuming
little or no IT training prior to the learner’s entry into that program. Academic teachers in
elementary and middle schools see little relationship between the skills students are developing
in academic classrooms and the IT skills valued by employers and needed for all work. By
operating independently, IT initiatives at each of these levels duplicate efforts both to develop IT
programs and to identify successful IT learning strategies. This has resulted in an IT educationto-employment system that is disjointed, fragmented, repetitive and wasteful. This system cannot
get students on the “fast track” into the IT workforce. In order to incorporate IT skills for
learning and working into the education and training system, we need to reduce duplication, see
the connections and synergy among these levels, and create new learning systems that build on
previous life experiences with technology.
Fragmented Career Pathway
K-Life-long Learning
POST SECONDARY EDUCATION AND WORK
IT TECH JOBS
IT TECH PREP
COMMUNITY COLLEGE
IT ALL WORK
OCCUPATIONAL/BUSINESS/
VOCATIONAL/TECHNICAL
IT LEARNING
ACADEMIC CLASSES
IT LIVING
SCHOOL-WIDE COMMUNITY
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What would it take to develop an IT pipeline that meets the needs of our society for a
pool of talented IT technical and professional workers? What does an IT pathway need
to look like for all students to have access to the high skill, high wage education and
employment opportunities provided by the world of Information Technology?
The Nested System – An IT Pathway Pipeline Model
Education and training for information technology skills should not be thought of as
necessary only for people planning to work in the IT industry. Technology has changed
the way we live, learn and work. We all need to be able to use technology at school, in
the workplace, and increasingly at home. The Nested System indicates the additive nature
of learning about technology. An individual’s level of learning will depend upon the
individual’s life needs. Developing IT skills and knowledge can begin at, and be part of,
all levels of education. However, no matter where you start, because of the changing
nature of technology and its impact on our lives and work, the learning process needs to
continue beyond the traditional boundaries of education and become part of life-long
learning and personal development.
The Nested System, shown below, illustrates the connections among the IT skills and
knowledge used for living, learning, working in wide range of industries, and specializing
in IT technical jobs.
The Nested System—IT Pathway
Pipeline Model
K-Life-long Learning
POST SECONDARY EDUCATION AND WORK
IT TECH JOBS
IT ALL WORK
IT LEARNING
IT LIVING
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Making Connections
An effective IT pathway pipeline model demands a rethinking of technology learning in
schools. The model’s implementation does not require a new, stand-alone information
technology curriculum. Instead, it requires: the use of existing threads of IT skill and
knowledge to connect the boxes in the currently fragmented IT career pathway; the use of
IT tools for learning and authentic assessment; and an integration of IT learning into
existing K-20 curriculum. For example,
x Word processing at the K-2 level can be used for story composition and rewrites;
x A live video connection to a museum curator can answer the tough questions that
students develop when analyzing the relationship between art and culture;
x The Internet can be used to facilitate interactions with colleagues around the world in
different time zones. (See Web sites such as Marco Polo, www.marcopolo.com, for
examples of how IT can be integrated into curricula);
x Spreadsheets can be used in economics classes to track stock prices and ratios; and
x Software simulations can be used in physics classes to illustrate what happens during
a nuclear reaction.
Making connections does not mean bringing workforce training into elementary schools.
At appropriate developmental levels learners will be ready to focus on building IT skills
to enhance employment and begin to prepare for entry into specific IT careers. At that
point, high quality, skill standards-based IT career cluster initiatives or other workforce
development programs can help in their school-to-career transition.
Why is it difficult to make connections across the academic and technical divide? Our
current education to employment system is organized around a traditional industrial
model where learners are introduced to and practice using industrial tools in specialized
workforce development programs at the secondary and post secondary levels. Table One,
below, illustrates where technical skill development occurs within this institutionalized
system. These designations are commonly accepted by educators responsible for
workforce development and reflect the organizational structure of an education system
designed to educate and train learners in an industrial era.
Technical Industry Skill Development in our Institutionalized Industrial Model
Level of Performance Commun- K-12
on Skill Standards
ity K-Life
Introductory Level
X
Practice Level
Mastery Level
Refinement Level
Expert Level
*Work Based Learning
WBL* 2 Year
College
X
X
X
X
X
4 Year Employ
College -ment
X
X
X
X
X
X
The preceding table does not reflect the actual skill development of learners in an
information-based society where youth become proficient users of IT industry tools at
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home, in their communities, and in their early childhood and school experiences. Table
Two illustrates where IT technical skills develop in our increasingly knowledge-based
society. It reflects the ubiquitous nature of computers and suggests that technical IT
skills are introduced, developed and practiced earlier in the educational experience, than
are other technical skills in the Industrial Model.
Technical IT Skill Development in our Emerging Knowledge-Worker Model
Level of Performance
on Skill Standards
Introductory Level
Practice Level
Mastery Level
Refinement Level
Expert Level
Commun- K-12
ity K-life
X
X
X
X
WBL* 2 Year
College
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
4 Year Employ
College -ment
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
*Work Based Learning
The differences in these charts explains some of the tension felt by educators in
developing IT programs within education systems designed on the industrial model. It
raises questions about the degree to which our traditionally structured learning in schools
meets the skill and knowledge needs of our youth. It calls for developing new vertical
connections between IT skills developed in elementary and middle school programs and
skills developed in secondary technical programs. Furthermore, it supports the lessons
learned from career development research and calls for a strategic plan to address career
information and career development supports for learners at all levels. In addition, the
potential impact of early technical skill development calls for rethinking the ways we
design IT workforce education programs at the secondary and post secondary levels as
our rising tide of IT fluency works its way towards these levels.
Pathway Pipeline Model—Benchmarks
The Pathway Pipeline skills model on the following pages uses an advanced organizer
based on categories of skills and knowledge needed by people in IT careers. The
standards contained within the chart represent skills and knowledge found in several sets
of national and state IT skill and technology standards. This model proposes a continuum
that begins with basic IT skills for learning and ends with core IT employability.
This chart can be used in several ways:
x Consumers and users of IT can use the chart to follow their progress through the
various levels of IT proficiency, as they move from users of IT for living and learning
to professional users of IT to IT technical workers.
x Developers of IT training programs or other out-of-school programs can use the chart
to help identify and sequence program and course content.
x Educators can use the chart to help plan the development of programs and curriculum.
The benchmarks illustrate an increasingly sophisticated skills progression described with
the following key words:
x uses,
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x
x
x
applies, designs/develops at basic level,
designs/develops at an intermediate level,
evaluates, enhances, and extrapolates.
Benchmarked to excellent examples of strong technology standards currently used in
schools across the nation, the following chart also identifies and sequences anticipated
learning goals for grades 4, 8, 10 and 12. These align the model’s structure with the grade
levels used to structure learning standards in most states. This structure invites options for
specialization at the secondary levels and articulates with post secondary technical
training, as well as with science, mathematics and technology curriculum in 4-year
colleges. The sequencing of skills in this model can also be used with adult learners.
The standards that are reflected in the chart include:
x the NorthWest Center for Emerging Technologies (NWCET) Information
Technology Skill Standardsxvii (http://www.nwcet.org)
x the Ohio Information Technology Competency Profilexviii (http://itworksohio.org/ITCOMP.htm)
x the International Society for Technology Education’s (ISTE) “Profiles for
Technology Literate Standardsxix (http://cnets.iste.org)
x the Patrick Lyndon Pilot School’s Technology Learning Standards
(http://lyndon.boston.k12.ma.us/)xx
x the North Carolina State Standards for K-12 Computer/Technology Skillsxxi
(http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/ Curriculum/)
x the National Research Council, Committee on Information Technology Literacy
“Components of Fluency with Information Technology”xxii and
x the American Library Association’s “Nine Information Literacy Standards for
Student Learning”xxiii (http://www.ala.org/aasl/ip_nine.html)
NWCET has developed skill standards for eight career areas: Database Development and
Administration, Digital Media, Enterprise Systems Analysis and Integration, Network
Design and Administration, Programming/Software Engineering, Technical Support,
Technical Writing, and Web Development and Administration. ISTE has developed
technology foundation standards, divided into six broad categories, for all students.
The Ohio Information Technology Competency Profile includes IT competencies
centered upon core academic subjects and built around four occupational clusters:
Information Services and Support, Network Systems, Programming and Software
Development, and Interactive Media. North Carolina has developed a detailed curriculum
matrix for computer technology skills linked to grades K-12. The National Research
Council has developed “Components of Fluency with Information Technology” which
include 10 Intellectual Capabilities, 10 Information Technology Concepts, and 10
Information Technology Skills. Finally, the American Library Association has published
nine information literacy standards for student learning.
Determines
when
technology is useful and
selects
appropriate
technology
tools
and
resources
Installs and uses programs
(disc, CD, download) and
uses new simple learning
programs
Uses
a
computer
independently
Locates information from
Web sites
Uses search engines
Demonstrates responsible
behavior while on-line
Uses word processing for
documents,
letters
and
reports (edit, format, spell
check)

Information
Literacy
PC
Principles
and Operation
Word
Processing
Desktop
Publishing
to
World Wide Web

Understands
and
uses
computers as a tool for
living and learning
Respects the work of others
(copyright, acceptable use,
responsible use)
Understands
impact of
technology on individuals
and communities
Appreciates that information
can be useful to life and
pursues information close to
own interests

Technology and
Society

Career
exploration
and
transition from IT skills for
learning to IT skills for working

Creates
complex
desktop
published
documents
and
reports
using
multiple
applications
in
teams
(Photoshop,
PageMaker,
Excel, Access)
Uses Internet as a research
and business tool in a highly
effective manner
Performs
basic
personal
computer operations
Strives for excellence in
information
seeking
and
generation
Applies basic principles of
visual
communication
to
transferring data into graphics
form
Understands, explains and
provides examples of how
computers are used to carry
out business
Understands past and current
trends in computer technology
Core IT employability for all
work

Selects, integrates and uses
appropriate technologies to create
complex professional publications
(e.g.,
yearbook,
brochure,
multifold flyers)
Understands and demonstrates
use of Internet for e-commerce
Understands
issues
affecting
system purchase and upgrade
decisions
Generates
and
pursues
information and practices ethical
behavior in regard to information
and information technologies
Understands and explains how IT
impacts society and the operation
and management of business
Initial specialized technical job
skills for the IT industry
IT for All Work – Grade 10 IT Employability – Grade 12
Creates complex word processed
letters, memos and reports which
include
tables
and
footnotes/endnotes in teams
Locates
and
organizes
information
from
Internet
resources
Differentiates
between
more
useful and less useful information
Uses PC and MAC computers
independently
Can teach others to operate
computers (turn on, use mouse,
call up programs, save, and
locate files)
Accesses information efficiently
and effectively
Evaluates information critically
and uses information accurately
and creatively
Understands,
explains
and
provides examples of how
computers are used as tools for
working
IT Fluency – Grade 8
Career awareness and IT
skills for learning
IT Skill and
Knowledge
IT Literacy – Grade 4
The Pathway Pipeline Model Benchmarks Chart
9
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Familiar
with
keyboard
functions
Keyboards with minimal
frustration
Corresponds with an e-mail
partner
Recognizes
that
files/software/
hardware
have different formats (file
types, extensions, operating
systems)
Selects and uses software
appropriate to task (e.g.,
KidPix, Word)
Searches
and
sorts
prepared databases
Defines parts of a database
Develops simple databases
and enters information

E-mail
Software
and
Systems
Integration
Database
Software: Use to
Management
Keyboarding

Creates simple graphics
using drawing and painting
software programs
Uses scanner and digital
camera and images from
the Web
Creates
thematic
slide
shows

Graphics
and
Image
Processing
to
Multimedia
Publishing

Career
exploration
and
skills for learning
to
20
words
per

Applies database to actual
situations and real world
(business) problems (college,
scholarships)
Uses, modifies, designs and
creates relational databases,
including queries, forms and
reports
Works with and integrates
items into project work from
multiple operating systems
Understands e-mail system
components and organization
Uses appropriate e-mail writing
style and protocols for various
purposes (personal/business)
Keyboards to 35 words per
minute including numbers and
symbols
Creates original audio, video
and animation elements
Incorporates and edits sound
and images from various
sources of input
Creates interactive multimedia
presentations
work

skill
Critically analyzes and evaluates
databases and their complex
interaction
Accesses and applies/uses large
scale databases for project work
(e.g., GIS, census, corporate
reports)
Coordinates
communication
between
different
operating
environments (e.g., facilitating
data
exchange
and
communication between Unix and
Windows NT networks)
Moderates listserv
Manages e-mail address books
and listservs
Uses e-mail effectively and
appropriately
Proficient in keyboarding
(accuracy and speed)
Selects, integrates and uses
appropriate media for complex
interactive
multimedia
presentations such as:
Web presentation with music,
video, & animation
CD-ROM
Video game
Uses database to manage
personal
information
(music
collections, phone numbers)
Creates, modifies and prints
database reports
Applies
search
and
sort
strategies
Accesses local, national, regional
databases
(e.g.,
DOL,
occupational information) for
project work
Integrates various pieces of
software
(word
processing,
images from Illustrator, photos
from PhotoShop) into one
product/project
Requests and sends information
globally
(with
attachments)
concerning research topics
Uses a listserv
Keyboards
minute
Creates
composite
imagery
integrating photos, drawings and
text using drawing or painting
software programs
Creates
a
hypermedia
presentation
IT Skill and
Knowledge
10
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Uses both CD-ROMs and
3.5” disks
Obtains
and
transfers
information from each
Maintains files
Follows a simple structured
program (e.g., Lego LOGO,
Basic)
Demonstrates knowledge of
individual parts that make
up a stand-alone PC
computer system and the
relationship
between
components
Can manage one’s own
electronic portfolio in a
networked environment
Works in teams
Values diversity
Develops basic skills in
literacy and numeracy
Listens
actively
and
communicates own ideas

Hardware
Installation and
Configuration
Network
Technologies
SelfManagement,
Teamwork and
Communication
Skills
(Soft
Skills)
Programming
Operating
Systems

Creates graphs and charts
Defines spreadsheet terms
Enters data into prepared
spreadsheet
Performs
simple
mathematical
calculations
and notices changes

Spreadsheet

Career
exploration
and
skills for learning

Speaks
effectively
and
persuasively
Analyzes,
interprets
information,
and
draws
conclusions
Manages resources
Generates ideas
Coaches others
Monitors and corrects systems
Performs basic set up and
configuration
of
network
hardware and software
Installs software programs and
performs basic configuration
operations
Understands
compatibility
issues
Creates simple object oriented
programs
using
already
developed source code (e.g.,
Java Script, Macros)
Troubleshoots minor problems
and can articulate problems to
technicians
Applies spreadsheet principles
to real-life situations and
business problems
work

Leads teams
Negotiates effectively
Continuously improves quality of
work
Teaches others
Generates designs
Creates and manages projects
Monitors
overall
network
operations
Troubleshoots basic problems
Implements
administrative
functions
Demonstrates basic knowledge of
PC hardware troubleshooting and
maintenance
Creates programs developing own
source
code
(e.g.,
Web
applications, free/shareware)
Troubleshoots basic configuration
problems
Customizes operating system
environments
Designs, creates, modifies and
troubleshoots spreadsheets
Uses databases functions to
perform “What If Analysis” or
decision models
Solves problems
Makes decisions
Integrates learning
Writes clearly and concisely
Calculates accurately
Navigates systems
Adapts to changing environments
Demonstrates integrity, honesty
and ethical behavior
Understands overall design and
components of a LAN and WAN
system
Installs and configures hardware
in a PC computer system (e.g.,
printers)
Maintains files and folders in
more than one platform
Uses multiple operating systems
(MacIntosh,
Windows,
Unix,
DOS)
Creates
simple
structured
programs
(e.g.,
Lego
Mindstorms, HTML)
Uses spreadsheets for managing
finances, addresses, purchases
IT Skill and
Knowledge
11
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Implications of the Pathway/Pipeline Model on IT Workforce Development
Rather than proposing a short-term solution, this paper urges a “long view”. It
encourages developing the Information Technology potential of all Americans by
connecting technology skills already required by many states (and taught voluntarily in
others) to the Information Technology skills found to be needed in high skill, high wage
careers. Moreover, reflecting on what we have learned about career development, the
disconnect between IT education and the world of IT, and the natural alignment of
educational technology learning standards in schools with Information Technology skill
standards needed for success at work, we are forced to ask the following questions:
What would be the impact on IT workforce needs if 3 million high school students
graduating annually could meet the standards benchmarked for IT Employability – Grade
12: Initial specialized technical job skills for the IT industry which are proposed on the
previous pages?
In what ways do we need to structure IT education programs preparing IT technicians and
professionals if entering freshmen possess these IT Employability skill and knowledge
sets?
What would it mean to an employer if their high school intern had seven years of
conceptual understanding and life experience in creating web pages and PowerPoint
presentations?
What would it mean to our communities if our children had access to the high skill, high
wage jobs offered by the IT industry?
What kind of investments must we make in public education to create a fully functioning
IT education to employment system?
Serious consideration should be given to long term research on these issues. This
approach should be encouraged by policy-makers and practitioners in education,
employment, career development and workforce development because it:
i Expands the pool of talented potential IT workers to all students and provides all
learners with the basic skills and knowledge needed to access the high skill, high
wage jobs associated with IT.
i Structures the development of IT skills and knowledge along a single continuum of
learning that begins in schools and continues into the workplace.
i Uses IT skill standards as the primary components of the skeletal structure, linking
learning and IT working through the most current skills and knowledge drawn from
front line workers in the IT industry.
i Allows students to develop core IT skills needed for all work as a benchmark for high
school graduation.
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i Provides options for specialization and vendor specific credentialling at the secondary
and post secondary levels.
i Vertically articulates the K-12 pathway with grades 13-20 IT technical and
professional career training.
An Information Technology Pathway Pipeline approach has the potential to significantly
contribute to workforce development in Information Technology, the career development
of our citizenry, and the economic development of our communities.
i
Education Development Center, Inc. IT Pathway Pipeline Model: Rethinking Information Technology
Learning In Schools. Newton, Massachusetts, 2000.
ii
Parsons, F. Choosing a Vocation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909.
iii
Kitson, H.D. The Psychology of Vocational Adjustment. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1925.
iv
Issacson, L.E. Career Information in Counseling and Teaching, 3rd ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1977.
v
Roe, A. “Early Determinants of Vocational Choice.” Journal of Counseling Psychology, 1957, 4, 3, 212217.
vi
Super, D. The Psychology of Careers, an introduction to vocational development. New York: Harper &
Row, 1957.
vii
Ginzberg, E., Ginsburg, W.S., Axelrod, S., and Herma, J.L., OccupationalChoice. New York: Columbia
University Press, l95l.
viii
Ginzberg, E., “Toward a Theory of Occupational Choice: A Restatement.” Vocational Guidance
Quarterly, 1972, 20,169-176.
ix
Havighurst, R. J. Human Development and Education. New York: Longman’s Green, 1953.
x
Holland, J.L., Making Vocational Choices: A Theory of Careers. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentiss-Hall,
1973.
xi
Crites, J.O., Vocational Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969.
xii
Bailey, L. J., and Stadt, R. Career Education: New Approaches to Human Development. Bloomington,
Illinois: McKnight Publishing Company, 1973.
xiii
Benson, Charles. “New Vocationalism in the United States: Potential Problems and Outlook”. National
Center for Research in Vocational Education: Berkeley, California, 1998.
xiv
School to Work Opportunities and the Fair Labor Standards Act (P.L. 103-239), 1994.
xv
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Monthly Labor Review, The Editor’s Desk. October 1998
xvi
ITAA. Help Wanted. 1998.
xvii
NorthWest Center for Emerging Technologies, Regional Advanced Technology Education Consortium,
Bellevue Community College. Building a Foundation for Tomorrow: Skill Standards for Information
Technology. Bellevue, Washington. 1998.
xviii
Ohio Department of Education, Ohio Board of Regents, and Tech Prep Curriculum Services at the Ohio
State University. 1999.
xix
International Society for Technology in Education—NETS Project. National Educational Technology
Standards for Students. Eugene, Oregon, 1998
xx
Patrick Lyndon Pilot School. “Technology Learning Standards,” Boston, Massachusetts, 1999.
xxi
North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. “K-12 Computer/Technology Skills,” Raleigh, North
Carolina, 1999.
xxii
National Research Council. Being Fluent with Information Technology. Washington, D.C.: National
Academy Press, 1999.
xxiii
American Library Association and Association for Educational Communications and Technology.
“Information Literacy Standards for Student Learning,” Information Power: Building Partnerships for
Learning. 1998.
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THE ANNALS FUN
10.1177/0002716204270191
MOBILIZING
OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
Mobilizing Fun
in the
Production and
Consumption
of Children’s
Software
By
MIZUKO ITO
This article describes the relation between the production, distribution, and consumption of children’s software, focusing on how genres of “entertainment” and
“education” structure everyday practice; institutions;
and our understandings of childhood, play, and learning.
Starting with a description of how the vernaculars of
popular visual culture and entertainment found their
way into children’s educational software and how related
products are marketed, the article then turns to examples of play with children’s software that are drawn from
ethnographic fieldwork. The cultural opposition
between entertainment and education is a compelling
dichotomy—a pair of material, semiotic, technical genres—that manifests in a range of institutionalized relations. After first describing a theoretical commitment to
discursive analysis, this article presents the production
and marketing context that structures the entertainment
genre in children’s software and then looks at instance of
play in the after-school computer clubs that mobilize
entertainment and fun as social resources.
Keywords: children’s software; children’s media; interactive media; play; computer games software industry
F
rom the late 1970s to the end of the 1990s, a
new set of cultural, economic, technological, and social relations emerged in the United
States, centered on the possibilities of using
computer technology to create entertaining
Mizuko Ito is a cultural anthropologist of technology use,
focusing on children’s and youth’s changing relationships to media and communications. Her current
research is on Japanese technoculture, and she is
coeditor of Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile
Phones in Japanese Life. She is a research associate at
the Annenberg Center for Communication and a teaching fellow at the Anthropology Department at the University of Southern California. Her Web page is http://
www.itofisher.com/mito.
NOTE: The ethnographic research for this article was
conducted as part of a project funded by the Mellon
Russell Sage Foundation and benefited from being part
of the broader 5th Dimension research effort. Writing
was funded in part by a Spencer Dissertation Fellowship
and the Annenberg Center for Communication and the
DOI: 10.1177/0002716204270191
ANNALS, AAPSS, , 2004
1
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THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
learning experiences for young children. Released in 1977, the Apple II, a tool of
hobbyists and a handful of enterprising educators, was just beginning to demonstrate the power of personal computing and programming for the masses. A homebrew industry of programmers had been laying the foundations for a new consumer software industry by sending their products, floppy disks packaged in
ziplock bags, to their networks of retailers and consumers. The video game industry hit public consciousness with the phenomenal success of Space Invaders in
1978, demonstrating the economic and addictive potential of a new genre of interactive entertainment. Hand in hand with these technological developments, small
groups of educational researchers across the country were beginning to experiment with personal computers as a tool for creating interactive, child-driven,
entertaining, and open-ended learning environments that differed from the topdown didacticism of traditional classroom instruction. The trend toward a more
pleasure-oriented, child-centered, and less hierarchical approach to education and
child rearing found material form in technologies that allowed greater user control
and input than traditional classroom media. Across a set of diverse contexts in the
United States, educators and socially responsible technologists were incubating a
shared cultural imaginary that centered on the possibilities of new interactive
computer technology to transform learning and engagement.
The case of commercial children’s software provides a window into a dynamic
field of negotiation that characterizes contemporary disputes over children’s culture, education, and technology. This article presents material from a more
extended analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of children’s
software (Ito 2003). The focus here is on analyzing the relations between the cultural and social categories of “entertainment” and “education” and examining how
they structure everyday practice; institutions; and our understandings of childhood, play, and learning. I present material on how the vernaculars of popular
visual culture and entertainment found their way into children’s educational software, how related products are marketed, and how these vernaculars are mobilized in the micropolitics of children’s engagements with computers and adults.
The examples of play with children’s software are drawn from ethnographic fieldwork at Fifth Dimension After School Clubs (5thD) (Cole 1997; Vasquez, PeaseAlvarez, and Shannon 1994), a setting that mobilizes as well as complicates conventional cultural oppositions between entertainment and education, play and learning. The opposition between entertainment and education is a compelling dichotomy—a pair of material, semiotic, technical genres—that manifests in a wide
range of institutionalized relations. In line with other articles in this collection, I
University of Southern California. This article is excerpted from a dissertation for Stanford University’s Department of Anthropology titled Engineering Play, which benefited from readings
and comments by Eric Klinenberg, Carol Delaney, Joan Fujimura, Shelley Goldman, James
Greeno, Purnima Mankekar, Ray McDermott, Susan Newman, Lucy Suchman, and Sylvia
Yanagisako. The description of the history of the children’s software industry was drawn from
interviews with software developers. I would, in particular, like to acknowledge the help and
insight of Gary Carlson, Colette Michaud, Robert Mohl, and Margo Nanny, all pioneering software designers from the early years of educational multimedia.
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argue that the socially transformative promise of new technologies is elusive in
everyday practice; existing institutional configurations, social alliances, and cultural categories weigh heavily in ongoing contestations over how new technologies
will be designed, deployed, and used. After presenting a historical and conceptual
framework, this article presents the production and marketing context that structures the entertainment genre in children’s software and then looks at instance of
play in the 5thD that mobilize entertainment and fun as social resources.
Engineering Play
Research on children’s media has documented the relation between changing
technologies of cultural production, new children-oriented consumer markets,
and shifting notions of childhood and intergenerational relations. Current discourses and industries surrounding computers and children can be located in this
broader history in the engineering of children’s pleasures and play. A child-centered popular culture has been growing in momentum ever since the establishment of children’s fiction and comic books, and it has expanded into more genres of
toys and mass media. Television was a turning point in creating a direct marketing
channel between cultural producers and children. Stephen Kline (1993, 165)
described how television opened up a new line of communication with children,
making marketing to even young children possible. He described the Mickey
Mouse Club as a turning point in the development of a distinct children’s consumer
culture by focusing on a children’s subculture formed by television (pp. 166-67).
Although this child-centered cultural production was initially still attentive to
parental concerns, it has gradually blossomed into a more explicitly
antiauthoritarian kids’ subculture that pushes back at adult-identified values.
In Sold Separately, Ellen Seiter (1995) contrasted the educational or developmental orientation of toy ads in Parenting magazine with the ecstatic and utopian
world of commercials aimed at children. She described how “commercials seek to
establish children’s snacks and toys as belonging to a public children’s culture, by
removing them from the adult-dominated sphere and presenting these products as
at odds with that world” (p. 117). “Anti-authoritarianism is translated into images
of buffoonish fathers and ridiculed, humiliated teachers. The sense of family
democracy is translated into a world where kids rule, where peer culture is all. Permissiveness becomes instant gratification: the avid pursuit of personal pleasure,
the immediate taste thrill, the party in the bag” (pp. 117-18). In a similar vein, Brian
Sutton-Smith (1997) suggested that the dominant discourse among adults is one of
play as progress or play as fulfilling developmental and learning goals. In contrast,
he sees children as exhibiting a quite different orientation, with play used often as a
form of resistance to adult culture and displaying a fascination with irrational fantasy that he calls phantasmagoria, characterized by pain, gore, sexuality, and violence. Ever since comic books, and culminating in video games, lowbrow and peerfocused children’s culture has been defined as visually rather than textually oriented, relying on fast-paced fantasy and spectacle over realism, subtlety, and
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reflection. Media industries capitalize on the discursive regime that produces play
as a site of authentic childhood agency, in particular, mobilizing phantasmagoria as
a site of regressive, illicit, and oppositional power.
Adult critique of “trashy” children’s entertainment has been a persistent companion to this growth of children’s visual culture. Borrowing from Foucault (1978),
one could consider these adult efforts to manage children’s play as less a repressive
regime that silences dark fantasies than an incitement to discourse that gives voice
and form to categories of “unnatural” and regressive as well as “natural,” wholesome, and productive play. In other words, the educational and entertainment
dimensions of contemporary childhood are twinned cultural constructions, engineered through a range of social, culturally, and technologically contingent discourses and practices. In contrast to a pervasive idea that children are naturally
ludic, particularly in relation to computers, I describe how pleasure and fun are
discursively constructed in the production of children’s software and, in turn, are
mobilized in certain types of practices and local micropolitics between children
and adults in an educational reform setting. A growing discursive, technological,
and capitalist apparatus is producing the “discovery” of natural and authentic children’s play and imagination. When looking at children’s engagement with spectacle
(Debord 1995), there is a level at which it is “just” entertainment, myopic and
inconsequential engagement with spectacular forms. But at another level, these
are politically, socially, and culturally productive acts. This is not simply a matter of
giving voice to children’s inner fantasies but of creating relationships with media
technologies, capitalist networks, and discourses of childhood, a celebration of
childhood imagination in the hands of commerce and state regulation as much as
children.
Digital technologies have appeared in these cultural politics holding out the
enlightened promise of transforming “passive media consumption” into “active
media engagement” and learning. Children’s apparent affinity to computers (see
Buckingham 2000) has also contributed to hopes that the “digital generation”
would overcome the toxic political economies of media industries pedaling products to passive child consumers. Despite the appeal of the discourse of digital revolution, in practice, the distinctions between passive and active, top-down and democratic, entertainment and educational media are not so clear-cut. As new tools for
cultural engagement and everyday meaning production, interactive technologies
lead not to singular effects but to a multitude of uses and appropriations, only some
of which conform to adult hopes for progressive educational play. The more malleable format of digital media technologies has meant that cultural “content” is
substantively created not only through social negotiations over design and marketing but also in the ongoing micropolitics of children, software, and adults manifesting certain aspects of the software in their everyday practice. I turn now to the production context of entertainment idioms in children’s software and then go on to
describe related instances of play.
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Multimedia, Entertainment,
and the Children’s Software Industry
The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the dawn of multimedia, enabled by the
spread of personal computers in the home and the advent of CD-ROM technology.
CD-ROMs, with their superior storage capacity and ease of use (in contrast to having to install data from multiple floppy disks onto a hard drive), meant that highresolution graphics, animation, and sounds could be accessed easily by a personal
computer. Until the late 1980s, Apple IIs and MS-DOS computers provided the
platforms for educational software. After the release of Microsoft Windows in 1983
and the Macintosh in 1984, the tide began to turn toward more graphically
intensive personal computing.
In 1989, the Visual Almanac, a product of the Apple Multimedia Lab, was introduced at the MacWorld tradeshow as a limited-release product to be donated to
educators. Using videodisc, a Macintosh, and Hypercard, the Visual Almanac heralded a new era of multimedia children’s software that would soon shift from videodisc to CD-ROM. Tying together the graphical capabilities of video and the interactive qualities of the personal computer, the Visual Almanac was the first
demonstration of the polished graphical quality in children’s software that has
come to be associated with CD-ROMs. Voyager was the company best known for
making the transition from videodisc to CD-ROM, publishing the first commercial
CD-ROM in 1989 and going on to publish children’s titles derived from the Visual
Almanac. Broderbund was another pioneering corporation in producing multimedia children’s titles, creating the new genre of multimedia picture book with their
Living Books series.
Multimedia united the lowbrow appeal of popular visual culture with the highbrow promise of the personal computer and the educational ideal of child-centered learning. Early developers shared an educational reform orientation, seeking
to enrich children’s learning as well as to liberate it from the dry, serious, and often
alienating cultural idioms of the classroom. Children’s “natural” affinity to new
technology and visual culture became tools toward these ends. While the more
educationally oriented and minimalist platform of the Apple II gave birth to The
Learning Company and Davidson & Associates, founded by former teachers, the
1990s saw a gradual shift toward an entertainment orientation in children’s products as large entertainment and software industries entered the market. Graphics
and visual appeal became central to software design with sophisticated PCs, a
larger market, and growing budgets. As a commercial market, these new ventures
were not under the same constraints as classroom software and were given more
freedom to develop content that appealed directly to children. The shift was from a
pedagogical perspective that sought to elevate and educate children to an entertainment orientation that sought to give voice and shape to children’s pleasures.
Gaming companies like Broderbund were beginning to see children’s software as
an area where they could create graphically exciting and entertaining but familyfriendly products. Maxis’s SimCity became a hit product that spanned the enter-
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tainment and education markets, although it was not originally intended as an educational title. Edutainment was an expanding site of negotiation and struggle
between the interests of educators, entertainers, programmers, artists, and
businesspeople, with the visual culture of entertainment gaining an increasingly
strong voice.
Since the late 1990s, children’s software overall has been characterized by visually polished multimedia titles that can compete with entertainment media in
terms of production value. The market for children’s software is being polarized
between curricular products that are based on a pastiche of school-coded content
and “wholesome entertainment” titles that are marketed as an alternative to video
gaming, providing fun and excitement without the violent content and mindnumbing repetitiveness of action games. At either of these poles, a certain level of
graphical appeal is a basic requirement, but the two kinds of products rely on different selling points, educational- or entertainment-focused. Elsewhere I have
reviewed curricular titles and how children engage with them (Ito 2003). Here I
focus on titles for young children that are more entertainment-oriented.
The ads for the more entertainment-oriented titles portray children as ecstatic
and pleasure-seeking rather than reflective and brainy and childhood as imaginative, pure, and joyous. The ethos is parent-friendly but child-centered, a formula
established by children’s media companies ever since the Mickey Mouse Club
aired on television. Rather than playing on achievement anxiety as curriculum-oriented software does, ads for these kinds of titles play on parents’ desires to indulge
their children’s pleasures and the growing pressure on parents to be in tune with
their children and keep them happy and entertained. The happiness of a child has
become as much a marker of good parenting as achievement and effective
discipline.
Humongous Entertainment puts the child’s pleasure close up, front, and center.
“This is the review we value most,” declares the ad copy above a large photograph
of a beaming child (see Figure 1). Humongous’s adventure game Putt-Putt Joins
the Circus does not make specific curricular claims other than promising an engaging and prosocial orientation. It lists “problem solving, kindness, teamwork, friendship” as its educational content items. The ad mobilizes discourses from the established genre of film reviews by describing how “critics rave” over the software title.
The bottom of the ad lists quotes from various reviews in software magazines. The
last quote from PC Magazine is particularly telling. “Nobody understands kids like
Humongous Entertainment.” The company is positioned as a channel to your children and their pleasures, the authentic voice of childhood.
Figure 2 features the adorably caped hero, Sam, and describes the software as
“an interactive animated adventure.” The back of the box does list educational content but in a small box that is visually de-centered from the portions describing the
excitement and adventure that the title promises. The list of “critical thinking,
problem-solving skills, memory skills, mental mapping and spatial relations skills”
does not make any curricular claims and stresses the “creative and flexible” nature
of the software and “the power of a child’s imagination.” “Feature-film quality animation” and “original music” are central selling points for the title. It can compete
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FIGURE 1
ADVERTISEMENT FOR PUTT-PUTT
with television and videos for your child’s attention, and it still has some educational value. The “natural” imaginations and creativity of children achieve full
expression through the mediation of sophisticated media technologies and an
immense apparatus of image production.
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FIGURE 2
BOX ART FOR PAJAMA SAM 2
SOURCE: Pajama Sam® artwork courtesy of Infogrames Interactive, Inc. © 2002 Humongous
Entertainment, a division of Infogrames, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
“Prepare to get blown away!!” screams the copy above a wide-eyed boy, dangling
off the edge of his PC in cliff-hanging mode in another ad. “The action in Disney’s
CD-ROM games is so awesome, your kids are gonna freak (and that’s a good thing).
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So hold on tight and check out the action this holiday!” As far as wild fantasy goes,
these products are relatively tame, based on the usual Disney formulas of fastpaced adventure and gore-free violence. Yet the pitch is to market the action and
“freaky” aspects of the software as its primary appeal. Although still addressing the
parent, the ad copy makes use of children’s language, hailing the hip parent, in
touch with children’s culture and desires. The boy is dressed in baggy skate-punk
shorts and trendy sneakers and has spiked hair with blond highlights. In this ad, the
vernaculars of children’s peer and popular cultures are mobilized to enlist the progressive parent and position Disney as the voice of children.
These more entertainment-oriented titles use the same visual elements as curricular titles such as Reader Rabbit and Jump Start. Both edutainment and entertainment titles share the same stylistic genre, and many titles are not clearly categorized as one or the other. They occupy the same shelves at retailers and are oriented
to a similar demographic of middle- and upper-middle-class families but are keyed
somewhat toward the more progressive and permissive parent. What distinguishes
entertainment as a genre is the orientation toward a more indulgent and repetitious play orientation in contrast to a competitive and linear progress orientation.
Edutainment titles, particularly those that make curricular claims, are generally
linear and make much of achieving certain levels and scores. By contrast, entertainment software and elements are exploratory, often repetitive, and generally
open-ended. With this latter genre, what gets packaged and marketed is not
achievement but fun, exploration, and imagination. These titles are also distinguished from the action entertainment titles marketed primarily toward teens and
adults. In contrast to the darker hues and often frightening characters adorning the
boxes of these titles, entertainment software for younger children is clearly coded
as a separate market with brighter colors and smiling, wide-eyed characters like
Pajama Sam. The packaging and marketing of these titles gives clues as to the
underlying cultural logics animating the software. I turn now to the contexts of play
to explore how these logics unfold in practice.
The Consumption Setting:
Software and Activity in the 5thD
My research on play with children’s software was conducted as part of a threeyear, collaborative ethnographic evaluation effort examining the 5thD reform
effort, in which researchers analyzed field notes and videotape from three 5thD
clubs. The 5thD is an activity system where elementary-aged children and undergraduates from a local university come together to play with educational software
in an after-school setting. The clubs are located at community institutions such as
Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs, schools, or libraries and vary considerably depending on the
local context and institution. What is common across the settings is a commitment
to a collaborative and child-centered approach to learning, the nonhierarchical
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mixing of participants of different ages, and the use of personal computers running
software designed for children.
When I was completing my fieldwork at the 5thD at the end of the 1990s, CDROM games and a more entertainment-oriented genre of products were making
their appearance at the clubs. Mainstream licenses such as Lego, Barbie, and Disney were yet to arrive at the children’s software scene, so I was not able to see titles
such as these in my play settings. We were just beginning to see the emergence of
licensing arrangement and tie-ins with television and other media and more and
more titles with CD-ROM quality production value. One of the early titles that
relied on entertainment vernaculars and tie-ins with other media (such as television and books) was the Magic School Bus series of CD-ROMs. One title in this
series, The Magic School Bus Explores the Human Body (MSBHB) was in frequent
use in the 5thD during my period of observation. This software was considered
graphically cutting-edge at the time, with beautiful animations and sophisticated
use of sound. It is based on a scenario of traveling through the human body in a tiny
school bus. The player can visit twelve parts of the body, such as the liver, lungs,
esophagus, stomach, or intestines. The teacher, Ms. Frizzle, and her magic bus
invert the power dynamics of the traditional classroom. The kids often appear as
the more levelheaded and calmer characters, struggling to keep up with their charismatic leader. Like the entertainment industry content creators, Ms. Frizzle
stands in for the liberated adult that is in touch with her uninhibited, playful, inner
child. Rather than being presented in the linear and progressive logic of classroom
curriculum, kids learn about subjects like the human body, space, and geology
through a chaotic and dizzying set of encounters where the characters in the story
careen from one scene to another.
Among the games that I observed in the 5thD, MSBHB most clearly represented the shift toward entertainment idioms in children’s software, but many
other titles also incorporated elements of entertainment-oriented visual culture.
SimCity 2000, introduced early on in the research, is a cognitively challenging
authoring tool, embedded in a graphically stunning multimedia package. The goal
of the game is to create and administer a virtual city that grows and evolves based
on player inputs. Another multimedia title that captured the attentions of children
at the 5thD was DinoPark Tycoon, which allowed players to similarly create and
administer a virtual dinosaur theme park. In what follows, I present examples of
play with these three pieces of software, examining engagement with visual, auditory, and interactional special effects and the ways in which entertainment idioms
were mobilized as relational and political resources in the 5thD.
Spectacle and Special Effect
Visual effects
The tapes of kids’ game play with graphically advanced games is continuously
punctuated by their notice of on-screen eye candy, an occasional “cool” or “oooh,”
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that testifies to their appreciation of visual aesthetics of one kind or another. One
undergraduate describes a boy playing SimCity 2000 for the first time. “Every time
he placed a building on the screen, he exclaimed ‘Cool!’ because the graphics were
very complex and vivid.” With a game like MSBHB, attention-grabbing graphics
are central to the game’s appeal, since the game relies on an exploratory mode of
interaction rather than one guided by a strong narrative story line or competitive
goal orientation. The animations that form the transitions between the different
parts of the body often draw appreciative “EEEW”s from both undergraduate and
kid viewers as they watch the tiny bus drop into a puddle of stomach goo or fly down
a sticky esophagus. “This is the fun part. This is fun. Watch,” insists one kid as he
initiates the opening animation. An undergraduate describes how a girl was “really
excited” about showing her one small animation in MSBHB.
The screen in which one designs a face to go on the driver’s license in MSBHB
invites many minutes of scrolling through the different options for facial features
and discussion of what is a cool or uncool feature. When multiple kids are engaging
with the game, there will invariably be extended discussion about and exploration
of different visual features in the driver’s license. For example, when two boys are
working together on a game, they argue about each facial feature, such as the eyes
and eyewear or skin color. Features such as the driver’s license, animations in the
different scenes, or different controls in the cockpit provide an ongoing stream of
visual effects that are often irrelevant to the educational content of the game but
provide eye-catching distractions that keep the kids engaged. MSBHB incorporates visually spectacular features that are ends in themselves for game consumers,
regardless of the relevance for the central play action. With MSBHB, undergraduate tutors constantly struggle to get kids to engage with the academic content of the
game rather than these visual features. The tension between the spectacular features of the game and the educational goal of learning about the functions of the
human body manifest as a tension between adult and child agendas of play.
Although SimCity 2000 did not have the same appeal to the grotesque as
MSBHB, it also invited pleasure in the visually spectacular and a similar set of social
negotiations between adult learning goals and spectacular pleasures.
1. Jimmy (J): I want to do a highway. (Selects highway tool.) How do I do a highway? Okay.
(Moves cursor around.) I’ll do a highway right here.
2. Holly (H): Right there? I think you should have it . . . hmm . . . trying to think where a good
place for it . . .
3. J: Right here? Here? (Moves cursor around.) Here? (Looks at H.)
4. H: Sure. What is that place there, residential?
5. J: (Budget window comes up and Jimmy dismisses it.) Yeah. I’m going to bulldoze a
skyrise here. (Selects bulldozer tool and destroys building.) OK. (Looks at H.) Ummm!
OK, wait, OK. Should I do it right here?
6. H: Sure, that might work . . . that way. Mmmm. You can have it . . .
7. J: (Builds highway around city.) I wonder if you can make them turn. (Builds highway
curving around one corner.) Yeah, okay.
8. H: You remember, you want the highway to be . . . faster than just getting on regular
streets. So maybe you should have it go through some parts.
9. J: (Dismisses budget. Points to screen.) That’s cool! (Inaudible.) I can make it above?
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10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
H: Above some places, I think. I don’t know if they’d let you, maybe not.
J: (Moves cursor over large skyscraper.) That’s so cool!
H: Is that a high rise?
J: Yeah. I love them.
H: Is it constantly changing, the city? Is it like . . .
J: (Builds complicated highway intersection. Looks at H.)
H: (Laughs.)
J: So cool! (Builds more highway grids in area, creating a complex overlap of four
intersections.)
H: My gosh, you’re going to have those poor drivers going around in circles.
J: I’m going to erase that all. I don’t like that, OK. (Bulldozes highway system and blows up
a building in process.) Ohhh . . .
H: Did you just blow up something else?
J: Yeah. (Laughs.)
H: (Laughs.)
J: I’m going to start a new city. I don’t understand this one. I’m going to start with highways. (Quits without saving city.)
One sequence during a child’s (Jimmy) play with an undergraduate (Holly) is
punctuated by moments of engagement with the interface as visual special effect.
At a certain point in the game, as his city grows, Jimmy attempts to build highways.
“I want to do a highway,” he declares, selecting the highway tool. “How do I do a
highway?” (line 1). Moving his cursor around, he discusses with Holly where he
might put the highway, settling on an area near a commercial district (line 3). He
bulldozes to make way for the highway and then builds it around one edge of the
city, discovering, at a certain point, that he can make it curve around the corner if
he clicks on blocks perpendicular to one another (lines 5-7). As he builds his highway in the foreground, he notices that it is elevated above the level of the regular
roadways. “That’s cool!” he exclaims. “I can make it above?” (line 9). Holly speculates on whether they can build the highway through the city, and then Jimmy
points with his cursor to a tall, blue and white skyscraper: “That’s so cool!” (lines 1011). Holly asks, “Is that a high-rise?” (line 12). “Yeah,” Jimmy answers. “I love
them,” he declares emphatically (line 13). Jimmy goes on to continue his highway
and then discovers that if he makes overlapping segments, they result in a
cloverleaf. He looks over at Holly with delight when this happens, and she laughs.
“So cool!” he exclaims, building further overlapping segments that result in a
twisted quadruple cloverleaf (lines 15-17). “My gosh,” says Holly, “you’re going to
have those poor drivers going around in circles” (line 18). Jimmy then bulldozes the
whole cloverleaf pattern, blowing up a large building in the process, and then
declares that he is going to start a new city (line 23). He closes his city without
saving it.
While this sequence begins with certain accountabilities to building a transportation system, by the end Jimmy has wasted thousands of dollars on a highway to
nowhere, blown up a building, and trashed his city. Holly draws him back into the
accountabilities of building a well-functioning city by pointing out that the highway
cloverleaf might look cool but is not going to work very well. Her intervention is
subtle, but it has the effect of calling him away from spectacular engagement to the
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more functional accountabilities of the game. Jimmy responds to her suggestion by
trying to fix the highway but eventually decides to start over since he has wasted too
much money on playing with the highway as special effect. He apparently has few
attachments to the city that he has worked on for more than thirty minutes and, in
fact, replicates a pattern of building up cities to a point of difficulty and then getting
rid of them, not bothering to save or follow up on his work.
Interactional and Auditory Special Effects
Unlike the media such as film and television that were the targets of Debord’s
(1995) critique of spectacle and passive consumption, interactive media are predicated on the active engagement of the consumer. This interactivity, rather than
negating the spectacular qualities of the medium, actually serves to create a new
genre of special effect, an experience of being able to control and manipulate the
production of the effect. While visual effects and animations are generally predicated on a somewhat distanced position of spectatorship, interactive effects often
foreground auditory effects over visual ones. Most games have a soundtrack, which
plays repeatedly in the background and is rarely noted by a player, contrasting with
sound as a special effect. A sound effect is a result of a particular action and, when
initiated by the player, is often the occasion for delight and repeated activation.
One example of engagement with an interactive special effect is with an elevenyear-old, Dean, who is building a city with an undergraduate who is an expert at the
game. As he is playing with the budget window, he discovers that increasing taxes
causes the sim-citizens to boo and lowering them causes them to cheer. He takes
some time out from administering the city to play with this auditory effect (lines 1,
5) before he is called back to his sim-mayor subjectivity by the undergraduate (lines
4, 6) (brackets signify overlapping talk).
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Dean (D): (Starts bumping up the property tax, big grin.)
Undergraduate (UG): What are you doing? No, no, no.
D: No, I just [want to see . . . ]
UG: [Now,] now—[listen].
D:(Bumps down the property taxes, making the citizens cheer.) [Yeeeee]eaaah. [I just
want to make them happy.]
6. UG: [The best way to make money]—You want to increase your population, right? So you
lay down the green, right? So if you put all, make all this all green, then, ahh, your population will increase and then you could raise taxes and then you could get up to your five
thousand mark.
7. D: Ohh OK. (Closes budget window.)
Dean’s apparent pleasure in this interaction can be understood as a kind of computer holding power (Turkle 1984) based on the logic of the interactive special
effect. It is the combination of direct interactional engagement with the machine
and a unique responsiveness that creates a brief but tight interactional coupling
between Dean and SimCity 2000. This kind of interactional pleasure occurred
numerous times during my observations of kids’ play but was only initiated by the
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children who were controlling the mouse. While surface readings of the interface
can invite collaborative interpersonal interpretation, as in the sequence with
Jimmy and Holly, the interactive special effect is somewhat antisocial, relying on a
tight interactional coupling with human and machine, often at the expense of other
interlocutors. As in most examples of this sort, the undergraduate calls him back to
the more functional and progress-oriented accountabilities of game play. This
undergraduate is more heavy-handed than the previous example with Holly, insisting that the kid pay attention: “No, no, no . . . now, now, listen. The best way to make
money—you want to increase your population, right?”
Television was a turning point in creating a
direct marketing channel between cultural|
producers and children.
Another instance of play, with DinoPark Tycoon, exhibits similar dynamics of
interactional special effects. At the “Dino Diner” the player is able to purchase
items from a menu as feed for the park’s dinosaurs. One of the features of this
screen is that there is a fly that buzzes around the menu, and if it lands on the menu,
and a page is turned, the fly is crushed, emitting a squishing sound, and the player,
upon flipping back to the page, sees a bloody smudge. In instance after instance of
play with DinoPark Tycoon, kids play repeatedly with this game feature. In this day
of Ian’s play, almost every time he visits the Dino Diner, he spends time smashing
flies:
1. Ian (I): (Turns a page, and squishing sound results.) Yeah, I just crunched some more.
Yeah, look at all them. They’re so dead (laughing). This is rad. Oh, come on fly, I want you
to come down here. Come down here puppy. Come to papa. Crunch! (Turns page, and
laughs.)
2. Adult (A): That’s nasty.
3. I: (Turns page.) Crunchie, crunchie, crunchie. (Turns page.) I crunched him! I crunched
him! (Turns page.) I’m so mean. I want to go check out my dino. (Leaves Dino Diner.)
As with the case with Dean, this interaction is relatively brief and clearly peripheral
to the primary goals of the game, which are to build and administer the virtual
theme park. Ian takes some time out to enjoy the interactional special effect (lines
1-2) but returns fairly quickly to the task at hand, checking up on his dinosaur (line
3).
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One area of MSBHB, involving a simple painting program, is particularly notable as an embodiment of the logic of the interactive special effect. Clicking on the
drawing pad of one of the characters calls forth a screen with a canvas and various
tools, shaped like body parts, along the side. After selecting a body part, the player
can squirt, splat, or stamp blobs and shapes onto the canvas, accompanied by
appropriately gross bodily noises appropriate to the body part. Often to the dismay
of the accompanying undergraduate, kids will spend excruciatingly long minutes
repeatedly squirting juices from the stomach or emitting a cacophony of farting
noises from the tongue tool. One undergraduate notes, after playing with a group
of girls, “Each different shape or design made its own unique sound. I think the
kids get a much better kick out of the sound than anything else. And they would
laugh and laugh when they found the sound they liked best.”
In another instance of play with this program, an undergraduate is working with
a boy who systematically and gleefully goes through each tool, repeatedly emitting
gross sounds. The undergraduate participates happily in this, but she eventually
suggests that they return to the main areas of the game. The boy than suggests that
she is discouraging him from playing with gross sounds and decides that he wants
to stop playing rather than return to the more educational sections of the game.
The undergraduate has actually been remarkably patient through an extended
sequence of play with each drawing tool, suggesting on various occasions that he
try one or another tool. Yet the boy insists that he knows why she suggests that he
move on, “ ’Cause you didn’t like the sounds.” In this case, the boy is more active
than the undergraduate in constructing the opposition between the adult stance
and kid stance with respect to the orientation to gross special effects.
Interactional special effects are similar to the manipulations that are possible
with materials such as clay and finger paints but are mediated by a computational
artifact that uniquely amplifies and embellishes the actions of the user. Like the
visual special effects described earlier, these interactional and auditory effects are
not part of a broader game goal structure but are rather engaged in for momentary
and aesthetic pleasure. These are not the dominant modes of engagement in play
with children’s software, but they are small, ongoing breaks in the narrative trajectories of multimedia titles. They are also sites of micropolitical resistance to the
progress-oriented goals and adult values that seek to limit violent and grotesque
spectacles in an educational setting like the 5thD.
Mobilizing Fun: The Micropolitics of Pleasure
Engagements with special effects are not merely an atomized process of individual engagement. They are part of the political economy of cool, a central source of
cultural capital in kids’ peer relations. Spectacle and fun are mobilized as devices to
enlist other kids and to demonstrate style and status, as well as a way of demarcating a kid-centered space that is opposed to the progress goals of adults. A search for
all instances of the word fun in the video transcript record revealed many instances
of funny but relatively few instances of children describing something as fun. More
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often, it got used in questions by adults querying whether a child was engaged: “Are
you having fun?” “Is this a fun game?” Although adults generally used the term to
describe moments when kids were actively engaged, kids tended to use the term to
refer to activity that was spectacular in nature, rather than educational or functional. In other words, adults (at least in this progressive educational setting) tend
to construct play and fun in relation to developmental goals and engagement,
whereas kids see it as something keyed to particular visual and entertainmentoriented idioms.
In the 5thD, an orientation to fun is actively encouraged but ultimately in the
service of a reformist educational project. Children mobilize fun as a way of indicating authentic engagement, and fun is celebrated in the 5thD to the extent that it
happens in the context of a prosocial learning task. Entertainment is clearly not a
monolithic category within mass media forms. While some entertainment idioms
are legitimized within the 5thD project, action gaming idioms are explicitly
excluded as too patently noneducational. Action entertainment idioms are constantly lurking in the ambient culture that kids participate in. These cultural elements are largely excluded from the 5thD through the selection of nonviolent
games and persistent adult surveillance, but they are still present. Due to their illegitimate status in the 5thD, they become a resource for subverting dominant (educational) codes in this local context. I close this article with a case of play with
SimCity 2000 that exhibits this complicated relational dynamic between
educational and entertainment idioms.
One day of Ian’s play with SimCity 2000, captured on video, is a rare case in
which action entertainment appears as a social resource in the 5thD, and it enables
one to see the tensions around this cultural domain as it appears in an informal
learning setting of this sort. The scene opens with Ian sitting in front of the computer, interacting with a well-developed city marked by an enormous airport and
waterfalls stacked in a pyramid formation. Another boy is sitting next to him,
observing his play and making occasional suggestions; and there is an audience of
other club participants, including the videotaper, undergraduates, and other kids
and adults walking in and out of the scene. He busily makes a railroad system, water
pipes, buildings, and a power plant and worries about such things as whether his
people are getting enough water or whether power plants need to be replaced.
Soon, the director of the club appears and tries to get Ian to teach others how to
play (line 1), but Ian deftly deflects this accountability to the club norm of collaborative learning, with the support of another kid (line 2):
1. Site director (D): Because you’re not going to be sitting here all day just doing it by yourself. So other people watch you. It’s not fair to other people.
2. Mark, a younger boy (M): No, we, we, we, we’re not supposed to be able to play. We’re not
supposed to play.
3. D: Why aren’t you supposed to play?
4. Ian (I): They’re not.
5. M: If you’re not a Young Wizard’s you can’t play this.
6. D: But if you’re a Young Wizard’s Assistant and you’re not teaching anybody else the game
then you can’t play it either.
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7.
8.
9.
10.
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M: He’s teaching me.
I: (Unintelligible) said I could.
D: OK good, all right, check it out then.
I: Anybody ask me any questions.
Ian’s tactic is momentarily successful; he passes as a teacher and resumes his
game play. After about twenty minutes, however, he is interrupted by the director
of the club again and asked to teach a new undergraduate how to play the game.
“I’m not kidding either,” the director stresses, “her grade depends on what you
teach her, so she’d better do a good job, okay?” After a few moments, Mark suggests, “Show her a disaster. Do an airplane crash.” Ian responds with enthusiasm,
saves his city, and announces, “Ha ha ha disaster time!!”
Edutainment titles, particularly those that make
curricular claims, are generally linear and
make much of achieving certain levels and
scores. By contrast, entertainment software and
elements are exploratory, often repetitive, and
generally open-ended.
In this sequence of activity, Ian finds himself in the center of a series of interventions and a great deal of social attention, positioned as an expert and asked to teach
both an undergraduate and a large audience of other kids about the game. The
videotaper and the site director have already intervened a number of times to orient him to his community role as game expert and teacher. His companion is the
first to suggest doing a disaster, and he takes it up with a characteristic virtuosity
and antiauthoritarianism. Disaster time involves an escalating series of special
effects in which the city is first invaded by a space alien, then flooded, set on fire,
and subjected to an earthquake and plane crashes. The undergraduate remains
pleasant and amused. The videotaper, a longtime participant at the club, is the first
to intervene, addressing the undergraduate first. “So, have you figured out how to
play?” And then she turns to Ian. “Remember Ian, that Anne has to . . . Ian?!” The
videotaper and the undergraduate’s protests punctuate this instance of play, and
though they do not specifically deny the appeal of destruction, they are clearly trying to redirect the activity. They are overpowered as Mark cheers Ian on and they
jointly delight in the spectacles of destruction. “Do another airplane crash!”
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“Destroy it.” Another boy joins the spectacle. “Please do a fire engine.” “Put more
fire. Fire’s cool.” “Just burn it all. Burn it. Burn it. Just burn it. Burn it. Burn it. You
need more fire, more fire.” The site director appears again. “Is he teaching you how
to be a constructive citizen?” he jokes. “Another five minutes, and then put Anne
on and see what she can do.” “Do riots,” the third boy continues, not responding to
the director’s comment.
[I]nteractional and auditory effects are not
part of a broader game goal structure but
are rather engaged in for momentary
and aesthetic pleasure.
After the city is in flames, Ian begins to build large buildings within burning
areas to induce more and more spectacular explosions. He turns from blowing up
the most expensive of the possible buildings to blowing up colleges, fusion plants,
gas power plants, and microwave power plants. His final achievement is to blow up
a row of fusion plants lined up in domino formation. “Ian, time, put Anne in there,”
insists the site director at the conclusion of this performance. “He’s into mass
destruction at the moment,” says Anne, worried. The director assures her, “Yeah,
but these guys know a lot about the game.” Then he turns to Ian. “I don’t want to
turn the machine off on you. Be nice to Anne and give her a turn.” That is enough of
a credible threat for Ian to start a new city for Anne. Here I would like to point to
the role of action entertainment idioms in enlisting an audience of other boys and
the role of computational media in enabling a virtuosity of the spectacular in the
hands of a player. The adults at the club are in the difficult position of trying to validate Ian’s technical knowledge but not wanting the destructive scenario to continue. Ian is quite aware of the boundaries of participation in the 5thD and plays to
his moment in the spotlight until he is on the verge of disciplinary action. Far from
being involved in a regressive and antisocial act, Ian is engaging in a process of
enlisting a large and engaged audience in a shared spectacle of technical virtuosity.
The unique context of the 5thD enables this to play out in a way that is negotiated
rather than either univocally repressive or celebratory; Ian retains his status as
game expert and teacher while enlisting the agendas and interests of both adults
and kids at the site.
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Conclusions
If one resists the impulse to call Ian’s activity antisocial, then one is beginning to
query the social functions of dysfunctional activity and a certain cultural paradox.
While competitive achievement that individuates learning and produces class distinction is considered prosocial and developmentally correct, hedonistic play that
creates peer solidarity in relation to consumer culture is considered antisocial and
regressive, an attention deficit to the progress goals of certain authoritative institutions. Sutton-Smith (1997) described this tension in terms of private and public
transcripts of childhood:
The adult public transcript is to make children progress, the adult private transcript is to
deny their sexual and aggressive impulses; the child public transcript is to be successful as
family members and school children, and their private transcript is their play life, in which
they can express both their hidden identity and their resentment of being a captive population. (P. 123)
The 5thD is a site that self-consciously works to reengineer this cultural logic by
accommodating both child and adult agendas and creating opportunities for crossgenerational negotiation and shared discourse. When one adds media industries
and high technology to the relational mix, the equation becomes more complicated. Far from being an unmediated voice of a natural childhood pleasure principle, phantasmagoria and spectacle are distributed, engineered social productions
that unite children and media industries. They are also sites of virtuosity,
connoisseurship, and status negotiation among children as well as between children and adults. What constitutes an authoritative institution is a contingent effect
of local micropolitics, where pop culture identification confers status in children’s
status hierarchies and “fun” gets mobilized vis-à-vis adults as an authenticating
trope of a “natural” childlike pleasure principal. This is not a simple story of adult
repression of authentic childhood impulses but is a distributed social field that produces the opposition between childhood pleasure and adult achievement norms as
a contingent cultural effect, subject to local reshapings as in the 5thD.
The spectacular dimensions of new media deserve special mention as unique
materializations of kids’ popular entertainment. The atomized consciousness of a
player engaging with a special effect is a small moment attached to a large
sociotechnical apparatus. Whether in movies or computer games, special effects
are what drive budgets and bring in large audiences. This is indicative of a particular kind of industry maturation, where a growing consumer base supports larger
production budgets but also increases investor risk, driving the push toward surehit products, sequels, formulaic content, and guaranteed crowd pleasers. Special
effects also weed out independent developers who do not have the budgets to compete in production value. Entertainment industries participate in the production
of institutionalized genres that are packaged and stereotyped into certain formulas
that kids recognize and identify with as a libratory and authentic kids’ culture. In
the titles I reviewed, these appeared as gross bodily noises, explosions, hyperbole,
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and increasingly established licensed characters. This “junk culture” is a particular
vernacular that cross-cuts media and commodity types, making its way into snack
foods, television, movies, school supplies, and interactive multimedia. Just as this
junk culture is a site of opposition between adults and kids, entertainment elements in children’s software become opportunities for kids to resist adult learning
goals in the 5thD and elsewhere.
Although the founders of the children’s software industry were looking for a radical break from the existing logics of both entertainment and education, when children’s software entered the political and economic mainstream, industrials began
reproducing familiar vernaculars that played to mainstream retailing and kids
mobilized these new cultural resources in ways that fit their local peer agendas and
intergenerational negotiations. Technology is produced through and productive of
structured social and cultural contexts, and any accompanying social change needs
to take this as a starting point. Multimedia and interactive media are not inherently
“fun” or “educational” but take on these characteristics through a highly distributed social, technical, and cultural apparatus. This research was conducted before
the spread of broadband Internet, file sharing, online software distribution, and
widespread game hacking and remix. As alternative models for software production and distribution take hold, we may find that the net is trafficking in forms of
children’s software that may truly redefine some of the cultural logics of contemporary childhood that were established in the television era. Whatever change happens, it will not be an effect of factors inherent in a particular technology but of a
whole complex of discursive, social, political, and economic alignments that link
sites of production, distribution, marketing, and consumption.
References
Buckingham, David. 2000. After the death of childhood: Growing up in the age of electronic media. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
Cole, Michael. 1997. Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Debord, Guy. 1995. Society of the spectacle. Detroit, MI: Black & Red.
Foucault, Michel. 1978. The history of sexuality: An introduction. Vol. 1. Trans. R. Hurley. New York: Vintage
Books.
Ito, Mizuko. 2003. Engineering play: Children’s software and the productions of everyday life. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press.
Kline, Stephen. 1993. Out of the garden: Toys and children’s culture in the age of TV marketing. New York:
Verso.
Seiter, Ellen. 1995. Sold separately: Parents and children in consumer culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press.
Sutton-Smith, Brian. 1997. The ambiguity of play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Turkle, Sherry. 1984. The second self: Computers and the human spirit. New York: Touchstone.
Vasquez, Olga A., Lucinda Pease-Alvarez, and Sheila M. Shannon. 1994. Pushing boundaries: Language and
culture in a Mexicano community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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NARRATIVE CONSTRUCTION AS PLAY
Brenda Laurel, Ph. D.
Chair, Graduate Media Design Program
Art Center College of Design
Narrative construction as a kind of play highly underrated in the design of
interactive media. I began to uncover evidence of this fact during my dissertation
research. That quest eventuated in my first book, Computers as Theatre
(Addison-Wesley, 1991). I learned more about the powers of narrative
construction from the research on gender and play that I conducted during 199296 at Interval Research.
In academic taxonomies of play, "constructive play" is most often framed as play
that utilizes objects (real or virtual) to construct other objects, mechanisms or
environments. When defined in this way, constructive play is predominately
engaged in by boys. But when you include stories as something that may be
constructed, you find that girls engage in constructive play with at least the same
frequency and relish.
My research at Interval led to the founding of Purple Moon (a transmedia
company for girls) in 1996. As we set about to discover or invent computer
games that would be attractive to girls, we were tempted at first to look at what
girls thought of existing games. We did explore that path, but it gave us limited
results simply because most girls were not playing computer games at the time
and there were few examples of games that they really liked (Nintendo's Mario
games and Ecco the Dolphin were the favorites). By far the more fruitful research
approach was our exploration of how girls play in general. Through interviews
with over 1000 children, our research indicated that narrative construction was
the largest category of play for girls ages 8-12. Stories were made up about
existing narratives or from whole cloth. Stories could be told, written, drawn,
theatrically performed or improvised. How can this finding be translated into
computer-based game-play?
First and foremost, materials for narrative construction take the form of
characters - characters that are drawn with enough depth and potential to
engage the player in imaginative construction of their motivations and thought
processes. In other words, players should be enticed and enabled to create the
backstory for characters that appear in the action of the game. During the course
of our research, we queried girls about games that were popular at the time. In
the context of the videogame X-Men, one subject (a 12-year-old girl) complained
that "these characters are so boring you can't even make up stories about them."
Narrative Construction as Play
copyright © 2004 by Brenda Laurel
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The history of the audience for the X-Men property is relevant in this context. As
a comic book series, the characters had plenty of narrative potential, but the
medium of comic books was culturally gendered. As a result, girls were not a
significant audience for the property. In its videogame incarnation, X-Men
characters were stripped of most of their narrative qualities and placed in a flat
action context. Both the game genre and the character construction discouraged
female participation. But when the property was transformed into a film, the
characters and backstory elements were plumped up to the point that girls
formed a significant segment of the audience and fan community.
A similar story can be told about the Star Trek franchise. Almost from the
beginning, females dominated the fan community, creating fanzines and slash
videos galore (see Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture
by Henry Jenkins, Routledge, 1992). Beginning as a geek-centric TV series that
was explicitly pitched to males, Star Trek garnered a passionate female following
primarily because of its social content. Through the lives of the various feature
films and follow-on series as well as the hundreds of paperback books,
Paramount slowly but surely recognized and responded to the gender makeup of
its audience by morphing the genre from science fiction adventure to a soap
opera in space. That is not a slam - as a die-hard Star Trek fan myself, I have
appreciated the transition toward stories that have more to do with characters
and relationships than dogfights in space. As Jenkins' analysis shows, the heart
of fan culture is the ability to relate to, appropriate, and repurpose characters and
story materials in order to create personal meaning. Fan behavior provides an
excellent example of narrative construction as play.
[an image of Spock and Kirk from old Star Trek could be juxtaposed with an
image involving Deanna Troi from The Next Generation or Captain Janeway from
Voyager - permission from Paramount would be needed]
In the Purple Moon products (the Rockett and Secret Paths series of games), we
concentrated on creating affordances for narrative play. We developed
characters based on research of girls' descriptions of their own friends and foes,
finding reliable patterns in our data that corresponded to character types. We
modeled affiliation and exclusionary behavior and other social dynamics of our
audiences in the structure of the game. Our research with our audience led us to
develop a gameplay pattern we called "emotional navigation," where choices
were made by the player in emotional rather than operational terms.
To encourage backstory creation, we populated the games with clues about the
characters' inner lives, family situations, and histories by exposing journals,
collections, and flashbacks. We gave our audience a publishing venue for their
backstory constructions on our website. Girls played with the characters through
contributions to the "school" newspaper, yearbook, journals, and bulletin boards.
We learned Henry Jenkins' lessons well and made an environment that was all
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about supporting the sorts of things that fan communities do. The result was a
site that beat disney.com for several months running in terms of both unique
users and dwell-time per log-in. Although the site was closed down by Mattel
after their acquisition of the company in 1999, I still get email every week or so
from a fan who wants to know when the site will come up again. Boy, did Mattel
miss the boat.
With the emergence of massively multiplayer online games like Ultima Online
and Everquest we begin to recognize the construction of characters, habitats,
social relationships and economies as flavors of constructive play. These play
patterns have made girls and women a reliable segment of players in the
adventure and role-playing genres from the beginning of the computer game era.
It is this sort of constructive play that invites women and girls to join the
computer-game party. Will Wright's recognition of these important play patterns
has resulted in a 65% female player demographic for Sims Online. As Will
describes in his interview in Design Research: Methods and Perspectives (B.
Laurel, Ed., MIT Press 2004), aggressively incorporating female-inclusive play
patterns has led to better game experiences for players in general.
Of course, games are not the only computer-based spaces in which narrative
construction occurs! All but the most procedural activities can be seen to have a
narrative arc. To re-cast the central observation of Computers as Theatre, good
experience design provides affordances for narrative construction of a particular
type: a story of a successful or delightful action with a beginning, middle and end,
where the interactor is typically the central character.
In order to construct a good narrative about an interactive experience, causes
and effects cannot be opaque. This does not mean that the process needs to be
"transparent" in the sense of faithfully representing the operations of an
application or a game; it may simply mean that serviceable representations of
those operations are available. Nor does it mean that every story must be a
success story; the story of a Google search that yields bizarre results can be a
comic masterpiece. But it's only funny, like the man slipping on the banana, if no
real damage or injury results. The sense of play, like comedy, depends upon the
absence of potential harm.
Narrative construction is a wonderful research tool and benchmark as well. I was
recently involved in consulting for a group that is designing a middle-school
science curriculum in an online environment. They asked me if I could point to
gameplay patterns that would enhance a student's enjoyment of online science
activities. I suggested that they take a step back and ask students to tell them
stories about their most delightful moments in learning about science. Forcing a
gameplay pattern into an educational activity is dicey precisely because the
student / player knows that there is real risk involved - risk of failure. Modeling a
happy experience with science learning takes the student away from the world of
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tests and grades and back into the world of wonder and discovery. Designing
online experiences that would prompt students to construct narratives filled with
delight would be a mark of real design success.
As Mike Mateas and Phoebe Sengers point out in their book Narrative
Intelligence (John Benjamins, 2003), we understand the world largely through
narrative construction. Researchers from Roger Shank to Jerome Bruner support
this view. Story-making is a pleasurable activity because in a very deep way, we
look at the world with storytelling brains. The designer of interactive systems
should take our narrative predisposition into account in the same way that the
designer of physical tools makes affordances for our opposable thumbs.
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New World
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Kids
The
Parents’ Guide
to Creative
Thinking
work in progress — discussion draft — not for distribution— © Susan Russell Marcus, 2005
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New World Kids: The Parents’ Guide to Creative Thinking
© Susan Russell Marcus 2005
work in progress — discussion draft — not for distribution — © Susan Russell Marcus, 2005
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Contents
Introduction
• Kids and the Future
• What We Need vs. What We’re Doing
• Rethink the Box
• It’s Where Innovation Begins
• This Is Where Parents Come In
Part 1. Creativity in Pieces
• Creativity Deconstructed
• 1. Imagination: the Source
• 2. The Sensory Alphabet: the Foundation
• How Do You See Beyond the Obvious?
• The DNA of “Stuff”
• The Sensory Alphabet: an Overview
• Play: the Heart of Creativity
• Media: Idea to Form
• Creative Thinking: the Process
• Think Like a Pro
• Individuality: Turbo-charging the Process
• Assessing Strengths
Part 2. Ideas in Motion
• Creating Everyday
• (Fun)damental Tips for Parents
• Reflecting and Evolving
Part 3. Educate the Senses
• Introducing the Alphabet
• Rhythm
• Space
• Light
• Color
• Sound
• Line
• Movement
• Shape
• Texture
• Sensing: Back to the Future
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Introduction (lite)
The new conditions demand a new way of thinking.
The new thinking demands new forms of expression.
The new expression generates new conditions.
- Bruce Mau
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Kids and the Future
We all want the best for our kids. We want to see them grow and bloom and become successful
adults in the world. But when you look at your two year old (or four or eight year old) today,
it’s hard to imagine what the world will be like by the time they’re grown, or what their career
choices will be.
Global positioning devices, instant messaging, satellite phones on mountain tops, non-invasive
surgery, networked terrorism, ‘service’ economies, even personalized jeans…all are indications
of the fundamental shifts in the ways we engage with the world and each other. Taken all
together, it adds up to “the new world,” a phrase that was first coined in the 15th century and
has recently re-entered the popular lexicon. Whatever our various perspectives, we are all
beginning to sense what it means.
The scale of change, largely driven and enabled by technology, is unprecedented in human
history. What’s happening resembles the way a kaliedoscope works with new connections
happening between fields or thought processes or even countries, new ideas emerging and
creating new ripples of thinking; then suddenly a new pattern becomes visible, and a new
picture falls into place. The change itself, this re-ordering, this inventing “the new world” is
what will occupy our children’s future. We are entering a time that will call for dedicated
innovation, across the board. It will occur in all fields. It’s already started. But unfortunately
where our kids are concerned, what we’re teaching is “business as usual.”
Ironically, business has the been writing about the future for a decade now… ruminating about
the rapid unfolding of technology, the interdependences of globalization, the acceleration of
change, and what is needed to cope with it. All this analyzing and strategizing has produced a
best selling stash of books and magazines surrounding the subject of the future. And what they
say we need is:
“Thinking out of the box.”
Where does “thinking out of the box” start? Why aren’t we considering this in relation to kids?
They are the future after all... And while we’re still in the box, kids are out there, moving at
lightspeed, adapting, and living deeply in the world their senses report as true. So far, we
haven’t offered much help.
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What We Need vs What We’re Doing
There’s a big gap between how our kids need to be equipped to deal with the future and how
we’re preparing them now. Let’s first consider the box. “The box” is business-speak for what
we teach and what we think of as important. It usually changes at a glacial pace and therefore
is good at maintaining the status quo. It’s where kids learn the basic literacies of our culture,
related to words and numbers. Our standardized tests reflect this. The thinking skills that are
taught and utilized generally fall under the umbrella of what are called critical thinking skills,
associated with analyzing and weighing information. These skills and literacies are very
important to learn, but no longer enough.
“The Box”
critical thinking
creative thinking
This is where we’re putting
all our educational resources.
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Kids naturally gravitate into the daily world of sounds, layered images, and simultaneous
events. It is the sensory world and it is up-close, technological, connected, visually rich,
emotional, and immediate. It’s about friends, fun, computers, games, stories, animals,
communicating, TV, wonders, worries, playing, family, music, sports.
It’s where pop culture lives. It’s also where the senses and the imagination live…
outside the box.
“Outside the Box”
critical thinking
creative thinking
This is where kids are really living.
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Rethink the Box
It’s time to rethink “the box”... to incorporate, teach and value the kinds of thinking that are
closer to the “creative” end of the thinking spectrum to balance out the box. That’s a
challenge for our culture that often holds creativity to be suspect. Although we admire shining
examples of creative thinking, we tend to believe that it’s a mysterious process. Or another
magical matter of talent. And besides, it’s hard to measure.
But “the box” we’ve put ourselves into won’t take us where we (and our kids) need to go. The
facts, figures and unconnected blueprints of subjects that make up school curricula create
what is like a still picture in a world that is now liquid and changing. What’s essential to put
into the box now, along with traditional thinking skills are: big ideas, inventing, making connections, approaching a subject sideways, or solving a problem from the inside out...the kind
of thinking that is fluent enough to come up with the innovations the future will demand.. It’s
about learning a sensory vocabulary, perceiving larger patterns, and jumping mental fences. It’s
also about allowing intuition, putting your hands in, and applying your unique fingerprints.
The Needed Box
critical thinking
creative thinking
It is only in the rich and somewhat
unpredictable tumble of a valued kid and
their individual mix of data and magic can
we hope for a healthy, thriving planet.
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It’s Where Innovation Begins
Innovation is often thought of as bringing new methods, products or ideas into a field or industry
that has already been established. It assumes there is a familiarity with the data and processes that
exist. It’s a new step ahead... a baby step or a giant leap. It’s a grown-up idea.
The child’s counterpart to innovation is creative thinking. Practicing creative thinking can hone
a child’s natural thinking tendencies that we see so often in their play into a firm foundation of
thinking skills that will serve them (and us) in the future.
It’s not a matter of chance or talent or luck, it’s a matter of focus and practice. Like reading, it’s a
skill that is learned by doing it. Inborn imagination and natural creativity become fluent thinking
tools by learning to see patterns, using associative thinking and practicing creating. And also, just
like reading, adults help kids along by supplying the right challenge at the right time.
Reading is a skill that is built on the foundation of several diverse elements: you have to know the
squiggles that make up the alphabet and the sounds associated with those abstract symbols, how
words are constructed out of them, the way to move your eye down the line of letters to come up
with the sounds that make the words like spoken words. Somehow along the way (like magic)
meanings start to pop into your brain...and you’re reading. You get better at it as you go along.
Creative thinking (as a skill) works the same way. It’s grounded in diverse elements. It is
enhanced by knowing a sensory vocabulary (elemental building blocks, like the alphabet) and
having experiences with a kind of thinking not necessarily involved with words, but the kinds of
knowings that your senses and your body are good at...like riding a bike, or judging relative
weights or seeing your favorite color. Often some kind of media comes next. (It’s a way for ideas
to take form.) Then play! Creative thinking (often in the presence of a problem to solve)
consciously rubs these diverse elements together and (presto!) ideas and meanings start to pop
into your brain.
Creative thinking is generative thing. It honors intuition but doesn’t leave out analysis. It uses
data, but also looks for larger patterns. It is flexible and fluent. It is the kind of thinking that is
the foundation for innovation in all fields, across the board, from physics to engineering to
cooking. And it is a most sought after quality in the current business environment.
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This Is Where Parents Come In
The good news is that kids live and breathe this creative thinking. It’s as basic as it’s
more trusted counterpart, critical thinking….just less measurable. We humans all come by it
naturally…it’s our heritage, our human nature. We just don’t honor it. In fact, research tells us
this kind of thinking is almost squeezed out by the 4th grade.
This is where parents come in...and where parents will play a crucial role. We all want to see
our kids grow up happy and successful. But now the game is changing. Success (for the whole
planet) may rely on “rethinking the box” and adding creative thinking to the list of skills that is
practiced and applauded. Schools are focused elsewhere. It’s up to parents to fill this gap. If
parents don’t give kids a strong foundation in creative thinking, they probably won’t get it. If
parents don’t value it, kids won’t. It’s that simple. It’s time to open this conversation about kids
and the future-oriented skills with parents. It’s past time.
These are important ideas we can all agree about, but as a parent, it can be anxiety producing!
At first glance, nurturing creative thinking in children can sound like a very large and ongoing
agenda that won’t fit into already tight schedules and overcrowded mental real estate. We hope
to put your anxieties to rest, and to assure you that nurturing creativity in your everyday life at
home can be a real source of fun! It can generate energy instead of drain it. It can enlarge your
child’s idea of what success looks like. It can be an important window into your child’s natural
strengths. It will better prepare your child for the future. And, not least, it will make unique,
memorable events for everyone to share.
We’ve gathered lots of knowledge and experience about this kind of thinking. It’s built on the
groundbreaking work of the Learning About Learning Educational Foundation and its nationally
recognized lab school. This book is the result of 35 years of applied research on the nature of
creativity, media, individuality, and cognition. Just as important are the same number of years in
work/play with educators, parents and kids, designing processes and projects, spaces and
experiences.
Also being parents, researchers, and educators ourselves, we’ve designed this handbook on
creative thinking with parents’ and caregivers’ needs in mind. It’s full of ideas, plans, tools and
support...an important resource for anyone who wants to activate their child’s creative
potential.
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Part 1:
Creativity in Pieces
The possible’s slow fuse is lit,
by the Imagination.
— Emily Dickinson
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Creativity Deconstructed
Play
Individuality
Media
Creative
Process
Sensory Alphabet
Imagination
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It is useful to look at creativity as the sum of various parts...parts that are not alike and don’t necessarily
form a sequence. Using reading as an analogy again: one way to look at it is through phonics, another by
the left to right sweep that the eye makes across the lines of type, another the alphabet foundation...each
important but each very different in nature. The following chapters of this book take each part of creativity
separately, defining, enlarging and giving you ideas of ways to use it... both as a lens into your child’s
unique creative potential and as the basis of activities to grow creativity in the context of everyday.
1. Imagination is a given. Everybody that calls themselves human comes with one, and it’s
available 24/7. It fuels little dreams all the time like, “What can I make for a snack?” and big dreams
like, “What can I be when I grow up?” It’s like a well that you can draw on to bring up ideas
anytime. You can feed your imagination with observations and experiences and memories. And
the more you do, the richer and wiser your imagination becomes...and the more and better ideas it
can give you.
2. The Sensory Alphabet is to creativity like the traditional alphabet is to reading. You learn it
first and then you can put its elements (like alphabet letters) to work in unlimited ways, seeing/
making all sorts of new patterns…the same as being able to read/write any word you can think of
after you learn your letters. It’s a very important tool to give your brain when you want to use
creative thinking.
3. Media is anything you use to get your ideas from the inside of your brain out into the world.
It might be words you say, or chalk to draw a game idea on the sidewalk, or a costume that
helps you make a character for your drama idea. The more you play with all kinds of different
media, the more it feeds your imagination. And that gives you more ideas to use.
4. Play is the heart of creativity. Play puts ideas in motion. Playing by yourself lets you see your
ideas out in the world, which gives you more ideas. Playing with another person gives your
ideas a chance to have a conversation with others’ ideas and multiply. What the experts know
now is that play is thinking in action. It gives you a chance to rehearse, direct, invent, imitate,
fantasize, try on, try out, experiment, rethink, rearrange, start over, express and explore... all
without the consequences of “the real world,” important for growing ideas.
5. Individuality is another given. It’s just that it’s so hard to see yourself and how you’re
different and what your strengths are. This is where parents come in; watching with care,
mirroring a child’s strengths, providing media and experiences that match each child’s unique
brand of imagination and supplying challenges that stretch each imagination. Understanding,
valuing and supporting each mind is what turbocharges individual creative potential.
6. The Creative Process isn’t really mysterious, it’s a particular way of thinking…like
“critical thinking” or “the scientific method.” Kids start out doing it naturally and
unconsciously. But it’s not often taught at school, and it’s not easy to measure, so it can
diminish. But when you learn and practice this way of thinking consciously, the results are
dramatic. It’s like adding writing to your reading and speaking skills. It’s a thinking skill that can
turn imagination into jet fuel for ideas…and for grown-up innovation later on.
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2.
The Sensory Alphabet:
the foundation
There are children playing in the street
who could solve my top problems in physics,
because they have modes of sensory
perception that I lost long ago.
— J. Robert Oppenheimer
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How Do You See Beyond the Obvious?
Our brains work so quickly and efficiently to construct meaning around our perceptions
of the world that often we don’t notice the elemental qualities of our experience. We
immediately and unconsciously leap right into defining, labeling and judging. Our brains
are fabulous at this...we don’t see the bowl of yellow shapes, we see lemons. We don’t
see the green prickly lines on that tree, we see pine needles. We don’t hear the rhythm
that makes westerners want to move, we hear the two-step.
And so, from babyhood on, we are off on our lifelong journey of naming, labeling and pigeonholing the world around us. It’s the perceptual shorthand we need and use so that we don’t
have to focus on every little thing. It is also our cultural blueprint...and, it’s the textbook for
thinking inside the box.
But when our goal is nurturing inventiveness, we begin with a more elemental approach. The
Language of Invention, which follows, is in essence a sensory language...another way of
describing what our senses are telling us is “out there.” It focuses on the patterns that underlie
what we experience. By naming this vocabulary, it lets us give voice to what we perceive in
ways that are not burdened with the boundaries, definitions, or even prejudicies of our culture.
It opens up our perceptions for analysis, comparison, designing and invention. It builds
curiosity and generates ideas.
When children absorb and use this sensory vocabulary on an everyday basis, its helpful nature
becomes second nature. The elements are easily spotted by children (young and old). They’re
close at hand, or eye, or ear. They feel welcome to a young mind taught so early the highly
abstract forms of the alphabet and numbers as we do in our culture. Every child can master this
vocabulary of sensing, comparing and contrasting. It offers a hands-on, eyes-on, all senses-on
path of discovery and delight. (And it is in direct contrast to the often visually hypnotic, passive
and repetitive qualities of television and video games.) It’s the natural foundation for deep
interaction with the world.
Because it describes, but doesn’t define, this sensory vocabulary enlarges the
capacity for seeing patterns between disparate objects, fields, and cultures...
and this facility to perceive patterns is one of the hallmarks of a creative mind.
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The DNA of “Stuff”
Deep under the thick layers of labels we use to tell us what’s what…deep under the
concepts that define fields of study, works of art, or indeed any “thing”…there is a set
of attributes that are elemental to our planet. It’s how we can describe anything. It’s
how our senses report to our brains what is out there. You could say it makes up the
DNA of “stuff.”
Taken together, we call these elements the Sensory Alphabet. There are nine elements: line,
shape, color, texture, sound, space, light, movement, and rhythm. These elements
are the “givens” here on earth. And though they are familiar, most of us don’t explore their
powers or use them consciously for problem solving and inventing.
Often we think of these elements as belonging to the territory of the arts or design, and of
course they are potent tools for those fields. But if we step back from our usual definitions,
it’s easy to see how these elements underlie all our perceptions. Rhythm, for example,
belongs not only to music but is also basic information to a doctor who is assessing an
electrocardiogram. Rhythm is at the heart of devising a spectacular basketball play, a
winning debate, or creating a dramatic cinematic moment in the film editing room.
Another example: we might first think of space as the tool and consideration of architects,
but it’s also what tickles the imaginations of physicists, graphic designers and it’s very
important when you’re parallel parking. The examples are literally endless.
These are the elements that make up the patterns our senses take in and to which our brains,
instantly and unconsciously, assign meaning and value. When a pattern of qualities, say, shape
and color and texture, resonates in a certain way, we recognize a dog or a tree or a vase.
Some patterns have become emblematic of our culture…the rhythms of rock and roll, the
amount of conversational space between people that can be identified as distinctly western,
or the series of lines we have come to know as the alphabet. We share these essences and
meanings with others of our culture and when we travel we can be surprised at how other
cultures have combined these elements to create very different formats, even though the
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essences and meanings are similar— the accepted closer conversational space of another
country might, to us, feel threatening, “in your face.” Standard cultural colors in another
region might feel drab to us, or conversely, too bright.
At an individual, more granular level there seems to be a built in sense of what is
comfortable when it comes to these elements…certain preferences that come out so early
they seem to be inborn. Every parent who has more than one child can attest to this.
There are favorites — certain qualities of light or rhythm — that are distinctively
different from other members of the family, certain kinds of sounds that are appealing,
a sense of a space, that is “just right” to each person.
These preferences are often expressed unconsciously in the choices an individual makes
— dressing in favorite colors, demonstrating a love of texture with hairstyles or through
jewelry, using big movement again and again.
In this country we teach young children these elements somewhat haphazardly, quickly
jumping to the labels and meanings our culture has assigned…shapes are squares or
circles, sounds are “what the cow says” or just “too loud.” Rhythm is usually defined
by music. We seldom explore shape for its own sake, or sound, or rhythm. But as
researchers, educators, and parents, we have observed that these elements, explored
individually and absorbed slowly and deeply over time can become a potent sensory
vocabulary of understandings for children.
The following pages introduce the Sensory Alphabet briefly, an overview of the elements
and where we find them in our everydays. In Part 2, we will give you ways to put these
building blocks together. We’ll talk about the creative thinking process that can turn
these elements into everday inventions and creations, exercising that capacity for
association. It’s like taking the building blocks of the alphabet and beginning to make
words...then sentences! Pretty soon you’re reading and writing...in this case, creating!
In Part 3, each element will have its own chapter...a getting-to-know-you session that will
re-familiarize you and give you ideas for ways to explore it, for yourself first, and then for
both you and your child. But now...the “alphabet”...
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The Sensory Alphabet
Color
Human vision is distinguished by the color-detecting
ability of our eyes, and so for us color is often the
element of discernment — and the visual language of
emotion. Green with envy, seeing red, walking around
under a black cloud, emotion transforms itself into
colorful characters, colorful language, poetic passion.
Paint on canvas creates sunny weather or an emotional
storm; and music paints a picture solomn or spritely.
Where is your color sense alive? In cooking or
chemistry, stargazing or paint mixing, finding
rainbows, delighting in a feather’s iridescence or
in an outlandishly fashionable fashion sense?
Sound
Sound has the inherent quality of acting directly
on the emotions without going through the
intellect. Listen. The world is speaking to you in a
thousand different voices. When we listen, we put
ourselves in the moment. Present to an argument, a
plea, a whine, a bird call, wind in the trees or a
symphony. Besides the obvious (musicians and
music), actors, politicians, priests and teachers
invoke action with tone, timber, tempo and sound.
Writers (and readers) listen as words unfurl on the
page. Painters may paint a sound and runners may
use one to make the miles fly. Ecologists,
anthropologists, birdwatchers, linguists and
physicians – all use sound to diagnose, distinguish
and define.
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Space
Space is omni dimensional, geographic and
temporal, both geometrically present outside of
us, and meta-phorically present inside the fences
of our imaginations. With space, what isn’t is as
important as what is: the inside of a basket, the
silences between the notes, the pause between the
speakers, the room inside the walls. The way a
canvas size or a room’s dimensions determine how
we move within it. As humans we can’t help but
pay attention to space as space and space as time.
How long? How wide? How fast? How slow?
Where and when? Think about how these people
use and analyze space: mechanical engineers,
publishers, architects, dancers, cartographers,
chess players, editors, sit com writers.
Light
Light delights as the most elusive and
changeable element of form: giving contour,
creating mood, illuminating all manners of
truth. The sea sparkles, pearls have luster, silk
shimmers, we “see the light.” Stage designers,
cinema-tographers, photographers and
architects are obvious masters of light and
shadow– but think too about light as perceived
by physicists, by glass artists, by poets and
urban planners. Without light, we’re literally
and figuratively “in the dark.” Fireflies,
fireworks, shadow play and starlight are some
of our first light-filled fascinations – what are
others?
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Rhythm
Rhythm is the heartbeat element, holding
things together in big and little patterns. We
each have a personal rhythm that is as distinct
as our fingerprints, recognizable beneath the
changing tides of emotional rhythms that rock
and roll us through the day. Rhythm at first
thought is audible and invisible – drum beats,
finger taps, cadences and cacaphony, but
imagine the world without stripes, dots and
dashes, without the visual patterns of steps, of
lines of shoes, of the this and that way of the
lines in a leaf. Without rhythm who could be a
pianist, a mathematician, a poet, an actor, a
director, a salesman, a video editor, a debator, a
basketball player, a waiter, a politician, an
animal behaviorist or a juggler?
Movement
Movement is about change and getting from here
to there, from up to down, from then to now. We
talk about how ideas move us, how ambition gets us
there, that responsibility keeps us tied down, how
our imaginations run away and our philosophies
collide. A storyline must move right along or it loses
our attention; cycles of days and years and viewpoints become the stuff of history; cycles in our
bodies, in weather, in nature present whole worlds
of study. Kinesthetic learners must move into
knowledge, often quite literally, finding the meaning of a concept by physically moving into it.
Movers include (but are not limited to) explorers,
botanists, meteorologists, dancers, acrobats,
athletes, construction workers, industrial designers.
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Line
Line, the elemental foundation for print and
number, has determined much about 20th
Century life and success in our culture. Isobars,
arteries, fault lines, line drives, battle lines, lines
of credit, timelines, lines of type, notes, numbers
and people..,stretchy, slinky, fixed or floating,
dotted or dashed, lines connect two or more
points. And the points are, as mathematicians
remind us, infinite. Writers pen story lines;
programmers, lines of code. Biologists decipher
lines of DNA; entrepreneurs develop product
lines. Singers follow melodic lines; jazz musicians
improvise upon them. Where do you enter the
element of line? As story teller or scribbler? With
delight for a maze or an appreciation for ballet?
Shape
“Shapes shape other shapes.” As shapefinders
we look for symmetries, for foreground and
background, the donut and the hole, for the
whole of the thing that is greater than its
parts. Putting puzzles together is playing
around with shape, and so is the literary love of
beginning, middle and end. Pleasing shapes
play their part in our neighborhoods, our
furniture, our plates, platters, shoes and cars.
Shapemakers include sculptors and
typographers, mathematicians with their
worlds of symmetries, microbiologists,
industrial designers and couture clothiers. We
shape play with shells and rocks, clay and
cookie dough, big bouncing balls and smooth,
sleek kitty cats.
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Texture
At its most direct, tactile information is as
close as it gets, up close and personal, right
at our fingertips. Smooth, woven, wrapped,
slippery, shiny, course, rigid and reedy. We
see texture, too, and hear it in a voice or a
song. Our days are rough or smooth, our
mood s even or edgy, our needs piercing or
pointed. Surgeons, weavers, gardeners, art
collectors, textile designers and chefs must all
pay close attention to texture. Does your child
explore texture in the sand box, through a
microscope’s lens, coiling clay snakes, eating
ice cream or squishing toes in the mud?
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Working Together
Power Users of Technology
Who are they?
Where are they going?
Why does it matter?
Photo used with permission of Adobe Education
“The Power Users Initiative
deals with what people can
learn about children who have
developed sophisticated technology skills. It is just one
example of changing patterns
of learning, challenging
schools. It raises important
questions on behalf of educators. The challenge of the
Power Users Initiative will be
how to translate the long-term
research into a continuous
flow of information to inform
education ministries for
purposes of developing
education policy.“
—Dr. Ulf Lundin
Executive Director of European Schoolnet
at WSIS, Geneva, 2003
By Joyce Malyn-Smith
ho are the “power users of technology”? We see
them in the developing and developed world,
among youth with access to technology, at
home, in school, telecentres, community technology
centres and cyber-net cafes. They play video games, use instant
messaging, listen to music and do homework, all at the same
time—multi-tasking, shifting focus from one task to another
seamlessly, without effort. They seek information and learn
what they want to know and when to satisfy their needs and
interests, on a just-in-time basis. We call upon them at home
to programme video recorders, troubleshoot software and
hardware problems, and advise us on specifications for technology purchases. They are our technology advisors.
W
fter a decade of work focusing on building the capacity
of youth and adults to use technology as a tool for living, learning and working, the Education, Employment and
Community programmes at the Education Development
Center, Inc. (EDC) launched a long-term research initiative
to learn from and with children who are the power users of
technology. This initiative asks the central questions: What
happens to youth when their technology capacity is highly
developed? How does this capacity shape thinking and reasoning, educational and career decisions, family and social
interactions? How do youth translate their technology skills
and interests into “currency” in a global information society?
“We are investing in this work because we know that
‘power users’ around the world offer humanity an entirely
new source of talent and imagination for the future.
A
This is part of a series of articles exploring the many facets of partnerships supported by the United Nations Fund for International
Partnerships (UNFIP). In the series, some of the UN private sector and foundation partners will convey their views on how partnerships
with the United Nations are being built and are achieving impact on the ground.
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(WSIS) in Geneva in
“But our goal is not simply
to nurture these unusual and
“A highly-skilled workforce is seen as the key to December 2003, where
masterful young power users economic growth and prosperity, and the quest for approximately 40,000 perto create a new elite . . . but to economic growth and prosperity remains at the core sons visited the expo and
understand better what is at of public policy. It is now more and more accepted engaged in thoughtful disthe heart of their thinking and that knowledge and skills are at the heart of the cussion with international
to be far more intentional in development and diffusion of new technologies and representatives, technology
companies and non-governbringing this knowledge
crucial to technical innovation.”
mental organizations (NGOs).
together to give all children
Overarching Framework, Statistics Canada, 2002
The role that ICT4D will play
the opportunity to take
in our changing world will
advantage of what technology
continue to be important as WSIS plans the 2005 procan offer . . . and, most importantly, to create welcoming
gramme agenda.
environments that encourage young people to be creators
A global sense of urgency in ensuring access to technology
and inventors of new technologies that connect us and improve
for all nations and peoples is emerging, along with an
our world,” stated Vivian Guilfoy, Senior Vice-President of
increasing set of questions about the impact that access
EDC.
will have on individuals, families and communities
The Power Users of Technology Initiative has several
shaping our global information society.
short-term goals that set a foundation for long-term
According to Amir Dossal, Executive Director of the
research. These goals include:
◆ Raising awareness among leaders in learning,
United Nations Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP),
workforce and human development that power users of tech“power users of technology are seen to be emerging in
nology is an emerging global phenomenon with important
countries around the world that have provided youth with
implications for policy and practice;
access to technology. This is an important initiative that
◆ Establishing an international research base that
must include participation of youth in countries around
connects researchers in many disciplines into a global
the world—north, south, east and west.” It is of special
research network; and
significance to developing nations that are leapfrogging
◆ Engaging an international community of practice
into a knowledge economy.
to learn from and with power users about living, learning
The power of computers and the Internet is growing
and working with technology.
exponentially. “Between 1975 and 2000, the computing
The Power Users Global Advisory Panel, formed to guide
power per dollar has increased 66,000 times. By 2010, this
the design of the project, found broad-based interest in the
figure will reach 10 million. There were 200 million Internet
Initiative and recommended holding the first International
users in 2000, 600 million in 2002, and 1 billion by 2005.
Power Users of Technology Symposium in 2005. Involving
Developing countries share of Internet users was 2 per cent
youth all over the world, the Symposium will highlight
in 1991, 23 per cent in 2001” (Choices, December 2003).
Countries are working to connect education and employpower users’ interactions with adult experts from the fields
ment activities in ICTs. These efforts can help emerging
of education, psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology,
power users make a smooth transition from school to
learning and cognition, as together they use technology tools
work. Examples from Estonia, Malaysia and Afghanistan
to solve complex, real global problems. New knowledge on
were recently highlighted in Choices, the human development
technology capacities, habits of mind and ways of working
magazine of the United Nations Development Programme
will be gained from this experience and shape long-term
(UNDP). In Macedonia, EDC is working with the public
research that informs policy makers and practitioners over
and private sectors to connect technology learning in
the long term, through publications, web activities and active
schools with technology skills needed for success in a
utilization of the international network of partners.
developing economy. The USAID project Dot.Edu is helpAligned with the UN Millennium Development Goals
ing to develop a national e-schools initiative in the country
and in keeping with Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s challenge
by supporting a community of practice among teachers who
to Silicon Valley, the Power Users Initiative focuses on
will integrate ICTs into curriculum. It also promotes techachieving its long-term research goals through an internanology learning in community settings. Next year, EDC
tional network of public/private partnerships. Why is this iniwill work in three regions to assist vocational centres of exceltiative important to the United Nations community?
lence to connect ICTs learned in school to the emerging ecoMore and more, information and communications
nomic cluster activities in the surrounding communities.
technology (ICT) is recognized as an important tool for
Exchanges between YouthLearn and villages in the Congo
development in our emerging global information society.
guide educators in developing technology-rich learning
ICT for development (ICT4D) was a focal point of discusexperiences and project-based learning.
sion at the World Summit on the Information Society
59
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www.un.org/chronicle
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COQS Index of Digital Literacy
(COQS index value national average)
Total population
Youth (up to age 24)
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
es
at
nd
St
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itz
Sw
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ia
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0
The COQS Index is a measure that combines four types of skills in using the
Internet into an overall “digital literacy” score. The skills include:
Communicating with others (by e-mail and other online methods);
Obtaining (or downloading) and installing software on a computer;
Questioning the source of information on the Internet; and
Searching for the required information using search engines.
Costa Rica Schools
Source: SIBIS GPS 2002, SIBIS GPS-NAS 2003
What happens to people once they have access to technology? What do they do to produce outcomes that matter
to individuals, groups and societies? Costa Rica is a good
example of the growing phenomenon of youth who are becoming power users of technology. It has made a commitment
to building national technology capacity in the education
and economic sectors, and is the first country to offer its
citizens a free national e-mail account: costarricense.cr.
Many public schools are integrating ICTs into the curriculum beginning at the primary level. The Omar Dengo
Foundation is helping to achieve this goal by guiding and
supporting students and teachers to use technology as a tool
for living, learning and working. It has taken only ten years
for Costa Rica to develop a technology economy that,
60
according to economic indicators, has surpassed its centenary coffee export amount. The economic benefits of
this bilateral investment are already seen through increases
in its direct foreign investments (from $162 million in 1990
to $448 million in 2001), and the percentage (78%) of software companies in the region are based in Costa Rica
(Estrategia & Negocios Magazine. June, 2001).
Dr. Olman Segura-Bonilla, Director of the Centro
Internacional de Política Económica (CINPE) at Universidad
Nacional Heredia Costa Rica, describes the power users of
technology emerging in Costa Rica: “We are seeing kids that
have a potential, a capability of working very fast and
learning very quickly from computers. They are self-directed
learners, constructing new learning in virtual environments
and learning more from each other and from their own use
of technology than from their teachers. We are talking
about young individuals who get very bored in their class
because they are able to learn faster and quicker, and
therefore we need to change the curriculum somehow to
capture their interest.” In this sense, it seems that power
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users may help to close the
Users Directorate at EDC is
digital divide, especially if
“Power users of information and communications seeking additional partner
we pay much more attention technology are individuals who break out of the institutions to join this inito the phenomena and confines of traditional learning, demographic or tiative to represent the interdevelop national policies technological barriers by constantly using, sharing, cre- ests of North America, Asia,
in this direction.
ating, producing or changing information in creative, Africa and Australia. The
The COQS Index of Digital innovative and/or unintended ways so that they Power Users Initiative is
Literacy, a measure that
become force multipliers in their own environments.” advised and supported by a
combines four types of skills
wide range of partners, includPower Users Global Advisory Panel, 2002
in using the Internet into
ing EDC Europe, Microsoft
an overall “digital literacy”
Research, the George Lucas
score, indicates that youth in European countries consisEducational Foundation, DigiPen Institute of Technology, CINPEtently have significantly higher levels of digital literacy
Universidad Nacional, University of Aalborg, California State
compared to the general population (see chart on page 58). These
University at Sacramento, KEMPSTER GROUP, PTC, and
trends throughout the European community raise questions
UNFIP.
of national significance. They were interpreted, along with
There are several ways to participate in this emerging
current research at the ICT4D Power Users of Technology
work:
◆ Raise awareness of the Power Users Initiative within
Roundtable at WSIS, by Dr. Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld,
your own networks. Link the Initiative to your web site,
Director of E-learning Lab, Aalborg University in Denmark,
create new venues to share information, invite the Initiative
and Director of the Doctoral School on Human-Centered
to make presentations at conferences and author publicaInformatics. We are in a unique situation in history where
tions or articles of interest to your stakeholders;
we can observe and learn from a new culture that is evolv◆ Join the research network. Become active in the
ing, one in which children as early adopters of technology
international power users community, join our online
are learning more than their teachers within specific areas.
discussion groups, respond to the “Call for Papers” to
She states: “Power users of technology are brokering new
synthesize existing research on power users of technology
ways of learning, challenging our institutions and our sociand/or test new hypotheses;
ety.” She also raises questions, such as: “What is the impact
◆ Provide internship opportunities for students to
of Power Users on our institutions and how will the instiparticipate in power user research, projects and activities;
tutions be able to adapt? What is the social impact? Will
◆ Provide scholarships for power users in your region
some developing countries be able to skip the industrialto participate in the International Symposium in 2005 or
ized paradigm? Is it possible that some developing
sponsor teams of educators/content experts to serve as
countries will be more advantaged and competitive because
participant observers;
they move directly into a knowledge and learning soci◆ Join the International Council of Partners, which
ety? Are our industrialized societies too slow to change,
provides support for the Power Users Initiative and is
holding back progress towards the learning society? How
planning the first International Symposium; and
will this impact the global balance of power?”
◆ Support regional power users research and activities,
To help answer these questions, EDC is establishing
through grants, in-kind support and partnership in your
networks of supporters and collaborators. Frans Rameckers,
own research or programme efforts.
Director of EDC Europe, is developing partnerships within
We welcome and challenge everyone to join us in this
the European community, building awareness of this
exploratory learning community—working together to
emerging phenomenon among institutions such as the
understand the tremendous potential of young people
European Schoolnet and Bertlesmann Foundation, and
and help the next generation take on the mantle of leadercoordinating student interns to review relevant research
ship that will make this world a better place. ❏
and pose new questions for consideration.
Six Power Users international research centres are being
established to create a global presence for the Initiative
Joyce Malyn-Smith is the Strategic
and ensure participation of all regions in the world. The
Director for Workforce and Human
Global Research Network will develop a shared research
Development of the Education,
agenda. With EDC, the centres will develop partnerships,
Employment and Community Programs
projects and research activities that contribute to the
at EDC, a non-profit research and develPower Users’ mission and goals.
opment firm with more than 320 projects in for ty countries worldwide
To date, two centres have come forward: CINPE in Costa
(www.edc.org). She was a teacher and
Rica , headed by Dr. Olman Segura-Bonilla, will serve as the
administrator in Boston public schools
coordinating institution in Latin America, while the Aalborg
for more than twenty years.
University’s E-Learning Lab will serve in Europe. The Power
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Piercing the Spectacle: A Situationist Critique of Computer Games
Brenda Laurel
“The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people,
mediated by images." - Guy Debord in The Society of the Spectacle, 1967
In our media-saturated world today, the Spectacle provides a glittering array of
substitutes for the experience of personal agency. Fewer and fewer opportunities for
action outside the Spectacle present themselves to us. We must seek them out; a hike
in open country may require several hours of travel to the trailhead, passing fast-food
joints and gas stations clumped along the highway like fungi on rotting logs. The same
junk sprouts out of all the screens in our lives - televisions, computers, PDAs and cell
phones. Commercials and brands, spam and flickering web ads, friendly text messages
from your cellular service provider, product placements in movies and computer games,
all reminding - or rather un-minding - us of the web of politico-consumerism in which we
are enmeshed like spiders’ snacks, stashed for hungry marketers and politicians. The
spectacle holds us fast.
“You have a mighty low opinion of us, Dr. Laurel,” you might way. “We are free people.
We aren’t passive consumers; we’re players.” And you would have a valid point.
Interactivity as we constructed it back in the days of early PCs and console games was
a very hopeful thing. How not-TV it was to play a game of Star Raiders! But read the
texts of our games, examine the roles of our player-characters, and see how we enact
the spectacle - of wars and fast cars, of crimes and disasters and the other fare of the
evening news, of heroic acts in magical worlds so far from our actual agency in our daily
lives as to engage us wholly in alternate universes of possibility.
I used to be fond of saying that people will always know the difference between media
and reality. What I have come to understand is that, while we may know the difference
very well, we are rarely called by representations of choice and action to enact our
power more robustly in the real world. No, games are not rehearsals for life. Through
fantasies of agency we are entrained to satiate our needs for personal power in a realm
where we can create no real disturbance to the web of control that enfolds us.
What of those innocent games that simply occupy our time with pleasurable interaction?
In an interview about Digital Chocolate, a company that builds games for web phones,
EA founder Trip Hawkins said: “The first products we put out at Digital Chocolate to be
honest (don’t) do very much. And yet what (they) do is addictive and compelling….The
games are geared to help you win. People get hooked.” [USA Today, 9/13/04] You
heard the man. The philosophy of games as business - to get people hooked - hasn’t
changed much since Trip first started his trip. And while it may be all innocent fun, I
wonder how it changes us.
A key premise of the mobile-technology game industry is that the pleasure of
interactivity is preferable to boredom. Who would choose simply to sit on a train or wait
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in a line when you could be distracting your brain and hands with a game? Idleness,
slowness, contemplation, being mentally present in a situated context have no place in
this wired world. But for those who were alive before this hyperactive culture grew up
around us, it was during those interstices of life’s activities that we breathed, relaxed,
observed, thought things over. Listen up - even the smallest fragments of your idle time
have now been colonized with meaningless, addictive junk. Junk that is part of the fabric
of the Spectacle.
Likewise, for thirty years, a key premise of the educational game industry has been that
the magic of gaming could serve as a hook for engagement. Why, when we are willing
to learn so much detailed stuff to play a computer game, can’t we simply design games
in which that detailed stuff has some educational value? Why for thirty years have we
failed at this? One reasons comes immediately to mind: educational software is built
upon a representation of education. Give me a game with mathematical concepts as its
content and I’ll show you a game that reminds me of sitting in a classroom, learning and
doing things with no demonstrable personal relevance. Educational games typically fail
to populate the dimension of action with choices that are personally relevant, creative,
or powerful. That’s because contemporary education fails in exactly the same way.
The construction of public education in America is very much about the Spectacle.
School imparts basic principles, information, and skills. The information is not to be
questioned. Now more than ever, the skills are about passing tests. School embodies
an authority structure in which the rules are predetermined and transgressions are
punished. Team sports in school subvert the sense of play by reinforcing a notion of
ritual competition within a status hierarchy. Students pass from the arms of education
into the arms of consumerism with virtually no change in the construction of power and
personal agency. Yes, we can vote when we come of age. But that is rather like
choosing between red and blue in today’s America. Those students who emerge from
high school with good critical thinking skills are an endangered species. Of course,
those are the very skills that give power to the notion of citizenship. In the absence of
critical thinking or the knowledge that one may intervene in the Way Things Are through
the exercise of citizenship or personal choice, we become a nation of consumers,
participating smoothly with the spectacle like parts in a well-oiled machine.
The reason why we have not succeeded in building good games for education is that to
do so would entail reconstructing the notion of education itself. In particular, we would
need to redefine what it means to be a good learner. Instead of receiving information,
we might construct understanding. Instead of giving the right answer, we might think of
taking an appropriate action. Instead of obeying the rules, we might question authority.
These are the sorts of rehearsals for living that games could be offering us.
Games about language or math, science or sociology, economics or geopolitics lack
luster because neither the activity they model (education) nor the activity for which
education itself intends to prepare us (life in the Spectacle) offer little in terms of
significant interaction. With no models of ourselves as change agents in the “real” world,
how can we envision such possibilities within a representation of it? In Middle Earth I
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can kick ass, but I am a helpless speck compared to the interests and institutions that
define the realities of my life. That is what both games and schools are teaching us. And
both of them are wrong.
The Spectacle is not all there is, and there are representations that pierce the Spectacle
by inviting us to have a look at the person (or web of relations) behind the curtain. Each
of us can think of images or stories that have powerfully revealed to us a hidden or unsanctioned truth. Such representations can also take interactive form, and are perhaps
more powerful when they do. Just as games can entrain us to enact the Spectacle, they
may enable us to enact its converse. Situationists call this sort of reversal a
reconstruction. Game designers have it in their power to reconstruct notions of personal
awareness, choice, and agency in ways that might seriously disturb the consumerist
ethos that has been prepared for us. Now, that could be really fun.
[This essay will appear in The Rules of Play Reader, edited by Katie Salen and Eric
Zimmerman, forthcoming from the MIT Press.]
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Blackwell Publishing Ltd.Oxford, UK and Malden, USAYSSEThe Yearbooks for the Society of the Study of Education0077-57622004 Blackwell Publishing Ltd20051041
Part Two: Doing Media Literacy in the Schoolsteaching critical literacy at the evcgoodman
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chapter 11
The Practice and Principles of Teaching Critical
Literacy at the Educational Video Center
steven goodman
We did a documentary about homeless youth . . . It was an important
topic for us to learn and research about because it will change not only
the way we think about it, but whoever watches the video will also
change their way of thinking about it. And it’s gonna make a difference
in people’s lives.
—(Vanessa, EVC Documentary Workshop)
Overall, what I’ve learned from EVC and what I will take with me, is
basically not only working with the camera and things like that and
making a documentary, but all in all, how to go out and meet people.
And how talk to people.
—(Serena, EVC Documentary Workshop)
Dialogue is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in
order to name the world.
—Paulo Freire (1970, p. 69)
Four high school students walk down a mid-Manhattan street as
they talk excitedly about who will conduct the first interview. They have
generated good questions to ask concerning the problem of homeless
youth in New York City, but are not quite sure if anyone will stop to
answer them. They pause at a street corner and work awkwardly to
disentangle the cables connecting the digital video camera, microphone,
and headphones they are holding. Once they sort out their equipment
and their crew roles, the book bag and the camera change hands. The
designated interviewer pulls out the notebook from among the extra
batteries and videotapes in the bag and opens it to the page with the
interview questions scrawled across it. After the third attempt, the scout
succeeds in bringing a passerby over to the crew. The interviewer
Steven Goodman is the Executive Director of the Educational Video Center in New
York, New York.
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explains that they are not from the news, but are students making a
documentary project on homelessness. The sound operator slips the
headphones on and nods that everything is okay. The cameraperson
flips open the viewfinder, zooms in to a medium shot, and pushes the
“record” button. The tape starts rolling.
These students are experiencing their first “shoot” out on the street
as part of the Educational Video Center’s documentary workshop. The
Educational Video Center (EVC) is an independent nonprofit media
organization that has worked, since it was established in 1984, to build
students’ skills in documentary production and media literacy while
nurturing their intellectual development and civic engagement. These
students come from high schools all across New York City and spend
four afternoons each week earning academic credit as they learn to
collaboratively research, shoot, and edit a documentary on a social issue
of immediate importance to them. By the end of the 18-week semester,
they will produce No Home of Your Own, a documentary exploration of
the problem of homeless youth in New York City (Educational Video
Center, Producer, 2004). But throughout the process they will learn
about much more than the content of this social issue. They will learn
about the power of the media to represent ideas, values, and voices, and
their own power, as learners and cultural producers, to use media as a
tool to educate, inform, and make change in the community.
As founding director of EVC, I have spent more than 20 years
working with students and teachers in New York City and have seen
how effective the critical literacy method of media education can be.
EVC grew out of my combined experience as an independent documentary maker and as a video teacher in an alternative high school in
Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Since 1984, it has evolved from a single
video class into an organization with four main programs: a high school
documentary workshop; a preprofessional paid internship program called
YO-TV; a community engagement program using EVC documentaries in
local neighborhoods to organize for social change; and a teacher development program serving K-12 educators throughout New York City as
they learn to integrate media analysis and production into their classes.
Over the years, funding for EVC has been provided by a range of
private foundations, corporations, and government sources including
the Open Society Institute, the Time Warner Foundation, the Ford
Foundation, the New York Community Trust, the JP Morgan Chase
Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the National
Endowment for the Arts, and the New York City Department of
Education.
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The EVC Documentary Workshop annually serves 60 public high
school students. They live in predominantly low-income communities
and reflect the racial and ethnic makeup of New York City. Each
semester, EVC contacts guidance counselors and teachers in high
schools throughout the city, requesting that they send students to apply
and be interviewed. Students are selected on the basis of equity, level
of interest, and counselor recommendation, but not on prior academic
record. In fact, most EVC students attend alternative high schools and
often struggle with academic skills, family troubles, or worse. At the
end of the semester, they present their final group projects in public
screenings and they present evidence of their literacy, technical, and
critical thinking skills in portfolio assessment roundtables.
The impact that the learning process of EVC workshops has on the
individual youth participants magnifies a thousand-fold when the
products—EVC’s library of over 100 youth-produced documentaries—
are distributed and seen by thousands of other students in schools,
libraries, and community centers across the country. Teachers can access
this library online via the EVC website at http://www.evc.org/screening/catalog.html. The documentaries cover a range of adolescent and
community issues including educational equity, media and youth identity, gun violence, AIDS, and environmental pollution. These screenings serve as springboards for discussion of the tapes and further inquiry
into the issues they have raised.
I use the term critical literacy as the unifying concept that animates
the methodology of media education at EVC. I define critical literacy
in much the same way as theorists Ira Shor, who describes it as a
“discourse that foregrounds and questions power relations” (1999, p.
18); Joe Kretovics, who asserts that it “provides students not merely
with functional skills, but with conceptual tools necessary to critique
and engage society along with its inequalities and injustices” (as quoted
in Shor, p. 20); and Gary L. Anderson and Patricia Irvine, who explain
the student’s process of learning to read and write as part of “becoming
conscious of their own experience as historically constructed within
specific power relations” (as quoted in Shor, p. 1). However, acknowledging the pervasiveness of the mass media and entertainment technologies in our society today, I would expand upon these definitions to
include the ability to analyze, evaluate, and produce aural and visual
forms of communication. I would argue that developing critical literacy
skills enables students to investigate power relations within the social
and historical context of their lived experience and within the broader
frame of their mediated culture. In this way, students build their capac-
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ity to understand how media is made to convey particular messages, and
how they can use electronic and print technologies to creatively express
themselves, and to document and publicly voice their ideas and concerns regarding the most important issues in their lives. Learning about
the world is directly linked to the possibility of changing it (Goodman,
2003, p. 3).
This pedagogy of critical literacy is comprised of three key practices
and principles:
1. Teaching Multiple Literacies: Students learn to analyze, evaluate,
and produce texts across oral/aural, visual, and alphabetic/textual
modes of language. Media production (writing) and analysis
(reading) are linked. Students develop their capacity to encode
and decode meaning in multiple forms of representation through
speaking and listening, visualizing and observing, and reading
and writing. They learn to use multiple literacies to tell their own
stories and through their video production represent themselves
as new storytellers.
2. Teaching Continuous Inquiry: The students’ learning is driven by
their own questions about their lived experiences; the social,
cultural, and historical conditions that shape those experiences;
and the media’s representations of those conditions and experiences. The learner-centeredness of this approach develops the
students’ agency as social, political, and cultural actors in their
community. Students learn to work collectively, engaging in a
problem-posing dialogue with the individuals and institutions in
their community and using their documentary to promote public
discussion and action for change.
3. Teaching Reflection: Students are given multiple opportunities to
reflect on their learning and development over time throughout
the production process in journals, in regular critique sessions,
and in end-of-semester portfolio roundtables where they present
drafts of their video and written work as evidence of their intellectual and artistic development. There is a creative tension
between action and reflection to ensure that the students’ experience is a rich and sustained learning process while they also
produce a high-quality media product.
In this chapter, I explore these strategies for teaching and learning
along with the challenges they present, and examine how they so
powerfully develop students’ intellectual, cultural, and social capacities.
Using EVC’s fall 2003 semester Documentary Workshop as a window
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into these issues, I draw upon tapes recording students at work, as well
as on interviews with their teachers and with graduates of the program
reflecting back on the long-term impact of their learning. Whenever
possible, I listen to the students’ voices for insight into the practices
and principles of critical literacy.
Teaching Multiple Literacies
A key principle of critical literacy is the notion of “multiple literacies”: that students need to learn to proficiently analyze, evaluate, and
produce meaning in visual, oral, and alphabetic forms of communication. This is in response to a few generally agreed-upon conclusions by
media literacy researchers and practitioners: (1) Within our mediasaturated culture, television, radio, movies, the Internet, newspapers,
magazines, music, video games, and so forth, use particular codes and
conventions to tell their stories and teach a particular set of ideas,
values, and representations about the world and our place in it; (2) This
ubiquitous, informal, and lifelong curriculum combines image, sound,
graphic symbol, and alphabetic text in overlapping and increasingly
integrated modes of communication; (3) These media messages and
narratives are delivered by a global system of ever-expanding digital
entertainment and information technologies, concentrated in the hands
of an ever-fewer number of corporations; (4) Meaning does not reside
in the media text itself. Audiences negotiate meaning from the various
media they consume depending on a range of factors including gender,
class, race, ethnicity, age, and culture (Bazelgette, 1989; Buckingham,
1990/1992; Duncan, D’Ippolito, Macpherson, & Wilson, 1996; Fisherkeller, 2002; Goodman, 2003; Masterman, 1985; Tyner, 1998).
While teaching multiple literacies may seem to be a worthy educational goal, it is not commonly put into practice. Even though the
National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and several states
have formulated language arts standards that call for students to view
and analyze a variety of nonprint media (Martin, 2003), school curricula
still tend to privilege print literacy over visual literacy and segregate
communication forms according to disciplines such as English, speech,
and art classes. Language arts instruction is still generally considered
to be synonymous with a written text-centric approach to literacy
(Goodman, 2003).
Print-based literacy is rarely connected to the practice of visual arts
and spoken word. There is the common idea that reading visual media
is different from notational alphabetic texts in that some basic under-
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standing of the rules of grammar and vocabulary has to be learned
before meaning can be made from the texts. “Reading” visual texts is
more direct, as there is no mediating alphabet to decode. But if the
grammar of media arts is not understood—the codes and conventions
of close-up shots, dissolves, rolling credits, and all the nuances of editing, sound, lighting, shadow, color, framing, angles, movement, and so
forth—a student would be unable to “read” in between the lines of a
film. Reading a moving image draws upon the same method of close
and repeated observations of all the elements the filmmaker used to
construct meaning that an art teacher would employ in reading how a
painter created a painting. And an art teacher would also train students
to develop multiple readings of a painting much as they would with a
written text (Piro, 2002).
In the course of a day, we receive visual, oral, and print messages all
jumbled together. We take for granted that sound, image, and text are
broadcast simultaneously on television, that a newspaper is a combination of image and text and that much of that text is the spoken word in
printed form, that music is increasingly accompanied by image on MTV
and in films, and that the sound of radio shows is now accompanied by
text and image on the Internet. To teach students to read in between
the lines of these modes of language, students first need to become
aware that these modes exist as such. Invisible as separate entities, the
interwoven threads of sight, sound, and print need to be pulled apart
and held up to the light for inspection.
While most of the learning and work at EVC centers around the
production of a documentary, learning to deconstruct media critically
is essential to the process. Time and attention are given to analyzing
still and moving images without sound and to analyzing sound divorced
from images. Students are then engaged in video-making activities that
link analysis and production and give them opportunities to practice
and apply the analytic concepts they have just learned.
To give students a sense of how sound contributes to telling a story,
the EVC instructor plays a section of a movie without dialogue. She
turns the video screen away from them so the students can hear but
cannot see the images. Then she stops the video at various points and
asks the students to list the different sounds they notice. In one scene,
for example, this may include the screech of breaks, the slam of a car
door, footsteps, the wind blowing, a door creaking, silence, a faucet
dripping, a dog barking, and violin music.
Students are then asked: What do you imagine is happening in the
movie? Why do you think this? What sound clues did you hear that
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support your prediction? After listening to the section again, the students can revise their notes and then share their ideas. Then the teacher
moves the monitor so the students can see the screen and she plays the
scene again. They can compare their imagined interpretation of the
scene with the visual and aural depiction. They learn the differences
between literal sounds that evoke an image of the sound-producing
source (such as the car door slam or dog barking) and nonliteral sounds
that may create a mood or feeling (such as the violin music that created
a sense of tension and anxiety). In addition, they analyze use of dialogue
in narrative films and the use of interviews, narration, and sound effects
in documentaries and in the news.
To apply this new knowledge regarding the use of sound in telling
a story, students are asked to create a simple story with only sound.
They practice recording different kinds of sounds using the appropriate
microphones and then learn to use different kinds of sound elements
to tell a story. Their stories are less than two minutes long and include
music, sound effects, and sounds recorded in the classroom or in the
street. They edit in sound effects.
A similar activity teaches students to analyze still images. They learn
to articulate how the visual elements of composition and framing are
used to represent values, ideas, characters, places, or events in a story.
They learn how a documentary camera operator employs a similar
aesthetic sensibility as a still photographer.
The students are clustered in small groups. Each group is given a
different black and white still image to study. All of the photos relate
to the topic they are exploring in their documentary; in this case,
homelessness. One is a high-angle, vertical framed photo. In the foreground, a boy sleeps on a suitcase on a cracked sidewalk next to some
bags piled against the wall of a concrete building. The wall that runs
nearly the full length of the right side of the photo has graffiti on it. A
woman carrying an infant in a snugli looks down in his direction while
one of her hands rests on a stroller with another child in it. Another
women stands behind her, holding the hand of a child standing on either
side of her. Near the top left corner of the photo, more women, children, and bags are behind her.
The students study their photo and jot down everything they notice.
They are asked to consider such characteristics as: the type of shot
(close-up, medium shot, long shot); the angle (high angle, low angle);
light and shadow; and placement of elements (objects, people, etc.)
in the picture (foreground, background, juxtaposition). Then they
describe how the image makes them think and feel.
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Using an overhead projector, each image is projected for the whole
class to see. The students who first analyzed the images present their
ideas. After they are finished, others contribute to the analysis. Students
collectively explore questions such as:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Who do you think took the picture?
How are the people in the photos represented?
What caption would you write for that photo?
What kind of message is the photographer trying to convey?
How do the different elements in the image contribute to get
that message across?
How might the message of the photo change if it were taken
from a different angle, or cropped differently?
Who might be the intended audience for the photo?
How might different audiences respond to the photo (including
the homeless people in the photos)?
Where do you think the picture appeared?
The aim of this and other similar lesson activities is to develop
students’ habits of close observation and questioning so that they automatically bring them to bear on all the media experiences they have.
Regardless of whether the student is trying to understand a visual, aural,
or print-based text, habits of questioning, evaluating, and analyzing distinguish critical literacy from an uncritical literacy.
At the most basic level, the reader, listener, or viewer may learn to
simply understand the literal meaning of what is written, said, or visualized. A more experienced “reader” can, as Dale describes (in Tyner,
1998), “draw inferences, understand the limitations of what was written,
said or spoken. . . . And finally, we learn to read beyond the lines, to
evaluate and apply the material to new situations” (p. 61).
Critical literacy aims to teach students the skills and capacity to read
at this most developed level—in between the lines and beyond the
lines—whether those lines are alphabetic, painted, videotaped, or spoken. But teachers need to give students repeated opportunities to practice and build upon the micro skills needed to progress through the
various levels of development. At each step along the way, students need
to practice skills and habits of close and repeated reading, with multiple
perspectives, across all textural forms. Students can only initially accomplish this with a great deal of teacher guidance and assistance; gradually,
they internalize the skills and finally can perform them independently.
Among the first steps in teaching critical literacy is to make the
learning outcomes and levels of proficiency explicit to teachers and
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students alike. At EVC, the teaching staff develops rubrics that differentiate among the various domains of learning that are embedded in
the process of documentary making such as research, camerawork,
media analysis, and editing. It is important to see these rubrics as living
documents that teachers hold up against their practice in the classroom
and based on that experience, review and revise each year. The point is
not to have learning standards forever set in stone, but to have ongoing
reflection and conversations among the staff about what counts as good
teaching and learning and how to collectively get there.
The way that students internalize and apply multimodal critical
literacy skills is difficult to quantify. In focus group interviews and
surveys distributed to EVC alumni who attended workshops several
years ago, Butler and Zaslow (unpublished) began to provide anecdotal
evidence of impact.
If I’ll be watching something on TV or something in general comes up and
something’s not right . . . I’ll tell somebody about what I’m thinking or what
I’m feeling about it. And I don’t know, it usually ends up like you’re explaining
something to them for like an hour but definitely you look more depth at
everything.
I spoke to my mom about it. She didn’t really understand too much about it
but one day we was watching the news and she was like, “These people will say
anything on TV.” And I’m like, “Well I go to EVC and I don’t think they’re
saying it the way it’s meant to be said. I think they’re just editing it and making
it come out a certain way.” And she’s like, “What are you talking about?” It took
about an hour for me to explain . . . the whole thing to her, but I explained it
to her. And she wanted to know if she could go to EVC but I’m like, “You’re
too old for EVC, Mom.” (p. 8)
While their media production skills could not be assessed as not
many graduates went on to work as documentary makers, the analytic
skills they developed at EVC—while not easily measured—do surface
and can be observed “qualitatively through their interpersonal relationships, through the change in attention and focus paid to media messages
and production techniques, and in the expectations they have of themselves and of others” (Butler & Zaslow, unpublished, p. 8).
Teaching Continuous Inquiry
Continuous inquiry has been an essential aspect of EVC’s educational and cultural practice of critical literacy. The EVC model teaches
students to assume a questioning, skeptical attitude; to dig deeply into
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public problems; and to investigate the connectedness of those problems to the social institutions and historic trends that have shaped them
and to the individuals who struggle to overcome them. This approach
gives students the opportunity to move between the personal and public
spheres, starting with the self-referential and then reaching beyond
themselves to study their community at large. Such work sows the seeds
for them to grow into what John Dewey called an “organized, articulate
Public” (1946, p. 146), civically engaged citizens capable of active social
concern.
Dewey is most well known for his writing on school reform and
democracy. But he also wrote about the role of the mass media as an
educational force in forming public opinion and consequently, its
potential to contribute either to a healthy or weak democracy. Observing in the early years of the 20th century both the sensationalist reporting of the press and the rapid growth of communication technologies
to distribute those reports, Dewey called for a public journalism of
“continuous inquiry”:
Telegraph, telephone, and now the radio, cheap and quick mails, the printing
press, capable of swift reduplication of material at low cost, have attained a
remarkable development. But when we ask what sort of material is recorded
and how it is organized, when we ask about the intellectual form in which the
material is presented, the tale to be told is very different. . . . Without coordination and consecutiveness, events are not events, but mere occurrences,
intrusions. . . . (leading to) the triviality and “sensational” quality of so much of
what passes as news . . . Only continuous inquiry, continuous in the sense of
being connected as well as persistent, can provide the material of enduring
opinion about public matters. (Ratner, 1939, pp. 395–396)
Dewey’s commentary is just as relevant today. Much of the news is
as remarkable for its instantaneous, 24-hour, global dissemination as it
is for its sensational, decontextualized, nonintellectual content. We can
hear echoes of Dewey’s call for journalists to practice continuous
inquiry in the press and for educators to teach students to think and
practice such inquiry in school so as to build a more informed public,
capable of thoughtful engagement in public problems and in the democratic process.
Continuous inquiry requires skills of observation and imagination
and a sense of agency. It requires the careful and repeated observation
of the cultural and material world and the ability to create a sense of
distance, a defamiliarizing of the familiar. For example, to pose the
question: “Why are there homeless teenagers?” the questioner must
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first take notice of the teens routinely passed by, sitting outside a shelter,
or sleeping in a subway car or bus station, and see that there are
homeless teenagers.
The student must also learn to imagine that which is not present.
To pose the problem presupposes that there is a knowable cause, perhaps a solution, and even the possibility of a world where homelessness
does not exist. Students must develop the capacity to imagine the world
as if it could be otherwise.
The learner must have the self-confidence to find and make sense
of answers to such questions, and also believe that a public audience
would be interested in hearing what the investigator has found out. In
other words, the student must have faith that the search is worth
undertaking.
However, too often students come to EVC without such hope.
They have not been engaged in this sort of in-depth community
research before and do not believe they can complete an inquiry or
that their project will make any difference. They seem to be, as
Greene (1998) describes, “sunk in the everydayness” of life and so
perceive the impoverished social conditions that surrounded them as
wholly normal (p. 124). They suffer from what Dewey (1934) called
the “anesthetic” in experience that numbs people into an inability to
imagine the existence of, much less search for, alternatives. Without
the self-confidence to ask questions and search for answers to them,
students will be much less likely to develop the other skills needed for
successful inquiry.
There are two underlying pedagogical strategies embedded in
EVC’s inquiry-based approach that make it possible for teachers to
actively engage students in the work: the learning process is dialoguebased and student-centered. From the first day of class, the teacher sets a
tone and develops a culture of open honest dialogue and learner-centered participatory decision making. Within this learning environment,
students develop a greater sense of empowerment that motivates them
to take up the search as well as a respect for themselves and their peers
as collaborative learners. Over time, they come to see that their inquiry
can make a difference and that through the process the students are
becoming teachers and change agents.
Dialogue-Based Teaching
The importance of dialogue in learning is described by Freire
(1970): “Only dialogue, which requires critical thinking, is also capable
of generating critical thinking. Without dialogue there is no commu-
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nication, and without communication there can be no true education”
(pp. 73–74).
In the EVC documentary workshop, dialogue takes place on
several levels. Pairs or small groups of students may have informal
conversations or more formal discussions and debates. They have
multiple opportunities to pose questions and conduct interviews on
video with peers as well as with adults in positions of authority. In
each of these instances, they learn about the subject of their inquiry
in addition to learning on a meta-cognitive level that their ideas and
questions count, and are in fact vital to the success of the entire class
project.
They also learn that the teacher is not the sole possessor of knowledge, and that knowledge is shared and constructed by all the students
and the community members they interview. This shared construction
of knowledge through dialogue constitutes an oppositional shift in
power relations from their traditional school experience where the
teacher, in a dominant role, does the talking and asking of questions
and the student, in the subordinate position, does the listening and
answering. Every community member is a potential resource; every
interview exploring community problems opens up possibilities for
further learning and problem solving. And as such, the entire community can become a laboratory for learning and action.
Several layers of dialogue drive the documentary process: an internal
dialogue between the student and her or his lived experience, and
external dialogues between student and student, student and teacher,
and student and interviewee. A dialogue also takes place between the
teacher, student, and interviewees whose ideas and voices are represented in the documentary and the audience who views it. Finally, it is
important to note that each of these dialogues is grounded in and grows
out of the essential social problem explored in the tape. This process
of inquiry and creative production illustrates Freire’s (1970) dictum:
“Dialogue is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in
order to name the world” (p. 69).
As is evident in this alumnus’s powerful reflection on his experience,
students realize that they can engage in dialogue with adults, about
“adult” problems, to “name the world”:
One thing that . . . I think is very true to anyone’s experience at EVC [is] just
knowing that as a young person you don’t have to be older to think about certain
things, think about certain topics, about certain issues and want to talk to older
people to get their opinions. Understand that you are on the same level or
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enough of a level that it’s OK to have a conversation with an older person about
politics or any number of global issues. (Butler & Zaslow, unpublished, p. 15)
Most students, however, do not begin the inquiry with the skills
needed to engage in open dialogue and make full use of their “laboratory.” The teacher needs to give them a great deal of practice and
preparation so they can build the skills along the way. This includes
teaching students how to approach a stranger on the street for an
interview, how to give and accept constructive feedback from peers, how
to use research to develop initial and follow-up questions, and how to
turn a formal interview into a relaxed open-ended conversation. Each
of these practices at some level involves a blending of oral and print
literacies and of social and intellectual skills, and leads to a gradual
opening up of students’ curiosity and imagination.
The importance of learning “how to talk to people” cannot be
underestimated. The documentary inquiry process gives students practice in journalism interviewing techniques that help them to initiate a
social encounter in the community and facilitate an intellectually engaging and generative conversation. These are not skills students often
learn in overcrowded traditional schools; the investigation of social
issues generally falls outside of the academic curriculum and community
members are often undervalued as primary sources of information. In
addition, as developing skills of oral communication is emphasized less
in school than is written work, students have few opportunities to
practice the art of dialogue. So gaining such opportunities at EVC is
appreciated by them all the more.
In reflecting on their experience at EVC, students seem to remember most the social encounter of the interview, learning to “approach”
a stranger to have a conversation, whether on the telephone or on the
street:
Overall, what I’ve learned from EVC and what I will take with me, is basically
not only working with the camera and things like that and making a documentary but all in all, how to go out and meet people and how talk to people. We
had to do research; we had to find people to talk to. We had to find expert
interviews. We had to actually go there, call them and set up the interviews.
Things like that. It was a real professionalism. You had to carry yourself in a
certain way . . . Interviewing I will take with me. It taught me how to approach
someone. (Serena)
Ultimately, the dialogue the students are engaged in is with their
audience. They are not only posing questions to their interviewees but
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are combining the answers they record on video along with imagery,
music, special effects, and other elements to tell a story. Their voices
are being heard through their tape, making an argument that reflects
back a synthesis of the best questions, stories, and wisdom that they
collected throughout the course of their inquiry.
The school and community screenings and the question and answer
sessions that follow are teachable moments. These are opportunities to
present new perspectives, make marginal voices heard, break the silence
about injustices witnessed, change audiences’ ways of thinking, and even,
in some cases, move them to action. As one EVC alum reported, “My
experience at EVC and the whole documentary workshop process gave
me the whole understanding that there were people out there that valued
my opinion and that you can make a difference by just doing a documentary on something.” For many students, their EVC experience was
a journey out of silence and into dialogue, and from dialogue into action.
The students also spoke about how their thinking changed as a
result of their experience producing the homeless youth documentary:
I learned more in this semester about this topic than I have all my life. Before
researching this topic, I too had many stereotypical thoughts and I didn’t know
anything else from what was visible to me, which was just the people sleeping
on the streets and subways. As soon as I found out about what’s actually going
on, and the youth that we usually don’t see, my views changed immensely. Now
instead of thinking that all homeless people are bad and crazy, . . . I see them
as average people, just trying to make it in this world, and people who don’t
have anyone to turn to. (John)
Another student explained how the video was going to “make a
difference” and would change the way audiences thought about the
problem.
Homeless youth . . . was an important topic for us to learn and research about
because it will change not only the way we think about it, but whoever watches
the video will also change their way of thinking about it. And it’s gonna make
a difference in people’s lives. (Vanessa)
Students were no longer only students but teachers, cultural producers, and social activists.
Student-Centered Teaching
The second and related strategy of EVC’s inquiry-based approach
is grounded in the student-centeredness of the teaching. Throughout
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the Documentary Workshop, the EVC teachers give students decisionmaking power in the purposes, content, and direction of their own
learning. It would not be sufficient to teach students to conduct neighborhood interviews if the teacher chose all the subjects to be addressed
and the questions to be asked. The teacher and not the students would
be doing the interesting, challenging intellectual work, and the students
would miss out on important learning opportunities. The point is for
the students to pose and refine their own authentic questions, find
resources and information, weigh evidence, present their findings, and
take a vested interest in and ownership of their own learning. The
intellectual and emotional rewards are so much greater for the students
if they feel connected to, inspired by, and passionate about their subject
of choice. Through this experience, they grow to become independent
and self-directed learners.
The EVC students consistently report that they feel more positively
about themselves, their work, and their community, in contrast to their
experiences in traditional teacher-centered classes. A powerful sense of
engagement and excitement surrounds them when they are out on the
streets, talking with their peers, and talking about subjects of immediate
importance to them. They have a sense of ownership about their work
when they get to decide the subject of study. And they feel tremendous
pride when they present their projects and answer questions at public
screenings attended by their friends, family, and teachers. While most
schools do not focus on work that has an audience beyond the classroom
or school setting, such work leads students to understand the importance of their roles as citizens and social critics. As one student
described it:
The single most satisfying moment was at the final screening at EVC. I had my
mother there, and my girlfriend at the time, and her mother. Her mother didn’t
know I could speak that well. She had her perceptions about me based on maybe
the way I looked or my appearance. She never got a chance to speak with me
or find out how I felt. But when she saw me speaking about the project and
how proud I was of it, it touched her. . . . Seeing my mother in the audience
and looking at how proud she was. That sticks out as well. (Goodman, 2003, p. 58)
A key principle and strategy of EVC’s student-centered class is
student choice of the subject of their inquiry. The students’ own condition of life becomes their curriculum of study. As a collective, the
Documentary Workshop students are given the opportunity to decide
what aspect of their life at home, in school, or perhaps in the streets of
their community is an important enough issue or problem to explore
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for nearly the entire 18-week semester. This selection is an involved
process that takes several class days to accomplish. Following is a brief
description of the process from the fall 2003 semester that resulted in
the documentary on homeless youth.
The students first view professionally and student-produced
documentaries to become familiar with the genre and the issues they
explore, and generate a list of criteria about what they believe makes a
“good” documentary. Students then look to the concerns they have in
their own lives and in their surrounding community for subjects worth
investigating.
Among the topics and questions the students generated were: the
representation of women in music, movies, advertisements, and TV and
how that affects how they are treated in society; does music impact how
we act and how violent we are as a society?; homeless teenagers; the
effects of growing up in a broken or an untraditional home; stress; youth
rights—why are they not allowed to drink or buy cigarettes but can be
tried as adults and go to jail before they are 18; HIV/AIDS and young
people; and rats and neighborhoods—why some have more rats than
others, and what kinds of diseases they transmit.
The students narrowed the list down from 33 issues to 10 after an
hour and a half of discussion about which topics might be redundant,
which could be grouped together, and which they felt most strongly
about. They then reduced the list to five and carried on the discussion
by writing questions and comments to each other on five separate
“graffiti boards,” each devoted to one of the top five issues.
After reviewing all of the comments scrawled across the graffiti
boards, the class more closely considered the pros and cons of each topic
using their criteria for a “good” documentary: a clear line of inquiry;
multiple voices and perspectives; formal and informal interviews; an
engaging story that educates and entertains; and new information, or a
different take on what is commonly seen. They were urged to consider
the topic that would make the best documentary rather than a personally favored topic. Finally, they voted, choosing homeless teenagers as
their focus. As Vanessa explained it, “Homelessness, out of all the topics,
seemed to be the most important one—the one that would actually
make a difference and that people could relate to 10 years from now.”
Teaching Reflection
Critical literacy teaches students to actively reflect on their own
work and learning. The skills and habits of reflection are developed
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through regular journal writing, critiques of a range of documentaries,
and rough-cut edit screenings. However, the most intensive time for
reflection that is built into the Documentary Workshop is the portfolio
roundtable. This learner-centered approach to reflection teaches students to monitor and evaluate their own and each other’s growth and
learning. The roundtable is a time for student reflection and also a time
to reach a collective assessment about the thinking and performance of
the student, and by extension, of the teacher as well.
Media educators are constantly making judgments about the quality
of camerawork, editing, and research we expect from our students.
Often the standards are based on an intuitive sense of what constitutes
good work in terms of craft, creativity, and thoughtfulness. Efforts to
use less subjective measures such as multiple choice tests tell us less
about what the students know than about what she or he does not know.
These tests do not tell us what students can actually do, or how students
think and grapple with problems within the real-life context of a video
production. Portfolios and the student exhibitions offer a richer portrait
of what students are capable of knowing and doing. They give students
an opportunity to publicly show their best work and talk about it with
members of the community including parents, other students, teachers,
principals, researchers, producers, and artists (Goodman & Tally, 1993,
p. 30).
To prepare for the portfolio roundtables, students gather a variety
of records and instances of documentation produced during the course
of their documentary production. These records include journal entries,
rough footage from interviews, rough-cut screenings, edit plans, interview questions, tape logs, and phone logs.
The collection process is well integrated into daily work. But gathering work is not enough; students and staff have to understand how
each student is evolving. This includes frequent conversations about the
work the students do, making criteria for what constitutes good-quality
work explicit.
During the roundtables, students present several drafts of their work
to demonstrate their learning and skill development over time. The
teachers, parents, media artists, researchers, and community members
who sit on the panel are asked not to assign a grade, but to look
carefully at the work, look for evidence of student learning, acknowledge the learning evidenced, and encourage that learning through constructive feedback. Ultimately, conversations around portfolios and
screenings can help shape a culture of self-reflection and critique that
students can internalize. The process of presenting a portfolio to a
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panel reinforces the self-reflection. Students begin their individual presentation by reflecting on the inquiry process of making their documentary as related to the two skill areas they chose to present. Here is
one student’s general overview related to interviewing and editing skill
areas:
We found people to interview. How we did that was we went online. I looked
for shelters, called them and asked them for interviews. They agreed; some
didn’t. We got interviews. We went to shelters, and we videotaped kids. Then
we got to the editing process. That was hard but also I had the most fun doing
the editing. It was hard because you had to figure out where you are going and
you had to present it in a way that everybody would understand and get your
point across clearly. That was definitely the hardest part because—how you
gonna go about deciphering through all this information and make it into
something coherent that people will understand? (Vanessa)
Students refer to rubrics that provide such criteria. For example,
students who chose to highlight camera work might evaluate their
learning through the choices of different types of shots to convey a
mood; students who present about interviewing might discuss how they
learned to ask pertinent follow-up questions to get desired information;
and students who present about critical viewing might discuss how they
can now identify various points of view in the media. During her
roundtable, one student showed a clip of the first street interview she
conducted and critiqued her lack of basic skills, such as memorizing
questions and paying attention to the interviewee.
That was a bad interview I did. I would say it was a bad interview because I
didn’t memorize the questions, and I was like “um, um.” I was hesitant; I
think I made them uncomfortable when I did that. I didn’t really pay attention to them . . . I could have come up with a follow up question to that. I
wasn’t really paying attention; I was just trying to go straight to the next
question. That was one of my bad interviews. And also, I was just hesitant. I
wasn’t confident doing the interview. I was like, “Uh, uh,” stuttering and
stuff. (Serena)
Then she showed a clip from a later street interview to show her
growth and development over time. She proudly showed off the more
advanced interviewing skills she demonstrated, such as asking followup questions and turning an interview into a flowing conversation:
I had skills! . . . I was kinda like Oprah [gestures with an imaginary microphone
in her hand]. You know like, I just kept the interview flowing. And I was able
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to still get information from her. When she said, “My neighborhood is good,”
I was like, “Why?” So, I could get a fuller answer. Yeah. I had skills.
She then showed a tape of herself conducting an expert interview
and explained how she learned to use research in her interviews:
My research, it really paid off when it came time to do the interviewing. . . . I
felt more comfortable interviewing him, ’cause I knew about the topic. I made
better questions and was more prepared. . . . Basically, we went to the Health
Department and interviewed Mr. Kopel about environmental stress to find out
more information about it. He was our expert. . . . This was a good interview
because I gave examples about the article we read from the New York
Times. . . . and I was just more confident. (Serena)
Another student showed her panel tapes of the first interview she
conducted with a homeless youth and reflected on how she had
improved as an interviewer:
Those were two interviews with the same person. He was nice enough to let
me interview him twice. Because the first time, I was so shy . . . I asked him if
it was difficult for him to find a job. And he said, “Yes, it was. It was hard to
put up a resume.” So then, right there. Instead of asking him why was it hard
to put up a resume, maybe because he doesn’t have an address or a telephone
number, I asked him if had a lot of references. Which has nothing to do with
the topic! But then the second time I interviewed him, all the questions that I
didn’t get to ask him, I thought about it the second time, and I kind of put them
in there. The second interview was much better than the first one. (Vanessa)
At the end of each presentation, the facilitator asks for questions to
clarify anything that was unclear, and allows the panel guests to probe
the student’s knowledge and understanding. After clarifying questions,
the facilitator asks participants for both “warm” and “cool” feedback
(McDonald, Mohr, Dichter, & McDonald, 2003). Warm feedback
includes only positive comments about the student’s cover letter, presentation, and work. What follows is an example of warm feedback
given by a guest to Vanessa, one of the student producers of the homeless youth documentary.
I thought that your presentation skills are excellent. Very clear, very thorough.
The way you walked us through the information you were presenting . . . I
really want to congratulate you, because I think that the interviews that you
guys were conducting . . . the ones with the youth themselves, were really challenging. Because these are young people who obviously are dealing with
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incredibly serious, and in some cases life threatening, situations—not having a
place to live . . . So it requires real sensitivity on the part of the interviewer
coming to that conversation. And I felt that as much as you thought that the
first one wasn’t any good. . . . your thoughtfulness and your sensitivity to the
person you were talking to, I thought that really came through really clearly.
And I’m sure that the interviewee appreciated that. (Tom, EVC staff member
panelist)
Then cool feedback, which includes more critical comments and
suggestions for the student’s future learning, is shared. Students are
instructed not to respond to feedback, but just to listen. Here is an
excerpt from Vanessa’s roundtable:
You have to listen to people before you are talking back to them. And that was
definitely something you had to work on all semester. And the same thing when
you go to a job interview. When someone starts to give you feedback, you don’t
want to interrupt them. You want to listen to them and then you speak after
they finish. That’s my only cool feedback. Other than that, I think you did
wonderful work through the whole semester. (Maria, Documentary Workshop
teacher)
After the warm and cool feedback has been given, the students can
answer any questions that the roundtable participants ask. This
exchange took place at Vanessa’s presentation:
Participant (Tom): What were the bigger picture challenges of this whole
experience of producing a documentary with a group of
your peers? For you personally, what were the biggest challenges of doing that?
Student (Vanessa): Working with people.
Participant (Tom): That is the challenge?
Student (Vanessa): That is the challenge. Really. Working with people. Because,
when you sit three people together to decide on something,
one person is gonna have an opinion. The other one is gonna
have a completely different one, and the third one is just
gonna be off this earth. And there is no way you can decide
on things because people are constantly like, “No, I want
this.” “I want that.” “No, I want this.” No matter what you
do, everybody is not gonna be happy with it . . . You have to
learn to how work with somebody you don’t like. . . . And
then you grow to love them. You really do.
McDonald et al. (2003), who developed and practiced protocols of
assessment and reflection from which EVC’s model has been adapted,
describe the pedagogical significance of the process:
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The point is to reach a different understanding of our students than the kind
we’re used to, one deeper than what is required merely to keep our teaching
and their learning in sync. But this demands a great shift in energy, both
practical and organizational . . . we often refer to this great shift of energy with
the simple phrase “looking at student work.” Here, however, we acknowledge
that the “looking” we advocate is simple in the deep and disciplined way that
Thoreau’s looking was simple at Walden Pond and Annie Dillard’s at Tinker
Creek. Simple but elemental. Simple but difficult . . . such learning communities foster democracy as well as cognition. They encourage learners—whether
they are first graders, graduate students or colleagues in professional
education—to appreciate the value of diverse ideas and deliberative communities. (pp. 3, 7)
Long-Term Impact
Critical literacy is both an educational strategy and a cultural practice. It seeks to address Dewey’s concerns of developing a civically active
“articulate public” that has the intellectual capacity to engage in collective dialogue and inquiry into the most pressing social problems; and
Freire’s concerns of developing a literate public empowered to “name
the world” in order to transform it. Critical literacy as practiced by the
EVC further addresses the concerns of Kathleen Tyner, David Buckingham, Cary Bazelgette, and other media literacy researchers and
practitioners who aim to teach students to produce and “read” between
and beyond the lines of media across a range of communication modes.
The power of this model of teaching and learning is evident in the
student work at EVC and opens up important possibilities not only at
EVC, but also in school and after-school settings on a much larger scale.
But to scale up the teaching of critical literacy requires broad changes
in the educational practices, goals, and structures of schools so that
language instruction is opened up to include multiple literacies; the
locus of instruction shifts from a teacher-centered to an inquiry-based,
dialogic, learner-centered model; punitive high-stakes testing gives way
to the collective reflection and deliberation of student learning through
portfolio assessment forums; and the curricula are expanded beyond the
state-mandated academic requirements to embrace the curricula of the
students’ lives and the media culture and social community in which
they live.
Documenting the teaching and learning of critical literacy as it is
practiced at EVC gives a snapshot of the impact it has on the students’
creative, analytic, and social capacities. Such a snapshot presents the
dual challenges of scaling up the work to reach larger numbers of
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students in schools as well as of scaling it down (McDonald, Buchanan,
& Sterling, in press), so the impact continues to be deep and lasting on
each individual student. A recent study on the long-term impact of
EVC’s pedagogy suggests a lasting change in student thinking (Butler
& Zazlow, 2004), although more research is needed. However, if focus
group interviews with EVC alumni 10 and more years after they took
the workshop are any indication, the results are encouraging.
Critical thinking and just thinking, and inquiry. . . . I’m a mom right now of a
5 year old, and I totally use that and teach my daughter that that’s very important. You know, questioning why you see something this way. I try to nurture
that within her even.
That’s what really impacted me with EVC, was it’s the place that I could go
and . . . not just write something down . . . or read something and regurgitate it
for a teacher to look at and that’s it. You know, you get a mark if you pass the
class or not, no big deal. But here I was getting something. Actually doing it,
by yourself, or with a group and it makes so much of a difference to me. . . . And
I think that’s what this has, it has that feel, you’re doing something, you’re
making these things happen. So it’s important to have . . . a place that’s keeping
an open mind and trying to get young people to speak their mind and I think
that young people are very influential and have the most influence over the
whole culture and they can just reach so many different people if they’re just
given that opportunity. (Butler & Zaslow, 2004, pp. 9, 15).
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I’d like to acknowledge the EVC Documentary Workshop students and their gifted
teachers Ivana Espinet and Rebecca Renard, whose work together exemplifies the power
and possibility of critical literacy explored in this chapter.
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REFERENCES
Bazelgette, C. (Ed.). (1989). Primary media education: A curriculum statement. London:
British Film Institute and the DES National Working Party for Primary Media
Education.
Buckingham, D. (Ed.). (1990/1992). Watching media learning: Making sense of media education. New York: The Falmer Press. (Republished 1992 by Falmer)
Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. New York: Minton, Balch, and Co.
Dewey, J. (1946). The public and its problems: An essay in political inquiry. Chicago: Gateway
Books.
Duncan, B., D’Ippolito, J., Macpherson, C., & Wilson, C. (1996). Mass media and popular
culture. Toronto: Harcourt Brace Canada.
Educational Video Center (Producer). (2004). No home of your own: A look at the lives of
homeless youth. New York: Educational Video Center.
Fisherkeller, J. (2002). Growing up with television: Everyday learning among young adolescents.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: The Continuum Publishing
Company.
Goodman, S. (2003). Teaching youth media: A critical guide to literacy, video production and
social change. New York: Teachers College Press.
Goodman, S., & Tally, B. (1993, August/September). The tape’s great, but what did they
learn? The Independent Film and Video Monthly, 30–33.
Greene, M. (1988). The dialectic of freedom. New York: Teachers College Press.
Martin, S. (2003, July/August). Close the book. It’s time to read. The Clearing House,
76(6), 289–291.
Masterman, L. (1985). Teaching the media. London: Comedia Books.
McDonald, J.P., Buchanan, J., & Sterling, R. (in press). Scaling up reform interventions.
In S. Bodilly & T. Glennan (Eds.), The national writing project: Scaling up and scaling
down. Santa Monica: Rand.
McDonald, J.P., Mohr, N., Dichter, A., & McDonald, E.C. (2003). The power of protocols:
An educator’s guide to better practice. New York: Teachers College Press.
Piro, J.M. (2002). The picture of reading: Deriving meaning in literacy through image.
The Reading Teacher, 56(2), 126–134.
Ratner, J. (Ed.). (1939). Intelligence in the modern world: John Dewey’s philosophy. New York:
Random House.
Shor, I. (1999). What is critical literacy? In I. Shor & C. Pari (Eds.), Critical literacy in
action: Writing words, changing worlds, (pp. 1–30). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook,
Heinemann.
Tyner, K. (1998). Literacy in a digital world: Teaching and learning in the age of information.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
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Technologies of the Childhood Imagination:
Yugioh, Media Mixes, and Everyday Cultural Production
Mizuko Ito
To appear in Joe Karaganis and Natalie Jeremijenko Ed., Structures of Participation in
Digital Culture. Duke University Press, 2005.
Many of the essays in this volume bear witness to the powerful alchemy of personal cultural
production and communication combined with large-scale networks of digital distribution
and archiving. While the implications of peer-to-peer exchange for the media industries have
attracted considerable public attention, there has been much less consideration of how these
exchanges operate in the everyday practices of individuals. In a world of networked and
viral cultural exchange—of cultural life captured in distributed archives, indexed by search
engines, and aggregated into microcontent feeds for personal information portals—areas of
practice once considered inconsequential dumping grounds of cultural production become
irrepressibly consequential, even productive. The despised category of “mass consumption”
fractured by several generations of poststructuralists, and corroded by ongoing research in
fan and reception studies, may find a still greater foe in the undisciplined practices of teenage
music sharing, game hacking, and personal journal blogs. These emergent digital culture
forms signal the active participation of previously marginal and invisible groups in what we
must now recognize as cultural production, not simply as derivative acts of active
consumption or ephemeral personal communication. What does it mean for those previously
constructed as “consumers”—non-generative, passive audiences for professionally produced
culture—are handed the means not only to distribute media through alternative peer-to-peer
networks, but to remix, repackage, re-value, and produce media through amateur cultural
production?
Shifting structures of participation in the production/consumption matrix are a theme
common to many of the essays in this volume (Manovich, Sundaram, Taylor, Nideffer). I
approach this question through ethnographic research on children’s new media—media
targeted at a demographic group most often characterized as uniquely passive, uncritical,
vulnerable, and receptive. One focus of my work was Yugioh, the craze among elementary
age boys1 in Japan in the years from 2000-2002. Yugioh is an example of a “media mix” of
the type pioneered by Pokemon, integrating different media forms through licensed character
content. The Yugioh animation was released in the US in 2001, and now the card game has
overtaken Pokemon here in popularity. Pokemon broke new media ground in its repackaging
of strategies and narrative forms of video games as content for serialized, non-interactive
forms of media (TV, manga). It innovated further in relying on portable and intimate
1
Although some girls engage with Yugioh, it was decisively marked as boys content, unlike
Pokemon which had a more mixed gender identity (Tobin 2004c). Unlike the “cute” style of
Pokemon (Allison 2004), Yugioh is stylistically closer to medieval and occult fantasies, with
often grotesque and scary monsters. Limited space prevents me from describing a case of a
girls’ media mix, and consequently, from taking the topic of gender difference head-on. But
I would note that, like most kinds of technology-oriented media culture, the trends in anime
media mixes are being set within boy-identified media and filtering over to girls.
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technologies (Game Boy, playing cards) that enabled kids to perform these narratives in
diverse settings of social interaction (Allison 2002; Tobin 2004a). Yugioh similarly relies on
virtual game play as the focal object of serialized narratives enacted in digital, analog, and
everyday sites of play. This chapter analyzes forms of participation in Yugioh-related culture
through three key concepts: the media mix, hypersociality, and extroverted childhood. My
description seeks to highlight the unique characteristics of Japanese children’s culture, while
also locating this case within a broad set of shifts linked to a transnational digital culture.
Network Creativity in Everyday Practice
My central argument is that everyday life, pursued by—in Jean Lave’s (1988) terms—“just
plain folks” needs to be theorized as a site of generative cultural creativity and production.
This is a structure of participation in cultural life that, since the modern era of mechanical
cultural production (Benjamin [1955] 1968), has been overshadowed but never eliminated by
centralized, professionalized, and capitalized forms of media production. In many ways, this
approach draws on established anthropological concerns with everyday practice, folk arts and
crafts, apprenticeship, and community. It differs, however, in that it takes up forms of social
life that are very unlike the small-scale, geographically localized communities and villages
that characterize the classical fieldwork encounter. My objects of study are social groups
mediated and focused by new media and networked cultural forms, many of which are massproduced by media industries. My effort is to rediscover local knowledge and practice
within the belly of the massively mediated beast.
Although this paper is not grounded in as finely textured an observational approach, I
take my cue from a wide range of practice-based studies that have described the inherent
creativity of everyday practice, ranging from Lave’s (1988) studies of everyday mathematics
as shoppers navigate supermarket aisles, to Edward Hutchin’s (1995) studies of cognitive
tasks involved in ship navigation, to Raymond McDermott’s (1988) description of how
children generate their own meanings within oppressive classroom settings. Energized by
Michel de Certeau’s (1984) suggestion that engagement with texts and places demonstrates a
similar generative practice, I draw most immediately from studies of fan communities
(Jenkins 1992; Penley 1991; Tulloch and Jenkins 1995) and ethnographic reception studies
(Mankekar 1999; Morley 1992; Radway 1991) that describe how mass media forms are
integrated and reshaped in local ecologies of meaning. The current digital ecology, however,
constructs far-flung networks of exchange at the “consumer” or, more appropriately, the
“user” level (Benkler 2000) that radically extend the boundaries of these more longstanding
processes of media engagement and reinterpretation. My effort here is to expand this
perspective on everyday practice and media reception into digital culture and technology
studies. How does everyday practice and local media (re)interpretation and (re)mix
articulate with the translocal, impersonal, and automated systems of exchange mediated by
the Internet?
The current digital culture ecology introduces two key sociotechnical innovations
central to my framing of the Yugioh case. The first (guided primarily by media industries
and by Japanese culture industries in particular), involves the construction of increasingly
pervasive mass-media ecologies that integrate in-home media such as television and game
consoles, location-based media such as cinema and special events, and portable media such
as trading cards and handheld games. Following the industry label, I call this the “media
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mix.” The second (primarily user-driven) is characterized by peer-to-peer ecologies of
cultural production and exchange (of information, objects, and money) pursued among
geographically-local peer groups, among dispersed populations mediated by the Internet, and
through national peer-to-peer trade shows. This is what I call “hypersociality.” These
twinned innovations describe an emergent set of technologies of the imagination, where
certain offerings of culture industries articulate with (and provide fodder for) an exploding
network of digitally-augmented cultural production and exchange, fed by interactive and
networked cultural forms.
Together, these dynamics describe a set of imaginaries—shared cultural
representations and understandings—that are both pervasive and integrated into quotidian life
and pedestrian social identity, and no longer strictly bracketed as media spectacles, special
events, and distant celebrity. I treat the imagination as a “collective social fact,” built on the
spread of certain media technologies at particular historical junctures (Appadurai 1996a, 5).
Anderson (1991) argues that the printing press and standardized vernaculars were
instrumental to the “imagined community” of the nation state. With the circulation of mass
electronic media, Appadurai suggests that people have an even broader range of access to
different shared imageries and narratives, whether in the form of popular music, television
dramas, or cinema. Media images are now pervasive in our everyday lives, and form much
of the material through with we imagine our world, relate to others, and engage in collective
action, often in ways that depart from the relations and identities produced more locally. In
children’s toys, Gary Cross (1997) has traced a shift in the past century from toys that
mimicked real-world adult activities such as cooking, childcare, and construction, to the
current dominance of toys that are based in fantasy environments such as outer space,
magical lands, and cities visited by the supernatural. Appadurai posits that people are
engaging with these imaginings in more agentive, mobilized, and selective ways as part of
the creation of “communities of sentiment” (1996a, 6-8). My focus is on the more recent
technologies of networked digital media and how they are inflected towards more ubiquitous,
activist, and customized engagements with a technologized imaginary.
From 1998-2002, I conducted fieldwork in the greater Tokyo area among children,
parents, and media industrialists, at the height of Yugioh’s popularity in Japan. My
description is drawn from interviews with these various parties implicated in Yugioh, my own
engagements with the various media forms, and participant observation at sites of player
activity, including weekly tournaments at card shops, trade-shows, homes, and an afterschool
center for elementary-aged children. I organize my narrative along the twin threads of media
mixing and hypersociality, concluding with a discussion of the implications of these
technologies of the imagination on the construction of childhood.
The Media Mix
In the past decade, study of digital culture has increasingly recognized that the “virtual
world” of the Internet is a site of “real” politics, identities, and capital rather than a
dematerialized realm of free-flowing information (for example, Castronova 2001; Hine 2000;
Lessig 1999; Lovink 2003; Miller and Slater 2000; Rheingold 2002). The media mix insists
that we also recognize the reverse flow: the real is being colonized the by the virtual as
technologies of the digital imagination become more pervasive in the everyday environment.
Yugioh and its associated ecology of digital technology in urban Japan are indicative of this
porous membrane between the real and virtual, the imagination and everyday life. The
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Yugioh media mix encourages this porosity through products that manifest Yugioh’s
creatures and fantasy encounters in everyday life—with increasing fidelity and portability via
virtual or augmented2 reality technologies.
Trading cards, Game Boys, and character merchandise create what Anne Allison has
called “pocket fantasies,” “digitized icons … that children carry with them wherever they
go,” and “that straddle the border between phantasm and everyday life” (Allison 2004, 42).
The imagination of Yugioh pervades the everyday settings of childhood as it is channeled
through these portable and intimate media forms. These forms of play are one part of a
broader set of shifts towards intimate and portable technologies that enable lightweight
imaginative sharing between people going about their everyday business. In many ways, this
ecology is an illustration of concepts of ubiquitous or pervasive computing (Dourish 2001;
McCullough 2004; Weiser 1991; Weiser and Brown 1996), extended to popular culture. In
Japan, this pervasive media ecology includes trading cards, portable game devices, “character
goods” such as mobile phone straps and clothing, screens and signage in the urban
environment, as well as multimedia mobile phones that capture and exchange visual as well
as textual information (Ito 2003; Okabe and Ito 2003). Imaginative fantasy is now more than
ever part of the semiotics of everyday social life.
In the Yugioh comic book (manga), monsters are an intimate presence in the lives of the
characters. Characters carry cards that ‘contain’ the monsters, and engage in duels that
combine a card game with life-like monster battles, projected in holographic 3D from “duel
disks” worn on the players’ arms. Boundaries are blurred as the duelists suffer collateral
harm from monsters blasting the playing field with dragon fire and destructive magic. Yugioh
is thus a very explicit drama of the hyperreal—of objects of the imagination becoming more
vivid, life-like and omnipresent, to the point of sapping the strength of flesh-and-blood
bodies. But the strange mingling of the real and virtual in the pages of Yugioh is just one
aspect of a larger drama of simulation. The Yugioh manga series has spawned a television
animation, an immensely popular card game, at least ten video game versions, and character
goods ranging from T-shirts to packaged curry to pencil boxes. All project Yugioh into
different sites of consumption, play, spectatorship, and social action.
Yugioh is similar to the media mixes of Pokemon and Digimon in that they involve
human players who mobilize other-worldly monsters in battle. There is a difference though,
in how this fantasy is deployed. In earlier media mixes, such as Pokemon, the trading cards
are a surrogate for “actual” monsters in the fantasy world: Pokemon trainers collect monsters,
not cards. In Yugioh, Yugi and his friends collect and traffic in trading cards, just like the
kids in “our world.” The activities of children in our world thus closely mimic the activities
and materialities of children in Yugi’s world. They collect and trade the same cards and
engage in play with the same strategies, rules, and material objects. Scenes in the anime
depict Yugi frequenting card shops and buying card packs, enjoying the thrill of getting a
rare card, dramatizing everyday moments of media consumption in addition to the highly
stylized and fantastic dramas of the duels themselves. In Japan, during the period when I was
2
Virtual reality is a term that gained currency in the early nineties as a way of describing
immersive, computer generated virtual environments that a user “entered” through
technologies such as stereoscopic goggles and instrumented gloves. Augmented reality is a
more recent term describing technologies such as see-through displays that juxtapose digital
images and real-world objects and environments.
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conducting fieldwork, Yugioh cards were a pervasive fact of life, a fantasy world made
manifest in the pockets and backpacks of millions of boys across the country. A 2000 survey
of three hundred students in a Kyoto elementary school indicated that by the third grade,
every student owned some Yugioh cards (Asahi Shinbun 2001).
As corporate marketing expertise with media mixes has grown—even in the very short
trajectory from from Pokemon to Yugioh—the media mix has come to signify and rely on
more than just product diversification across sites of consumption. Instead, media mixes are
increasingly designed to sustain intertextual referencing across the different media
incarnations. Among other things, this permits the hierarchies of value elaborated in one
domain (e.g., between different cards described in the manga story) to underwrite economies
of scarcity in another (the card game, the video games, etc.). A biography of one card in the
Yugioh pantheon provides an example: the Blue Eyes White Dragon card (or Blue Eyes, for
short) is probably the most famous of the Yugioh trading cards. Blue Eyes makes its first
appearance in 1996, in the ninth installment of the Yugioh comic series in the weekly Jump
Magazine. “This is the Blue Eyes White Dragon Card” explains Yugi’s grandfather. “It is so
powerful that production was stopped right away. It is the ultimate rare card that any card
addict would give a right arm for” (Takahashi 1997). The card plays a central role in the
origin story of the feud between Yugi and Kaiba, the two protagonists, and ultimately
becomes closely identified with the latter. Both Yugi and Kaiba are card masters: Kaiba in
the mode of ruthless individualism, battling for his own pride and power; Yugi in that of
selfless kindness, battling to help his friends and family as well as perfect his game.
A few years after Blue Eyes appeared in the manga, the cartoon series was launched on
TV Tokyo. Soon after, the Blue Eyes card was released by game maker Konami in several
versions as part of its Yugioh Official Card Game, thereby entering into circulation among
the kids of our world. The first version was released in March 1999—packaged as a starter
box complete with cards, playing accessories, and instructions. Konami put Blue Eyes at the
top of the card hierarchy—both in terms of rareness and the number of ‘attack points’ it
represented. The cards were printed with a shiny surface and labeled “ultra rare,” in contrast
to normal cards, plain old rare cards, and super rare cards. As the card game grew in
popularity, Konami released new cards in smaller five-card packs, costing just over the
equivalent of $1. Konami thereby engineered scarcity within the flow of physical cards (and
consequently within the regime of economic exchange). Unlike the starter box, with its fixed
set of cards, the smaller packs imply a gamble: like baseball cards, one doesn’t know exactly
what one is getting. There is a chance of receiving rare, super rare, and ultra rare cards, in
addition to the normal cards.
Variations on this theme followed, including the EX pack, divided into a Yugi and a
Kaiba deck (Kaiba leading with his signature Blue Eyes and Yugi with his own Dark
Magician), and special edition Blue Eyes cards, such as the undocumented “ultimate rare”
card in the ‘Spell of Mask’ Series and another version distributed at the Jump Magazine
Trade Show in 1999. Product spinoffs and launches have continued to be accompanied by
special-edition releases, from the launch of Jump Magazine in Japan and the U.S. to new
versions of Yugioh Playstation and Game Boy software. Stickers, notebooks, T-shirts, and
pencils, many featuring Blue Eyes, round out the product lineup.
This cross-marketing drives sales and connects the different levels of Yugioh play. Game
Boy software ties together the fantasy world of the comic characters and real life game play,
allowing the player to play against the comic characters in story mode, or against other kids
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by connecting Game Boys together. The linkage between the physical cards and the virtual
game cards extends beyond the card inserts in the game packages. Each physical card carries
a printed code that can be inputted into the online version, translating the physical card into
the online space. In fact, it is nearly impossible to play the Game Boy game without having a
collection of physical cards available for virtualization.
Despite the endless forms of production, reproduction, and engineered scarcity through
which the Blue Eyes card circulates, the actual utility of this card in game play is limited.
Among professional players—and by this I mean both children and adults who compete in
national and international tournaments—use of this card is impractical as well as passé. For
players playing by the expert rules, the card is too powerful and unwieldy, requiring two
other monsters to be sacrificed in order to be able to play it. The spectacular duels enacted in
the comics and cartoons feature flashy, powerful monsters that find their way more into card
collections than card play. In other words, the regimes of value (Appadurai 1986) between
the symbolic, monetary, and competitive value of cards are interconnected, but also distinct.
For example, gamers value cards primarily for playability, but might also include a card like
Blue Eyes in their deck because they identify with Kaiba. Similarly, card collectors who buy
and sell card primarily price based on rarity, but a card like Blue Eyes, that has a prominent
role in the narrative forms, fetches a higher price than other cards of similar scarcity.
While the intertextual dynamics of media mixing have existed for as long as people have
transcribed oral narratives or dramatized written ones, contemporary versions have unique
qualities. They go beyond the more familiar form of adaptation between one media form and
another, as when a movie is made with the characters of a prior book or video game. With
Yugioh and similar media properties, multiple media forms concurrently produce an evolving
but shared virtual referent of fantasy game play and collection. Unlike earlier forms of card
play, Pokemon and Yugioh cards are tied to an immense narrative apparatus of anime and
manga series spanning years, as well as digital gameplay. The media mix forms a
heterogeneous but integrated web of reference, manifest through multiple technologies of the
imagination. At the corporate level, and as the formats multiply, this requires an integrated
set of alliances across a wide range of industries, retailers and advertisers. At the user level,
this means that Yugioh players, readers, and viewers can experience the Yugioh imaginary as
a sustained and omnipresent engagement. Unlike the spectacular film release or the cyclical
television special, this form of engagement is often nurtured over years of ongoing viewing,
reading, collecting, and social exchange, a relationship more of connoisseurship than
consumption.
Hypersociality
Yugioh demonstrates how pervasive media technologies in everyday settings integrate the
imagination into a wider range of sites of social activity. Far from the shut-in behavior that
gave rise to the most familiar forms of anti-media rhetoric, this media mix of children’s
popular culture is wired, extroverted and hypersocial, reflecting forms of sociality augmented
by dense sets of technologies, signifiers, and systems of exchange. David Buckingham and
Julian Sefton Green have argued in the case of Pokemon that “activity—or agency—is an
indispensable part of the process rather than something that is exercised post hoc”
(Buckingham and Sefton-Green 2004, 19).The image of solitary kids staring at television
screens and twiddling their thumbs has given way to the figure of the activist kid beaming
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monsters between Game Boys, trading cards in the park, text messaging friends on their bus
ride home, reading breaking Yugioh information emailed to a mobile phone, and selling
amateur comics on the Internet. This digitally-augmented sociality is an unremarkable fact
of life to the current generation of kids in urban Japan. With the majority of Japanese
accessing the Internet through mobile phones and with the rise of the handheld Game Boy as
the preferred platform for gaming, computer and TV screens are no longer privileged access
points to the virtual and the networked world.
Congregating with their Game Boys and Yugioh playing cards, kids engage in a form of
hypersocial exchange that is pervaded by the imagination of virtual gaming worlds. Buzzing
with excitement, a group of boys huddles in a corner of their after-school center, trading
cards, debating the merits of their decks, and talking about the latest TV episode. A little girl
rips open a pack of cards at a McDonald’s, describing their appeal to her baffled
grandparents. A boy wears a favorite rare card around his neck as he climbs the play
equipment at the park, inciting the envy and entrepreneurialism of his peers. As their mother
completes her grocery shopping, a brother and sister walk into an elevator dueling with
coupled Game Boy Advance machines. When Yugioh players get together, (hyper)social
exchange involves both the more familiar discursive sharing of stories and information, and
the material exchange of playing cards and virtual monsters.
Rather than the one-way street connoted by the term mass media or mass culture,
hypersocial exchange is about active, differentiated, and entrepreneurial consumer positions
and a high degree of media and technical literacy. This builds on the sensibilities of kids
who grew up with the interactive and layered formats of video games as a fact of life, and
who bring this subjectivity to bear on other media forms. The interactivity, hacking, and firstperson identification characteristic of video gaming is integrated with card play and
identification with narrative characters. Players collect their own cards and monsters,
combining them into decks that reflect a personal style of play, often derived from the
stylistic cues presented by the manga characters. Pokemon decisively inflected kids game
culture towards personalization and recombination, demonstrating that children can master
highly esoteric content, customization, connoisseurship, remixing, and a pantheon of
hundreds of characters (Buckingham and Sefton-Green 2004; Yano 2004)—an environment
of practice and learning that Sefton-Green has called a “knowledge industry” (Sefton-Green
2004, 151). These more challenging forms of play have also attracted a wide following of
adults.
Like most popular forms of anime content, Yugioh has an avid following of adult fans,
often labeled by the Japanese term for media geek, “otaku”(Greenfeld 1993; Kinsella 1998;
Okada 1996; Tobin 2004c). Adult otaku communities are the illegitimate offspring of the
Yugioh media empire, and exist in uneasy relationship with the entertainment industries that
create Yugioh content. They exploit gaps in both dominant systems of meaning and
mainstream commodity capitalism, using tactics that circumvent the official circuits of mass
marketing and distribution. With the advent of the Internet, otaku communities found their
communications medium, an organizing ground for special-interest fan communities and a
site for distributing alternative content and grey market goods. Cultural remix is about the
appropriation and reshaping of mass cultural content as well as its revaluation through
alternative economies and systems of exchange.
One kind of otaku knowledge is known as sa-chi or “searching,” methods by which
card collectors identify rare card packs before purchase. I find myself out at 1 AM with a
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group of card collectors, pawing through three boxes of just released cards. The salesperson
is amused but slightly annoyed, and it takes some negotiating to get him to open all three
boxes. My companions pride themselves on the well-trained fingertips and disciplined vision
that enables them to identify the key card packs. They teach me a few tricks of the trade, but
clearly this is a skill born of intensive practice. After identifying all the rare, super rare, and
ultra rare cards in the store, they head out to clear the other neighborhood shops of rare cards
before daybreak, when run-of-the-mill consumers will start purchasing.
Single cards, often purchased in these ways, are sold at card shops and on the
Internet. In city centers in Tokyo such as Shibuya, Ikebukuro, and Shinjuku, there are
numerous hobby shops that specialize in the buying and selling of single cards, and which are
frequented by adult collectors as well as children. These cards can fetch prices ranging from
pennies to hundreds of dollars for special edition cards. Street vendors and booths at
carnivals will also often have a display of single-sale Yugioh cards that attract children.
Internet auction sites and Yugioh web sites, however, mediate the majority of these player-toplayer exchanges. The total volume is extremely large. One collector I spoke to purchases
about 600 packs of cards in each round of searches and could easily make his living buying
and selling Yugioh cards.
Children share the same active and entrepreneurial stance, cultural fascinations, and
interests as the adult gamers, but they lack the same freedom of movement and access to
money and information. The rumor mill among children is active though often ill-informed.
All the children I spoke to about it had heard of search techniques, and some had half-baked
ideas of how it might be done. Children create their own local rules, hierarchies of values,
and microeconomies among peer groups, trading, buying, and selling cards in ways that
mimic the more professional adult networks. Despite adult crackdowns on trading and selling
between children, it is ubiquitous among card game players. Once mobile phones filter down
from the teen to the elementary-aged demographic, these exchanges are likely to be central to
an expanded range of communications between kids, exchanging information, beaming
character .jpegs and cutting deals during their down-time hours in transit and at home in the
evenings.
Another arena of otaku cultural production, which I will mention just briefly here, is
the publication and selling of amateur comics, often derived from mainstream content such as
Yugioh, During my years of fieldwork in Tokyo, I would make an annual pilgrimage to the
Comic Market, by some estimates largest trade show in Japan and the epicenter for mangaotaku. The show occupies Tokyo Big Site twice a year, an immense convention hall located
on new landfill in the synthetic port entertainment town of Daiba at Tokyo Bay. It attracts
hundreds of thousands of manga fans, including large numbers who camp at the site and line
up at dawn. The convention center is packed with rows of tables displaying self-published
manga, ranging from booklets constructed of stapled photocopies to glossy bound
publications costing the equivalent of $20 USD, much more than the average commercial
publication. Millions of yen exchange hands as fans queue up for their favorite artists and
series.
Unlike the world of the card and video game otaku, the manga otaku are dominated
by working class girls (Kinsella 1998, 289), with much of the content featuring boy-boy
relationships idealized by a feminine eye. For example. Yugioh fan zines often feature
romantic liaisons between Yugi, Kaiba, and Yugi’s best friend, Jounouchi (Joey in the US).
Unlike professional cultural production, fan zines center on tight-knit communities of peers
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that both create and buy amateur manga. Artists sit at their booths and chat with artists and
readers who browse their work. Comic Market is the largest show of its kind, but a greater
volume of zines changes hands through a more distributed exchange network which includes
the Internet, regional events, and events focused on specific form of content, such as a
particular manga series or genre. There are an estimated 20,000-50,000 amateur manga
circles in Japan (Kinsella 1998; Schodt 1996, 37). Most participants are teenagers and young
adults rather than kids, but these practices are an extension of childhood practices of drawing
manga and exchanging them among friends. As in the case of the card otaku, manga otaku
translate childhood imaginaries into alternative adult networks of amateur cultural production
and commerce.
Unlike spectacular narratives of good and evil told on the TV screen, the buzz of
competitive exchange between kids in the park, the furtive nightime rounds of collectors, and
the flow of cards, monsters, and fan zines through Internet commerce and street-level
exchange point to a peer-to-peer imaginary that is heterogeneously materialized and
produced through highly distributed social practices. The Yugioh imaginary exceeds the
sanctioned networks and contact points of mainstream industrialists and the hegemonic
narratives they market to supposedly passive masses of children. While the Internet has
taken center stage in our theorizing of new forms of communication and relationality, media
mixes in children’s content, below the radar of mainstream adult society, have been quietly
radicalizing a new generation’s relationship to culture and social life.
The Cultural Politics of Wired Childhoods
The backchannel discourse of the otaku is an example of new forms of commodity capitalism
mixing with and sustaining an increasingly entrepreneurial, extroverted, and wired
childhood. Yugioh demonstrates how the market for media mix content is becoming
organized into a dual structure, characterized on one side by mainstream, mass distribution
channels which market to average consumers, and an intermediary zone that blurs the
distinction between production and consumption—fueled by the Internet, otaku groups,
amateur cultural production, and peer-to-peer economies. Joseph Tobin distinguishes
between “otaku and snackers” among Pokemon afficionados, tracing the symbiosis between
the geekier—often older—groups of hardcore players who lead the way in adopting new
forms and innovations, and the less intense, faddish engagement of average kids (Tobin
2004b, 277-281). The consumption/production cycle of popular media mix content like
Yugioh and Pokemon is driven forward by this dynamic interplay of connoisseur and popular
markets. While these markets are somewhat distinct, they also speak to each other, as certain
kids gain local expertise and notoriety even among more casual players, or other kids gain
access to the adult gaming communities. The media mix fuels this interplay, leading to new
anxieties and efforts to regulate of children’s behavior. Ultimately, the media mix supports a
complex set of media environments and markets that give rise to new kinds of contact zones,
tensions, and cultural politics surrounding childhood.
The cultural establishment, represented by the voices of parents and educators, and by
Konami’s official marketing discourse, maintains a boundary between the sanctioned
consumption of Yugioh content by children and certain unsanctioned forms of consumption
of Yugioh content by adult core gamers and collectors. In this view, the legitimate place for
children’s entertainment is in the home, under the surveillance of parents, and that the
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legitimate economic relation is one of standardized commodity relations, distributed through
mainstream channels such as convenience and toy stores. Konami has been rumored to have
tried, unsuccessfully, to pressure some card shops to stop the sale of single cards. They have
also tried to exclude the members of at least one core gaming team from the official
tournaments. Mainstream publishers of manga are similarly quick to distance themselves
from the amateur market, which they see as derivative and unsavory, catering to the cultural
margin. In some rare cases, artists have transitioned from amateur to professional status, but
the amateur market is generally quite distinct from mainstream markets and industries
(Kinsella 1998; Schodt 1996).
In her work on otaku and the cultures of ‘cute’ in Japan, Sharon Kinsella describes
discourses in the seventies and eighties that correlated popular media and consumerism with
the infantilization, irresponsibility, and materialism of youth. While girlish pop idols and
cute character goods are appealing to the Japanese mainstream, Otaku represent what some
consider a pathological extreme of adult engagement with kids culture (1998, 290-4). Otakuidentified cultural forms became a source of moral panic in the late eighties and early
nineties, after Miyazaki Tsutomu was arrested in 1989 for the abduction and murder of four
small girls. His bedroom was walled with manga and videos that evidenced an obsessive
interest in young girls and associated cute cultures. Through the image of the obsessive
otaku, media fans became associated with social pathology that mirrored their marginalized
status in economic and cultural life (Kinsella 1998). Although there are efforts to reclaim a
positive image of otaku as media savants (Okada 1996), and although the term has been
taken up with more positive valences in the US and Europe (Greenfeld 1993; Levi 1996;
Napier 2000), it is still associated with social dysfunction for the Japanese mainstream.
Although few parents had problems with Yugioh games and card trading among
peers, most were nervous about children participating in adult gaming and collecting circles.
In contrast to most critiques situated outside Japan, notably those focused on the consumerist
logic of Pokemon (Buckingham and Sefton-Green 2004; Yano 2004), Japanese parents did
not exhibit much concern with their children’s participation in mainstream commodity
capitalism. Instead of battle lines being drawn between parents and industry, Japanese
parents tend to align themselves with mainstream capital against the subaltern practices of
unregulated and unpredictable otaku economies. None of the parents I interviewed condoned
buying and selling single cards at professional card shops, although some turned a blind eye
towards occasional visits. In particular, they did not like the idea of their kids selling and
buying rare cards for high prices in the professional networks. Part of the problem was price
and the fanning of consumer desire to levels well beyond what children could manage
financially and psychologically. One parent describes her perspective on monetizing the
value of cards.
If my child can understand the meaning of spending 5000 yen on one card,
then it would be okay. With 5000 yen I could buy this, and this, and this.
But instead, I want to buy this one card. Understanding this trade-off is
quite different from just buying it because he desires it.
There is also the fear of exploitation—that children are bound to lose in financial
negotiations with adult collectors.
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This may be a strange way to put it, but I explain it this way. I know not
all these guys are like this. But what if some strange guy came up to you
and said, “Check this out. This is really rare. It really could be sold for
10,000 yen, but just for you, I will sell it for 1000 yen.” What if you buy
it, and later find out that it wasn’t rare at all. Could you really make that
judgment? And could you take that responsibility?
Card vendors also see relations with kids as a difficult border zone. Some see kids as
a legitimate market for their goods. Some admit that there are collectors who exploit kids by
selling counterfeit cards. Others prefer not to sell to kids because they see them as unreliable
and irresponsible in their financial transactions. Most card shops prevent kids from selling
cards, though buying is generally not a problem. Buying, trading, and selling over the
Internet, however, remains a significant gray zone, where different expectations of conduct
often come into conflict. Cards are sold on brokered auction sites such as Yahoo or Ebay,
but also on private sites of individual card traders. One card trader I spoke to described a
problem he had in an Internet trade with a middle school student who sent him the wrong
card. What was most galling to him was the response of the parent, when he visited the
child’s home to try to talk through the problem. “The father took the attitude that his son had
done nothing wrong. After all, he is just a child. And he had his wallet out ready to resolve
the problem with cash.” While the adult trader felt it was an issue of honor and
responsibility, and the child should be held accountable, the parent insisted that Yugioh was
“mere” child’s play. The father also assumed the trader was primarily motivated by
mercenary motives independent of his engagement with the game and desire for the cards
themselves.
Overall, the adult collectors I spoke to had a less innocent view of childhood. In the
words of one hardcore gamer, describing children’s often-desperate efforts to get the cards
they desire, “Kids are dirty.” This same gamer described with some distress how he used to
share cards and information with neighborhood kids. Soon, however, false rumors spread
that he was selling cards, and parents asked him to stop talking with their children. The
dynamics between parents, kids, and adult gamers occasion a familiar protectionist impulse
toward childhood, and toward its maintenance as a separate space. This wish finds itself
increasingly at odds, however, with media mixes that introduce children to subcultural,
mixed-age social arenas beyond the surveillance of protective adults such as parents,
teachers, and the sanctioned media industries and markets. A rising generation of young
adults, at least of the otaku variety, tends to see a more porous boundary between childhood
and adulthood, and childhood subjectivity as an attractive arena for culturally productive
activity. Although otaku continue to be objects of suspicion, adult engagement with
childhood products is steadily becoming more pervasive in Japanese society.
Notwithstanding critiques by cultural commentators from both inside (Doi 1973;
Okonogi 1978) and outside Japan (Kerr 2001), the popularity of Japan’s cultures of cute,
epitomized by manga, anime, and character goods, continues unabated. Such cultural
products have become a central element of Japan’s “gross national cool” (Iwabuchi 2004;
McGray 2002) in the transnational arena (Allison 2004; Kinsella 1995; Napier 2000). The
culture of cute is by no means restricted to children: approximately one third of all character
goods in Japan are consumed by adults aged nineteen and older (Databank 2000). In his
study of advertising images in the sixties and seventies, Thomas Frank (1997) describes what
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he calls “the conquest of cool”: the appropriation by marketers of hip, youthful, countercultural images that broadcast resistance to the square mainstream of work and discipline. I
believe we are seeing a similar process of the conquest of cute in the commodification of
images and products of childhood.
While in the US, identification with cute culture is generally considered effeminate
for young men and adolescents (Tobin 2004c), in Japan there appears to be a growing
willingness to embrace childhood and cuteness as a source of alternative adult identities of
both genders. In his discussion of Pokemon and gender identity, Samuel Tobin (2004c, 253)
points out that “toys and TV shows are not inherently appropriate for certain ages or
genders.... instead … these factors change with time.” Social, cultural, and historical context
naturally plays a large role. Moreover, as my Yugioh work suggests—such shifts can be
traced within much broader cultural formations. In the current moment in Japan—and
arguably with increasing frequency outside Japan—childhood play is being imagined by kids
and adults as a site for alternative forms of symbolic value and economic exchange. In part,
this is a form of refusal or resistance to ‘adult’ values of labor, discipline, and diligence and
institutions of school and workplace. This valence is central, for example, to Kinsella’s
account of the popularity of child-identified and cute products among young adults (Kinsella
1995).
Although studies of children’s culture have recognized the agency of kids even in the
face of stereotypically passive TV-centered consumer cultures (Jenkins 1998; Kinder 1999;
Seiter 1995), the current media mix represents a stronger integration of this agency with the
design of the media apparatus. Childhood agency can be performed as well as imagined
through the new combination of digitally-inflected media mixes and peer-to-peer forms of
cultural and financial trafficking. This alchemy has created zones where adults and kids
participate in communities of rich cultural production and exchange. Media industries have
found a new market in both kids and adults who are attracted to a certain depiction of
childhood—one that is distinguished from and resistant to certain structures of adult society
without being depicted as inferior. Symbolized by tiny Yugi’s triumphs over corrupt adult
society, childhood play is represented as mobilizing the power of the margin.
Although it would be easy to dismiss these imaginings as the false liberatory fantasies
of people who will remain, in reality, resolutely marginal and disenfranchised, we can also
see these new cultural productions as part of a growing significance of the margin when
augmented by digital networks. The media mix of Yugioh does not end with the player’s
interpellation into the narrative fantasy, or even with the recontextualization of the
imagination into local knowledge, but extends to the production of alternative material and
symbolic economies that are informed by, but not mediated by, the corporate media
apparatus. In other words, these practices produce alternative cultural forms that are
disseminated through everyday peer-to-peer exchanges below the radar of commodity
capitalism; they are a mode of cultural production that does not overthrow capitalism, but
operates in its shadow, through “cultures of insubordination” (Sundaram, this volume) that
both rely on and disrupt the dominant mode.
It seems likely that the mainstream will continue to characterize these practices and
imaginaries as socially dysfunctional, psychologically immature, and out of touch with
reality. At the same time, the ethic of the otaku and the entrepreneurial kid-consumer seem
to presage a technosocial shift, much as the rise of geek chic in the past decade was tied to a
shift in the mainstream perception of a marginal subjectivity. The technological tinkering,
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amateur cultural production, and media connoisseurship enacted by kids and otaku Yugioh
fans is a subjectivity with loose analogs in other digitally-mediated cultural spaces. The
otaku resemble the Euro-American hacker or geek, or the player-producers described by T.L.
Taylor in this volume. At the same time, the strong identification with childhood, remix, and
revaluation cultures ally otaku more strongly with specific phantasmagoric cultural arenas
rather than with digital technology per se. Also, importantly, these cultures are more
strongly associated with the socially disenfranchised and subaltern—kids and working-class
youth—and thus represent a greater distance from elite centers of cultural and technological
production.
Working with highly technologized and phantasmagoric social sites like Otaku
practices and the media mix for Japanese children suggest a differently inflected research
imaginary for those of us who study media technology. My effort has not been to suggest
that we have seen a decisive shift in technologies of the imagination, but rather to evoke an
emergent set of research questions tied to the new technologies and practices of a rising
generation, and to an increasingly transnational network of otaku media hackers. Just as the
electronic media and globalization have forced a re-reading of more traditional socialscientific concepts such as place and locality (eg., Appadurai 1996b; Gupta and Ferguson
1992; Meyrowitz 1985), media mixing invites attention to social and cultural processes in all
media—both old and new. Media mixing involves attention to a highly distributed and
pervasive imaginary that spans multiple material forms, an imaginary that is massive, but not
mass. In addition to an analysis of the relation between reality and text, production and
consumption, media mixing also demands that we query the relation between differently
materialized and located texts, exploring issues of intertextuality, multiple materialities, and a
distributed field of cultural production. Perhaps most importantly, the media mix demands a
continued attentiveness to the politics, productivity, and creativity of the everyday, as
technologies of the imagination populate even the most mundane corners of our daily lives.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by grants from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science,
the Abe Fellowship Program, and the Annenberg Center for Communication. This essay has
also benefited from comments from Joe Karaganis and Paul Price and discussion among
participants in the SSRC “Network Creativity” workshop. I would also like to thank the
Yugioh players, parents, creators, distributors, and most of all the kids, who took the time to
clue me in to the intricacies of their culture and practice.
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Tobin, Samuel. 2004c. "Masculinity, Maturity, and the End of Pokémon." Pp. 241-256 in
Pikachu's Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokémon, edited by J. Tobin.
Tulloch, John and Henry Jenkins. 1995. Science Fiction Audiences: Watching Doctor Who
and Star Trek. New York: Routledge.
Weiser, Mark. 1991. "Future Computers." Scientific American 265.
Weiser, Mark and John Seely Brown. 1996. "The Coming Age of Calm Technology."
Yano, Christine R. 2004. "Panic Attacks: Anti-Pokémon Voices in Global Markets." Pp. 108140 in Pikachu's Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokémon, edited by J.
Tobin. Durham: Duke University Press.
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Visual Language and Converging Technologies in the
Next 10-15 Years (and Beyond)
A paper prepared for the National Science Foundation Conference on Converging
Technologies (Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno) for Improving Human Performance Dec. 3-4, 2001
by
Robert E. Horn
Visiting Scholar
Stanford University
Background
Introduction
Visual Language is one of the more promising avenues to the improvement of human
performance in the short run (the next 10 to 15 years). The current situation is one of
considerable diversity and confusion as a new form of communication arises. But visual
language also represents many great opportunities. People think visually. People think in
language. When words and visual elements are closely intertwined, we create something
new and we augment our communal intelligence.
Today, human beings work and think in fragmented ways, but visual language has the
potential to integrate our existing skills to make them tremendously more effective. With
support from developments in information technology, visual language has the potential
for increasing human "bandwidth," the capacity to take in, comprehend, and more
efficiently synthesize large amounts of new information. It has this capacity on the
individual, group, and organizational levels. As this convergence occurs, visual language
will enhance our ability to communicate, teach, and work in fields such as
nanotechnology and biotechnology.
Definition
Visual language is defined as the tight integration of words and visual elements and as
having characteristics that distinguish it from natural languages as a separate
communication tool as well as a distinctive subject of research. It has been called visual
language although it might well have been called visual-verbal language.
A preliminary syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of visual language have been described.
(Horn, 1998) Description of, understanding of, and research on visual language overlap
with investigations of scientific visualization and multimedia.
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History
The tight integration of words and visual elements has a long history. (see Horn, 1998,
Chapt. 2) Only in the last 50 years, with the coming together of component visual
vocabularies from such widely separate domains as engineering diagramming
technologies developed in medical illustration, and hundreds of expressive visual
conventions from the world of cartooning has something resembling a full, robust visualverbal language appeared. (Tufte, 1983, 1990)
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Its evolution has been rapid in the past 10 years, especially with the confluence of
scientific visualization software; widespread use of other quantitative software that
permits the creation of over one hundred quantitative graphs and charts with the push of a
single function key; and the profusion of multi-media presentation software, especially
PowerPoint which, it is said, has several million users a day.
More effective communication
There is widespread understanding that visual-verbal language enables forms and
efficiencies of communication that heretofore have not been possible. For example,
improvements in human performance from 23 to 89% have been obtained by using
integrated visual-verbal "stand- alone" diagrams. In this case, "stand-alone" diagrams
refer to diagrams that have all of the verbal elements necessary for complete
understanding without reading text elsewhere in a document. (Chandler and Sweller,
1991; Mayer 2001, Horton, 1991)
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Facilitates representation. This new language facilitates complex, multi-dimensional
visual-verbal thought, and -- with multimedia tools -- it incorporates animation as well.
Researchers and scholars are no longer constrained by the scroll-like thinking of endless
paragraphs of text.
Big, complex thoughts. Human cognitive effectiveness and efficiency is constrained by
the well-known limitations of working memory that George Miller identified in 1957
(Miller 1957). Large visual displays have for some time been known to help us
overcome this bandwidth constraint. But only since the recent advances in visual
language have we been able to imagine a major prosthesis for this human limitation. The
prosthesis consists of a suite of visual language maps. This visual-verbal language
(together with computer-based tools) may eliminate the major roadblocks to thinking and
communicating big, complex thoughts — i.e. the problem of representing and
communicating mental models of these thoughts efficiently and effectively. This
especially includes the so-called messy (or wicked or ill-structured ) problems.
(Horn, 2001a) Problems have solutions. Messy problems do not have straightforward
solutions.
They are
- more than complicated and complex. They are ambiguous.
- filled with considerable uncertainty — even as to what the conditions are, let alone what
the appropriate actions might be
- bounded by great constraints; tightly interconnected economically, socially, politically,
technologically
- seen differently from different points of view, and quite different worldviews
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- comprised of many value conflicts
- often a-logical or illogical.
These problems are among the most pressing for our country, for the advance of
civilization, and for humanity.
Premises
The deep understanding of the patterns of visual language will permit
- More rapid, more effective interdisciplinary communication
- More complex thinking, leading to a new era of thought
- Facilitation of business, government, scientific, and technical productivity
- Potential breakthroughs in education and training productivity
- Greater efficiency and effectiveness in all areas of knowledge production and
distribution
- Better cross-cultural communication
Ready for major research and development. Major jumping-off research platforms
have been created for rapid future development of visual language e.g. the Web; the
ability to tag content with XML; database software; drawing software; a fully tested,
widely used content-organizing and tagging system of structured writing known as
Information Mapping¤ (Horn, 1989); and a growing, systematic understanding of the
patterns of visual-verbal language. (Kosslyn, 1989, 1994; McCloud, 1993, Horton, 1991,
Bertin, 1983)
Rationale for the visual language projects
A virtual superhighway for rapid development in visual language can be opened and the
goals listed above in the premises can be accomplished if sufficient funds over the next
15 years are applied to the creation of
- Tools
- Techniques
- Taxonomies
and systematically conducting empirical research on effectiveness and efficiency of
components, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of this language. This in turn will aid the
synergy produced in the convergence of biotechnology, nanotechnology, information
technology, and cognitive science.
Some of the goals of a visual-verbal language research
program
A research program requires both bold, general goals and specific landmarks along the
way. A major effort to deal with the problem of increasing complexity and the
limitations of our human cognitive abilities would benefit all human endeavors, and
could easily be focused on biotechnology and nanotechnolgy as prototype test beds. We
can contemplate, thus, the steady incremental achievement of the following goals as a
realistic result of a major visual language program:
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1. Policy-makers provided with comprehensive visual-verbal models. The
combination of the ability to represent complex mental models and the capability of
collecting real-time data will provide sophisticated decision-making tools for social
policy. Highly visual ’cognitive maps’ will facilitate the management and navigation
through major public policy issues. These maps provide patterned abstractions of
policy landscapes that permit the decision-makers and their advisors to consider
which roads to take within the wider policy context. Like the hundreds of different
projections of geographic maps (e.g. polar or Mercator), they provide different ways
of viewing issues and their backgrounds. They enable policy makers to drill down to
the appropriate level of detail. In short, they provide an invaluable information
management tool.
2. World-class, worldwide education provided for children. Our children will
inherit the results of this work. It is imperative that they receive the increased
benefits of visual language communication as soon as it is developed. The continued
growth of the internet and the convergence of intelligent visual-verbal representation
of mental models and computer-enhanced tutoring programs will enable children
everywhere to learn the content and skills needed to live in the 21st century. But this
will take place only if these advances are incorporated into educational programs as
soon as they are developed.
3. Large breakthroughs in scientific research. The convergence of more competent
computers, computer-based collaborative tools, visual representation breakthroughs,
and large databases provided by sensors will enable major improvements in scientific
research. Many of the advances that we can imagine will come from interdisciplinary
teams of scientists, engineers, and technicians who will need to become familiar
rapidly with fields that are outside of their backgrounds and competence. Visual
language resources (such as the diagram project described below) will be required at
all levels to make this cross-disciplinary learning possible. This could be the single
most important factor in increasing the effectiveness of nano-bio-info teams working
together at the various points of convergence.
4. Enriched art of the 21st century. Human beings do not live by information alone.
We make meaning with our entire beings: emotional, kinesthetic, somatic. Visual art
has always fed the human spirit in this respect. And we can confidently predict that
artistic communication and aesthetic enjoyment in the 21st century will be enhanced
significantly by the scientific and technical developments in visual language.
Dynamic visual-verbal murals and art pieces will become one of the predominant
contemporary art forms of the century — as such complex, intense representation of
meaning joins abstract and expressionistic art as a major artistic genre. (This has
already begun to happen with the artists creation of the first generation of large
visual language murals. Horn, 2000)
5. Emergence of smart, visual-verbal thought software. The convergence of massive
computing power, thorough mapping of visual-verbal language patterns, and
advances in other branches of cognitive science will provide for an evolutionary leap
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in capacity and multi-dimensionality of thought processes. Scientific visualization
software in the past 15 years has led the way in demonstrating the necessity of
visualization to the scientific process. We could not have made advances in scientific
understanding in many fields without software that helps us convert "firehoses of
data" (in the vivid metaphor of the 1987 National Science Foundation report on
scientific visualization) into visually comprehensible depictions of quantitative
phenomena and simulations. Similarly, every scientific field is overwhelmed with
tsunamis of new qualitative concepts, procedures, techniques, and tools. Visual
language offers the most immediate way to address these new, highly demanding
requirements.
6. Wide open doors of creativity. Visualization in scientific creativity has been
frequently cited. Einstein often spoke of using visualization on his gedanken
experiments. He saw in his imagination first and created equations later. This is a
common occurrence for scientists, even those without special training. Visual-verbal
expression will facilitate new ways of thinking about human problems, dilemmas,
predicaments, emotions, tragedy, and comedy. The limits of my language are the
limits of my world, said Wittgenstein. But it is in the very nature of creativity for us
to be unable to specify what the limits will be. Indeed, it is not always possible to
identify the limits of our worlds until some creative scientist has stepped across the
limit and illuminated it from the other side.
Researchers in biotechnology and nanotechnology will not have to wait for the final
achievement of these goals to begin to benefit from advances in visual language research
and development. Policy makers, researchers, and scholars will be confronting many
scientific, social impact, ethical and organizational issues, and each leap in our
understanding and competence in visual language will increase our ability to deal with
the complexity. Normally, as a language advances in its ability to handle complex
representation and communication, each such advance can be widely disseminated
because of the modular nature of the technology.
Major goals along the way to the next 15 years
The achievement of these goals will obviously require advances on a number of fronts.
1. Goal: Diagram an entire branch of science with stand-alone diagrams. In many
of the newer introductory textbooks in science up to one-third of the total space
consists of diagrams and illustrations. But often, the function of scientific diagrams
in synthesizing and representing scientific processes has been often taken for granted.
However, recent research cited above (Mayer, 2001, Chandler and Sweller, 1991) has
shown how stand-alone diagrams can significantly enhance learning. Stand-alone
diagrams do what the term indicates. Everything the viewer needs to understand the
subject under consideration is incorporated into the diagram or from other diagrams
linked to the one in focus. The implication of the research is that the text in the other
two thirds of the textbooks mentioned above should be distributed into diagrams.
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"Stand-alone" is obviously a relative term, because it depends on previous learning. One
should note here that automatic prerequisite linkage is one of the easier functions to
imagine being created in software packages designed to handle linked diagrams. One
doesn’t actually have to make too large a leap of imagination as scientists are already
exchanging PowerPoint slides that contain many diagrams. However, this practice
frequently does not have either the stand-alone or linked property.
Stand-alones can be done at a variety of styles and levels of illustration. They can be
abstract or detailed, heavily illustrated or merely shapes, arrows, and words. They can
contain photographs and icons as well as aesthetically pleasing color.
Now, imagine a series of interlinked diagrams for an entire field of science. Imagine
zooming up and down in detail -- always having the relevant text immediately accessible.
The total number of diagrams could reach into the tens of thousands. The hypothesis of
this idea is that such a project could provide an extraordinary tool for cross-disciplinary
learning. This prospect directly impacts the ability of interdisciplinary teams to learn
enough of each other’s fields to collaborate effectively. And collaboration is certainly the
key to benefiting from converging technologies.
Imagine that these diagrams were not dependent on getting permissions (one of the least
computerized, most time-consuming tasks a communicator has to accomplish these days).
Making permissions automatic would remove one of the major roadblocks to the progress
of visual language and a visual language project.
Then imagine being able to send a group of linked-stand-alone diagrams to fellow
scientists.
2. Goal: Create "Periodic table(s)" of types of stand-alone diagrams. Once we had
tens of thousands of interlinked diagrams in a branch of science, we could analyze
and characterize all the components, structures, and functions of all of the types of
diagrams. This would advance the understanding of "chunks of thinking" at a finegrained level. This metaunderstanding of diagrams would also be a jumping-off point
for building software tools to support further investigations and to support
diagramming of other branches of science and the humanities.
3. Goal: Automatically create diagrams from text. At the present moment, we do not
know how to develop software that enables the construction of elaborate diagrams of
many kinds from text. But if the stand-alone diagrams prove as useful as they appear,
then it creating diagrams, or even first drafts of diagrams, from verbal descriptions
will turn out to be extremely beneficial. Imagine scientists with new ideas of how
processes work speaking to their computers and the computers immediately turning
the idea into the draft of a stand-alone diagram.
4. Goal: Launch Human Cognome Project. In the Converging Technologies
workshop I suggested that we launch a project that might be named "Mapping the
Human Cognome Project." If properly conceived, such a project would certainly be
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a project of the century. If the stand-alone diagram project succeeds, then we would
have a different view of human "thought chunks." And human thought-chunks can be
understood as fundamental building blocks of the human cognome. The rapid
achievement of stand-alone diagrams for a branch of science could, thus, be regarded
as a jumping off platform for at least one major thrust of a Human Cognome Project.
5. Goal: Create tools for collaborative mental models based on diagraming. The
ability to come to rapid agreement at various stages of group analysis and decisionmaking supported by complex, multidimensional, visual-verbal murals is becoming a
central component of effective organizations. This collaborative problem solving,
perhaps first envisioned by Douglas Engelbart (1962) as augmenting human intellect,
has launched a vibrant new field of computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW).
This community has been facilitating virtual teams working around the globe on the
same project in a 24/7 asynchronous time frame. An integration of the resources of
visual language display, both the display hardware needed and the visual display
software, with the interactive possibilities of CSCW work offers the possibilities of
great leaps in group effectiveness and efficiency.
6. Goal: Crack the unique address dilemma with fuzzy ontologies. The semantic
web project is proceeding on the basis of creating unique addresses for individual
chunks of knowledge. Researchers are struggling to create "ontologies" (by which
they mean hierarchical category schemes, similar to the Dewey system in libraries.)
But researchers haven’t yet figured out really good ways to handle the fact that most
words have multiple meanings. There has been quite a bit of progress in resolving
such ambiguities in language translation, so there is hope for further incremental
progress and major breakthroughs. An important goal for cognitive scientists and
computer wizards will be to produce breakthroughs for managing multiple, changing
meanings of visual-verbal communication units in real-time on the web.
7. Goal: Understand computerized visual-verbal linkages. Getting computers to
understand the linkage between visual and verbal thought and their integration is still
a major obstacle to building computer software competent to undertake the automatic
creation of diagrams. This will likely be less of a problem as the stand-alone diagram
project described above progresses.
8. Goal: Crack the "context" problem. In meeting after meeting, people remark at
some point that "it all depends on the context." Researchers must conduct an
interdisciplinary assault on the major problem of carrying context and meaning along
with local meaning in various representation systems. This may very well be
accomplished to a certain degree by providing pretty good, computerized "common
sense." To achieve the goal of automatically creating diagrams from text, there will
have to be improvements in the understanding of "common sense" by computers.
The CYC project or something like it will have to demonstrate the ability to
reason with "almost any" subject matter from a base of 50 million or more coded
facts and ideas. This common-sense database will somehow be integrally linked to
visual elements.
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Conclusion
It is essential to accelerating research in the fields of nanotechnology, biotechnology,
cognitive science, and information technology to increase our understanding of visual
language. We must develop visual language research centers, fund individual
researchers, and ensure that these developments are rapidly integrated into education and
into the support of the other converging technologies in the next decade.
REFERENCES
Bertin, Jacques. (1983) Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams, Networks, and Maps,
Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1983
Chandler, Paul and John Sweller (1991) Cognitive load theory and the format of
instruction. Cognition and Instruction 8, no. 4: 293—332.
Engelbart, D. C., (1962) Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework,
Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park, California , Director Of Information Sciences
Air Force Office Of Scientific Research , Washington 25, D.C. , AFOSR-3233, Contract
AF49(638)-1024 , SRI Project No. 3578October 1962
Horn, R. E. (1989) Mapping Hypertext , Lexington, MA, The Lexington Institute
<http://www.stanford.edu/~rhorn/MHContents.html>
Horn, R. E. (1998a) Mapping Great Debates: Can Computers Think? MacroVU Press.
<http://www.stanford.edu/~rhorn/CCTGeneralInfo.html>
Horn, R. E., (1998b) Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century.
MacroVU Press. < http://www.stanford.edu/~rhorn/VLBkDescription.html>
Horn, R. E. (2000) The Representation of Meaning--Information Design as a Practical
Art and a Fine Art, a speech at the Stroom Center for the Visual Arts, The Hague
<http://www.stanford.edu/~rhorn/VLbkSpeechMuralsTheHague.html>
Horn, R. E. (2001a) Knowledge Mapping for Complex Social Messes, a speech to the
Packard Foundation Conference on Knowledge Management
<http://www.stanford.edu/~rhorn/SpchPackard.html>
Horn, R. E. (2001b) What Kinds of Writing Have a Future? a speech prepared in
connection with receiving Lifetime Achievement Award by the Association of
Computing Machinery SIGDOC, October 22, 2001
Horn, R. E. (2002) Think Link, Invent, Implement, and Collaborate! Think Open! Think
Change! Think Big! Keynote Speech at Doug Engelbart Day in the State of Oregon,
Oregon State University, Corvalis OR, January 24, 2002
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Horton, W. (1991) Illustrating Computer Documentation-- The Art of Presenting
Information Graphically in Paper and Online, N. Y. Wiley
Kosslyn, Stephen M. (1989), Undersstanding charts and graphs, Applied Cognitive
Psychology, vol. 3, pp. 185-226.
Kosslyn, Stephen M. (1994) Elements of Graph Design, N. Y., W. H. Freeman
McCloud, Scott, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Northampton, MA, Kitchen
Sink Press, 1993
Mayer, R. E. Multimedia Learning. N.Y. Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press. 2001
Edward Tufte (1983), The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Graphics Press,
Cheshire Connecticut
Edward Tufte (1990), Envisioning Information. Graphics Press, Cheshire Connecticut
AUTHOR
Robert E. Horn
Visiting Scholar
Program on People, Computers and Design
Center for the Study of Language and Information
Stanford University
2819 Jackson St. # 101
San Francisco, CA 94115
(415) 775-7377
Fax: (415) 775-7377
email: [email protected]
URL: http://www.macrovu.com (publisher)
URL: www.stanford.edu/~rhorn (personal)
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Visual Literacy
Ron Bleed
New technologies have conditioned many of us to being very visual in our
entertainment, living and learning. We are bombarded daily with visual
images. We are fond of visual images. We spend much of our disposable
income on television, movies, photography, video games and art. Popular
holiday gifts in 2004 were digital cameras and camcorders, iPods and high
definition televisions.
Visuals created with new technologies are changing what it means to be
st
literate. In the 21 century the ability to interpret and create visual and
audio media is a form of literacy as basic as reading and writing text.
Visual literacy is required of us as much as text literacy. However, most
academic programs in community colleges are centered on reading and
writing words. We must expand our concept of literacy to match the
reality of today.
Another term for visual literacy is “screen language as the new currency
for learning.” In a recent conversation with renowned scientist, John Seely
Brown, he commented, “If you can’t deal with screen language, you are
not literate… There is a new kind of digital divide today and it is the
divide between faculty and students. Faculty, stuck in yesterday’s analog
world, are confronted with students who arrive nicely fluent in digital
technology, and the virtuals of hyper speed.”
(John Seely Brown 2004)
Because of the importance of visual literacy, community colleges need
programmatic actions to prepare our students. These initiatives could
duplicate three strategies similar to what community colleges used for
two other forms of literacy in prior years. First, a visual literacy course
(similar to the efforts of computer literacy twenty years ago) could be
developed. Second, a program of “visual literacy across the curriculum”
could be instituted that resembles the efforts of “writing across the
curriculum.” Third, some existing courses for visual arts, communications,
information technology, etc. could be adapted and promoted.
The first strategy is the creation of a new visual literacy course for one
credit like the one developed by Dr. Susan Metros at Ohio State University.
The learning outcomes described for this course, Visual Literacy in the Age
of Information Abundance, state students will be able to:
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1. Identify their learning style
2. Comprehend the meaning of visual literacy in the context of
information literacy
3. Create graphic representations of data, information, knowledge and
wisdom (charts, maps, concept maps and storyboards)
4. Use a digital camera, iMovie or equivalent and other presentation
and multimedia software to create a short movie
5. Provide classmates with constructive face-to-face and online
feedback
(Metros 2004)
The second strategy is similar to the early 1980’s when Maricopa
Community Colleges and many community colleges implemented a
program of “Writing Across the Curriculum” to improve a student’s critical
thinking skills through writing assignments in courses. An approach
regarding “visual literacy across the curriculum” would be to encourage
and support faculty to assign projects to students that use visual media.
An example of a success with this approach occurred in the
Anthropology courses taught at Mesa Community College by Rick Effland.
Instead of the traditional ten page written research paper as an
assignment, he had the students create a digital movie. He found that the
amount and quality of the research done by the students in a video
format far exceeded the quality of their work done with written papers.
The students were more engaged, worked collaboratively, and learned
more when they used visual and audio media. Karla Pagtakhan, student in
one of these classes commented:
Creating the movie was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. I not only
educated myself with the topic I presented, but also learned the process of
piecing together clips to compose the film.... I learned a lot more than what I
would have learned from just a paper on the topic.
A third strategy is to re-direct or modify existing courses. Although visual
literacy is not confined to a particular discipline or course, some existing
courses already teach visual arts, communications, information
technology and literacy. One or more of those courses could be adapted
and promoted as primary sources of teaching and learning on visual
literacy.
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The creation of a visual literacy program would not alter or replace
curricula that exist for development of media professionals, fine arts
programs, technology certifications, etc. The computer literacy programs
did not alter or replace the professional development programs of
computer science during the past twenty years. Visual literacy programs
would be designed to serve general students and not professional
students.
The history of computer literacy at Maricopa Community Colleges dates
back to 1984. The first big effort was the “Faculty Computer Literacy
Project” wherein faculty members were loaned a personal computer for
three months and went through training sessions. (This was a big deal
back then.) The personal computer revolution became huge during the
middle 80’s and Maricopa Community Colleges caught that wave with
perfect timing. Computer literacy courses for students became a big
driver of the enrollment increases in the 1980’s. In the 1990’s computers
became so integrated into the academic program that a majority of the
courses included an instructional technology component. In this current
decade, the use of instructional technology is leading to larger portions of
instructional content delivered by computers. Hybrid and distance
learning courses continue to grow at a faster rate than other courses.
Visual literacy could follow the same path as computer literacy with even
larger impact.
Community colleges would be wise to follow the advice of George Lucas,
the famous film maker.
We must teach communication comprehensively, in all its forms. Today
we work with the written or spoken word as the primary form
of communication. But we also need to understand the importance
of graphics, music, and cinema, which are just as powerful and in some ways
more deeply intertwined with young people's culture. We live and work in a
visually sophisticated world, so we must be sophisticated in using all the
forms of communication, not just the written word.
From Edutopia, Sept/Oct 2003
http://www.glef.org/magazine/ed1article.php?id=art_1160&issue=sept_04
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4HEHISTORYOFVISUALLITERACY
4HESIGNIlCANCEOFVISUALLITERACYHASBEENAPPARENTTHROUGHOUTHISTORYANDACROSS
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&URTHERMORE!USBURNARGUESTHATWELIVEINANERAOFVISUALCULTUREWHICH
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7HITE0APER
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3EMANTICSREFERSTOTHEWAYIMAGESRELATEMOREBROADLYTOISSUESINTHEWORLDTOGAIN
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7HITE0APER
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4OSOMEEXTENTVISUALLITERACYSKILLSDEVELOPAUTOMATICALLYWITHLITTLEINPUTREQUIREDFROM
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3IMPLEEVERYDAYTHINGSCANBEUSEDTOINTRODUCEVISUALLITERACYSUCHASWASHINGINSTRUCTIONS
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L 7HATATTITUDESAREASSUMED
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What Kinds of Writing Have a Future?
(Speech prepared in connection with receiving Lifetime Achievement Award
by the Association of Computing Machinery SIGDOC, October 22, 2001)
By
Robert E. Horn
Visiting Scholar
Program on People, Computers, and Design
Center for the Study of Language and Information
Stanford University
First of all, to answer the question in my title: many kinds of writing have a future.
Novels, plays, scripts, poetry, essays, and news reports will not go away any time soon.
But as their contexts change, they will also change. Competing forms – as I will explain
– have been crowding their ecological niches for some time. The past 40 years have seen
a larger number of innovations in writing than perhaps in the entire history of writing.
Certainly the spread of the innovations has been orders of magnitude more rapid than in
the past. It is these changes and their future that I want to talk about today.
Breaking the rules of writing
When I went to college there was one only kind of writing. It was taught in college
composition courses. It consisted of well-crafted three- to five-page essays. We had
certain rules to follow. Complete sentences, for instance. Here I am 50 years later
receiving a lifetime achievement award from you for having broken a great many of those
rules. Not only broken them, but blasted some of them completely out of the water. For
example, as you are aware, in some circles, I am known as the guy who kicked the
paragraph out of technical writing. So, it’s a good time to look at why the kind of writing
I was taught in college hasn’t had as much of a future as I would have guessed at the
time. It’s a good time to reflect on the kinds of written communication I’ve been
involved in creating and changing during this period. And to think about what kinds of
writing have a future.
Themes I’ll examine
In examining this history and suggesting scenarios for the future, I will look at several
themes or characteristics of the innovations of the past 50 years. Among these
characteristics are (A) what to put in and what to leave out (there are some kinds of
writing where you leave out the most important information!); (B) how thoughts stick
together (and how to organize this stickiness); (C) what writing should be linear and what
should not; (D) when to tightly integrate words and images into visual language; and (E)
what in the future may be called metawriting.
What I was taught
What are some of the rules that I was taught in that college course? Make your
paragraphs flow one into the other with smooth transitions. Attract your readers and keep
the suspense up so they have to read everything you write. Use topic sentences. Put in a
subtitle once in awhile, but not very often—the cuter, the better. I followed the rules. I
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got pretty good grades. I wrote a column for the student newspaper, did some newspaper
reporting.
Rethinking and reinvention
But all that changed with a massive re-thinking and reinvention of writing during my
lifetime. It is a revolution that is still going on. My first involvement in this re-thinking
was to work on what has come to be called Information Mapping®’s method (1) for
which you have given me the award today. At Columbia University, I had two years to do
basic research. I decided to look at printed instructional materials. Most of my
colleagues were investigating psychomotor skill learning, like typing, where you could
measure very precisely the learning taking place. But I was more interested in the kinds
of learning that we have to do as adults. I was interested in the high volume of reading
we have to do. And I was interested in making a far more systematic approach to helping
that learning to take place.
What’s wrong with the paragraph
One of the first things I realized was that if we were really going to be systematic, we had
to admit we didn’t have a good basic unit of meaning. I wanted something that was
precise enough that two different writers working on the same document would come up
with similar enough chunks to plug into a larger document. The unit had to be flexible,
modular, and part of a very good taxonomy. The paragraph did not fit the bill. It was
too fuzzily defined; to vague to be a consistent, reliable unit of meaning. Sometimes, for
example, it had a topic sentence. Sometimes it only “had” an implied topic sentence, that
is, one that was left out. The only thing you could say for sure about a paragraph was
that it had a dent at the beginning. (2)
I decided to develop a better, more reliable way of identifying basic chunks of thought.
My initial method— cut apart books
The way I did it was to sit down with textbooks and cut them apart into individual
sentences. I then asked the question: “What function is this sentence performing?” I
soon realized that I could sort the sentences of a subject matter into categories.
Definitional sentences were first. They were easy to find.
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So were example sentences. Then I noticed that several example sentences stuck together
to form one example. That meant that the individual sentence wasn’t the basic unit of
meaning—at least not always. Sometimes you had to have several sentences to create a
satisfactory, meaningful chunk. This was my first important experience with the
stickiness of sentences. I found that some of the sentences stuck together more closely
than others and were best dealt with in that closely stuck-together form. However, the
lack of strong guidelines, at that time, permitted writers to separate these sticky sentences
into different paragraphs.
Taxonomy helps systematic work
Well, I continued to sort sentences into piles that seemed to go together and attempted to
create a taxonomy. I knew that in some sciences, especially biology, taxonomy was
fundamental. In not too long I had a group of some 40 categories into which I could
reliably sort approximately 80 percent of the sentences of a subject matter. That was
pretty interesting. It was a lot more than the seven to ten kinds of paragraphs that were
usually taught in composition classes.
Completeness of analysis
In coming up with these categories I found that I had achieved something very powerful,
especially for technical writers. In principle, you could know what you didn’t know in a
fairly precise manner. One of the things you would do was to put the topics along the top
and the block types along the side to create a matrix. Then you plugged in the sentences.
Where there were empty spaces, you had gaps in your knowledge.
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This tells you a lot about precisely what the subject matter is, and, when combined with a
user analysis, tells you much about what to leave out of a particular document.
Only one kind of functional information in a chunk
Then I got to thinking that one of the precise things that make paragraphs so
dysfunctional as a basic unit of writing is that you can put all kinds of stuff into a
paragraph. You can put introductory words and phrases, transitional stuff, definitional
stuff, example stuff, and irrelevant commentary stuff. I asked myself, what would
happen if we introduced a rule or guideline that said: Put only one kind of functional
meaning in each chunk you present to the learner. That was a kind of leaving out of
information – leaving out what was not relevant to the specific function of the chunk
being presented to the reader. To distinguish these chunks of information from
paragraphs I began to call them information blocks.
I’m aware that over the past years the teaching and practice of technical writing has
changed significantly in this respect. There is now widespread recognition that irrelevant
information has no place in our technical and user documents.
The difference that my work introduced is the systematic approach to putting in and
leaving out. This has massive effects when you are writing databases of chunks that may
be used in many media and many different documents, rather than writing in the context
of a single document as I will discuss at the end of this talk.
Leaving out is so much more important these days than it was in the 17th and 18th
centuries when many of our ideas about essay composition were formulated.
Scanning and skipping with the use of labels
The “information explosion” was already upon us as I was working on these issues. The
problem was that there was too much information. There were things that I didn’t want
to know. But paragraphs generally did not allow me to scan and skip – at least not easily.
One of the things I noticed was that headlines and subheads – if written well -- allowed
me to scan more easily and skip what I didn’t want to read. So in my evolving system of
writing, I introduced another suggested guideline: Put an informative label or subhead on
every chunk of information.
Labels show organization
Later I devised a bunch of simple rules for what kinds of labels work best for what kinds
of the 40 blocks of information in my taxonomy. This had an interesting effect on
writing. If you have to label every chunk, the organization of your material becomes
obvious to the reader.
Outlines—key information typically left out
This led me to realize that we had been teaching people to make outlines, but this key
structure was then hidden from the reader. It was left out! But the outline is exactly what
the reader needs in order to decide whether to read all or part of the piece of writing. It is
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also exactly what the reader needs to comprehend the structure of the document. Yet we
so often deliberately make readers’ jobs harder by concealing the structure from them.
Labels are the transitions
When we started labeling every chunk of information, it made the transition words and
phrases somewhat awkward. And when we looked at this phenomenon closely, we found
that the transition functions were being performed by the labels, not by the usual words or
phrases. After that, we weren’t so nervous about leaving transitions out of the blocks.
Frequent labels—the most important change
I have come to think, of all the innovations that I’ve introduced or strongly advocated,
that this one, labeling every chunk, is the single change that would improve written
communication to the greatest extent. If all writers would label every chunk of
information, our reading lives would be truly easier. We could then skip a lot of reading
that we didn’t need to do!
Relevancy principle
We suggested one more principle to the cluster of principles governing the construction
of information blocks. The relevancy principle states: Include in one chunk only
information that relates to one main point based on that information's purpose or function
for the reader.
Consistency principle
Finally I suggested that we use the same principles for all blocks of information in the
document. This was the consistency principle.
Summary—four main principles
With those four principles—chunking, relevancy, labeling, and consistency—I built the
information block as a substitute for the paragraph. And created a fundamental change in
how we write technical and business documents.
Summary—leaving things in and out and how sentences stick together
As you can see, what you put in, and especially what you leave out of, a chunk of
information is very fundamental to my way of thinking. How sentences stick together is
also crucial. Information blocks, as they are usually written, have sentences that stick
together functionally.
Stickiness in its various forms
There were other patterns of stickiness that emerged in my investigations. We needed
methods and formats to deal with them.
If-then stickiness
There is, for example, if-then stickiness which was formatted into decision tables.
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It turns out that formatting this way creates fewer errors and improves speed of decision
making. (7) If-then stickiness can amount to as much as five percent of many pieces of
technical writing.
Table stickiness
Table stickiness is well known. The columns and rows stick together in a particular way.
Comparing is a standard, natural human mental functioning. The table format makes
such comparing and contrasting much more efficient.
Create errors and slow people down
If you have the perverse impulse to create more errors and slow people’s information
processing down, it’s very easy to do so. Rewrite decision tables and compare-andcontrast tables as prose paragraphs. That will really slow them down.
Map stickiness
We also found that there was another kind of stickiness usually produced by two to seven
information blocks working together. This is both a conceptual stickiness and a
convenience formatting for helping humans with their limitation of short-term memory
capacity of seven plus or minus two chunks of information. We created a separate unit of
document organization called an information map to accommodate this kind of stickiness.
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This was a peculiar kind of stickiness. It meant that certain kinds of blocks—key blocks,
we called them— always appeared on seven kinds of maps. The seven kinds of
information came to be called “information types.” (3) They are:
• Structure
• Concept
• Procedure
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•
•
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Process
Classification
Principle
Fact
Aside—lifecycle methodology and taxonomies of many documents
Many of you have discovered or been taught some of these guidelines quite
independently of my work. I think that my research was simply a very early recognition
(in 1965) of what we all have to deal with in our writing. The generic name for what I
have been doing has come to be “structured writing” (4). My version of structured
writing is called the Information Mapping® method which I turned into a life-cycle
methodology, applying these guidelines to a whole variety of business documents. Today,
how does our work differ from other structured writing? I think it is simply more
structured, precise, flexible, and modular along every dimension.
Taxonomies for different business documents
It turns out that there are different taxonomies of block types for different kinds of
business documents. We have some twenty or so typical kinds of business documents
analyzed into their types of blocks. (Each has “key blocks” that designate and
characterize the kinds of information in that document.) These patterns of blocks in
particular documents help us manage business and technical knowledge.
Course taught to hundreds of thousands
We have taught the Information Mapping approach to at least 300,000 people in business
and industry. That’s a significant fraction of the technical writers writing today. I think
that structured writing, and in particular the Information Mapping approach, definitely
has a future.
The future of the paragraph
Does the paragraph have a future? In some kinds of writing, yes. In novels, essays, etc.
But over the long run, I don’t think it has much of a future in technical writing. I think the
information block will be the idea that survives.
Simulation games
There are other problems in writing documents that people are to learn from. One of the
problems of our world is how to make decisions in a complex, ambiguous environment
with only partial information at hand. Somewhat later in my career I got involved in
creating simulation games aimed at creating conditions that helped people learn to
operate in complex, ambiguous environments. My principal contribution was as editorin-chief of a consumer’s report on simulation games. With the personal computer, such
simulation games are now everywhere. In the early 1970s they were an innovation. And
almost all were non-computerized. They were not your fly-around, shoot-em-up, knockem-down, blow-em-up simulations. Many were social, role-playing simulations.
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Leaving out key information
Part of the trick to creating (that is, writing) simulation games was leaving out the key
information. The learners were to supply this in the role-playing and decision-making
that they did while playing games. One of my simulations called Participative Decision
Making became the most played and reproduced simulation in those early decades.
What this means is that there are at least two sides to devising learning materials and
exercises: (A) providing information (which is what structured writing and Information
Mapping does) and (B) providing the opportunity for active participation (which is what
simulation and role playing games do). There aren’t any really simple rules for what to
put in and what to leave out in simulations. But in simulation games you have to leave
out the key material and put in enough so that the learner can practice decision making.
It’s really quite a different set of choices from those in documentation writing. Simulation
exercises with much of the important information left out also have an important place in
the future.
Writing so they don’t have to read what we’ve written
I’ve already noted that we need to write so people can scan and skip. That means we
need to write so people don’t have to read everything we write. This is something of a
paradox. We need to make it convenient for people not to read some of our words. Let
me repeat—we have to write so people don’t have to read what we write.
We know that people have had the freedom not to read everything and probably always
have read in a non-linear way. But with hypertext they skip all over the place.
What writing should be linear and what should not
In about 1970, I read an important article-- Doug Englebart’s article on the augmentation
of human intellect (5). It was my first introduction to hypertext. Englebart was the first
person to implement Vannevar Bush’s ideas of linked text on a computer. I got to know
Doug shortly thereafter, and realized that the kind of writing I had been devising and
working on for the previous 5 years was specifically made for a hypertext environment.
In my first book on Information Mapping’s approach, published in 1976, I put at the
bottom of the pages a device I called “related pages.”
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This was a deliberate attempt to recognize that if you were going to skip around in a text,
it might be a good idea to include specific links. This meant that people were not going
to read in a linear fashion.
We had begun to learn that some writing doesn’t have to be linear. Hypertextual linking
meant that writing had to change. I can’t go into all of these changes, but my book
Mapping Hypertext (6) presents my ideas. With hypertext, many people are still
struggling with the chunk-size questions that I think we solved in the 1960s. The book
is, by the way, still selling well, even though it was written before the World Wide Web
came into existence. Why? Because it focuses exactly on the problems of organizing and
structuring text.
Disputed subject matter
Information Mapping, as I had initially devised it, focused mainly on what I’ve called
relatively stable subject matter-- that is, the subject matter you find in introductory
textbooks and in declaratory subjects, such a computer documentation or company
procedures and policies. When I left being CEO of Information Mapping, Inc., I started to
think about another area – disputed subject matter, those areas of disciplines where
debates take place, those areas where the content is not stable. What would an analogous
approach be like that would “map” argumentation?
Argumentation mapping
The major problem in understanding arguments is that often we do not find the claims
and their rebuttals and the further counter-rebuttals close enough to each other so that we
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can easily consider them together. Over the past few years, we’ve worked out how to
create these “argumentation maps.” Here the blocks of information are again important.
Relevant chunking is important. However, here the chunks are made up of claims and
rebuttals and the linkages are different. The links are made up of supports and disputes.
And the approach must be diagrammatic. Therefore you can read in all kinds of
directions. Diagrams are basically non-linear (as are argument structures). We need
boxes and arrows to show the structure of the arguments. (7)
Leaving out information in argumentation maps
In argumentation maps, we put in and leave out different kinds of information from stable
subject matter. For example, that which is not disputed does not get into our
argumentation maps. That which is disputed must be put in. We have thus created an
infrastructure for navigation of huge, sprawling debates that span decades.
This is part of the intellectual history of many academic disciplines. The same maps
show what the current status of the argument is.
When to tightly integrate words and images into visual language
The last ten years I’ve also been very involved in what I think is a major change in how
writing will be done in the future. It is called visual language, and this development is
noted in your award to me. The critical attribute in visual language is the tight
integration of words, images, and shapes. I think it literally is becoming a new
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international auxiliary language. Among the problems it helps solve is—how to show
big, sprawling, complex phenomena with hundreds of causal elements. Visual language
helps us represent common mental models.
The big questions are different in visual language. The big question is: What do words
do best and what do visual elements do best when they are working together? I devote
two chapters of my recent book, Visual Language, to exploring those questions. (8)
How big screens will affect writing
When I started out my career, what we could display on a computer was one line of text.
Screen size also affects writing. Screens are going to get bigger. Soon, we will have big
wrap-around screens. Already people in my department at Stanford have built a seminar
room wall that has the resolution of a computer screen everyplace on it. That means that
computer controlled displays can be presented at the resolution of 10 point type. Screens
like this will enable us to show visual language infomurals, which I think are the
overviews of the future. They will begin to solve the problems of context. They will tell
us how to organize our thoughts in time and space, in debates and conceptual ontologies,
in documents and groups of documents. They will be visual. Here are some examples.
Metawriting—the challenges
Another trend is also now becoming important. Sometimes, there are many different uses
of a single piece of information about a product or service—training manuals,
documentation, job aids, reports, change of information instructions, etc. Many software
products have versions that are modified for different special customers. If a big
company like AT&T likes your software and wants to buy a lot of it, but wants some
special features and functions, you are going to make these changes for them. But then
you have to document the changes. One company has 17 versions of its premium
software. That’s just in this one software release. It’s on its tenth release. All this means
that the documentation has to be in a database.
Write once—use many times
Once you have the systematic Information Mapping way of writing blocks that I spoke of
earlier, you can begin to write one block that can appear unchanged in many documents.
We call this “write once—use many times” or “single source writing.” I have begun to
call it “metawriting.”
Why single source writing is different
This is a different kind of writing. From the beginning of the history of writing, writers
have written to the context of the document. We had an idea of what the document was
going to look like. We knew where the next sentence fit in to the complete document.
But this is not so with single-source metawriting. There, you write the information block
and don’t know where it is going to appear. The display-event is the context. This has a
number of kinds of challenges. It means that the format is completely separate from the
content structure. Completely. You can now—with XML—completely ignore the
WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) world. We can tag single sentences, although
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as I have explained in talking about stickiness, it is probably better to tag information
blocks.
Drop transition words and other habits
This kind of writing involves breaking some of our oldest habits. We have to drop the
use of many of the transition words. For example, you can’t say “as we’ve just
described” in a sentence in a block if you don’t know what has just preceded it. And you
don’t know what will precede it when you are writing to a database rather than to a
context.
This then implies that a separate edit needs to be done to ensure that these kinds of
outside-of-the-block references are kept to a minimum, and eliminated wherever possible.
Two kinds of single-source metawriting
We have identified two kinds of single-source writing. One is “on-the-fly” writing where
the blocks must be very independent. On-the-fly blocks are completely controlled by the
computer display algorithm.
The second kind of single-source block writing is when the writer is writing a library of
subcomponents that will be used in different documents in specific places.
Special metawriting stickiness
There are in the Information Mapping system some new kinds of stickiness when you are
doing metawriting. For example, we have two kinds of blocks: procedures and
warnings. In the context of their use in training manuals and factory-floor job aids, these
two must be linked together so that the display algorithm doesn’t display the procedure
block without the warning block.
How does all this new stickiness become involved with visual language? We’re still
working on it. Stay tuned.
Summary
1. Pay attention to types of stickiness.
2. Make sure you know what you’re putting in and leaving out..
3. Write so people don’t have to read what you write (if they don’t need to).
4. Label every chunk.
5. Don’t always write in a linear fashion.
6. WYSIWYG is not quite dead – but threats to its existence in some parts are looming.
7. Use visual language. Change the ratio of images to words.
Thank you
Again I thank you for the honor you have given me today. I look forward to greeting old
friends and colleagues here and to meeting many new ones.
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_______________________________________________________________________
NOTES
1. Information has a topography like geographical terrain. Information has peaks and
valleys, cities and countryside, and roads and superhighways that connect them. Like
geographical maps, formats should relate to this topology on an point-to-point basis, in so
far as possible. Information maps should guide you through the information just like
geographical maps do. The ability to show relationships and guide the user quickly to
relevant places is a feature of the formats, and the key to the metaphor of Information
Mapping's name. (Horn, 1969, 1971, 1992a)
2. For an interesting history of how the paragraph got to be and an important critique of it
see Stern, Arthur A. “When is a paragraph?” which is widely reprinted into collections
of essays about writing. Stern’s article was called to my attention only a couple of years
ago.
3. The information types were completed in 1965; first in Horn (1966); incorporated into
a research proposal in 1967 and first published in Horn, et. al. 1969.
4. The structured writing approach dates back to 1965 when I was a researcher at
Columbia University's Institute for Educational Technology. The earliest publication is
Horn, et. al., 1969. Most of the literature on structured writing refers to it by a
trademarked name "Information Mapping" which is a registered trademark of
Information Mapping, Inc., Waltham, MA. www.infomap.com However the generic
term for the approach, which I suggested in the early 1980's, is "structured writing."
Often authors of "structured writing" documents use different and more loose standards
for analysis, organization and display of information than those who practice Information
Mapping's method. The characteristics described in this article refer to those which I first
synthesized into Information Mapping's method. Since the name "Information Mapping"
is trademarked, we must abide by the requirements of the trademark law and mention that
fact. A more complete history of the invention of Information Mapping’s method can be
found in an article I wrote for Performance and Instruction called “Structured Writing at
25” at www.stanford.edu/~rhorn
5. Englebart
6. Horn (1989)
7. Horn (1998a)
8. Horn (1998b)
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References
Horn, R.E., (1966). A terminal behavior locater system. Programmed
Learning, No. 1 (Feb. 1966), 40-47
Horn, R. E., Nicol, E., Kleinman, J., and Grace, M., (1969),
Information mapping for learning and reference. Cambridge, MA: I.R.I.
(A.F. Systems Command Report ESD-TR-69-296)
Horn, R. E., Nicol, E., Roman, R., Razar, M, (1971). Information
mapping for computer-learning and reference. Cambridge, MA: I.R.I.
(A.F. Systems Command Report ESD-TR-71-165)
Horn, R. E. (1989). Mapping hypertext: analysis, linkage, and display
of knowledge for the next generation of on-line text and graphics.
Lexington, MA: The Lexington Institute (available from Information
Mapping, Inc.)
Horn, R. E. (1992a). How high can it fly? Lexington, MA: The
Lexington Institute
Horn, R. E. (1993). Structured writing at twenty-five. Performance and Instruction,
32(February), 11-17.
Horn, R. E. (1998a) Mapping Great Debates: Can Computers Think? Bainbridge Island
WA, MacroVU Press
Horn, R. E. (1998b) Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century,
Bainbridge Island WA, MacroVU Press
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