More information on the same subject area as below is available from Australian Journal of Language and Literacy from Jan/Feb 2010 (this is available from a number of online databases)

Franticread: Okay - I think we ill get started - and those rushing here can catch up. Hello, my name is Ellen Forsyth. I would like to welcome you to this talk today which is in the #rugame series. Before I introduce our speaker, we will do a quick around the room to find out where people have come from. Just location is fine, but if you want to say your library name or location and your name that would also be great. So to start - my name is Ellen Forsyth I work at the State Library of NSW in Sydney, NSW Australia - we might move around to my left - so next...

Allustriel: Bryan, TX, USA. Angela.
Nairarbil: University of Technology, Sydney, represent!
Stefwynn: Mylee, State Lib of NSW, Sydney
Hiemal: Liz Danforth, games blogger for LJ, Tucson AZ
Lilaea: Kendra from College Station, Texas, USA
Fyrefly: Hi, I'm Sam and we have Christine and Valeria as well, from Randwick NSW. We also have Peter and Alice.
Reynjardine: BWS Johnson, boring consultant.

Franticread: Great to see the range of libraries/people here! Today we are hearing from Dr.Joanne O'Mara, Senior Lecturer, School of Education, Deakin University will talk about research she has been involved in about learning from computer games. This talk was inspired by a comment Craig Anderson made in his talk last year. I will leave to Joanne to really introduce herself and let us know about the amazing research she has been involved in. Now, over to Dr. Jo! (Dr. Jo is fine with us asking questions as she goes.)

(Time passes...)

Franticread: Dr. Jo seems to be experiencing some technical problems at present -- perhaps chat amongst yourselves for a moment or two to give time for this to be sorted.

I am trying to contact DrJo - but no success yet. It seems like there was a power surge at the university. I am on the phone to DrJo at present - and she has the university IT services on the other line. Her computer won't go on at all at present. It sounds like it may be best for Jo to e-mail me her talk (when there is life in a computer - or she uses another computer. I will ring Jo and see what her electronic status is like. I have Jo on the phone - she will dictate her talk to me and I will type what she is saying.

Dr. Jo Via Franticread: Sorry about this everyone (this is Jo) and in fact it is kind of an example of one the aspects of technology which makes it difficult for teachers and librarians to work with young people despite your best efforts it does not always work. The term used is fragility as it does tend to put some teachers off. In the project we worked with 5 different schools. In some of the schools ht teachers had quite a lot of support with loading up games and making sure things were working. In some of the schools teachers had to do all the work themselves and that made it more difficult. Two of the participants were teacher librarians and they ran great projects. The lack of technical support is an issue, often people don't want to risk anything going wrong.

We had a few different arms to the project. One arm was run by Professor Clare Bradford. She’s from Children’s Literature and did analysis of narrative structures in a range of games. She looked at how fundamentally narrative is changing through these processes. (I will provide a link to great paper about this. Talks about the narrative, really interesting work.)

Stefwynn: Was this high school or elementary? What age kids?
Dr. Jo Via Franticread: They were secondary schools, years 8 – 10.

Dr. Jo Via Franticread: A large part of the project was around different case duties in school. A range of different projects; one school used computer games in conjunction with teaching fantasy texts, using fantasy games and fantasy texts, long, epic stories. They looked at texts such as Tolkien across multiple platforms. They also looked at titles like the Nancy Drew games and compared to the text. The teachers liked the different dimension - looked at computer games with quite a literary eye.

Another project was students making their own game using game maker software. Superb teacher. Very remarkable outcomes. Gamemaker is capable of quite a range of games, from click and point to quite sophisticated games with advanced software. Teacher does it for every year 8 and over the last 4 - 5 years every boy (it is a boys’ school) has produced a playable game. Lots of the games have very year 8 boys’ humour - they are terrific, really great games. When you interview the kids and talk to them about what they are doing, [what is apparent] is the sense of agency they have. This is one of the significant outcomes as much is written about children as consumers of games or being sucked into games, but the kids are a lot more savvy than this.

In game maker the boys drew on other things from other computer games as well as invented things that were very local to them, and developed very strong narratives. Some of the games really took off; with one the boy who designed the game gave it away, the boys enjoyed playing it and then others enhanced the games.

Stefwynn: What do you mean 'sense of agency'?
Dr. Jo Via Franticread: Sense of agency - a lot of the rhetoric sees adolescents as consumers/victims of games. With “sense of agency” it is that the kids were making their own conscious decisions about the games and they have a good understanding of how the games work. At the same school was involved in a drama project exploring how the boys/their parents saw games in their work, and in the drama they took each games myth - which they know - and over turned them. The way the young people play around with this media... they know what they are doing with them.

Another project is one where some groups of students made paratexts from the games; similar to fanfiction - making a text about the game. A lot of video games have tools within them which enable you to make your own version/track/something you can add in to the game, lots of examples of I've seen where young people are making things from the game engine and then using them in another way, like in the Lego games where you can make a film of the Lego game. Also Grand Theft Auto - lots of the car games you can make your own tracks, or make social objects about the games.

Lilaea: Social objects?
Dr. Jo Via Franticread: Things where they share it around.

Stefwynn: I wonder, are the students tough critics of each other's games?
Dr. Jo Via Franticread: The kids are critics of each other’s games, but they are really supportive as well, the teacher set up a trialling and testing process. The boys were tough, but they were supportive and fair. Some of them put their games up to the Gamermaker community for feedback - really valuable aspect of what happened. So I guess there was a component where there was some serious game people played - they are games designed to teach about the social world, like form the UN teaching about food, whole category of games designed for serious purposes. For English they played the games and critiqued the content inside them - getting students to look at what is the world shown in the game and questioning the assumptions within the game. They’ve done work with Neopets. Neopets is a popular game (with about 100 million pets) [that is] very popular with 8 - 12 year olds. Look at the assumptions within the games - example of giving tree where you give to the needy pets and a fight ring where if you win the fight you get extra food. They’re looking at some of the assumptions about the world shown in the game. Part of this is looking at games as a text like a novel, what are the kind of questions and the way you examine them?

In Australia, because there has been so much work done on multiliteracies in school, thinking about the written text, computer games are a step beyond this, but not as big a step as it would have been 10 years ago, and not as big a step in Australia as elsewhere. Australia seems to have a broader understanding of literacy, especially in new media, where it’s more part of the curriculum, which helps.

Fyrefly: Does anyone think there are any ways in which public libraries can support this sort of projects by schools?
Stefwynn: I think libraries could run information sessions for local teachers with teens demonstrating how the games work ... a bit hard to plan lessons using games if you don't know much about them ... also promote books about games. Libraries could also build LibGuides or other resource pathfinders for teachers who want to explore the topic ... a bit like the How to create book trailers using Animoto: http://projectelite.wikispaces.com/Book+Trailers
Dr. Jo Via Franticread: One of the project had the Australian Centre for the Moving Image as a partner, they ran the games lab and had the games set up so libraries could support it by running games sessions in the libraries, having the librarian expert setting it up, and then running activities about it. (For teachers to set up games with no technical support took a long time.)

Lilaea: are these really small class sizes that are making games?
Dr. Jo Via Franticread: About class size - class size of about 28. Teacher probably working with about 200 students at each year level working on games, this is not a small scale, but it works well because of how the teacher sets up his class room to enable this to happen. Those boys made individual games but they did group work as well. The teacher shows the boys games other people have make, and the basics of making games using Gamemaker (the basics of Gamemaker are very easy) then the class set up so that all the students start making the elements of the game, he moves around a lot, pairs the boys up so they ask each other questions, directs them to the online help. Fairly quickly the boys become very self directed and able to find the resources for themselves; good way of teaching how to seek out information. A lot of the boys get help from the Gamemaker community and some of them post their games to the Gamemaker website and get feedback.

Fyrefly: Can Gamemaker be used for small scale games? I was thinking of something like the advent calendar which was discussed at one of the ALIA talks last week.
Dr. Jo Via Franticread: They can be small scale games, from basic to one that may be 30 levels with complex graphics.

Lilaea: Do you think you could do a Gamemaker program/event at a public library, if you did a really basic game or had a few sessions?
Dr. Jo Via Franticread: Yes to the program in the library, Gamemaker and Cahoots would both be good, and could run over a few sessions. You would need to start with an introduction with getting them to make a space, etc. If you ran 2 - 3 sessions could get a game.
Lilaea: What is Cahoots?
Dr. Jo Via Franticread: Cahoots is really good for primary school students. Gamemaker can have quite complicated graphics, quite powerful; for teenagers can get quite good look and feel - the boys felt their games were cool and not babyish. Cahoots is not so good for high school.

Lilaea: I noticed on the description it said ARC-funded research; what's ARC?
Dr. Jo Via Franticread: ARC - Australian Research Council - nationl funding body for research projects.

Reynjardine: Was Dr Jo's dissertation on gaming?
Dr. Jo Via Franticread: Dissertation was on process drama - really interested in learning and play spaces, how drama supports literacy and how games support literacy. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy has lots of articles about this - February 2010 - I will add links. This should be available from libraries and will have an article about the different projects in the school.

Franticread: Dr. Jo is saying thanks for listening - and for the questions - her computer is still really dead.