6th International Conference on Multimodality (6-ICOM)

Venue: Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, London
Date: 22 August – 24 August 2012

Key Notes:

• Sigrid Norris, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand: Analyzing Multimodal Interaction
• John Knox, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia: Digital News and Online texts
• Arlene Archer, University of Capetown, South Africa: Social Justice and multimodal pedagogy
• Lorenza Mondada University of Lyon, France: Video based research and the work-place
• Gunther Kress & colleagues at IOE Centre for Multimodal Research:Multimodality, learning and recognition 

This is not a theme-based conference and we envisage a broad based interpretation of multimodality. We welcome papers from across various fields of application - including health, work and occupations, art, media and marketing, games and play, education, tourism, and business.

Whilst we expect many of the papers will come under the following sub-headings these are not designed to be exhaustive or limiting:

A New Culture of Learning

In A New Culture of Learning, Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown pursue an understanding of how the forces of change, and emerging waves of interest associated with these forces, inspire and invite us to imagine a future of learning that is as powerful as it is optimistic. 

Our understanding of what constitutes "a new culture of learning" is based on several basic assumptions about the world and how learning occurs:

• The world is changing faster than ever and our skill sets have a shorter life
• Understanding play is critical to understanding learningThe world is getting more connected that ever before – can that be a resource?
• In this connected world, mentorship takes on new importance and meaning
• Challenges we face are multi-faceted requiring systems thinking & socio-technical sensibilities
• Skills are important but so are mind sets and dispositions
• Innovation is more important than ever – but turns on our ability to cultivate imagination
• A new culture of learning needs to leverage social & technical infrastructures in new ways

Play is the basis for cultivating imagination and innovation
By exploring play, innovation, and the cultivation of the imagination as cornerstones of learning, the authors create a vision of learning for the future that is achievable, scalable and one that grows along with the technology that fosters it and the people who engage with it. The result is a new form of culture in which knowledge is seen as fluid and evolving, the personal is both enhanced and refined in relation to the collective, and the ability to manage, negotiate and participate in the world is governed by the play of the imagination.

Typically, when we think of culture, we think of an existing, stable entity that changes and evolves over long periods of time. In A New Culture of Learning, Thomas and Brown explore a second sense of culture, one that responds to its surroundings organically. It not only adapts, it integrates change into its process as one of its environmental variables.

Replete with stories, this is a book that looks at the challenges that our education and learning environments face in a fresh way.
A New Culture of Learning:

Novelty

Novelty is a free game maker tailored for making visual novels. Contrary to most other visual novel makers, Novelty is designed for people without any experience in scripting or programming.

As a designer you have a lot of artistic freedom in Novelty. There are no templates or presumptions on how your game should look. The visual tools that come with Novelty enables you to give your game a unique look that will stand out.

Photo novel using Google Docs

Testing the new version og Google docs:


Using a screen-recorder and some music from YouTube the result can very cinematic:

Toondoo

Testing Toondoo by jonhoem | Make your own at www.toondoo.com

Testing Toondoo

Read me Resources

Read me Resources

Creating Participatory Photonovels

Drevet av Google Dokumenter

Participatory proccesses

A historical reference:



participatoryproccesses.pdf

How to create and publish a photo novel

How to create and publish a photo novel; 2008

Builder – Moglue

Builder – Moglue

Visual novel

A visual novel is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art, or occasionally live-action stills or video footage.[1] As the name might suggest, they resemble mixed-media novels or tableau vivant stage plays.

In Japanese terminology, a distinction is often made between visual novels proper (abbreviated NVL), which are predominantly narrative and have very little interactive elements, and adventure games(abbreviated AVG or ADV), which typically incorporate problem-solving and other gameplay elements.

This distinction is normally lost in the West, where both NVLs and ADVs are commonly referred to as "visual novels" by Western fans. Visual novels and ADVs are especially prevalent in Japan, where they made up nearly 70% of the PC game titles released in 2006.

Visual novel - Wikipedia

9 digital book-making tools

Demibooks Composer
iPad-based app gives authors a touchscreen-based development tool from which they can create an iPad app. You can do things like move objects to indicate motion paths. Ideal for kids' books with lots of illustrations. In private beta, planned release later this summer.

My Story Book for the iPad
Like Composer, this app lets you create kids books on the iPad itself — though with fewer interactive and motion capabilities. Includes basic tools for adding and manipulating text atop photos and illustrations. Beta launching this summer.

Aquafadas
Plug-in tool lets you add interactive and multimedia enhancements to InDesign or Quark layouts. Good for complex layouts featuring a mix of text and images. In limited pre-release.

Active Reader
Plug-in for Unity (high-powered game development program). Flowchart-like user interface lets you program interactivity and motion; especially useful for highly illustrated books like graphic novels.

Moglue
Desktop app (Mac or Win) for creating interactive iOS and Android ebooks, especially illustration-rich kids books. Open beta starting in July according to their Twitter account.

InteractBuilder
Desktop app (Mac or Win) lets kids book authors create iOS interactive ebooks.

App Press
Web-based tool for creating iOS apps. Early uses include photo histories and cookbooks. Web-based preview tool lets you share in-progress designs. Developer provides InDesign and Photoshop templates for preparing assets before importing into the App Press tool.

Leanpub
Lets you use pretty much any blogging tool to publish an ebook. System accepts RSS feeds, HTML, or Markdown and outputs ePub 2.1, Mobi and PDF. Built-in e-commerce system takes care of sales for author and offers very generous royalty rates (usually about 90%).

O'Reilly Radar

Webcomics Topics

20 Ways to Use Comics In Your Classroom

Tap Into The World Of Comics

View more presentations from S. Hendy

Free Technology for Teachers

Comics in the Classroom

Comics in Education

View more presentations from EduComics Project

educomics.org/

Dvolver Moviemaker

Dvolver Moviemaker

EduComics Project

EduComics Project

How do graphic novels promote literacy

Motivation
Graphic novels powerfully attract and motivate kids to read. Many librarians have built up graphic novel collections and have seen circulation figures soar. School librarians and educators have reported outstanding success getting kids to read with graphic novels, citing particularly their popularity with reluctant readers, especially boys—a group traditionally difficult to reach. At the same time, graphic novels with rich, complex plots and narrative structures can also be satisfying to advanced readers. In fact, graphic novels are flexible enough that often the same titles can be equally appealing to both reluctant and advanced readers. Providing young people of all abilities with diverse reading materials, including graphic novels, can help them become lifelong readers.

Reluctant readers
Graphic novels can be a way in for students who are difficult to reach through traditional text. Even those deemed poor readers willingly and enthusiastically gravitate towards these books.

Benefits to struggling readers, special-needs students, and English-language learners
Graphic novels can dramatically help improve reading development for students struggling with language acquisition, including special-needs students, as the illustrations provide contextual clues to the meaning of the written narrative. They can provide autistic students with clues to emotional context that they might miss when reading traditional text. English-language learners will be more motivated by graphic novels, and will more readily acquire new vocabulary and increase English proficiency.

Using Graphic Novels with Children and Teens: A Guide for Teachers and Librarians | Scholastic Teacher

Digital Graphic Novels

The focus of this course revolves around around two questions

• Can digital graphic novels productively promote social conscious and civic engagement? 
• If so, what forms might digital graphic novels assume? 

The first question drives the action research portion of the course. The second question, investigated by production of digital graphic novels, promotes theory into practice.

Background

This course evolves from an earlier course focusing on visual culture: a field of study within cultural studies focusing on aspects of culture that rely on visual images and their ability to communicate ideas quickly and effectively. Visual culture often overlaps with film or television studies and may include the study of video games, comics, traditional artistic media, advertising, the Internet, and other media that employ crucial visual components. Visual culture can be defined across a broad spectrum:

Narrow/Specific Definition
Visual culture is the tactic with which to study the genealogy, definition, and functions of postmodern everyday life from the point of view of the consumer, rather than the producer.

Middle Definition
A fluid interpretative structure for understanding response to visual media of both individuals and groups.

Broad/General Definition
Visual culture is concerned with visual events in which information, meaning, or pleasure is sought by the consumer in aninterface with visual technology (any form or apparatus designed to be looked at or enhance natural vision: oil painting to television to Internet).

DTC 338 Digital Graphic Novels

Graphic Novels in the ESL Classroom

Bill Templer is a Chicago-born educator with research interests in English as a lingua franca, literature in the ESL classroom, and critical applied linguistics.

• Introduction
• Core theses
• Going multimodal, honing visual literacy
• Graphic novels come of age
• Powerful direct appeal
• Getting started: tips for teachers
• Student-drawn comics as reader response
• Surmounting discursive walls
• More classroom-based research needed
• Browsing the graphic book shelves
• Conclusion: high time to experiment
• References

Humanising Language Teaching Magazine for teachers and teacher trainers