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INTRODUCTION
Recent years have seen a critical shift away from conventional notions of literacy in terms of language alone. The growing availability of media forms and 'texts' has lent literacy studies an ever-expanding field to critique, from television to computer games, and the internet to mobile devices. In the field of education, a great deal of research has described how children develop literacies related to these media - and especially the disjuncture between formal literacy teaching in conventional school contexts and the types of informal literacy learning that occurs outside of institutional instruction. Bernstein (1999), for example, conceives of these as vertical and horizontal axes respectively, where vertical discourse is hierarchically organised and formally pedagogic, delivered instructionally and carefully sequenced, and where horizontal discourse is a relative free-for-all of discoursal practice in informal contexts. Most notably horizontal discourse is regarded in relation to media texts (Moss 2001).
Accordingly, there has for some time been talk of horizontal discourses of 'computer literacy' and, more recently, 'games literacy', and the skills and competencies gained and practised through interaction with these interfaces. Prensky (2001) has suggested that today's children have been born as 'digital natives' into this computerised age, accepting new media as integral parts of the world that they need to synthesise into their everyday ways of working and communicating. Suss et al (2001) argue that around these many forms of media, children have formed rich exchange networks in which artefacts and dialogue are always circulating between peers, adding continuously to the knowledge of the peer group as a whole; these exchanges can also occur over the internet. Recent growth in peer-to-peer web technologies also suggests these kinds of exchanges are likely to grow ever richer (Rheingold 2003), while online computer gaming has demonstrated the keenness of participants to communicate and exchange 'in-game' as well as outside of it. For 'digital natives' it is essential to be able to interpret, often in parallel, the range of modalities that contribute to these media, and to be able to utilise these understandings in support of their social relationships.
In this sense, 'literacy' can already be seen in two respects: as a set of skills and competencies, and as a cache of linguistic resources or discourses for describing the experience of mobilising them. Our interest in this paper is in how children practise these various forms of both discoursal and activity-based literacy. Specifically, we examine the kinds of literacy practices that surround video games play. These, we argue, are bound up in social communities, often geographically dispersed. We then proceed to present case studies from initial trials of two new software prototypes developed in association with Futurelab, both of which utilise a video games aesthetic in support of children's learning, and examine what literacy practices are being mobilised through their use. This returns us to a discussion of what Bakhtin (1981) describes as 'ventriloquism' and 'parody', and the implications for children's literacy learning suggested by that reading.
Overarchingly, the paper asks:
- What forms of literacy are relevant and important to discussions of children's learning with digital and multimedia devices?
- What is meant by 'games literacy' and what are the implications for children's formal and informal learning?
- What implications do 3D design and games aesthetics have for children's construction of multimodal meanings and development of 'multiliteracies'?
In summary, the paper asks how do new educational programs utilising the aesthetics of video games enable children to gain new understandings of their multimedia environment, and how can we develop these rich technologies to contribute to new pedagogies in the classroom? First, though, the paper describes two prototypes and the research methods used during the pilot studies, before exploring what current debates on 'multiliteracies' imply for children's learning, and how notions of 'literacy' have evolved.
PROTOTYPES AND RESEARCH APPROACHES
Virtual Puppeteers
Virtual Puppeteers is a virtual performance kit that allows users to create characters on a computer, and to enact scenarios with characters created by other users across a network. It was conceived by squidsoup interactive designers and developed over three months in spring and summer 2003. The puppet making kit was designed as virtual plasticine, allowing users to sculpt, mould and paint the basic virtual material into multicoloured puppets. Once the puppets have been created, users can then export them into the stage section to perform alongside other users. Microphones and headsets are included for users to communicate with each other when performing together with their puppets. Performances are recorded live and saved once complete. The range of puppet movements available in this early prototype is limited, with facilities only to make the puppet appear to run, wave its hands, and float (or fly) around the stage. Later iterations are intended to expand the available repertoire of puppetry motions.
Virtual Puppeteers was evaluated with 29 children from Year 5 (mean age 9.7 years) in a primary school in Bristol during one week in July 2003, with the research and evaluation programme designed and conducted by a researcher from Futurelab. This was a necessarily short research intervention, intended to inform next developments and a further, more longitudinal phase of research.
Two data collection methodologies were used. Firstly, semi-structured interviews took place prior to the programming of the software, in order to gauge expectations and develop ideas. Secondly, children's interactions using the software were recorded on videotape, and where these dialogues occurred over the network the recorded interactions were synchronised to provide full transcripts of the finished performances.
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