There is a lot to digest this week, and I have decided to enter the Defiance forum. The reasoning? I have at least one student who has purchased the game and is playing the game and watching the series, and has the iPad APP (Definace -the Essential Guide) and the "sync" with pop-ups when you watch the series. I have the APP and can watch the series. I have seen the game in play [didn't buy game at $59-99] So they have several ways of getting you interested in more than one transmedia event. The feedback from my students is that the game is good and the series isn't. "I am stuck watching the series now to play the game," said one of my students.
Moral of the story, if we use transmedia, we must be sure that each piece of that transmedia puzzle is equally strong as the others.
Or does it have to be? If this was an educational game, is it necessary that all parts be strong or "likable" if the goal is to teach in all aspects of the transmedia? Interesting thought.
When you look at the difference between "Destiny" and "Defiance" there isn't much difference, both are sci-fi and both are essentially "Defend the Castle" games. Unfortunately, even these video games teach, even if they are not intended to teach, and may teach something that isn't to the benefit of the player. I am critical of the stereotypes of the "races" in Defiance. The social structure seems to be on a white to dark skin and beautiful to ape-like features. One lesson in this series/game is that corporate greed is not good, the Liberata were greedy and have fallen to the lowest level of the social system where they work as servants or menial tasks to "make amends for the sins of the past."
There is a quick 60 second recap of episode 1 (after the commercial)
Defiance in 60 Seconds - First EpisodeIn the creation of our worlds and characters, we must be ever careful that we don't just reinforce stereotypes, which I think Defiance does. So, back to the original question:
"How could we use a combination or mashups of media for education? What types of educational event could be designed?I am still looking to the interaction of my anthropology classes with public auctions where there are all those "cultural artifacts" laying around discarded and now up for auction to the highest bidder. I think it was my great-aunt Maude, who on looking at someone's entire estate on the block, "Sooner or later, everything is for sale." I could do the following and am open for suggestions:
1. Have a QR code that was in their online class shell taking them to a youtube video like shown on our week 6 page. There they might see say, 10 items and be told to do internet search to identify them.
2. They would go to an auction (as I described last week) and we go on Wednesday. There is a list of 34 items to find, prizes awarded.
3. We then could look at a film, regarding how much people throw away (Garbology) and my students really liked this one.
Wasteland This is on the dump outside of Rio that employed 5000 people and now is closed. It is the story of the re-cyclers' lives, how lives can be transformed.
4. My students could then look at their objects and create stories about where they came from and what they may have meant to the people who owned them, (would be nice to cross-list with an English comp class).
6. Create either Interactive Fiction stories about the objects for others to play (hope for an APP) or do their own video and tell the story of their item.
What would I be teaching? I would be teaching them about cultural, the coming and going of what we desire and use, and times-past . They would learn what material possessions mean to people and how they let them go They would learn why the dumps and the idea of a throw-away society is culturally maladaptive, and by that, hoping that they will be more conscious of their own obligation to the earth and each other.
Even something as simple as mapping the origin of the articles they find to show the amount of importation into the United States would be educational.