Proof yet again this week from the USA –  if more proof were needed – of the flawed logic of equating improvements in test scores with improvements in literacy, or indeed of believing that literacy can be improved by legislation.  According to a CNN report, one of the net effects of George W Bush’s flagship education act, No Child Left Behind,  is actually a lowering rather than a raising of standards. The act states that every child must be proficient in reading and maths by 2014, and schools which fall short of that target are subject to financial penalties. What would you do in that situation, faced with cuts in what is already a meagre budget, especially if your school was in one of the more deprived areas of the country? Exactly. In almost a third of states, the test score required for “proficiency” was lowered to the point where almost every student was able to pass, and since states are responsible for setting and assessing their own tests, this was not difficult to achieve. The end result was that in one state the score required for proficiency was 70% of that required in a neighbouring state.

Source: New York Public Library: 1920s

What I find quite depressing about this story is not just the scramble to improve test scores, the desperation of governments and politicians to be seen to be improving standards, or the schools’ attempts to massage the figures and hang on to their budgets, but the fact that the most immediate concern of the CNN reporter, assuming to speak on behalf of parents if not the nation, is to find a way of making the test scores more reliable, robust and “standardised”, rather than engaging in a genuine debate about what it actually means to be proficient in reading, why it is necessary, and how it might be achieved for all young people.

It couldn’t happen here, could it?

Related Articles

Read the full CNN report by Randy Kaye here

Read Jaye Richards on Future Models of Assessment here

Reflecting on a very enjoyable seminar in sunny – yes literally – Edinburgh on Saturday. There was an excellent turnout for a Saturday morning, proving yet again that if teachers feel that they have an opportunity to learn something new or hear a different slant on learning and teaching they will seek it out, even if it means giving up some of their leisure time. There was a real buzz in the room, and it wasn’t entirely down to the air conditioning system, as delegates wrestled with the reading strategies and were asked to re-think the whole notion of literacy, reading and texts in a society where electronic media are becoming the norm, rather than the exception. To paraphrase David Warlick, this isn’t about using or embedding technology, it’s about re-defining literacy.

The morning was made all the more enjoyable for me by the presence of my good friends Mike Coulter of Digital Agency, who came along to take some photos, and Dave Terron, an English teacher at Elgin Academy, who spoke about his work in school with Inanimate Alice ,Samorost and Machinarium, as well as providing an excellent starter sheet for participants. Thanks to both of them for their contributions. Thanks also to Mike for the Flickr slideshow. You can see more of his photo sets by clicking here. You can see more of my photo sets by clcking on any of the photographs under My Photos in the other column.

Just putting the finishing touches to my Reading Strategies presentation for the seminar in Edinburgh tomorrow. I am so looking forward to it – I haven’t been this excited since…well, since I had an email from WordPress the other day to tell me my last blogpost had been promoted to their home page. I must admit I couldn’t help feeling a bit good about that, since they have about a quarter of a million blogs to choose from and the same number of posts every day.
Anyway, enough of that. The reading strategies seminar will be a look at the importance of narrative, why we tell stories, why people have the (wrong) impression that boys don’t read, and whether there are certain key reading strategies which can be applied in all contexts. I think you know my answer to that, but you’ll have to wait a bit longer to find out. I’ll post a full version of the presentation in due course, and I’ll ask delegates to comment here on what they think of the seminar. In the meantime here’s a quick summary of the topics I’m hoping to cover in the course of the morning. Look forward to meeting you if you’re going to be there.

I’ve been working on a seminar for teachers called “Snow White and the Seven Reading Strategies”, which is an exploration of the processes we automatically engage in as sophisticated readers, but which are not always made explicit to developing readers. It’s my contention that if they were, and if they were rehearsed often enough, they would provide young readers with an understanding of why reading is so important and how it relates to their development in the world. Central to this view is the notion that “reading” applies to all forms of text – written, audio, visual or digital – and that in order to understand how we read, we need first to come to an understanding of why we read, and why we tell stories. Which, as it happens, is the sub-title of Christopher Booker’s amazing study of books and reading, The Seven Basic Plots.

It is a hugely ambitious task, and some would argue that it fails in its ultimate goal, which is to convince us that every successful story ever told or written or filmed can be categorised under one of only seven basic plot structures: Overcoming the Monster; Rags to Riches; The Quest; Voyage and Return; Comedy; Tragedy and Rebirth. However, whether you end up agreeing with Booker or not, it is a fascinating 700-page journey through the history of story-telling.

If you want to know what the key elements of each of the plots are, but don’t particularly want to read the book, here is a summary:

 One -  Overcoming the Monster

“The realm of storytelling contains nothing stranger or more spectacular than this terrifying, life-threatening, seemingly all-powerful monster whom the hero must confront in a fight to the death.”

 Genres: War, Hollywood Western, Thriller, Science Fiction

 Plot Structure:

• Anticipation stage (newspaper report etc)
• Dream stage (still a remote threat)
• Frustration stage (enormity of task)
• Nightmare stage (all seems doomed)
• Miraculous Escape (and death of the monster)

Examples: Greek myths (Perseus/Medusa, Theseus and the Minotaur etc); Frankenstein; Dracula; The Magnificent Seven; Jurassic Park; Jaws; The Three Musketeers; The Bond stories; Star Wars; War of the Worlds; Quatermass and the Pit; The Towering Inferno; Fairy Tales inc Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk.

 Two – Rags to Riches

 “Again and again in the storytelling of the world we come across a certain image which seems to hold a peculiar fascination for us. We see an ordinary, insignificant person, dismissed by everyone as of little account, who suddenly steps to the centre of the stage, revealed to be someone quite exceptional.”

Common features:

• we meet the hero or heroine when they are still very young – the story is about “growing up”
• they are at the bottom of the heap – often the youngest child
• they are usually overshadowed by a “dark figure” or dominant character (wicked stepmother, jealous rival etc) who fails to see the true qualities of the main character because of their own egocentricity

 Plot Structure:-

The story tends to fall into two distinct stages, separated by a central crisis, where in Part One there is an initial rise in the hero’s fortunes, showing a glimpse of what might be possible, when a crisis occurs which seems to snatch away all hope of a happy ending, before, in Part Two, the hero is unwittingly prepared for their final reversal of fortune, emergence into the light and glorious state of completeness.

Familiar Stages of Plot:

•  Initial wretchedness and the “call”
•  Out into the world – initial success
•  The central crisis
•  Independence and final ordeal
•  Final union, completion and fulfilment

Examples: The Ugly Duckling; My Fair Lady; Dick Whittington, Superman; David Copperfield; Cinderella; The Gold Rush; Jane Eyre.

 Three – The Quest

“No type of story is more instantly recognizable to us than a Quest. Far away, we learn, there is some priceless goal, worth any effort to achieve: a treasure; a promised land; something of infinite value. From the moment the hero learns of this prize, the need to set out on a long, hazardous journey to reach it becomes the most important thing to him in the world.”

 Common Features:

Unlike other kinds of stories, the hero is usually accompanied by one or more friends who may be -

• a large number of anonymous helpers ( or army)
• an alter-ego or close friend (Hamlet/Horatio)
• a foil or opposite of the hero
• a group whose various characteristics complement each other and add up to “the whole”

In addition to all the negative figures the hero and his companions meet on the journey, they also meet (and are helped by) others, usually in the form of “an old man” and “a young woman”.

NB. One of the most surprising things about the Quest plot is that the journey only makes up half the story. The entire second half of The Odyssey for example describes what follows when Odysseus arrives incognito back on his island to find his kingdom in near total disarray.

 Plot Structure:

• The Call – the hero receives a sign that he must make a long and difficult journey to save a community/country/planet etc
• The Journey – the hero and his companions set out across hostile terrain and face a series of life-threatening ordeals (these usually fall into one of four categories – monsters, temptations, the “deadly opposites” or journey to the underworld)
• Arrival and Frustration – the hero arrives within sight of his goal but a new set of obstacles presents itself
• The Final Ordeals – the hero has to undergo a final series of tests (often 3) to prove he is worthy of the prize
• The Goal – after a last “thrilling escape from death” the treasure, or the princess, or the goal is won

 As with’ Overcoming the Monster’ and’ Rags to Riches’, the hero of ‘The Quest’ begins with a sense of constriction, experiences a sense of enlargement as he moves out into the world, faces a final, more serious sense of constriction in the final ordeal, before becoming liberated and overthrowing the dark forces and reaching a state of light or fulfilment.

Examples: Homer’s Odyssey; Pilgrim’s Progress; Treasure Island; Lord of the Rings; Raiders of the Lost Ark; Watership Down; Around the World in Eighty Days

Four – Voyage and Return

 “The essence of the Voyage and Return story is that its hero or heroine (or the central group of characters) travel out of their familiar, everyday, “normal” surroundings into another world completely cut off from the first, where everything seems disconcertingly abnormal. At first the strangeness of this new world, with its freaks and marvels, may seem diverting, even exhilarating, if also highly perplexing. But gradually a shadow intrudes. The hero or heroine feels increasingly threatened, even trapped, until eventually (usually by way of a “thrilling escape”) they are released from the abnormal world and can return to the safety of the familiar world where they began.”

 Common Features:

Voyage and Return stories tend to fall into two categories; stories which describe a journey to a distant land beyond the known world, and those which describe a journey to a magical or imaginary world closer to home (often children’s stories).

NB. A variation of the above is the “social Voyage and Return” where the journey takes the hero or heroine into a different social milieu (eg Waugh’s Decline and Fall or Brideshead Revisited; Greene’s The Third Man; L P Hartley’s The Go-Between).

 Plot Structure:

• Anticipation stage – the “fall” into other world (through sleepiness, boredom, recklessness etc)
• Initial Fascination or Dream stage – hero is initially curious
• Frustration stage – mood of adventure changes to one of frustration, difficulty and oppression
• Nightmare stage – serious threat to hero’s survival
• Thrilling Escape and Return – how have they learned from the experience?

Examples: Alice in Wonderland; Goldilocks and the Three Bears; The Time Machine; Gone with the Wind; The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe; The Wizard of Oz; Lord of the Flies; Robinson Crusoe; Journey to the Centre of the Earth; Gulliver’s Travels.

Five – Comedy

“Comedy is a very special kind of story. It isn’t simply any kind of story which is funny. Some very funny stories have quite different kinds of plots….but what it is that shapes the plot of Comedy, that provides the common bond between say, a Marx Brothers film and a play by Shakespeare, an American musical and a novel by Jane Austen, a Mozart opera and a story by P G Wodehouse, requires a little unraveling…”

“What we are looking at when confronted by a fully developed Comedy is not unlike a jigsaw puzzle. By the time a jigsaw is complete, it seems obvious that there is only one way it could have ended up, with each piece in its proper place and fitting perfectly together with all the others. In Comedy, the key to bringing this to light is the process of ‘recognition’…”

 “The essence of Comedy is always that some redeeming truth has to be brought out of the shadows into the light.”

 Plot Structure:

• We see a world where people have passed under a shadow of confusion, uncertainty and frustration, and are shut off from one another
• The confusion gets worse until the pressure of darkness is at its most acute
• Finally, with the coming to light of things not previously recognised, perceptions are dramatically changed. The shadows are dispelled, the situation is miraculously transformed and the little world is brought together in a state of joyful union.

Examples: Shakespeare’s Comedies (A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Twelfth Night; The Merchant of Venice etc); The Marriage of Figero; Pride and Prejudice; Sense and Sensibility; War and Peace; The Importance of Being Earnest; Marx Brothers; Some Like it Hot; Four Weddings and a Funeral.

 Six – Tragedy

“Sooner or later, in any attempt to explore the deeper patterns which shape story-telling, we are brought up against one central, overwhelming fact. This is the way in which, through all the millions of stories thrown up by the human imagination, just two endings have far outweighed all others. Either it ends with a man and a woman united in love. Or it ends in a death.”

 Plot Structure:

• Anticipation stage – the hero is in some way incomplete or infulfilled
• Dream stage – for a while things seem to go improbably well
• Frustration stage – almost imperceptibly things start to go wrong
• Nightmare stage – things are slipping seriously out of the hero’s control. He has a mounting sense of threat and despair
• Destruction and Death Wish stage – the hero is destroyed, either by forces he has aroused against him or by some final act of violence

Examples: Greek myth of Icarus; Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde; Lolita; The Picture of Dorian Gray; Bonnie and Clyde; Shakespeare’s Tragedies (Romeo and Juliet; Macbeth; King Lear etc)

Seven – Rebirth

 “A hero or heroine falls under a dark spell, which eventually traps them in some wintry state, akin to a living death: physical or spiritual imprisonment, sleep, sickness or some other form of enchantment. For a long time they languish in this frozen condition. Then a miraculous act of redemption takes place, focused on a particular figure who helps to liberate the hero or heroine from imprisonment. From the depths of darkness they are brought up into glorious light.”

 Plot Structure:

• A young hero or heroine falls under the shadow of the dark power
• For a while everything seems to go reasonably well; the threat may even seem to have receded
• Eventually it returns again in full force, until the hero or heroine is seen imprisoned in the state of living death
• This continues for a long time, when it seems that the dark power has completely triumphed
• Finally comes the miraculous redemption either, where the imprisoned figure is a heroine, by the hero, or where it is the hero, by a young woman or a child

 The power of the Rebirth story is in the contrast between the condition of the hero or heroine in their frozen or imprisoned state and the moment when the liberation begins.

 Common/Contrasting Imagery

Coldness/Warmth      Hardness/Softness          Despair/Hope

Immobility/Movement      Constriction/Liberation

Sleep/Awakening     Darkness/Light      Sickness/ Health    Decay/Growth

Isolation/Conjoining      Torment/ Happiness      Lack of love/Love

Examples: Sleeping Beauty; Snow White; The Frog Prince; Beauty and the Beast; The Snow Queen; A Christmas Carol; Crime and Punishment; The Secret Garden

So there you have it. Can you think of any stories which don’t come in to one or more of these categories? Incidentally, the reason we tell stories is covered in the second half of the book and is a whole new blog post. I’m sure I’ll get round to it.

A few weeks ago I wrote about an online adventure game called Samorost, and its potential as a stimulus for creative writing, storytelling, problem-solving and the development of talking and listening skills. After months of speculation and anticipation Amanita,the makers of Samorost, have just released Machinarium, an even more mind-boggling adventure narrative with a science fiction theme. The basic premise of the game is that a little robot figure has been unjustly dumped on a scrap heap behind the city, and the player has to rebuild him before helping him return to the town, where he must prevent the criminal Black Cap Brotherhood from blowing up the residence of the town ruler. And following the true plot structure of the Quest he must also rescue his robot girlfriend, of course.
Like Samorost, the game is played by pointing and clicking the mouse at certain objects in sequence to progress to the next level. The player must help the robot to solve a series of puzzles while discovering the reasons for his plight and the urgency of his return. Again, the graphics are stunning in their detail, colour and texture, and, unusually for a computer game, the soundtrack is more than just a background annoyance (in fact it is a work of art in its own right and available as a separate download). The game is more complex than Samorost, and although there is no spoken dialogue, it has been enhanced by pop-up thought balloons, an inventory of items which the player has to collect, and, thoughtfully, a clue to help you on each level if you are really stuck, but even here you have to work your way through a mini-arcade game to unlock the secret. Prepare to be enthralled.

Watch a short trailer here (note that the visual quality does not compare to the actual game).

You’ve read the book, you may have seen the film. Now read/watch the “vook”. The digitisation of books began with the advent of e-readers like Kindle and Sony, which can hold dozens of books in one hand-held device, but which largely reproduced the format of a traditional, print-based book with occasional illustrations. All of that is about to change, however, as publishers increasingly look to attract new readers with the “vook”, which is effectively a combination or “mash-up” of text, video and web-based media for a more interactive experience. Responses to the new format have so far been very mixed, reminiscent of the old book versus film debates, with advocates of the book arguing that it is always preferable to create your own images than to have someone else create them for you. The advantages of the mult-modal format may be more obvious for non-fiction texts, such as cookery or fitness books,but does it really work for fiction, or in an educational context?

To read more about vooks and the debates surrounding them click on this link to the full article in The New York Times.

One group of people who are thoroughly convinced that multimedia texts are the way ahead are the creators of Inanimate Alice, a digi-novel in ten episodes, each one of them a self-contained chapter in the life of Alice and her digital friend Brad. The narrative takes Alice as an eight-year-old who lives with her parents in remote Northern China, and brings her through various global adventures to the point where, in her twenties, she is an animator with the biggest games company in the world. Increasing in difficulty and interactivity as the reader progresses, it is claimed that the story appeals to a wide range of readers, and it comes with an impressive educational support pack, free to teachers. Click on the image for more details, and please let them, and me, know what you think.

I was looking through an old notebook* the other day when I came across a couple of quotations which had slipped out of the ageing hard drive on top of my shoulders, but made the same impact when I read them again as they had when I first heard them straight from the horses’ mouths as it were. The first was from Anton Colella, the then Chief Executive of SQA, speaking at a Principal Assessors’ Conference in Edinburgh in March 2006, when he said, “SQA qualifications serve the curriculum, the curriculum does not serve qualifications.”

Just a few months before, in November 2005, Peter Peacock the Education Minister, spoke at the Association of Headteachers Annual Conference, telling delegates, “Assessment needs to reflect and support learning priorities. We need to assess what we teach and not teach what we are about to assess. We need to make sure that arrangement is right now and into the future.” He repeated the message in the same month to an International Conference, also in Edinburgh, telling the audience, “There is a danger that in Scotland, the exams system reaches down to year one in secondary and pulls pupils through a particular route rather than teachers being given more freedom to teach…..we’ve got to have further dialogue in Scotland about how we get the balance right.”

Four years on, and much “further dialogue” later, it seems that we are still, to a great extent, teaching what we are about to assess, and the exam system is still very much reaching down to year one in secondary. Why should that be the case? Have too many of our teachers lost the desire or the ability to have “the freedom to teach”? Are they too scared that someone in authority – HMIE? SQA? QIO? Headteacher? – is going to blame them for their “failures” rather than praise them for their successes? Whatever the reason, if we are to make any progress towards the transformational change that the majority of those in Scottish education appear to be looking for, that burden of exam results as the ultimate goal must be removed. Here’s a suggestion for starters. Let’s try a ban on any mention of formal exams at least until the end of S3, and make sure that all our systems of accountability reflect the seriousness with which we mean it.

* Notebook in this context refers not to an electronic device but to an old science notebook printed by Andrew Whyte & Son Ltd., Edinburgh. It is one of many notebooks I still scribble in, and they come in all shapes and sizes, some hardback and some with soft covers, lined and plain paper, spiral bound or with fine Italian leather. I use them most often for recording quoations and I have done for a very long time. If you haven’t already discovered it, TK Max is the best, and the cheapest, place to find them.

For the past few days I have been playing games, or one game to be precise, to explore some of the possibilities for using it in the context of improving literacy in the classroom. Samorost is a free online adventure/puzzle game created by Jakub Dvorsky while he was a student at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague; it is produced by his freelance Flash and web design agency Amanita Design. I first heard of the game from Andrew Brown at Learning and Teaching Scotland, who are doing some really interesting development work on Games-Based Learning.  I am also indebted to Dave Terron at Elgin Academy who has used the game in his English classes to very good effect, and to Kim Pericles, a primary teacher in Sydney, Australia who has used the game with her students for some time now – you can see some of their creative writing by clicking here.

The object of the game is to direct the main character, a small white gnome-like humanoid (let’s call him Sam), through a series of visually stunning landscapes, by clicking the mouse on various objects in the correct sequence, and to help him avert a collision between his home planet and another planet/spaceship which is hurtling towards it. In the sequel, Samorost 2,  the gnome goes on a longer quest to save his kidnapped dog and return home safely.

Both games are played out against a uniquely atmospheric soundtrack, which is another of the game’s attractions, and against a backdrop of surreal worlds which combine natural beauty, spooky underground caves and a kind of post-apocalyptic industrial wasteland. Another positive is you can have endless attempts to solve the many puzzles which are put in front of you, and no matter what you do you can’t be killed. The problem-solving element of the game is difficult, at least for me, which probably means it is suitable for 12 or 13-year olds, and I could imagine it being used in a variety of contexts within the curriculum to develop listening and talking, writing, collaborative working and problem solving skills. Here are just a few ideas for discussion and other activities which immediately come to mind:-

English/Literacy

Group Discussion-Who is this character? What is happening here? What is going to happen? What should we do next? What would happen if….? What would happen in real life if…..?

Writing – freeze the frame at almost any point in the game and ask students to describe what they see. Ask them to create and describe their own “world” to include as an extra level in the game. Tell the story from the point of view of another “character”. Write detailed instructions for someone else to play the game. Write instructions to play a game they are familiar with, including board games and street games. Write another adventure for Sam and/or his dog.

Art and Design

Discuss the design of the game in terms of colour, form, detail, tones, texture and pattern. Describe what it is that makes the game visually appealling. Design and draw a new character/landscape/object/ planet  for the game. Design a new game. Make a board game version of Samorost. Make a short animation of one of the levels of the game.

Music

Play the soundtrack without the visuals and ask students to describe what they think is happening (music tracks are available from iTunes). Identify instruments used on the soundtrack. Explore music relating to outer space/the planets/other worlds and to suggest alternative soundtracks (Space Oddity? Lost in Space? The Planets? Star Wars Theme? War of the Worlds?). Compose and play an alternative soundtrack.

Science/Planet Earth

How many animal and plant species can you identify? Find out as much as you can about them and find out how they depend on each other for survival. How many different ways are there of creating energy in the game? Examine any of the means of transport that the gnome uses in the game and explain how it works. There are numerous opportunities at various points in the game to examine and discuss the concepts of ecology,evaporation, distillation, gravity, flow, substance, compound, circulation, motion, suction, current, voltage and quite a few others.

Technologies

There are a number of “machines” in the game, most of them in the Heath Robinson style of design. However, they provide excellent opportunities to discuss such things as valves, pulleys, thermostats, pressure and combustion. You could ask students to build a simple version of the ski lift or the metal ball which lowers Sam into the underworld in Samorost 2 or to design and build a new rocket for Sam.

Social Studies

How much do we know about Sam’s planet? How does it differ from the other planets he travels to? Are there any clues as to what era we might be in? What kind of society does this seem to be? What can we tell about the creatures who kidnap the dog?   Is there life on other planets? Debate the merits and demerits of space travel in the 21st century.

These are just a few ideas but if you have any more, or indeed if you are already using the game I would be delighted to hear from you.

Had a really enjoyable day yesterday at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, where I was taking part in a panel discussion, and making a presentation on Technology and Literacy. My co-presenters were Judy Robertson, a computer scientist at Heriot-Watt University, and Lili Wilkinson, an Australian cyber-journalist (no, I had never heard of it either) and the session was chaired by Joy Court of CILIP. The subtext for the seminar was, “Can video games, the internet and other ICT applications help young people engage with literature?”

Judy spoke about her work on the Adventure Author project and about storymaking through computer game design, while Lili took us into the fascinating world of www.insideadog.com.au , a website which promotes young adult literature, highlights Australian writers and their work, and generally engages young people in the world of books. The name incidentally comes from the Groucho Marx quote, “Outside of a dog a book is a man’s best friend, inside a dog it’s too dark to read.”

For my part, I was wrestling with the notion of engaging young people with literature, and how this related to technology and literacy. Engaging with literature is certainly “a good thing”, but literature and literacy are two different animals. Anyway, for what it’s worth, here is a slightly abridged and adapted version of my presentation. Some of the references will be familiar to you if you are a regular visitor to the blog, but I make no apologies for referencing them again.

“In her wonderfully clever but very readable book  about the development of the reading brain, Proust and the Squid, American professor Maryanne Wolf tells the story of how Socrates, in the 5^th Century BC, called on all his rhetorical skills to fight against the acquisition of literacy and the introduction of the Greek alphabet, believing passionately that the written word posed a serious threat to society.

His concerns had three aspects. First, he contended that oral and written words play very different roles in an individual’s intellectual life. Secondly, he regarded the fact that the written word reduced the role of memory as catastrophic, and finally he warned that oral language had a unique role in the development of morality and virtue in society. In other words, he felt that writing was just plain bad and was likely to lead to the end of civilisation.

Professor Wolf sees clear parallels between Socrates’ resistance to that  transition from an oral to a written culture, and the shift that we are currently witnessing  from a written tradition to one that is increasingly driven by visual images and massive streams of digital information.

 (It should be remembered of course, that we wouldn’t know any of this but for the fact that his words were being recorded in writing by that young rascal Plato, who obviously knew a thing or two about the future).

So the nature of literacy is changing. Reading is no longer simply about reading words and sentences, or even books; it’s about reading other codes as well, particularly the codes of still and moving images. And of course, it’s about reading and creating multi-modal texts, texts which combine words and pictures and sound.

In attempting to redefine literacy for the new century, Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence  has it as “the set of skills which allows an individual to engage fully in society and in learning, through the different forms of language, and the range of texts, which society values and finds useful.”

There is at least one reference to “society” too many there for my liking, but you have to commend the attempt to recognize that literacy is a much broader concept than it was even twenty years ago.

So what part then does, or should, technology play in developing this new literacy?

I’m inclined to agree with Marc Prensky, the American learning and technology expert, author of Games-Based Learning and Don’t Bother me Mom, I’m Learning, when he says “the role of technology in our classrooms is to support the new teaching paradigm”, a paradigm which he describes as the shift from the old pedagogy of teachers “telling” or “talking” or “lecturing”, to the new pedagogy of young people teaching themselves with the guidance of the teacher, a combination of “student-centred learning”, “problem-based learning” and “case-based learning”.

Prensky argues that “if we can agree that the role of technology in our classrooms is to support the “new” pedagogy…..then we can all move much more quickly down the road of reaching that goal. But if every person continues to talk about the role of technology in a different way, it will take us a whole lot longer.”

 That description of the new teaching paradigm may bring a bit of colour to your cheeks, especially if you are a teacher, but the key message is clear – technology is a means of supporting learning, it is not an end in itself.

The question posed in the programme for this event was “Can video games, the internet and other applications help young people engage with literature?” The answer of course is YES. Games like Myst, Samorost and Neverwinter Nights, to name but three, provide exciting, stimulating, and imaginative contexts in which young people learn to solve problems, work collaboratively and think creatively. They have the potential to transport young people into the kinds of worlds which they might also encounter in literature (think of the world of Narnia for instance). More than that, the games allow them to collaborate to create the imaginary world and the narrative for themselves, and to explore the meaning and the rules of genre, which encourages them to look for more, and so on.

However, not only do the games encourage comparisons with literature, and provide introductions to more traditional written texts, they are perfectly valid texts in themselves, if we accept the broad definition of “text” as “the medium through which ideas, experiences, opinions and information can be communicated.”

Technology can also broaden opportunities and help to eliminate social inequalities. For young people who for various reasons are unable to go very far from their immediate environment, it can bring the world to them. It can give them access to people and events they would not otherwise be able to take advantage of.

GLOW is the world’s first national intranet for education. Funded by the Sottish Government and managed by Learning and Teaching Scotland, it connects learners and teachers in a number of ways. Glow Learn is a Virtual Learning Environment which includes tools to share, organize and search for digital resources and courses, monitor student progress and provide learners with access to structured content – it can be used at any time and from any location which has internet access. Potentially, for example, it could provide the ideal solution in THE EXTREMELY UNLIKELY EVENT THAT ANY KIND OF PANDEMIC HEALTH ISSUE SHOULD CAUSE THE CLOSURE OF OUR SCHOOLS.

The Glow Meet facility is a web conferencing tool which allows people to interact using video, audio and a shared whiteboard space.  Dr Mel Gibson’s presentation, Visual Literacy, Learning and Graphic Novels was relayed live from this venue last Thursday, not only allowing a wider audience to hear the presentation, but allowing them to ask questions and take part in the discussion as well.

 So I believe that far from being in opposition, technology and literacy are mutually supportive. I also believe that the reason literature matters so much to us lies in the importance of narrative. It is through constructing our own narrative, and reading other people’s narratives, that we come to understand who we are in the world and how we relate to everyone else.

Video games (computer games?), the internet and new Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis, podcasts and social networking tools make it easier to share, and enthuse, and engage young people with the traditional literature which we all know and love, but sometimes it is the computer game, or the film, or the graphic novel, which provides the narrative and which is every bit as valid a text as the book.

Finally, to return to Socrates for a moment, I suppose if we are entering a new era in the development of language and literacy, we need to have a new alphabet.

Now repeat after me: A is for Apple, B is for Blogger, C is for Cooliris, D is for Delicious…………………

I’m just chilling out today, as we younger dudes say, after a very enjoyable cycle trip to Islay to catch up with my good friends Ian and Andy. The visit was the ideal way of seeing a part of Scotland which is so significant to our cultural heritage, including the production of some of the finest malt whiskies on the planet, and at the same time making up in some part for missing out on the hugely successful unconference back in June. To call it a cycle tour is a slight exaggeration as in actual fact most of the journey was by boat and some of it by train.

Setting out from Ayr on Wednesday I took the train to Ardrossan Harbour and boarded the ferry to Brodick. From Brodick I cycled the very hilly road to Lochranza which was basking in glorious sunshine as I waited for the short ferry ride to Claonaig. Another five hilly miles across the Mull of Kintyre to Kennacraig and I was ready to board another ferry for the two and a half hour journey to Port Ellen at the southern end of Islay. Arriving at around 8.30 in the evening my effort wasn’t quite finished as I had booked in to the Bowmore Hotel in the main town ten miles to the north. Fortunately this part of the island is pretty flat, although that coupled with the fact that this stretch of road is also very straight can make it feel like you are never getting there. The round church at the top of the hill was a welcome sight as I freewheeled into Jamieson Street and found my digs for the night.

On Thursday I left Bowmore and headed round to Portnahaven to have a coffee in An Tigh Seinnse, the best (only) pub in Portnahaven and one of the smallest in the world, and to take some pictures of  the sandy bay where a group of children in wellies were playing along the water’s edge and a lazy seal lay sunbathing on a rock, posing for tourists. Stopping for lunch with Ian and Caroline at Port Charlotte I then headed to the distillery at Bruichladdich for a sample of the local produce (highly recommended) before making my way back to the hotel and the sanctuary of a hot bath.

After a bite to eat it was time to for a tour of some of the more remote parts of the island – this time in a four-wheeled vehicle – and a trip to the awesome Machir Bay to watch the breakers rolling in and the sky darkening as the rain clouds gathered. We retreated to the Bridgend Hotel for a few beers and a game of pool while we sorted out the Scottish education system and described with increasing clarity our vision for the curriculum in the twenty-first century.

I took my leave of Andy and Ian, as I was to be up early on Friday morning for the cycle back to Port Ellen and the same journey in reverse. I hadn’t been on Islay for much more than a day but I had seen enough of the island and the people to convince me that there’s something special there, and perhaps it’s best demonstrated by the fact that as you cycle the roads almost every driver gives you a wave, and not in the way they tend to on the mainland.

For more photos of the tour go to LiteracyAdviser on Flickr