Beam me up Bard

The Whitney Quesenbry presentation, which I linked to in my last post, listed as a suggested reading Janet H Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. This book, now bedtime reading, is challenging me to consider the connection between the storytelling and gaming worlds. Worlds which hitherto I saw as unconnected.

Murray has also contributed a chapter to First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game which critically debates the relationship between story and game. The debate is continued online at an interactive companion website featuring "essays, intense ripostes" and an invitation to contribute to "ongoing dialogue."

First Person notes traditional literature's failure to successfully migrate online and asks whether a specific genre of games—those that utilise storytelling conventions—might instead be considered e-literature. Indeed the suggestion is that future e-literature will be so interactive that it will be impossible to present simply as e-books.

For me the description parallels the failure of traditional transmission models of education to successfully adapt to online environments and the related predominance of the book metaphor in current proprietory LMSs. In the same way that technology has changed storytelling, technology has changed education… it's just that we haven't all realised it yet!

I wish I could be at the opening celebrations of the Middlebury library to hear Murray speak on "The Future of Storytelling in the Digital Age." Perhaps I could teleport?

Update: You may like to check out Media Inquiry (RSS), the blog of Middlebury resident Hector J. Vila (a.k.a. the Accidental Technologist—now there's a story!)

Digging on Saul Carliner

Digging around Saul's web pages unearthed these PDF slides from a presentation entitled Storytelling as an Information Design Technique. The presentation, made at lastyear's STC conference, considers the use of storytelling techniques in design, research, and for presenting technical content.

Saul also offers up a couple of great links courtesy of Craig Marion's Software Design Smorgasbord:

• Gerd Waloszek's article offers a tempting glimpse into the future of narrative user interfaces—revolutionary interfaces, based on storytelling, which attempt to mimic the communication behavior of humans.


• Usability designer Whitney Quesenbery believes storytelling is a powerful way to explain complex concepts, and present a vision for a design. Points she makes in these PDF slides from a presentation made at another STC conference. Have to get to one of these STC conferences!

Every museum tells a story

My colleague Cheryl brought Saul Carliner's textbook qualitative comparison of the instructional design processes used in museum exhibit design to my attention. What lessons are here for the instructional design of online learning? Well Carliner devotes another paper to just this question, but what interested me was the use of storytelling as a design technique:

Like books and movies, museum exhibitions have:

• Storylines, that is, the development of a plot
• Key characters, the people whose stories are told by the exhibition
• Juxtaposition, the careful placement of objects and points to provoke thought
• Subliminal messages, points that designers hope to convey without explicitly stating them
• Techniques for holding interest

Carliner suggests as instructional designers "…we employ many of the same storytelling and interpretation techniques used by museum exhibit designers to achieve our goals, although we may call these techniques by other names."

I would suggest that these storytelling elements are applied (if they are applied) in a rather fragmented fashion, what is needed is a more holistic approach to using storytelling techniques in the design of online learning.

RAMBLE on

I'm an advocate for the use of blogs as reflective journals. The accessibility of blogs, the immediacy syndication affords, and the collaborative reflective possibilities (e.g. critical friends) networking allows, all make for a powerful environment for reflective practice. Thus RAMBLE, a JISC funded research project intrigues me. (Great acronym too!) To quote from the abstract:

RAMBLE will investigate the use of Web logs (blogs) as a reflective authoring activity in an educational context. The project will be particularly relevant to Higher or Further Education, and these will be the targets for the dissemination of the project's conclusions.

The project's work is divided into two strands:

1. The off-line authoring of Web log entries on a PDA and subsequent upload to a Web log server.
2. The creation of a blogging component that will allow Web log content to be integrated into Bodington, an open source VLE.

The first strand will investigate mobile blogging for students who do not have immediate access to an Internet connection. We will investigate various PDA-based blogging clients, and use them in three case studies of learners at different stages in their learning—in the fields of Medicine, Chemistry and ICT (this project).

The second strand will develop a tool that will enable blog content to be presented in the wider educational context of a VLE. The tool will be able to query any blog server that is standards-based.

Note that the project does not propose to deliver VLE content to the PDA. The use of VLEs directly with mobile devices involves considerable complexity and is outside the scope of this project.

The proposal provides some interesting links, including one to Pebble, an open source, Java-based blog server which compares well with others and which includes desktop and moblog clients.

A-keep-a ramblin' baby…

Doing rather than knowing

I like Amy's distinction between information and knowledge. (Although Nancy's not so sure.) Amy's advice to "Think verbs, not nouns" appeals because verbs are doing words and the shifting meaning of knowledge links knowledge to performativity—what knowledge can do.

Diana Oblinger in her paper Boomers, Gen-Xers & Millennials: Understanding the "New Students" quotes Jason Frand's ten attributes of an information-age mindset. This one seemed to have particular relevance:

Doing is more important than knowing. Knowledge is no longer perceived to be the ultimate goal, particularly in light of the fact that the half-life of information is so short. Results and actions are considered more important than the accumulation of facts.

Interactive Narratives

Via e-Literate comes this link to the Interactive Narratives collaborative weblog. (The RSS feed is available here.) Interactive narratives are "informational and storytelling experiences designed and produced for the web." The closing of a small town milling operation provides a powerful example of the possibilities of digital storytelling.

Four stakeholders tell their stories as they move through the grieving process. Hardy's observation as quoted in McDrury and Alterio that "we dream in narrative, daydream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticise, construct, gossip, learn, hate and live by narrative", highlights the aptness of narrative for conveying their stories.

My Generation

On the subject of generations, my wife alerted me to this definition (which she mistakenly thought applied to me) published in the NZ Listener:

Generation C

Obsessive content generators. Often to be found snapping photos—of themselves—on their mobile phones for instant distribution to friends and family. Or constantly updating personal blogs with boring personal trivia.

Maybe Roger Daltry was right when he sang:

Why don't you all f-fade away
And don't try to d-dig what we all s-s-say
I'm not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation
I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-generation

XYZ and U!

Jeremy's post on GenXers reminded me of Mark McCrindle whom I heard speak on inter-generational differences almost one year ago to the day. He appealed to us as educators to reach Gen Y through understanding their different attitudes and values:

• Rather than making independent decisions based on core values, they live in a culture encouraging them to embrace community values, and to reach consensus.
  
• …their attitude is one of practicality, short-term focus, and utilitarianism.
  
• The culture today asserts that any philosophy, religion, or practice is as valid as any other as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, and it is tolerant of the beliefs of others.
  
• They want community: to be understood, accepted, respected, and included.
  
• They are on a search for fun, for quality friendships, for a fulfilling purpose, and for spiritual meaning.
  
• They are looking for real life role models and mentors who not only know the way, but also go the way, and can show the way.

According to McCrindle, communication with Gen Y needs to be:

1. Real—bombarded daily with 1600 marketing messages, Gen Y are well practiced at sniffing out an insincere message or messenger.
   
2. Relevant—to be relevant means that you are adapting to the needs and wants of the people with whom you interact.
   
3. Relational—as a very relationally focused cohort, considering the relational dynamic when communicating with Gen Y is essential. This is particularly topical given current calls for immediacy in online learning.

Gen Y is also the subject of an Australian professional development project to assist teachers better understand the support needs of their students.

Update: For more background read Mark's paper The ABC of XYZ: Generational Diversity at Work, or for a more education focused article Diana Oblinger's Boomers, Gen-Xers & Millennials: Understanding the "New Students".