narrative » geniwate.com

teaching by stealth

Issues in education Comments Off

Nov 232012

I delivered last semester’s course in a new way, combining gamified assessment, flipped lectures, and storytelling. Yes, I made the course content into a story. Above is 1 episode.

Why?

According to Peter Guber and Jonathan Gottschall

After a decade of gory stalemate at Troy, the ancient Greeks decided they would never take Troy by force, so they would take it by guile. They pretended to sail home, leaving behind a massive wooden horse, ostensibly as an offering to the gods. The happy Trojans dragged the gift inside the city walls. But the horse was full of Greek warriors, who emerged in the night to kill, burn, and rape.

Guber tells us that stories can also function as Trojan Horses. The audience accepts the story because, for a human, a good story always seems like a gift. But the story is actually just a delivery system for the teller’s agenda. A story is a trick for sneaking a message into the fortified citadel of the human mind.

via Why Storytelling Is The Ultimate Weapon.

I’m repurposing marketing talk to education – and it appeared to work. i’ve never had such a lively discussion about copyright and the internet in a class before, and it was stated by the students – after they read my stroy eps in which our heroes get into trouble for breaking copyright from the Ministry of Blogging.

My media isn’t perfect – or ever, in a lot of cases, finished – but that didn’t appear to matter. Although a lot of the narrative was just text, the students engaged with it.

I don’t usually stick marketing in my blog, but here’s a really cute marketing vid for Tell to Win by Peter Guber

A few new job descriptions – and skills

This working life Comments Off

Apr 162012

[Image from Edupics]

Really good summary of what we should be trying to impart to the bright young things queueing at our doors by Educational Technology Guy. Some of the terminology might be a little alien – read the description. The skills are:

Sense-making. The ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed
Social intelligence. The ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions
Novel and adaptive thinking. Proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based
Cross-cultural competency. The ability to operate in different cultural settings
Computational thinking. The ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning
New-media literacy. The ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms and to leverage these media for persuasive communication
Transdisciplinarity. Literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines
Design mind-set. Ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes
Cognitive load management. The ability to discriminate and filter information for importance and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques
Virtual collaboration. The ability to work productively, drive engagement and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team

And now for this season’s new professions:

Narrative Designer:

Narrative for games, but not as you know it, according to Narrative Designer Stephen Dinehart. In this interview with Christy Marx – Transmedia Writer & Narrative Designer, he says:

I consider my role as a Narrative Designer to be two-fold: a) as a game designer specializing in how to integrate storytelling with gameplay; and b) as a writer who carries out that integration. By “storytelling”, I mean all aspects of storytelling, not solely text or dialog — the full spectrum of audiovisual storytelling.

Yet another aspect is working with the design of the UI, as the UI is crucial in how story will be delivered. Likewise, it helps when I have significant input on the Tools side of things, so that implementing narrative is easy and timely to accomplish.

Or to put it more simply, you could say that a Narrative Designer is a writer who understands game design.
Social Media Manager, according to Mai Overton:

Give your social media marketing manager leeway to be creative. Challenge them to come up with new ways of interacting with your fans and followers. Give your social media marketing manager time to learn and develop their skills and knowledge. Social media and digital marketing is a huge, constantly changing arena. Keeping up with what’s current is half of the battle. It’s pointless to think that your secretary can update your status on Facebook because, contrary to opinion, keeping up with the evolving digital technologies is a full time job.

Business insider supplies a few more, complete with the cutest list of average salary ranges (eg, $30k-$90K !!)
Social Media Strategist:

in charge of the whole game—planning what strategic moves to make next, deciding on which platforms to grow communities, and giving your stamp of approval to the content your team shares online.
Content Curator:

scour the web and bring back viral videos, articles, infographics and images to feed your company’s social platforms. Some products will be created in-house, but no matter where it comes from, you look for content that’s contagious.
Social Media Analyst

track the numbers and establish metrics to determine which social media campaigns are flopping or flying high. Your quantitative brain sees the big picture as you advise your team on their next move—all based on the numbers.
Online Reputation Manager

focus on filling social platforms with positive reviews, answers, and posts to drown out any negative stuff.
Community Manager

As your company’s resident social butterfly, you develop campaigns or spaces to grow and nurture these virtual connections.
Social Media Customer Service Rep

tweet instructions to a confused client, or help pro-actively resolve an issue someone has posted on Facebook. No matter which platform, it’s your job to keep consumers happy.
Social Media Consultant

help organizations get their social media efforts up and running.

Tweet

a few interesting web narrative projects

resources, Transient Spaces Comments Off

Feb 202012

Still from Take this Lollipop

Take This Lollipop

If you’ve ever had any concerns about online privacy, this is brilliant, short and will confirm all your worst fears (needs a Facebook account). 5 stars!

Bear 71

“It’s hard to know what people are capable of. They can start a revolution on a smart phone but forget to close the lid on a bear-proof garbage can.”

Blurring the line between the wired world and the wild world, the National Film Board of Canada’s Bear 71 is a multi-user interactive social narrative that observes and records the intersection of humans, nature and technology.

Launched with a live, interactive art installation at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival New Frontier Program, the storyworld of Bear 71 is a fully immersive, multi-platform experience. Participants explore and engage with the world of a female grizzly bear via animal role play, augmented reality, webcams, geolocation tracking, motion sensors, a microsite, social media channels and a real bear trap in Park City. This project is the most recent example of how the NFB is changing the face of cinema.

My verdict: A moving documentary with OK footage and fantastic interactive map. 4 stars.

Pandemic

Director Lance Weiler’s storytelling project Pandemic 1.0 is part film, part interactive game, part sociological experiment, and was one of the most talked-about experiences at Sundance 2011’s New Frontier program.

The experience imagines that a mysterious virus has begun to afflict adults in a rural town. The town’s young people soon find themselves cut off from civilization, fighting for their lives. People online work with people in the real world to unlock a variety of hidden clues.

This transmedia storytelling experience unites film, mobile and online technologies, props, social gaming and data visualization, enabling audiences to step into the shoes of the pandemic protagonists.

My verdict: is not a standalone website but rather was linked to an event, so too difficult to understand. An artefact rather than a complete project. 2 stars.

Welcome to Pine Point

Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge, formerly of Adbusters, recreated a town that doesn’t exist anymore. Part book, part film, part family photo album of a place that’s been lost in time, the National Film Board of Canada’s Welcome to Pine Point website explores the memories of residents from the former mining community of Pine Point, Northwest Territories. Overall, it’s an interactive media exploration of how we remember the past.

A multiple-award winner (including two Webby Awards), the online experience combines photographs, sound and video clips, interviews, music and narration by Simons to personally immerse the viewer in a multimedia world of memory and loss.

My verdict: moving and nostalgic excursion to a place that no longer exists, lots of grainy vids and imagery, structurally a little boring. 3 stars

Rome

Originally a concept album for a film that does not (yet) exist, Rome is a multiplatform interactive narrative experience inspired by the music of Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi (featuring Jack White, Norah Jones and renowned composer Ennio Morricone’s original 40-piece orchestra from Italy).

Director Chris Milk, an artist focused on technology-generated emotional resonance through interactive video, created this project. The result culminated into a feature film produced by Likely Story and Annapurna Pictures, which was adapted from the novel The Reapers are the Angels. The project integrated the use of webGL within the Chrome browser, creating a rich graphical interactive experience complete with elements of game play.

My verdict: spacey 3D animation not wholly rendered. You get to build your own lego-like 3D structure and save it to a gallery. I personally, needed a stronger point to all this to emerge. 2 stars.

Go Bzrk

They take the names of madmen because madness is their fate.
They descend into the tiny places, down where the mites leap and the lymphocytes ooze and the spark of human reason fires like lightning from sizzling neurons. Down in the meat. One by one they join the fight. In the macro, in the nano, in both at once, they fight for life, liberty and the inalienable right to be crazy.
BZRK is their method.
BZRK is their battle cry.
BZRK is their doom.

Verdict: A transmedia thriller which seems to revolve around a book and an app, both of which are for sale. Can’t comment on how good it is. Can’t be rated.

the Hyp replacement

The Hyp Replacement takes place over the course of 2010 and follows the daily lives of four Brooklynites – Yaya, Sandy, Eloise and Sol. They are in search of love, employment and happiness. They share the same Fort Greene brownstone. Eventually, they start an underground marijuana coffeeshop. That’s when things start to get interesting.

How does it all work?

Short chapters are published on an almost daily basis.
Told through a 3rd person narrative, but characters express 1st person narratives through Twitter, Tumblr, Blogspot and YouTube.

Verdict: A complex textual experience, set over various media. Although the writing seems strong, I’m feeling a little short-changed. I want my transmedia to revel sensually in audio and visuals as well. However if you’re happy with just text, this might do the job. 3.5 stars.

Read the interview with author E.A Marciano by Megan O’Neill.