Phonics and the Shrek Effect
Posted on August 27, 2010
Filed Under ICT and Learning | Comments Off
ITC, for some remains something of a contentious subject, with the lovers and haters outnumbered by the beleaguered teachers in the middle struggling with targets and ever changing directives and arcane performance metrics. For many of them ITC has been the wettest of damp squibs combined with learning curves that can seem like a yomp up the north face of the Eiger.
I like to think about ITC in terms of the learning experience and the teaching process, rather than from a technical or system point of view. Thinking about how children interact with media and how teachers interact with them, can open up some interesting new avenues of thought about how both teachers and parents could support children’s learning and the possible nature of that learning and possible pedogogies together with the materials and infrastructure required.
A simple example could be called the Shrek effect and early learning. Now Disney and the other entertainers have been extending their brands into this market for decades. But what is different now, particularly with interactive technologies is that childrens affinity with animation can be leveraged in many more interesting and productive ways.
Why Choose Phonics?
Although we do not endorse any particular phonics product or subscribe to any specific ’school of thought’, we believe that modern phonics based literacy tuition, often called synthetic phonics, has proved to be the most effective route to early literacy for the majority of children. What makes it so appealing is the systematic nature of the instruction and the underlying logic that can be applied to that protion of the written code that is regular.
In short we like it, it is rooted in historic success, so where to next? Let us not stand on ceremony, development and evolution are, while not demanded for their own sake, are necessary. There is still a great deal to do, which brings me to the benefits of Shrek, Sulley and the grotesques of the Doom franchise, the considerable output of the games industry, and all of those other 3D creations that have so entranced the young and old alike.
In the case of slower learners and the socially disadvantaged, these methodologies have been shown to dramatically reduce perceived literacy problems among children and the need for intervention teaching programmes. As an aside, this seems to be an interesting point vis a vis international children learning English as a foreign language, without the advantage of an English Language based cultural experience. Anyway, the thrust of this piece is the potential compatibilty between synthetic phonics schemes and 3D animation forms.
Why 3D animation?
What role can 3D animation have in educating young children? Why do we consider it to be so potentially powerful? Why should parents consider it to be an attractive option?
Over the past decade, 3D animation has emerged as a powerful entertainment medium for children and adults alike because it works on multiple levels. 3D animation has remarkable powers of emotional engagement. It’s the Shrek effect, or Monsters Inc, or Toy Story or any of the hugely popular 3D franchises that have emerged in recent years, and not just among children. They suspend disbelief and immerse themselves in the richness of the 3D worlds. The range of emotional expression made possible by 3D technology lends remarkable emotional depth to characters and their narrative. The fusion of sumptuous spectacles with music, humour and the animation anarchy so familiar from the 2D form of the art, can be spectacularly engaging.
Clearly, with phonics, the primary objective is to educate. This requires motivation and emotional engagement to promote retention (memory) and assimilation - information committed to memory and transformed into knowledge as a platform to higher level thinking skills. To achieve these objectives, high quality animation is a powerful tool, interactive 3D animation is even better.
Animation alone is insufficient, the content often requires energy and music. It must work on an entertainment level. We are creating characters that are, essentially tutors and friends with whom learners can engage and ‘escape’. Fortunately 3D animation is well proven in this regard, especially when combined with effective sound design, particularly music, and occasional visual mayhem.
The use of 3D animation to engage and educate young minds has great appeal to young children, potentially enhancing levels of motivation and so progression. The key is to devise narratives that work within the limits of teaching needs. They can be used simply as learning reinforcing entertainment narratives or integrated into effective learning activities. Of course what may seem obvious to some, could just as easily be futile to others, but that’s what makes a market.
Phonics learning schemes could benefit from both modes of use. A bonus of the integration approach is that it is possible to combine entertaining 3D animation with interactive activities that reinforce phonics learning in ways that are well known to the parents of the games generation. This interactive mode of control is called kinesthetic learning forms, together with visual and auditory learning, the three dominant learning styles.
The primary barrier to testing this simple hypothsis would be cost - even in these technology enabled days, 3D animation remains a fairly expensive undertaking, although the programming resources to develop the interface and interactivity are fairly vanilla, unless one opts for a real time solution. This has the largest technical overhead, but also offers by far the greatest range of possibilities. It also brings us to the final, and possibly most interesting aspect of the challenge, that is designing efficient activites around an effective pedagogy. One for the teachers and researchers maybe, but a little like most of the ICT that has come and gone, it’s all worthless without an effective P. But then, the whole package could also extend the pedagogical possibilities. The problem becomes an opportunity for the creative.
High quality 3D character animation integrated into phonics activities would motivate and engage children while being naturally adaptive to their preferred learning style. It’s a combination that, if designed around an effective pedagogy could be very effective indeed, an effect that would make an ogre like Shrek, or Mikey and Sulley, and all of the other denizens of the ever expanding 3D universe; very proud.
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Just sixty one sounds and one hundred words – Is ERR a phonics reading revolution?
Posted on October 2, 2007
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All of that guessing leaves them adrift
Posted on August 19, 2007
Filed Under FruitPhonics, ICT and Learning | Leave a Comment
It has come to my attention that many of the young who seem to be strugggling with reading have a bit of an attention problem. It seems to be particularly, although not exclusively, young boys. Whenever we invite them to read a simple CVC word such as SIT, they try decoding but if there’s a problem, the guessing begins, quickly followed by the goofing off. They do like to distract attention from their discomfort, these little tykes. It’s clear that they have no systematic approach to decoding the text and building a framework. They get a few correct but when a problem arrives (usually very quickly) it’s guess and goof time.
They shout out words they know, rather than analyse the symbol sequence on offer. Clearly they are not ‘reading’ the code, so much as responding to the sound and letters they might know and throw out words they are familiar with as guesses….sometimes these guesses have no relation to the challenge in front of them……at this point, diversionary tactics are close. It’s obvious that these kids have not developed any kind of logical analysis and sequencing skills, in addition to having insufficient familiarity with the basic phonetic code.
This would suggest to us a need to ensure that children know and recognise all of the 44 phonemes and are systematically introduced to blending. These phonemic skills are prerequisites for progress and crucial for a child to develop confidence and so begin to enjoy exploring language and text, not develop a sense of foreboding everytime literacy activities loom.
We confess that, here in the glade, we like plenty of attention and we cannot do our stuff if the children don’t recognise us or know our names. Spare a thought for all of those shy letters. They come out to play and little Johnny or Jemima have no idea which is which, and get all confused when a couple of letters stick together in a blend or short word. It’s most distressing for all concerned and only emphasises the need to pay extra special attention to the basics.
FruitPhonics - sounds like singing in an orchard….
Posted on July 11, 2007
Filed Under FruitPhonics, ICT and Learning | 1 Comment
There’s some singing, dancing and splatting too, but this is not Verdi for apples or Issaac Newton giddy with cerebral delight. FruitPhonics is a strand of a larger project by Mennell Media, designed to develop entertaining, multiplatform interactive learning content. In contemporary education, despite the hyperbola of the natives with careers to make and products to sell, the paradigms remain resolutely old world. So we thought that it would be worth us having a little go at applying our interactive animation and internet technology to design a few little pieces of learning content as an experimental product. Several years later…… well, we’ll leave the soap opera for another time.
FruitPhonics is the result of the ‘Early Learning’ literacy strand. Initially designed for an interactive client application, we converted some of the material to compressed video to complement the soon to be released interactive 3D section of the website.
BlabberFruit is a blog that give a voice to the residents of the Glade. Our ‘gang’ are keen to help parents and teachers to connect with and motivate young learners. We would like to bridge the digital and social divides that remain the primary determinants of educational and so social outcomes, and the only way we know how is to make some intertesting and entertaining stuff that educators can use effectively and, most important, that works. Not much of an ambition really, is it?
We’d really like to make a friends, exchange some ideas and develop some damn fine content and tools to support teachers and parents in their endeavours to educate their little darlings. New media creates so many new possibilitites, BlabberMouth wants to express some of those as seen from the Glade, and is even prepared to listen. It’s all social you see, this new media, web 2.0 thingy.
Blabber has a brand new Phoneme set
Posted on March 4, 2007
Filed Under FruitPhonics | 1 Comment
satipn is not an anagram, code or the transliterated name of some exotic Thai beach. It is the grouping of the first six phonemes to be released on the FruitPhonics website.
This momentous event has made the gang very happy, relieved now that the interminable stress of waiting is over. They’re giddy with delight at being out and about among the learning young and their not so infantile parents and guardians ( that’s more of an expression of hope rather than belief).
The game is afoot, so to speak, now all we have to do is work out the best way to use them. That little task, is down to what is fashionably called the ‘collective wisdom of crowds’…..that is you lot. Of course we have a plethora of spiffing ideas for interactive exercises and games, of which we are rightfully proud, for they are rather marvellous conceptions, (there’s no love like self love eh!) but we thought it best (and cheapest) to let the gang to the talking for a while and see where that leads.
Blabber, (I wonder if you can guess which of our little fruit is burdened with such a moniker) is raring to go. We have a stack of back up material to be released, but the first thing to do is get them familiar with the phoneme set and a few words. The rest will (hopefully) follow as the learners respond and improve, and we understand better how to structure and manage the introduction of incremental material.
We thought that to begin with, some simple ’show and tell’ sessions, a few exercises in ‘word search’ and a little ‘find the sound’ should do for parental starters. We are not going to presume to tell teachers what to do with our little friends (scarred by a precocious past, where we learned the hard way that humility and diligence were the route to survival free of trauma.) The materials are here to help, not insult, our esteemed professional educators.
Ours is more of a plea (spot the already emerging subtext of sycophancy). Please use the basic materials and give us some ideas on how useful, or otherwise you find them.
Share your ideas and experiences with us and we will incorporate them into the design of the platform, our new animations and learning activitites. Let’s get collective and give Blabber more than a few phonemes to get excited about.
Toodle Pip
A warm and fuzzy fruit
The BlabberFruit Blog is Live
Posted on March 3, 2007
Filed Under FruitPhonics | Leave a Comment
There are so many things still left to do, but they’re getting tetchy, so I guess, in the great tradition of surrendering to pester power, it is time to get our little fruits into the limelight…the rest is up to them.
So let’s hear it for the BlabberFruits from FruitPhonics……
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