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Australian Teachers of Media, Qld Youth Council on Mass Media

This past Friday and Saturday, I had the pleasure of working with a group of young people from around Queensland who have been chosen to form a Youth Council on Mass Media. They were chosen after entering a competition in which they had to submit a video recording of themselves answering three questions about young people and the media. The successful students were from Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Cairns and Mt Isa.

The students met for two days during the ATOM Qld State conference 'Connect09'. They discussed aspects of young people's relationship with media and planned and made two one minute videos picking up on the themes they discussed. They then presented these to the conference delegates in the final session on Saturday and took part in a Q&A session. The videos and students' responses to questions were very well received.

The students will now take part in discussions for the Global Youth Council being organised for the Summit on Media for Children and Youth to be held in Sweden in June 2010. The students will take part in discussions in a Facebook group and responses from this space will be taken to the Summit in Sweden.

State library talk

Recently I was invited to present a talk about video games and education as part of the State Library of Queensland's "Open Source" series. The presentation will take place on the 30th July. Details are below:


Serious play – videogames and education

Once regarded as incompatible with the business of serious learning, video games are being increasingly harnessed in the classroom and other education contexts.

Many teachers are leading an educational revolution by tapping into young people’s passion for video games to help them become motivated to learn. In addition, many education experts argue that video games offer a whole new way to learn that should be emulated in schools and classrooms, and incorporated into the curriculum.

This talk will present a holistic view on using video games in the classroom, outlining both their numerous positive impacts as well as addressing a few cautions for teachers, students and parents.

QUT media literacy educator Michael Dezuanni will discuss the ways that games can enhance the learning process, how students can learn complex concepts while designing and producing their own games, and learn to critically reflect on their work. Michael will also provide examples of the brilliant new ways games are being incorporated into the classroom, as well as highlight what games cannot do with respect to learning.


When Thu 30 Jul, 6.30pm
Where slq Auditorium 2, level 2, State Library of Queensland
FREE no booking required

The politics of media literacy

In my film an media curriculum class today a question arose about the role of politics in the media literacy classroom. The focus of the class was on approaches to "controversial" or "disputable" media texts and alternatives to discussion and debate in the media classroom. This was in the context of how a teacher might engage middle years students to critically respond to texts that rely on sexist and racist stereotypes - where students resist "theory" based lessons. I introduced the practice of culture jamming and the students used editing software to remix / jam a controversial video game to change its meaning and draw attention to some of its problematic content. The students agreed that this was a productive and meaningful alternative to respond to such texts. However, the inevitable questions arose - who gets to decide what is controversial and to what extent should a teacher be directly "political" in the classroom?

Of course, media literacy education often deals overtly will political questions, both in the more traditional sense of party politics and in the broader sense of socially and culturally based politics. However, my students put forward a range of views about how overtly political they believed media classrooms should be. Some believed media education should aim to intervene in students' social and cultural roles. Others believed it was wrong for media teachers to overtly 'politicize' the classroom. Particularly interesting was that several of the students indicated that they knew little about politics because they had not learned about it in secondary school and they indicated that they felt the system had let them down.

Personally, I believe that media classrooms are a space in which political ideas should be raise. However, students are unlikely to respond to polarizing viewpoints or soap box positions. Furthermore, the outcome of classroom activities should never be to have students arrive at a predetermined disposition towards an issue. Media classrooms should be spaces in which a range of viewpoints is possible and in which differing positions are accepted. Of course, this is not to say a teacher should not put forward their own position - but it should be recognised as one of a number of positions to take into consideration.

Video Games in the English Language Arts classroom Pt 2

In my last post I suggested that there were three levels on which learning about video games in the English classroom might occur: using conventional textual analysis; through identifying gameplay and games design techniques; and through designing, making, remixing games.

My presentation about this at a workshop with teachers on Friday was well received and they seemed to see the value in the approach. It was interesting that the teachers believed one of the main motivations for introducing games into English was to engage male students who were reluctant readers: the teachers had degrees of success with engagement with games study where they had little success with literature. Our discussions around this focused on the importance of being authentic to gaming culture - with the teachers agreeing that the over-intellectualisation of games was counter-productive.

A concept I introduced - that teachers seemed highly interested in - was that of video games "para-texts". That is, texts that are produced as part of the discussion / critique / discourses around games - for example, forums on games websites; walkthroughs produced by gamers; games reviews and so on. One suggestion was to have students produced voice-over walkthroughs of their own recorded gameplay, with a focus on the ways in which the game engages the player.

I argued that this type of "critical" approach to games was likely to be far more authentic to gamers than exercises in which students are asked to deconstruct games using models borrowed from literary and even film and television analysis.