Digital Literacy

What does it mean to be literate today?

Visual Literacy

http://www.inanimatealice.com/

'Inanimate Alice' tells the story of Alice, a young girl growing up in the first half of the 21st century, and her imaginary digital friend, Brad.

Over ten episodes, each a self contained story, we see Alice grow from an eight year old living with her parents in a remote region of Northern China to a talented mid-twenties animator and designer with the biggest games company in the world.’

Pascoe Vale PS - Engaging Students with Digital Fiction

• http://aliceandfriends.wikispaces.com/- Tuning in to students’ interests- Creating global awareness/connections- Why care? – students stated that they wanted

to produce work that was ‘up to the standard’ of Inanimate Alice, saw PURPOSE in their work and wanted to share their ideas and creativity

Sound like fun but…..

Where’s the work and learning?

The students knew from the very beginning of this unit what was expected of them.

These expectations are linked back to our Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS)

Students were encouraged to keep these in mind when making choices about working partners.

During and after viewing episode 1 ...

Students worked together to record their questions and wonderings.

This is the list generated during whole class discussion

After viewing episode 1 ...

Lots of group discussion on the elements of a narrative• Every narrative has ....• They may also have ....• But a really good one will ...

Many of the lists included in this presentation were

generated as part of whole class sharing of

ideas, that were developed during small

group discussions.

After reading and viewing episode 1 students compared digital narratives with print narratives ....

Students worked together to complete task before generating a list as a class.

A critical task for the students was

the discussion around the

differences they noticed as a reader of print and digital

texts.

After viewing episodes 1 & 2 students were asked ...

•What do you know about Alice?

•What don’t you know about Alice?

•What do you infer about Alice?

Throughout this unit

students were expected

to be able to justify and

provide evidence for their

ideas and work.

Before viewing episode 3 students were asked to predict what they expected using their knowledge from episodes 1 & 2.

PREDICTING EPISODE 3

Before beginning the challenge of writing their own episode students spent lots of time on analysis of...

• Text structure

• Visual features

How will what you know about the TEXT and the VISUALS impact your decisions as a writer and creator of digital fiction?

CHANGES: What differences are there in the three texts? Can you identify patterns in these differences?

Viewing the episodes as authors .......

Each group was given a specific question to focus on then share their findings with the class.

STORYLINE: What elements/themes can you identify that are common to all three episodes?

AUTHOR’S CRAFT: What techniques and strategies has the author used to create this text?

TEXT STRUCTURE: What is similar about how the text is structured across all three episodes?

As writers of episode 4 the students were involved in many conversations with their writing partners, with each other and with us.

Throughout this unit of work the students were very aware of the importance of accountable conversations.

Active listening and accountability in partnerships, small group and whole class discussions was valued and expected.

Work to be proud of!

“In our development as higher-order thinkers…our ability to understand what we see, to interpret what we experience,

to analyze what we are exposed to, and to evaluate what we conclude against criteria that support critical thinking is integral to

our survival.”

Barbara R. Jones-Kavalier and Suzanne L. Flannigan