I had really hoped to have my first review done for the second assessment task in INF533 by this past Friday. The thing that is holding me up is the question of what to choose.
I would really like to have my three examples cover not only three different digital literature categories, as specified in the assignment, but also to cover the breadth of my K-6 teaching context. If possible, they would represent different genres and/or text purposes as well. Therefore, I am hesitating to commit myself to a review until I am sure which items will be part of my suite of reviews.
One issue I am struggling with is what to count as “literature” as some examples I find stray more towards music, visual art or performance art (Andrews, 2000-2018) and other fine examples of works with digital affordances that enhance quality text are informational (Field of Mars Environmental Education Centre, n.d.) or journalistic(News Corp Australia, n.d.) in nature.
Another area of struggle is that many of the really interesting web-based works or born-digital works using app or online platforms that I have found seem most appropriate to only the highest level of primary school or, truly, to high school or beyond.
The Boat Interactive Webcomic – Matt Huynh. (Huynh, n.d.). A bit too intense for Year 6?
Device 6 – one of the most enjoyable text-based experiences I have had in months! (simogo, 2013)
I think that I am narrowing down my list, though, so hopefully a review post will be hitting the aether soon!
References
Andrews, J. (2000-2018). Oppen do down. Retrieved from http://vispo.com/vismu/oppen/index.html.
Field of Mars Environmental Education Centre. (n.d.). Multi-touch books. Retrieved from http://fieldofmarseec.nsw.edu.au/digital-learning/multitouch-books/.
Huynh, M. (n.d.). The boat interactive webcomic – Matt Huynh [Streaming video]. Retrieved from http://www.matthuynh.com/the-boat/.
News Corp Australia. (n.d.). Kids news: News for kids. Retrieved from https://www.heraldsun.com.au/kids-news/news.
simogo. (2013, July 31). Device 6 – reveal trailer [Streaming video]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/KrpAzVcebhg.
I know students in ETL402 have also had similar struggles over what counts as digital literature, and it isn’t helped by the definitions of digital literature varying between subjects!