Book Review: Diary of a Wimpy Kid 7 (The Third Wheel)

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Listen — Jeff Kinney is probably never going to sweep the “serious awards” category for his Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. And with the seventh book in the series (The Third Wheel), the newness of his drawings and the discovery of his characters have long since become just … “comfortable.” But Kinney can still get you chuckling over the circumstances and ego-centric world of his main character, Greg Heffley, in ways that are sly and (as a parent of three boys) a bit too real at times.

Here, in The Third Wheel, Greg is off to a middle school dance with his goofball friend, Rowley, and a girl they bring as their “friend” (the title gives away what is going to happen, so I don’t have to). But much of the first half of the book is Greg remembering various events from his childhood, and it was in these tales of Greg in the womb, Greg commandeering the television when his mom tries to use the Baby Genius tapes, Greg’s frustrations at getting everything as a hand-me-down from his older brother (including underwear) that had me chuckling.

It’s a quick read, as all the Wimpy Kid books are, and Kinney’s illustrations are light and funny. My 8 year old son read the book — devoured it, actually — in two hours. My older sons read it in less than an hour (the older one being a bit furtive about it now that he is in high school, I think). In the end, The Third Wheel is a good entertainment, and sometimes, that’s all we ask in a book, right?

Peace (with the kid),
Kevin

PS — bonus video: Jeff Kinney drawing lesson!

 

Come Play The Digiwrimo Video Game

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digiwrimovidgamemap

I finished up the video game project for Digital Writing Month, and I want to invite you to play it and see what you think. You’ll notice from the above level map (which I shared yesterday) that I used the letters of the #DIGIWRIMO hashtag as the foundation for the game play, so your player has to move through and around the letters to get to the end, and collect jewels (nuggets of wisdom?) along the way.

Have fun. Don’t give up. I purposely did not make it too easy, but I hope I didn’t make it too difficult, either. (hint: use the letter Z to portal from one spot to another, and the space bar shoots freezing ice rays, and get all of the jewels. There are checkpoints throughout, in case you die or get too lost.) And I would love to get some feedback from you about how it went. And of course, this kind of activity raises the larger question: is my creating a video game a form of digital writing? Is your playing the game a form of digital reading? Where does gaming fit in our exploration of digital composition. I have some ideas but I would really love to hear from you.

(play the Digital Writing Month video game with this direct link, too)

Peace (in the game),
Kevin

 

A Tool for Checking and Adjusting Privacy Settings

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http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/185y0x400u6snjpg/original.jpg

I saw this site — Adjust Your Privacy —  in a newsletter from the fantastic Doug Belshaw, who found it at Lifehacker. The tool allows you to check out your privacy settings on various sites, and also provides a handy lists of places to check out how easily you can be “found” with the personal data that other sites have collected on you.

Be careful of what you share, and do your best to keep track of where you’ve been. I know it’s not easy. I spent just a few minutes using some of the tools and found that my privacy setting seemed OK, but it is a little odd to see how much personal information one can gain with the search queries they also have listed on the page. Worrisome, even.

Check out Adjust Your Privacy

Peace (in the snooping),
Kevin

 

 

 

Graphic Book Review: Amulet (Prince of the Elves)

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Amulet Comic Creator
You have to admire writer/illustrator Kazu Kibuishi for the way he is unfolding the story of the Amulet graphic novel series. Years go by between books (the latest is Book Five: Prince of the Elves), and Kibuishi wastes no time with backstory for readers. He trusts that we have been reading, and thinking, and that we remember the characters and storylines enough to be brought right back into the tale of the Stonekeepers. (I’m not sure what a new reader would make of it all, though. They would be completely lost, it seems to me)

As I dove into Book Five,  I had to jog my memory, but I bit in to the story in the latest Amulet book anyway. You can’t ignore the beauty of the illustrations, which are so evocative and powerful, nor the narrative sweep that Kibuishi is setting forth in the series, which tells the stories of a girl, Emily, who is learning how to harness the power of her magic stone; Max, whose mysterious past is slowly coming to life; and the showdown between the race of Elves and others in the world that was once hung together with the magic and power of the Stonekeepers.

There are echoes of many traditional epic stories in the Amulet books (the mysterious voice inside the stones, the pull between good and evil, the redemption of society, the reluctant hero) but I find it refreshing that Kibuishi trusts us to believe in his storytelling power and to let the narrative strands slowly pull apart before coming back together again. We are shifted quickly into different storylines and you have to stop to take stock of where you are. This is not a bad thing, but I wonder about his young readers. Or maybe, like the cult of Harry Potter, the legions of kids who were wowed by the first Amulet book years ago are now older, and more sophisticated, readers.

And I can’t ignore the comments of my 8 year old son, who snapped up the Amulet book as soon as it was out of the box. (He has read and re-read all of the series many times)

“That book is one of the best books  I read,” he said, handing it back to me a few hours later. “Serious.”

I won’t go that far, but I will say that the Amulet series is bringing the art of graphic novels to interesting levels, and I am ready for Book Six, whenever that happens.

Peace (in the frame),
Kevin

PS — I used the comic creator at Scholastic to create the top comic from the Amulet template;

 

Digital Writing Month: Game off/Game on

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Digital Writing Month game2
This really is what happened to me with my video game project for Digital Writing Month. I had begun to create a game in which I was seeking to represent some of my ideas around digital writing. I was two and a half levels into the game design when I realized: this is not working. If you have never dipped your toes into game design, the use of symbolism is important, and here, as I tried to “represent” digital writing within a video game format, it just fell apart on me.

So, I rebooted.

I deleted all of that work and sat back down with an empty piece of paper (interesting how a digital project originates from the tried and true, isn’t it?) and came up with a new idea. This one has to do with a single level, in which the letters of the hashtag of #digiwrimo would have to be navigated. Each letter would have some sort of challenge but the player would have journey through or over the letters themselves. Meanwhile, I would add a bonus level down below the main game where one could experience Twitter vs. Zombies, and also a place of collaboration with sprites helping the player through a maze.

It worked, and I am still tinkering with the game, so it is not quite ready for primetime. BUT, check out the map that the site I use — Gamestar Mechanic — has added as a feature. This new tool allows you to get an image map of the levels of games that you create. Which is perfect for sharing in this case, since you can clearly see the DIGIWRIMO letters that form the centerpiece of my game.

digiwrimovidgamemap

Peace (in the game),
Kevin

 

Digital Writing Month: A Code-Poem Experiment

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I saw a challenge over at Digital Writing Month: create a html code poem. Eh? Why not?
Here, first is the poem in raw text:

<body>
<p>Yes, I see you. Do you see me?</p>
</body>

I’m <strong>
perhaps but not so </strong>
as to <img src=http://badg.us/media/uploads/badge/image_poetic-thinker_1350505650_0891.png> imagine
how you might be <em> listening </em> to my <i>words</i>
and yet so often fail to <a href=http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2012/04/25/the-7-pillars-of-connecting-with-absolutely-anyone/> connect </a> with me</a>
in these shared experiences
in a space that gets <small>smaller all the time</small>.

You may <break> my meaning into <p>aragraphs</p> and then
into words, and then into <small>bytes</small>, and then slowly reduce me <ins> the hidden me</ins> into
<ul>
<li>emotion</li>
<li>thought</li>
<li>memory</li>
<li>echoes of the pst</li>
</ul>
<sub>while down here</sub>, where I watch you
<sup>towering over me </sup> in my dreams,
I fade
and fall <break> apart.

You leave me <font size=”8″> feeling <font color=”blue”>blue.

And here is the poem, when converted:

Yes, I see you. Do you see me?

I’m
perhaps but not so
as to imagine
how you might be listening to my words
and yet so often fail to connect with me
in these shared experiences
in a space that gets smaller all the time.

You maymy meaning into

aragraphs

and then
into words, and then into bytes, and then slowly reduce me the hidden me into

  • emotion
  • thought
  • memory
  • echoes of the pst

while down here, where I watch you
towering over me in my dreams,
I fade
and fall apart.

You leave me feeling blue.

The difficult part was trying to think through what would be invisible and what would be visible in both formats, and how the code commands might inform the poem itself. I’m not sure I completely captured that, to be honest. It’s difficult to toggle meaning between two languages like that. I like it better as raw html. You?

Peace (in the code, in the poem),
Kevin

Cyberbullying: An Overview and Teaching Strategies

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When Bullying Goes Digital: What We Can Do about Cyber-Bullying on Prezi

This is my presentation from an NCTE session on bullying. My part was to have us think about the aspects of cyberbullying and to consider strategies for teachers. This was part of a larger conversation about the effects of bullying and our need to address it on many fronts. The influx of digital media in the lives of young people has the potential to exasperate and increase the ways that students get bullied — inside and outside of our schools.

I was also asked to share some resources. These are either ones that I shared in the presentation or were shared by audience members during the discussion times. I hope (we hope) these resources allow you a chance to educate yourself, your students and the families in your communities about cyberbullying by viewing prevention through the lens of learning.

Peace (in tolerance),
Kevin

 

Digital Writing Month: A Text Message Story

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A number of years ago, I remember reading an odd story told entirely in cancelled bank checks. I was inspired and created my own version of it at one time (need to find it) and this week, as part of Digital Writing Month, I thought about how we might use the format of text messaging to tell a story. I had this idea of a girl texting her parents about “losing it” – a phrase that brings up a few different connotations — and letting the message unfold until the meaning becomes clear.

Honestly, I don’t know how successful the story is. I had to add something later to the beginning, which may have ruined the flow of the story as I first told it. I am hoping the late addition added to it. But I did like how I had to think in terms of character, and medium, and the nuance of conversation in this format. It made for a tricky tale, told quickly with lots of narrative gaps. And the text message generator gave me a chance to write and kick out images that look like it really did unfold on a cell phone.
txtmessagestory
txtmessagestory2
txtmessagestory3
txtmessagestory4
txtmessagestory5
txtmessagestory6

 

Peace (in the story),
Kevin

 

Talking Video Game Storyboarding with New Zealand

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Skyping with New Zealand: Game Design
For the second time this week, I hopped on my computer and joined a group of people somewhere else. The other day, it was as part of a collaborative keynote address in New York. Last night, it was a Skype visit to Kathryn Trask’s classroom in New Zealand (we follow each other on Twitter). Her students are learning about video game design  by using Gamestar Mechanic (just as we do) and she wanted me to chat about the elements and importance of storyboarding. I was happy to do it, although the time difference was a little strange (it was today when I talked to them last night).

As I talked with her students, I tried to emphasize a few things around game design storyboarding:

  • A storyboard is a map of ideas so you see the larger picture as well as the smaller segments
  • While storyboards do not need to include every detail, they should conceptually show a story/narrative arc
  • In game design, storyboard panels are a handy way of considering “levels” of a game
  • The act of storyboarding flips you from seeing your game as the maker to envisioning the role of the player
  • Just because you have a storyboard doesn’t mean you shouldn’t veer off when something better/more interesting comes along in the midst of design. Remain flexible

Later, I also shared a few resources that might be helpful:

It was pretty neat to jump into another classroom. Kathryn’s students asked some great questions and now, she has the challenge ahead of them to begin planning a game. Good luck!

Peace (in the sharing and connecting),
Kevin