More CP mash-ups

I have been interested in Club Penguin machinima for some time, but in the past weeks have become aware of Club Penguin collages – mainly because as I have been peering over the shoulders of my nieces as they play on the site, I have observed penguins standing in the town square shouting ‘Collage at my igloo on the map!’ Collages consist of a series of elements that are either used singly or juxtaposed together, including still images, sections of film (created using screen capture software), overlaid text and music. I have pasted examples at the side of this post and below. Technically easier to assemble than machinima, they enable CP users to recreate favourite CP moments or entice visitors, keen to feature their avatars in the collages, to the producers’ igloos. These are good examples of what Colin Lankshear calls the ‘stuff of new literacies’.

Webkinz films

I have written previously about the machinima children make inside the virtual worlds they inhabit, but the users of the Webkinz virtual world appear to prefer making 'live action' films in which they use Webkinz toys to act out a narrative (see the example below, 'Webkinz American Idol'). One might wonder what the attraction of these films are for the viewer, but they are very popular with other Webkinz fans - Webkinz Americal Idol has been viewed more than 300,000 times. I wonder if the different approaches to film-making within these games are linked to gender? A group of researchers, led by Bobbi Hammett, is planning a joint project on Webkinz, looking at practices in Canada, Australia and England - maybe we will explore this aspect of the play... (more on this project another time).

MA in New Literacies

The colleague I mentioned in the previous post, Julia Davies, has developed an online masters programme, the MA New Literacies which begins this Monday. I am very pleased to be a member of the programme team, as the programme site offers a very exciting learning space – and is also visually appealing, thanks to Julia’s imaginative layout! I am looking forward to sharing my research with the students on the programme and finding out about young children’s digital literacy practices in their own countries (the students are located across the globe). We are also intending to hold seminar sessions in Second Life, which will be a novel experience for me – although I am interested in children’s use of virtual worlds, I haven’t used them extensively myself. I guess when I do, I will be even more in awe of many children and young people’s dexterity in using these spaces. For an example of their skills in online worlds, see the Club Penguin machinima here.

Machinima

I have been interested in machinima for a number of years now, having listened to a fascinating discussion of these films (made within computer games) at the Showcomotion Children's Media 2005 conference. Over the past few years, the films have become more sophisticated in nature and are appealing to a wider audience, not just fans of the computer games featured. For example, this film is popular with children because it features characters from the game 'World of Warcraft' dancing to MC Hammer's song 'Can't touch this'. This intermedia-textuality (or intertextuality across media) is a central feature of children's popular culture, as Marsh Kinder noted 16 years ago now. What's different in 2007 is the way in which this weaving together of disparate texts is central to children's production of texts as well as those they consume. This remixing is, as Colin Lankshear says, the 'stuff' of new literacies.