In the news – building perspective

maps

Studying the news and gaining perspective on an incident or event from another person’s point of view is a valuable learning experience.  Whether it be politics or sport, it is possible to help students see through another set of eyes by reading the news as it is presented in another country.  Here are some useful tools for the purpose:

Newspaper Map

Read news from a local perspective with links to more than 10,000 newspapers in over 130 countries.  Beautifully visual, simply to select a newspaper from its location on a world map and read it with the assistance of Google Translate.  Excellent for foreign language students and for anyone seeking to gain an understanding of the culture of another country.  See how nuclear energy features in European newspapers, for instance, compared to Australian newspapers.

Museum- Today’s Front Pages

Newseum displays the front pages of more than 2,000 newspapers worldwide on its website each day.  They are in their original, unedited form.  Access by gallery, list or location on a world map.  Functionality on the site is quite granular with the ability to sort by world region, then name of paper or country.  Translate function is accessible by using the link to website and using Google Translate.

OnlineNewspapers.com

A beautifully clean and fast site, OnlineNewspapers.com also includes online magazines with links to free worldwide magazines on a broad range of subjects.  Newspaper websites can be searched by country or region and are very quickly retrieved.  A few dead links seems to indicate a lack of maintenance on the site but it’s still a very useful resource.

ipl2 – Newspapers & Magazines

Organised as a basic database, the user starts at the international and regional level, drills down to country level, then can use the city index to locate a specific newspaper.  Less visual than other sites, it is still easy to use and reveals an amazing range of world news.

Newspapers are under attack with the rise of blogging and alternative news tools but they are still an effective tool for expanding a student’s perspective and providing opportunities for discussion.  Take time to explore.

 

A groundswell of playfulness

Hamish Curry, Education Manager at the State Library of Victoria reflects on gaming and playfulness after recently taking part in conferences in Auckland and Melbourne.

Games and playful thinking have been popping up a lot for me recently, more so than usual.

There seems to be a shift in the discussion from the games people play to how games both reflect and add to the culture of our workplaces and public spaces. School libraries can potentially be a hub for this kind of discussion enabling the exploration of games and apps that contribute to our understanding of digital literacy, deep reading and game elements.

In digging deeper I headed along to the inaugural Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) from July 19-21. Here more than 40,000 gamers descended on the Melbourne Show grounds to indulge in games from all kinds of mediums: card games, board games, video games, and talks about games. The scale was overwhelming. It was a powerful physical reminder of just how ubiquitous and diverse games are, as well as how rich the networks and local game development scene are too. I spoke on a panel about The Playful Library exploring the ways in which library spaces can be designed and co-programmed to support games culture. If libraries are keen to engage with the community, then games become a powerful way to bring playfulness and partnerships into their spaces.

Speaking of spaces, I was New Zealand bound the following day to participate in the Auckland City Council’s Hui ‘New Rules of Engagement: Future Directions for Children’s and Youth Services at Auckland Libraries’. This two-day event explored the ‘serious business of being playful’ and brought about 180 staff together to discuss how library spaces can be revitalised, redesigned and reprogrammed to better support families and youth services. There was a strong sense of community driven perspectives coming through the sessions, which also included a workshop on building bridges with newspaper whilst being shot at with Nerf guns! Clearly the play potential of libraries was a key focus, and the energy of the room suggested that the tenacity and eagerness of staff was certainly there.

The themes of risk, innovation, and opportunity kept surfacing. Something that also surfaced during this Hui was an article I’d written for the Schools Catalogue Information Service on Games and learning. In it I explore the ways in which games complement and contrast with education, and how control is always shifting.

Being playful reminds us all that control is at once a state of mind and an opportunity to do things differently.

Image credit: Steam punk nerf guns at Auckland Libraries Hui – librarians vs children!

Lizzie Bennet Diaries: transmedia story telling

In this guest post Centre for Youth Literature Program Coordinator, Adele Walsh talks about The Lizzie Bennet Diaries – an amazing example of transmedia story telling.

When you think of Lizzie Bennet, most see a tome of Pride and Prejudice or Jennifer Ehle slowly coaxing a smile out of Colin Firth in the last scene of the BBC adaptation. Since April last year, the two hundred year old character has undergone a radical makeover in the form of a hugely successful web series.

Hank Green, one half of the Nerdfighting duo with brother John Green, and head writer Bernie Su, have created The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a web series that lovingly references the classic text while reflecting life today and social media trends. LBD, as it’s known, has also created a staggeringly engaged online community.

It’s a perfect example of highly successful transmedia at work – a series of web tools that integrates the elements of narrative to create unique content based on existing (and out of copyright) properties.

Remaining loyal to the structure of Jane Austen’s work, Hank and Bernie have followed the same narrative arc, but have adapted characters and motivations so they make sense today and fit the medium. For instance, there are only three Bennet sisters in LBD – Lizzie (our fearless vlogging protagonist), Jane (timid but lovely) and Lydia (irrepressible and endearing). Mary makes an appearance as a cousin with Kitty as the family pet. Every change to the original is done with love and humour, it never mocks its source material.

Marriage proposals are now job offers, estates become large corporations and as for the shocking Wickham/Bennet development….well, our lips are sealed.

Green and Su have also integrated different social media platforms to develop characters and events from outside Lizzie’s perspective. Each character has a Twitter account composed by the series’ writing team where they interact with the public and each other. Jane works in fashion so her outfits and inspiration are posted on her Tumblr and Lookbook accounts.

Jane Bennet on Lookbook

Lydia starts her own web series to have a share of the spotlight but what starts out as an exercise in narcissism becomes something else entirely. Lydia Bennet has never been as beloved as she has in this form of Pride and Prejudice. The appearance of the characters (and cast) at last year’s VidCon brought real and imagined worlds together in a way that tickled the funny bone and imagination of the LBD audience.

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries appeals to new and established audiences. Many of the teens and adults who have gravitated to the series have no pre-existing knowledge of the story so every new episode is a revelation. The dialogue, acting and variations in the story give viewers familiar with the novel a new experience which often challenges them to think about characters in a different way.

The series also encourages audience participation. Viewers are actively involved in the characters’ lives – giving Lydia advice (or warnings…) in YouTube comments, chatting with characters on Twitter and pestering creators to hurry up and introduce Darcy!

One of the most interesting spin-offs from LBD is the fan group, The LBD Seahorses. Before Lydia’s fall from grace, fans couldn’t agree which tragedy would ruin her in a contemporary setting. Pregnancy seemed to be the frontrunner. The question was then asked, “What would Darcy even do to help the situation?” To which someone replied, “He’d offer to carry the baby for her.” “Oh, so he’s going to become a seahorse?”

And so the niche group was born.

LBD Seahorses group on Twitter

While it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and not all LBD fans love it, the group is a great example of how web based media evolves. In a recent Lizzie Bennet Q&A session there was even a shout out for this fan group.

The creators couldn’t have anticipated the audience driven art, discussions and interests inspired by the series. The actress who plays Jane often styles her hair using ideas from the World War II era prompting questions about how she does it.  Jane posted on Pinterest and made video tutorials so now fans are wearing elaborate hair styles like Victory rolls and milk maid braids.

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries project is slowly coming to an end. This week celebrates the 91st episode and (almost) a year of continuous, free narrative-based content. Who would have imagined that a series of 3-5 minute videos and social media channels based on a classic reimagined text would so firmly capture young people’s attention?

Hank Green and Bernie Su did.

The big question is which classic will they tackle next?

 

Poetry mash up: Leanne Hampson

The Resourcehound

Leanne Hampson (aka The Resourcehound) from Brauer Secondary College recently completed the PLN program and is experimenting with web tools in her library and classroom. Her guest post today talks about how to create poetry mash ups with students.

Recently I was studying poetry with my year 9 English class, mainly focussing on analysing particular poems. Most students seem to find it difficult to create their own poetry and I certainly find it very difficult to assess (poetry is such a personal thing, don’t you think?). Then I happened across a Bright Ideas post about the Phat Poetry site and although I couldn’t seem to get the mash up function to work (more investigation required!), it was the spark I needed.

One thing I have discovered is that while students can use some computer programs well, they needed a lot of guidance and suggestions on how they might present their mash ups. Whenever I promote a particular web tool or program I like to demonstrate it to the students as well (the old, ‘and I expect yours to be much better than mine…’). This meant creating some mash ups of my own. This was quite addictive and I spent far too long on my ‘demos’ when I should have been writing reports…oh well.

Students used two texts with a similar theme but they could choose these themselves. I recommended they select song lyrics they felt strongly about and then we went to the library and searched the poetry collection for something that matched. Then students had to take lines from each text, find images and music to match the feel and atmosphere and then decide on a program to create their mash up. I recommended to students that they use either Photostory, Animoto, Movie Maker or Glogster. All of these have the capacity to combine text, images and sound together. I made examples in Photostory, Animoto and Glogster to show them.

Some issues we had were that Animoto tended to ‘eat’ their internet quota pretty quickly and its ability to add text is limited. But it does come out looking absolutely smashing! Glogster is also simple to create but I did struggle with how to let students share their work. I think this was because I was unfamiliar with the new Edu Glogster though, rather than a limitation of the site. Photostory was very straightforward and was probably the most successful of the three. We worked together to solve issues and had a great time in class looking at everyone’s work.

Overall the students were very engaged. They loved using their computers and the final products were impressive. It is amazing how effective the new texts were. One student used poetry written by her grandmother and even the ‘I hate poetry’ boys got enthused. I also used Rubistar to create an assessment rubric for the task (if you’d like a copy, contact me via my blog, The Resourcehound, or Twitter, @LHampso).

Here is an example I made using Animoto. It features ‘Been Caught Stealing’ by Jane’s Addiction and the poem ‘Stealing’ by Carol Ann Duffy.

Volumique

Volumique is a French publishing company that explores book creation as a new computer platform, with particular emphasis on how physical paper books can interact with smart phones. They also experiment with interactive story telling and game.

With projects like Pirates (paper board game using smartphones), the book that disappears (a book you have 20 minutes to read before the pages turn black) and Balloon (an Ipad virtual reality pop up book), there are lots of lovely ideas to explore.

Volumique

It’s wonderful to think that artists and publishers are thinking so creatively about where books can go in the future and how technology can augment the experience of storytelling.

To see more of their recent work, take a look at the Volumique Vimeo channel.

FUSE learning resource: CC sMash

CC sMash, created by The Arts Centre, will be released on August 18th and will allow students to create, attribute, and share their own audio work, while learning about using material correctly via the creative commons open license framework. The creative commons site provides a library of sound from which to create your mashups. This site is a must to show to your school’s music teachers and ICT teachers, who can start planning to bring their students plenty of fun mixed with learning.

CC sMash 

Libraryhack

It is time to start thinking about Libraryhack, the amazing competition to create mashups and applications open to individuals or teams. This would be a fantastic competition for media students, or any students to partake in that show an interest in creating mashups and apps.

Competitors use data from participating libraries. These libraries include State Library of Victoria (SLV), State Library of South Australia, State Library of Queensland, State Library of Tasmania, State Library of Western Australia, State Library of New South Wales, National Library of Australia, and the National Library of New Zealand/Digital NZ. Datasets will be available from the Australian Government data repository, the New Zealand Government data repository, and through Digital NZ.

The ideas competition in now running.

The ideas competition runs from 8th February – 30th April 2011. The winning prize is $1000 for the best idea for a mashup or app.  All entries in this category must suggest using at least one dataset or content from at least one dataset, from one of the participating libraries. The datalists below are provided by Libraryhack to inspire entries in the ideas competition. SLV’s datasets are listed first. As the datasets become available a link will appear in the list.

Libraryhack - data

The Libraryhack competition will be held in May.

There will be mashup and hack events held across Australia. Check the Libraryhack website, or follow Libraryhack on twitter for venues near you. In Victoria, SLV is hosting ‘Libraryhack’:

When: Fri 20 – Sat 21 May, 10.30am – 5.30pm
Where: State Library of Victoria, Experimedia.
Tickets: Free, bookings required
Bookings: http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/event/libraryhack 

You will be able to access SLV’s library collection content and data in order to remix and create a new application, digital story, image, or other new content. These can then be entered into the libraryhack competition. Reminders will be posted closer to the event.

If you are unsure what a mashup, hack, or app looks like, check out the resources offered on the Libraryhack site.