Krystina Madej - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Books by Krystina Madej
"Fragile Avatars?". Representations of Disability in Video Games, 2021
The book was published within the research project “Fragile Avatars?” Representations of disabili... more The book was published within the research project “Fragile Avatars?” Representations of disability in video games, in linguistic, visual, narrative, and structural context’ funded by The State Fund for Rehabilitation of Disabled People (PFRON) under the agreement number BEA/000057/BFD.
Play engages humans cognitively, emotionally, and physically at all ages. It is ubiquitous in soc... more Play engages humans cognitively, emotionally, and physically at all ages. It is ubiquitous in society and central to human development. Theorists in the twentieth century such as Klein and Winnicott, Huizinga and Callois, Piaget, Bruner and Vygotsy brought different perspectives to our understanding of play’s role in our society. In particular, Vygotsky’s theories about process provide insight into how children attend to learning and assimilate new information. The increasing use of digital media as both an entertainment and learning environment at ever-younger ages, is generating new discussions about the nature and value of play in children’s development, in particular, physical, or somatic play.
Using a historical framework, and focusing on play as represented by material artifacts such as toys and games, this book explores play as a form of somatic engagement that reflects cultural attitudes about development and learning as these have evolved over time in western culture. The emphasis on games intended for children necessitates a discussion of the cognitive, behavioral, and neuroscience that supports play activities and physical engagement as a crucial aspect of development. The book then looks at the trajectory of digital games in contemporary culture and explores whether these artifacts (whether intended for learning or entertainment) have extended or are curtailing boundaries of somatic engagement. Finally, the book discusses alternative play and game design an
At the forefront of narrative innovation are social media channels – speculative spaces for creat... more At the forefront of narrative innovation are social media channels – speculative spaces for creating and experiencing stories that are interactive and collaborative. Media, however, is only the access point to the expressiveness of narrative content. Wikis, messaging, mash-ups, and social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others) are on a trajectory of participatory story creation that goes back many centuries. These forms offer authors ways to create narrative meaning that reflects our current media culture, as the harlequinade reflected the culture of the 18th century, and as the volvelle reflected that of the 13th century.
This new book (Springer, December 2015) first prospects the last millennium of interactive narrative and then provides an account of a small group collaboratively authored social media narrative, "Romeo and Juliet on Facebook: After Love Comes Destruction."
Imagination is the source of creativity and invention. This volume of essays has been collected e... more Imagination is the source of creativity and invention. This volume of essays has been collected expressly to bring readers new ideas about imagination and creativity in education that will both stimulate discussion and debate, and also contribute practical ideas for how to infuse daily classrooms with imaginative activities.
Researchers and educators around the world have taken up the discussion about the importance of imagination and creativity in education. This global relevance is represented here by writings from authors from Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Italy, Israel, Japan, and Romania. In the first part of the book, these authors explore and discuss theories of development, imagination, and creativity. In the second part, they extend these theories to broader social issues, including responsible citizenship, gender, and special needs education, and to new approaches to teaching curriculum subjects such as literacy, science, and mathematics, as well as to the educational environment of the museum.
Since the first edition of this book, Imaginative Education (IE) has developed increasingly accessible strategies for teachers to routinely engage imagination in everyday practice. New essays for the second edition include discussions about increasing political consciousness, improving teacher education, and using mathematical evaluation in Part I, and phenomenological approaches to media education in Part II.
Disney Stories: Getting to Digital looks at how, throughout the century of the company’s evolutio... more Disney Stories: Getting to Digital looks at how, throughout the century of the company’s evolution, Disney has used technological innovation to create characters and stories that engage audiences across media.
Drawing on Disney films from the twenties through the thirties, and on the writings of historians, screenwriters, and producers, the book first presents how Walt Disney pushed the envelope for animated stories by taking advantage of emerging media and encouraging new uses of technology to get effects that engaged audiences. Disney’s belief in the importance of developing character and story content took his work from animated gags to full-length animated stories in theatres, to television features in people’s homes, and to a virtual world in his theme parks.
With this backstory, the book looks at how the Disney Company moved its stories into the virtual digital world in the 1990s and the online communities of the 2000s. When Disney reached out to its audience with The Lion King Animated Storybook in 1994, the company was simply following a well-established tradition of using leading-edge technology to improve story engagement. In this case, it offered interactivity and the opportunity to be part of the creation process. With the move into online MMORPGs such as Toontown, the immense community of Disney characters and stories was made easily available to anyone at a click of a button.
The story is told from the perspective of Newton Lee, a senior software engineer and producer who was instrumental in helping develop key online applications and activities at Disney Online, and Krystina Madej, a narratologist who looks at how stories change and make meaning with each new media development.
Imagination is the Source of Creativity and Invention This series of 14 essays has been collect... more Imagination is the Source of Creativity and Invention
This series of 14 essays has been collected expressly to bring readers new ideas about imagination and creativity in education that will both stimulate discussion and debate and also contribute practical ideas for how to infuse our daily classrooms with imaginative activities.
The ability of children to think creatively, to be innovative, enterprising, and capable, depends greatly on providing a rich imagination-based educational environment. This discussion, about the importance of imagination and creativity in education, has been taken up by researchers and educators around the world. It is represented here by writings from authors from Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Italy, Israel, Japan, and Romania. In the first part of this book these authors explore and discuss theories of development, imagination, and creativity. In the second part they extend these theories to broader social issues such as responsible citizenship, gender, and special needs education, to new approaches to curriculum subjects such as literacy, science, and mathematics, and to the educational environment of the museum.
Video/Audio Presentations by Krystina Madej
DisneyBrit is the longest running UK based podcast about all things Disney. Adam Goodger intervie... more DisneyBrit is the longest running UK based podcast about all things Disney. Adam Goodger interviewed Newton Lee and Krystina Madej, co-authors of "Disney Stories: Getting to Digital," for podcast #98, JULY 19 2012
The entire podcast can be heard at http://disneybrit.com/?s=krystina+madej&x=0&y=0 or you can download just the interview as an mp3.
Georgia Tech, Brown Bag Lunch Series, 2017
Play engages humans cognitively, emotionally, and physically at all ages. The increasing use of d... more Play engages humans cognitively, emotionally, and physically at all ages. The increasing use of digital media as both an entertainment and learning environment at ever-younger ages, has generated new discussions about the nature and value of play in children’s development that are situated in the behavioral psychology and neuroscience supporting physical play as a crucial aspect of development. In this talk I explore play as a form of physical engagement that reflects cultural attitudes about development and learning as these have evolved over time in western culture. I then look at the trajectory of digital games in contemporary culture and explores whether these artifacts (whether intended for learning or entertainment) have extended or are curtailing boundaries of somatic engagement. Finally, I discusses alternative play and game design, speculate on the future of new media play artifacts, and show examples of student work that demonstrates new ways of thinking about physical engagement. See talk at http://gvu.gatech.edu/event/brown-bag-archive/gvu-brown-bag-lunch-series-krystina-madej-physical-play-childrens-digital
Georgia Tech Brown Bag Lunch Series, 2015
This talk introduces "Interactivity,Collaboration, and Authoring in Social Media" released by Spr... more This talk introduces "Interactivity,Collaboration, and Authoring in Social Media" released by Springer January 2016. It first prospects the last millennium of interactive narrative and then provides an account of a small group collaboratively authored social media narrative, "Romeo and Juliet on Facebook: After Love Comes Destruction."
At the forefront of narrative innovation are social media channels – speculative spaces for creating and experiencing stories that are interactive and collaborative. Media, however, is only the access point to the expressiveness of narrative content. Wikis, messaging, mash-ups, and social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others) are on a trajectory of participatory story creation that goes back many centuries. These forms offer authors ways to create narrative meaning that reflects our current media culture, as the harlequinade reflected the culture of the 18th century, and as the volvelle reflected that of the 13th century. See talk at http://gvu.gatech.edu/event/brown-bag-archive/gvu-center-brown-bag-seminar-series-krystina-madej-0
Studies in neurobiology substantiate the importance of physical activity in children’s developmen... more Studies in neurobiology substantiate the importance of physical activity in children’s development. Grounded in orality and physicality, narrative rhymes enter our psyche at a young age to form a basis for physical, social, cognitive, and imaginative development. First read or sung to babies, rhymes are soon physically enacted by young children through play and games as they grow to be toddlers and pre-schoolers. Because of the physical immaturity of young children, and (until recently) the minimal physical engagement opportunities provided to them by digital environments, the physical engagement that has been an integral part of oral and print presentations of narrative rhymes for generations does not exist to any great extent in today’s play within digital environments. This talk introduces research on the nature of children’s physical engagement with narrative rhymes in which characteristics of young children’s physical interaction with narrative rhymes in traditional oral and print media are contrasted with play in digital media. - See more at: http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/event/brown-bag-archive/gvu-center-brown-bag-seminar-series-krystina-madej#sthash.3zReJQtK.dpuf
This talk looks at our imaginative engagement with the world, offers a perspective of how knowled... more This talk looks at our imaginative engagement with the world, offers a perspective of how knowledge grows in the mind, and provides insight into why children engage with narrative games. Imagination is the source of flexibility and invention in human thinking. It provides for the ability to think of the possible not only the actual. The educational theorist kieran egan suggests there are five distinct kinds of “imaginative understanding”– somatic, mythic, romantic, philosophic, and ironic. This talk elaborates on these in so much as they help to provide insight into how children (and youth) engage with game narratives. http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/event/brown-bag-archive/gvu-brown-bag-seminar-krystina-madej
Chapters by Krystina Madej
Humans construct their knowledge of the world as schemata, as short bits of story that, with time... more Humans construct their knowledge of the world as schemata, as short bits of story that, with time, build towards a narrative intelligence, a perspective from which they view the world. Since the days of drawing on cave walls humans have used not only their voice and their gestures to share their narratives, but have put to use the materials within their grasp to give their stories material presence. While to us the historic objects we find and examine may seemed fixed, when they were created they were only in the process of becoming, part of a continuously evolving effort to express, with each subsequent generation actualizing a new material culture through which its stories represented their thoughts and deeds. In our presentation of narratives in digital media, we continue that process of becoming far more rapidly than in the past: each creation is quickly overwhelmed by new manifestations as we move forward eagerly and respond with alacrity to the changes in our media.
Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics and Games, 2018
Children's Games: from Turtle to Squirtle From the late 1960s when the first programming langu... more Children's Games: from Turtle to Squirtle
From the late 1960s when the first programming language for children was developed at MIT, to today’s mixed reality applications, the evolution of children's digital games has travelled a continuum committed to both learning and entertainment. Their history shows a confluence of two different interests that emerged as the transformation of computers into a technology used by mainstream society was occurring: an interest in using computers as a means for increasing learning, and the development of video games for entertainment. For millennia society has had an ongoing desire to take advantage of children’s proclivity to learn as they play and adults have long used children’s games to educate as well as to entertain. It’s not surprising then that children’s video games had their start with a desire to use technology to benefit learning, or that, on their own, children prefer to accentuate entertainment over education. This duality set the pattern for development that helped shape game genres as new technologies emerged – tangibles, handhelds, internet, mobile – and continues today as augmented realities shape the next generation of games. This brief history takes the reader from the LOGO's drawing "Turtle" of the 1960s to Pokémon GO's "Squirtle," a representation of the breakthrough in computer games of bringing to children physical engagement with the world around them.
Proceedings of the …, Jan 1, 2007
This paper presents a prototype framework for an interactive storytelling platform that supports ... more This paper presents a prototype framework for an interactive storytelling platform that supports narrative development for young children. Representing a multidisciplinary approach, this project builds simultaneously from theory and technical feasibility by combining hands-on experience in product design with design methods from interaction design and research in digital narrative for children together with the potential of sensor technologies to support tangible interaction.
PageCraft is designed to bridge the gap in emerging narrative development for young children between physical and digital media. By associating physical objects with text and visuals displayed on a digital screen, the system offers a child progressive experiences in storytelling through a rich multi-sensory environment. The narrative media, ranging from traditional print based stories and computer-read digital stories, to editable self-authored narratives are all linked with a tangible user interface to leverage the capabilities of digital resources.
Engaging Imagination and Developing Creativity in Education (Second Edition)
Children’s experience and perception of narrative changes as they move into the formal learning e... more Children’s experience and perception of narrative changes as they move into the formal learning environment of school. When children are very young, their experience of story is socially constructed and based in a multimodality that develops their imaginative, cognitive, affective, and physical capabilities through orality, imagery, interactivity, and performance. Stories create an encompassing environment that provides context for their actions and their involvement with the world around them. As children get older, and begin their formal education, the adult view that stories are structured literary entities is superimposed on their early narrative experience. This paper presents the study The Dynamic of Young Children’s Emerging Narrative Process. The study observed young children in a preschool and in a kindergarten setting with two goals in mind: first, to identify the characteristics of children’s early text narrative encounters in a contemporary setting (discussed in a separate paper), and second to identify if a change in approach to teaching narrative occurred between preschool and kindergarten (discussed here). The study revealed that a pronounced change occurred: in preschool story was used as an encompassing learning paradigm throughout the day’s activities, in kindergarten story was used predominantly to teach literary structure within the Language Arts program. The study shows that as children move into formal schooling, stories are removed as a fundamental tool from their language of learning.
Conference Papers by Krystina Madej
This paper suggests that viewing traditional narrative structure with its climactic plot as a nor... more This paper suggests that viewing traditional narrative structure with its climactic plot as a norm diminishes the importance of all other narrative structures. It demonstrates that rather than being traditional, this structure is a fairly recent upstart in narrative history, that young children view story as structured differently before schools channel their ideas through language arts curriculum, and that young children engage with stories as experience rather than structured texts. Maintaining such a norm denies a rich source of different forms of narrative expression on which game developers can draw, and fails to support the genres being explored within digital media today.
Proceedings of the 2006 ACM International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology, Jun 1, 2006
Fifth Anniversary Conference: Media, Communication and Humanity
We forget that that our perception of the world is not formed when we are adults; it begins to fo... more We forget that that our perception of the world is not formed when we are adults; it begins to form at birth, through experiences first within our family circle and then within our community. The stories we hear, watch, and read as children play a significant part in helping us become members of our society and understanding its values. In western societies, print stories, whether of the bible, Aesop, or Tarzan, have been part of the enculturation process for hundreds of years. Today, digital environments are a very significant factor in children’s enculturation process. This paper discusses children’s narrative experience in both digital game and online narratives and shows how younger children in particular lose both story content and story experience in these environments. Digital games, while offering increased engagement through immersive interactive features, offer less depth and breadth of story than does print. Children’s stories translated into games are generally reduced to vehicles for action. Story content, when remediated as game, is mined for action sequences and stripped of value as a vehicle for exploration of a culture’s actions, social relations, and values. Online digital storytelling for young children uses the same text/graphic format of print but does not offer the range of tangible activities that are inherent in children’s experience of print narrative artifacts and which assist in their integration and assimilation of content. Findings from observations of children experiencing print and digital narratives in home, preschool, and kindergarten settings, support these ideas; they also suggest opportunities to increase the breadth and depth of stories in games exist.
An interactive relationship develops when a reader or user sits down in front of a computer, open... more An interactive relationship develops when a reader or user sits down in front of a computer, opens a work of digital narrative, whether a hypertext or a narrative game, and begins to interface with the contents. The ensuing level of involvement, or engagement and immersion, and the satisfaction of that involvement, is partially dependant on the interface and the interactive conventions the story incorporates. If a reader comes away from a narrative without some sense of involvement and satisfaction he or she may not return to that narrative, or perhaps even that genre of narrative. To continue building an audience for digital narrative it would be useful to look at how certain conventions encourage involvement in the narrative medium. This paper briefly describes engagment and immersion, and interface conventions such as immediacy and hypermediacy, agents and guides, maps, and time indicators that encourage or make continued interactivity with the hypertext or narrative game easier and more appealing.
Proceedings of the 2006 ACM International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology, Jun 1, 2006
Young children's earliest encounters with print narrative are based in a multimodality that inclu... more Young children's earliest encounters with print narrative are based in a multimodality that includes orality, visual literacy, performance, and interactivity and embrace a range of experiences that are socially constructed.
"Fragile Avatars?". Representations of Disability in Video Games, 2021
The book was published within the research project “Fragile Avatars?” Representations of disabili... more The book was published within the research project “Fragile Avatars?” Representations of disability in video games, in linguistic, visual, narrative, and structural context’ funded by The State Fund for Rehabilitation of Disabled People (PFRON) under the agreement number BEA/000057/BFD.
Play engages humans cognitively, emotionally, and physically at all ages. It is ubiquitous in soc... more Play engages humans cognitively, emotionally, and physically at all ages. It is ubiquitous in society and central to human development. Theorists in the twentieth century such as Klein and Winnicott, Huizinga and Callois, Piaget, Bruner and Vygotsy brought different perspectives to our understanding of play’s role in our society. In particular, Vygotsky’s theories about process provide insight into how children attend to learning and assimilate new information. The increasing use of digital media as both an entertainment and learning environment at ever-younger ages, is generating new discussions about the nature and value of play in children’s development, in particular, physical, or somatic play.
Using a historical framework, and focusing on play as represented by material artifacts such as toys and games, this book explores play as a form of somatic engagement that reflects cultural attitudes about development and learning as these have evolved over time in western culture. The emphasis on games intended for children necessitates a discussion of the cognitive, behavioral, and neuroscience that supports play activities and physical engagement as a crucial aspect of development. The book then looks at the trajectory of digital games in contemporary culture and explores whether these artifacts (whether intended for learning or entertainment) have extended or are curtailing boundaries of somatic engagement. Finally, the book discusses alternative play and game design an
At the forefront of narrative innovation are social media channels – speculative spaces for creat... more At the forefront of narrative innovation are social media channels – speculative spaces for creating and experiencing stories that are interactive and collaborative. Media, however, is only the access point to the expressiveness of narrative content. Wikis, messaging, mash-ups, and social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others) are on a trajectory of participatory story creation that goes back many centuries. These forms offer authors ways to create narrative meaning that reflects our current media culture, as the harlequinade reflected the culture of the 18th century, and as the volvelle reflected that of the 13th century.
This new book (Springer, December 2015) first prospects the last millennium of interactive narrative and then provides an account of a small group collaboratively authored social media narrative, "Romeo and Juliet on Facebook: After Love Comes Destruction."
Imagination is the source of creativity and invention. This volume of essays has been collected e... more Imagination is the source of creativity and invention. This volume of essays has been collected expressly to bring readers new ideas about imagination and creativity in education that will both stimulate discussion and debate, and also contribute practical ideas for how to infuse daily classrooms with imaginative activities.
Researchers and educators around the world have taken up the discussion about the importance of imagination and creativity in education. This global relevance is represented here by writings from authors from Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Italy, Israel, Japan, and Romania. In the first part of the book, these authors explore and discuss theories of development, imagination, and creativity. In the second part, they extend these theories to broader social issues, including responsible citizenship, gender, and special needs education, and to new approaches to teaching curriculum subjects such as literacy, science, and mathematics, as well as to the educational environment of the museum.
Since the first edition of this book, Imaginative Education (IE) has developed increasingly accessible strategies for teachers to routinely engage imagination in everyday practice. New essays for the second edition include discussions about increasing political consciousness, improving teacher education, and using mathematical evaluation in Part I, and phenomenological approaches to media education in Part II.
Disney Stories: Getting to Digital looks at how, throughout the century of the company’s evolutio... more Disney Stories: Getting to Digital looks at how, throughout the century of the company’s evolution, Disney has used technological innovation to create characters and stories that engage audiences across media.
Drawing on Disney films from the twenties through the thirties, and on the writings of historians, screenwriters, and producers, the book first presents how Walt Disney pushed the envelope for animated stories by taking advantage of emerging media and encouraging new uses of technology to get effects that engaged audiences. Disney’s belief in the importance of developing character and story content took his work from animated gags to full-length animated stories in theatres, to television features in people’s homes, and to a virtual world in his theme parks.
With this backstory, the book looks at how the Disney Company moved its stories into the virtual digital world in the 1990s and the online communities of the 2000s. When Disney reached out to its audience with The Lion King Animated Storybook in 1994, the company was simply following a well-established tradition of using leading-edge technology to improve story engagement. In this case, it offered interactivity and the opportunity to be part of the creation process. With the move into online MMORPGs such as Toontown, the immense community of Disney characters and stories was made easily available to anyone at a click of a button.
The story is told from the perspective of Newton Lee, a senior software engineer and producer who was instrumental in helping develop key online applications and activities at Disney Online, and Krystina Madej, a narratologist who looks at how stories change and make meaning with each new media development.
Imagination is the Source of Creativity and Invention This series of 14 essays has been collect... more Imagination is the Source of Creativity and Invention
This series of 14 essays has been collected expressly to bring readers new ideas about imagination and creativity in education that will both stimulate discussion and debate and also contribute practical ideas for how to infuse our daily classrooms with imaginative activities.
The ability of children to think creatively, to be innovative, enterprising, and capable, depends greatly on providing a rich imagination-based educational environment. This discussion, about the importance of imagination and creativity in education, has been taken up by researchers and educators around the world. It is represented here by writings from authors from Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Italy, Israel, Japan, and Romania. In the first part of this book these authors explore and discuss theories of development, imagination, and creativity. In the second part they extend these theories to broader social issues such as responsible citizenship, gender, and special needs education, to new approaches to curriculum subjects such as literacy, science, and mathematics, and to the educational environment of the museum.
DisneyBrit is the longest running UK based podcast about all things Disney. Adam Goodger intervie... more DisneyBrit is the longest running UK based podcast about all things Disney. Adam Goodger interviewed Newton Lee and Krystina Madej, co-authors of "Disney Stories: Getting to Digital," for podcast #98, JULY 19 2012
The entire podcast can be heard at http://disneybrit.com/?s=krystina+madej&x=0&y=0 or you can download just the interview as an mp3.
Georgia Tech, Brown Bag Lunch Series, 2017
Play engages humans cognitively, emotionally, and physically at all ages. The increasing use of d... more Play engages humans cognitively, emotionally, and physically at all ages. The increasing use of digital media as both an entertainment and learning environment at ever-younger ages, has generated new discussions about the nature and value of play in children’s development that are situated in the behavioral psychology and neuroscience supporting physical play as a crucial aspect of development. In this talk I explore play as a form of physical engagement that reflects cultural attitudes about development and learning as these have evolved over time in western culture. I then look at the trajectory of digital games in contemporary culture and explores whether these artifacts (whether intended for learning or entertainment) have extended or are curtailing boundaries of somatic engagement. Finally, I discusses alternative play and game design, speculate on the future of new media play artifacts, and show examples of student work that demonstrates new ways of thinking about physical engagement. See talk at http://gvu.gatech.edu/event/brown-bag-archive/gvu-brown-bag-lunch-series-krystina-madej-physical-play-childrens-digital
Georgia Tech Brown Bag Lunch Series, 2015
This talk introduces "Interactivity,Collaboration, and Authoring in Social Media" released by Spr... more This talk introduces "Interactivity,Collaboration, and Authoring in Social Media" released by Springer January 2016. It first prospects the last millennium of interactive narrative and then provides an account of a small group collaboratively authored social media narrative, "Romeo and Juliet on Facebook: After Love Comes Destruction."
At the forefront of narrative innovation are social media channels – speculative spaces for creating and experiencing stories that are interactive and collaborative. Media, however, is only the access point to the expressiveness of narrative content. Wikis, messaging, mash-ups, and social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others) are on a trajectory of participatory story creation that goes back many centuries. These forms offer authors ways to create narrative meaning that reflects our current media culture, as the harlequinade reflected the culture of the 18th century, and as the volvelle reflected that of the 13th century. See talk at http://gvu.gatech.edu/event/brown-bag-archive/gvu-center-brown-bag-seminar-series-krystina-madej-0
Studies in neurobiology substantiate the importance of physical activity in children’s developmen... more Studies in neurobiology substantiate the importance of physical activity in children’s development. Grounded in orality and physicality, narrative rhymes enter our psyche at a young age to form a basis for physical, social, cognitive, and imaginative development. First read or sung to babies, rhymes are soon physically enacted by young children through play and games as they grow to be toddlers and pre-schoolers. Because of the physical immaturity of young children, and (until recently) the minimal physical engagement opportunities provided to them by digital environments, the physical engagement that has been an integral part of oral and print presentations of narrative rhymes for generations does not exist to any great extent in today’s play within digital environments. This talk introduces research on the nature of children’s physical engagement with narrative rhymes in which characteristics of young children’s physical interaction with narrative rhymes in traditional oral and print media are contrasted with play in digital media. - See more at: http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/event/brown-bag-archive/gvu-center-brown-bag-seminar-series-krystina-madej#sthash.3zReJQtK.dpuf
This talk looks at our imaginative engagement with the world, offers a perspective of how knowled... more This talk looks at our imaginative engagement with the world, offers a perspective of how knowledge grows in the mind, and provides insight into why children engage with narrative games. Imagination is the source of flexibility and invention in human thinking. It provides for the ability to think of the possible not only the actual. The educational theorist kieran egan suggests there are five distinct kinds of “imaginative understanding”– somatic, mythic, romantic, philosophic, and ironic. This talk elaborates on these in so much as they help to provide insight into how children (and youth) engage with game narratives. http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/event/brown-bag-archive/gvu-brown-bag-seminar-krystina-madej
Humans construct their knowledge of the world as schemata, as short bits of story that, with time... more Humans construct their knowledge of the world as schemata, as short bits of story that, with time, build towards a narrative intelligence, a perspective from which they view the world. Since the days of drawing on cave walls humans have used not only their voice and their gestures to share their narratives, but have put to use the materials within their grasp to give their stories material presence. While to us the historic objects we find and examine may seemed fixed, when they were created they were only in the process of becoming, part of a continuously evolving effort to express, with each subsequent generation actualizing a new material culture through which its stories represented their thoughts and deeds. In our presentation of narratives in digital media, we continue that process of becoming far more rapidly than in the past: each creation is quickly overwhelmed by new manifestations as we move forward eagerly and respond with alacrity to the changes in our media.
Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics and Games, 2018
Children's Games: from Turtle to Squirtle From the late 1960s when the first programming langu... more Children's Games: from Turtle to Squirtle
From the late 1960s when the first programming language for children was developed at MIT, to today’s mixed reality applications, the evolution of children's digital games has travelled a continuum committed to both learning and entertainment. Their history shows a confluence of two different interests that emerged as the transformation of computers into a technology used by mainstream society was occurring: an interest in using computers as a means for increasing learning, and the development of video games for entertainment. For millennia society has had an ongoing desire to take advantage of children’s proclivity to learn as they play and adults have long used children’s games to educate as well as to entertain. It’s not surprising then that children’s video games had their start with a desire to use technology to benefit learning, or that, on their own, children prefer to accentuate entertainment over education. This duality set the pattern for development that helped shape game genres as new technologies emerged – tangibles, handhelds, internet, mobile – and continues today as augmented realities shape the next generation of games. This brief history takes the reader from the LOGO's drawing "Turtle" of the 1960s to Pokémon GO's "Squirtle," a representation of the breakthrough in computer games of bringing to children physical engagement with the world around them.
Proceedings of the …, Jan 1, 2007
This paper presents a prototype framework for an interactive storytelling platform that supports ... more This paper presents a prototype framework for an interactive storytelling platform that supports narrative development for young children. Representing a multidisciplinary approach, this project builds simultaneously from theory and technical feasibility by combining hands-on experience in product design with design methods from interaction design and research in digital narrative for children together with the potential of sensor technologies to support tangible interaction.
PageCraft is designed to bridge the gap in emerging narrative development for young children between physical and digital media. By associating physical objects with text and visuals displayed on a digital screen, the system offers a child progressive experiences in storytelling through a rich multi-sensory environment. The narrative media, ranging from traditional print based stories and computer-read digital stories, to editable self-authored narratives are all linked with a tangible user interface to leverage the capabilities of digital resources.
Engaging Imagination and Developing Creativity in Education (Second Edition)
Children’s experience and perception of narrative changes as they move into the formal learning e... more Children’s experience and perception of narrative changes as they move into the formal learning environment of school. When children are very young, their experience of story is socially constructed and based in a multimodality that develops their imaginative, cognitive, affective, and physical capabilities through orality, imagery, interactivity, and performance. Stories create an encompassing environment that provides context for their actions and their involvement with the world around them. As children get older, and begin their formal education, the adult view that stories are structured literary entities is superimposed on their early narrative experience. This paper presents the study The Dynamic of Young Children’s Emerging Narrative Process. The study observed young children in a preschool and in a kindergarten setting with two goals in mind: first, to identify the characteristics of children’s early text narrative encounters in a contemporary setting (discussed in a separate paper), and second to identify if a change in approach to teaching narrative occurred between preschool and kindergarten (discussed here). The study revealed that a pronounced change occurred: in preschool story was used as an encompassing learning paradigm throughout the day’s activities, in kindergarten story was used predominantly to teach literary structure within the Language Arts program. The study shows that as children move into formal schooling, stories are removed as a fundamental tool from their language of learning.
This paper suggests that viewing traditional narrative structure with its climactic plot as a nor... more This paper suggests that viewing traditional narrative structure with its climactic plot as a norm diminishes the importance of all other narrative structures. It demonstrates that rather than being traditional, this structure is a fairly recent upstart in narrative history, that young children view story as structured differently before schools channel their ideas through language arts curriculum, and that young children engage with stories as experience rather than structured texts. Maintaining such a norm denies a rich source of different forms of narrative expression on which game developers can draw, and fails to support the genres being explored within digital media today.
Proceedings of the 2006 ACM International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology, Jun 1, 2006
Fifth Anniversary Conference: Media, Communication and Humanity
We forget that that our perception of the world is not formed when we are adults; it begins to fo... more We forget that that our perception of the world is not formed when we are adults; it begins to form at birth, through experiences first within our family circle and then within our community. The stories we hear, watch, and read as children play a significant part in helping us become members of our society and understanding its values. In western societies, print stories, whether of the bible, Aesop, or Tarzan, have been part of the enculturation process for hundreds of years. Today, digital environments are a very significant factor in children’s enculturation process. This paper discusses children’s narrative experience in both digital game and online narratives and shows how younger children in particular lose both story content and story experience in these environments. Digital games, while offering increased engagement through immersive interactive features, offer less depth and breadth of story than does print. Children’s stories translated into games are generally reduced to vehicles for action. Story content, when remediated as game, is mined for action sequences and stripped of value as a vehicle for exploration of a culture’s actions, social relations, and values. Online digital storytelling for young children uses the same text/graphic format of print but does not offer the range of tangible activities that are inherent in children’s experience of print narrative artifacts and which assist in their integration and assimilation of content. Findings from observations of children experiencing print and digital narratives in home, preschool, and kindergarten settings, support these ideas; they also suggest opportunities to increase the breadth and depth of stories in games exist.
An interactive relationship develops when a reader or user sits down in front of a computer, open... more An interactive relationship develops when a reader or user sits down in front of a computer, opens a work of digital narrative, whether a hypertext or a narrative game, and begins to interface with the contents. The ensuing level of involvement, or engagement and immersion, and the satisfaction of that involvement, is partially dependant on the interface and the interactive conventions the story incorporates. If a reader comes away from a narrative without some sense of involvement and satisfaction he or she may not return to that narrative, or perhaps even that genre of narrative. To continue building an audience for digital narrative it would be useful to look at how certain conventions encourage involvement in the narrative medium. This paper briefly describes engagment and immersion, and interface conventions such as immediacy and hypermediacy, agents and guides, maps, and time indicators that encourage or make continued interactivity with the hypertext or narrative game easier and more appealing.
Proceedings of the 2006 ACM International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology, Jun 1, 2006
Young children's earliest encounters with print narrative are based in a multimodality that inclu... more Young children's earliest encounters with print narrative are based in a multimodality that includes orality, visual literacy, performance, and interactivity and embrace a range of experiences that are socially constructed.
ComSpace 2003: Creating Communicational Spaces
Using Bakhtin's notion of intertextuality we look at the hypermediated narrative environment as a... more Using Bakhtin's notion of intertextuality we look at the hypermediated narrative environment as a space in which "a dialogue exists between the novelist and earlier writers not just between the texts themselves.” Extending Bakhtin's theories to hypermedia narratives and their producers we can theorize that a dialogue exists between the producer and earlier writers, designers, musicians. The digital space created is never completely original, springing as it does from an "interplay of spontaneity and tradition." The producer who puts forward a space for an audience, includes references to cultural modes of behaviour and artifacts (literary texts, movies, music). The relationship exhibited in the environment created is not simply of two objects (one past, one present, one chosen, one created) but requires "human mediation for dialogic realization." Audience together with the producer's dialogue with past cultural artifacts adds another level of intertextuality and affects the interpretation of the digital work. Producers are "powerful disseminators of culture, for they depend on the culturally shared knowledge of the reader for a true understanding of [the message]."
This paper explores the symbiotic relationship that evolves in communicational space when authors use intended and specific cultural metaphors.
Celebrating its 60th year in 2017, the Logo programming language was launched at MIT by Seymour P... more Celebrating its 60th year in 2017, the Logo programming language was launched at MIT by Seymour Papert and his research group in 1967. Developed as a way for children to use computers to learn by doing, LOGO triggered an ongoing interest in bringing digital technologies to children. Until that time, digital games for children did not exist. As technology and media affordances evolved over the next sixties years, children's digital games travelled a continuum committed to both learning and entertainment. This duality set the pattern for development that helped shape game genres and their content. It continues today as augmented reality, mixed reality, and virtual reality shape the next generation of games by offering engagement that transcends the screen. The latest in opportunities for children to create their own mixed reality (MR) experiences, ZAPPER, celebrates LOGO in its commitment to engaging children in creating their own digital environments.
https://cie.acm.org/articles/logos-60th-anniversary/
Computers in Entertainment, 2017
Children negotiate their relationship with the world around them and create meaning as they play.... more Children negotiate their relationship with the world around them and create meaning as they play. For them, all play is serious. Games offer children a space that supports learning on their own. Moving from the typical to the atypical game, from simple problem solving that increases cognitive skills, to social problem solving that teaches empathy, is a shift that can happen through participation in narrative dialogue. Social value in a game can exist when the cognitive load is not in computing numbers but in the challenge of uncovering the more intriguing stories beyond the surface of coded messages. This article shares preliminary ideas for game designs that were developed by a group of EU Erasmus students this past spring, partially in response to the Manchester Bombings, when tasked with the challenge of creating physically engaging entertainment that addressed social responsibility through narrative media. https://cie.acm.org/articles/taking-serious-topics-childrens-entertainment-games/
Education Canada, Jan 1, 2009
Computers in Entertainment (CIE), Jan 1, 2003
Brief overview of developments in computer technologies and evolution of digital narrative as the... more Brief overview of developments in computer technologies and evolution of digital narrative as these overlap and move each other forward