Playing Beowulf: Bridging computational thinking, arts and literature through game-making

Preparing younger generations to engage meaningfully with digital technology is often seen as one of the goals of 21st century education. JeanetteWing’s seminal work on Computational Thinking (CT) is an important landmark for this goal: CT represents a way of thinking, a set of problem-solving skills which can be valuable when interacting with digital technologies, and with different fields of knowledge, such as Arts and Humanities. Even if this cross-areas relevance has been celebrated and acknowledged in theoretical research, there has been a lack of practical projects exploring these links between CT and non-STEM fields. This research develops these links. We present a specific case – a game produced by two 14 years-old boys – within Playing Beowulf, a collaboration with the British library’s Young Researchers programme, in which students aged 13–14 from an inner-London (UK) school have developed games based on their own readings of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf during an after-school club. The game was produced using MissionMaker, a software (currently under development at UCL Knowledge Lab) that allows users to create and code their own first-person 3D games in a simple way, using pre-made 3D assets, such as rooms, props, characters and weapons and a simplified programming language manipulated through drop-down lists. We argue that MissionMaker, by simplifying the development process (low floor), can be a means to foster the building of knowledge in both STEM (CT) and Arts and Humanities, building bridges between these two areas inside and outside traditional schooling

Digitalisation in education, allusions and references

The metaphor of digitalisation in education emerged during a period when phenomena such as budget cuts and privatisation, layoffs and outsourcing of labour marked the ethos of the twenty-first century. During this time, digitalisation was constructed as an ultimate purpose and an all-encompassing matter in education. As a result, these narratives add new configurations to the metaphor of digitalisation on an ongoing basis. Such configurations attribute a mythical fullness to the concept, in the sense that digitalisation goes beyond the limits of a property that needs be developed so that society can successfully deal with contemporary challenges and advancements. In this way, digitalisation emerges as a new hegemony in education, with narratives that are more and less directly referential. Less direct references add the element of allusion to the metaphor of digitalisation, in the sense that references can be more implicit/covert or even concealed/hidden. Moreover, as they combine with abstract terms and concepts, they make the boundaries of the technological and educational domains blurry and render education discourse vague. In order to examine the narratives of digitalisation and how they influence education discourse, this study aims to discuss and analyse relevant policy documents in relation to research and studies on the integration of digital technologies in classroom settings and the hybrid (or blended) learning environments that open up. For this purpose, the study uses thematic analysis and discourse analysis in order to trace allusions and references and discuss how emergent meanings relate to current and future needs in education generated by digitalisation itself. © 2019, University of Ljubljana. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe

Making a nest. Art and ecology as formative and trasformative practices in adult education.

The radical experience of isolation and vulnerability during the pandemic has aroused a reflection on the forms of living environments and social ties, on the need to rethink the relational and pedagogical styles on which they are based (Pignalberi 2022). The accentuation of disparities in access to education and culture has shown how, in truth, the training system has been in a stagnant situation of difficulty for decades. The pandemic crisis has been considered by some pedagogists (Fullan 2020) not so much as a destructive event of a functioning model but as the possibility of participating in the transformation of learning. In 2021-2022 the Department of Human Sciences of the University of Verona promoted a training course "Practices and cultures of difference in educational and care work" which was attended by 35 professionals in social-health and educational services. The training course focused on the fact that the established practices of social work often fail, exposing professionals to the unexpected, to the crisis, to the need to create. This impact was even more evident during the pandemic which made the social ties of many Italian cities increasingly fragile. It was therefore necessary to propose training contexts that could meet the experiences of vulnerability, the need to nourish trust in community ties and hope. The course aimed to address the theme of differences by deepening theories and practices of feminist philosophy (Zamboni 2009, bell hooks 1994) and transformative pedagogy (Formenti 2017, Mortari 2003) which have elaborated a florid reflection on the themes of care and relationship: an embodied knowledge that puts to work the senses, the resonances, the materiality of relationships to rethink the encounter with the Other in daily life. The path proposed to move away from 'expertism' (Illich 2008) to rethink the care of oneself, of places and of others, as a common good, thanks to: • a formative ecology vision that questions the link between learning and the environment, between daily work and community life; (Iori 2019, Corntassel, J., & Hardbarger, T. 2019, Pignalberi 2022) • art-based methodologies as levers for processes of continuous transformative training and as a means for an ecological and ecosophic transition under the banner of social justice (Formenti Lusaschi, Del Negro 2019, Sossai 2017, Segal-Engelchin D., Huss E., Massry N. 2020). The third module of the above-mentioned training course was titled "Know how: community art practices" and was held at the Mare Memoria Viva Ecomuseum in Palermo (Sicily, Italy). It was a pedagogical choice that aimed to open up the narrow imaginaries of social work to a community horizon. The artistic workshop of intensive two weeks was also granted access to 35 professionals and all those who, by attending the Ecomuseum as operators or beneficiaries, would have voluntarily contributed to the creation of a new space for cultural fruition, participating in building an Ecodom structure in Superadobe in the shape of nest

Encounters beyond the interface: Data structures, material feminisms, and composition

This dissertation argues that data literacy should be taught in college writing classes along with other new media literacies. Drawing from several areas of study, this dissertation establishes a definition of data literacy, introduces a feminist methodological approach to Big Data and data studies, and makes a case for teaching data literacy in first year composition and professional writing courses as a foundational writing-related literacy. Information written into and read from databases supports research activities in any number of fields from STEM to the humanities; while different disciplines approach databases and data structures from diverse perspectives, all students need foundational data literacies. Nearly all digital environments are facilitated in some way by databases. They drive a range of web applications in ways that most users do not realize. On the surface, only GUIs are visible, and sets of data could be presented in any number of ways through them in the form of visuals, texts, and sound. It is important that students learn how data structures influence what comes across in the interface. By having students rhetorically analyze databases and then create them, composition teachers can help to demystify these ubiquitous yet invisible technocultural objects. Becoming aware of data structures gives students insight into how digital compositions emerge, empowering them to be more than “users” or “subjects” that use technological “objects.” Ideally, they would gain insight into how both “sides” of this encounter arise in dependence on many contributing factors, such as the standards, classifications, and categories perpetuated by techno-cultural infrastructures. Developing a socio-ontological methodology that combines scholarship in both feminist new materialisms and feminist rhetorical methodologies, this dissertation discusses the importance of researcher positionality. The socio-ontological methodology developed here expands on social constructivist theories to view all participants in a situation, including non-human ones, as mutually existing in dependence upon each other. Within this framework, contemplative mapping helps to articulate how the researcher does not exist outside of the research situation and assists in helping to make the situation uncanny, so that we can question assumptions and think through processes. Providing a foundational understanding of why data structures have become important to our professional and personal lives, this dissertation explains the public fascination with Big Data and exposes the ways that individuals can be affected by data collection practices, examining how the data structures that enable what comes across in user interfaces can be understood and taught in the context of writing studies

Proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET 2013)

"This book contains the proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET) 2013 which was held on 16.-17.September 2013 in Paphos (Cyprus) in conjunction with the EC-TEL conference. The workshop and hence the proceedings are divided in two parts: on Day 1 the EuroPLOT project and its results are introduced, with papers about the specific case studies and their evaluation. On Day 2, peer-reviewed papers are presented which address specific topics and issues going beyond the EuroPLOT scope. This workshop is one of the deliverables (D 2.6) of the EuroPLOT project, which has been funded from November 2010 – October 2013 by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission through the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLL) by grant #511633. The purpose of this project was to develop and evaluate Persuasive Learning Objects and Technologies (PLOTS), based on ideas of BJ Fogg. The purpose of this workshop is to summarize the findings obtained during this project and disseminate them to an interested audience. Furthermore, it shall foster discussions about the future of persuasive technology and design in the context of learning, education and teaching. The international community working in this area of research is relatively small. Nevertheless, we have received a number of high-quality submissions which went through a peer-review process before being selected for presentation and publication. We hope that the information found in this book is useful to the reader and that more interest in this novel approach of persuasive design for teaching/education/learning is stimulated. We are very grateful to the organisers of EC-TEL 2013 for allowing to host IWEPLET 2013 within their organisational facilities which helped us a lot in preparing this event. I am also very grateful to everyone in the EuroPLOT team for collaborating so effectively in these three years towards creating excellent outputs, and for being such a nice group with a very positive spirit also beyond work. And finally I would like to thank the EACEA for providing the financial resources for the EuroPLOT project and for being very helpful when needed. This funding made it possible to organise the IWEPLET workshop without charging a fee from the participants.

Metaphors we teach by : representations of disciplinary and teacherly identity.

This dissertation is a theoretical examination and textual analysis of the metaphors used to describe the act of writing and the teaching of writing. Within Rhetoric and Composition, there are specific conceptual metaphors that are instrumental to how teachers and compositionists describe the how writing development occurs, and what role teachers have in encouraging that development. This dissertation excavates the metaphoric interaction that has helped to shape the discipline of Rhetoric and Composition. I argue that the metaphors of writing run the risk of becoming black-boxed, uncritically accepted (or resisted), which can lead to an unbalanced interactive relationship between members of Rhetoric and Composition and the metaphors they use to teach writing. In this dissertation, I use a synthesis of metaphor theory to understand the interactive potential of the conceptual metaphors used to describe and teach writing, in a progressively narrowed perspective that addresses the identities metaphorically available to both the discipline at large as well as the individual teachers within Rhetoric and Composition. This dissertation is divided into four chapters. Chapter I reviews the theoretical views of metaphor that guide this project. This chapter also provides insight into how metaphors become morally defined, as well as (dangerously) disregarded when deemed dead. Chapter II examines the conceptual metaphor of WRITING-IS-PROCESS. This chapter charts the 40-year lifespan of PROCESS, providing snapshots representing the many shifts and reinvigorations that characterize the continued vitality and power of the metaphor as part of the identities available to teachers and scholars of writing. Chapter III narrows the focus further to examine the metaphors dominant within the genre of the teacher narrative. In such narratives, the teacherly experience is metaphorized through three key conceptual metaphors: TEACHING-IS-S TORY, TEACHING-IS-COMMUNITY, and TEACHING-IS-CONVERSATION. These metaphors can characterize teacherly experience in productive ways, but they can also, when not fully attended to, create a narrative trajectory that depicts the teacherly identity unproductively. Chapter IV focuses localized teacherly identity within statements of teaching philosophy. This chapter draws from collected teaching statements to identify the metaphoric trends in identity construction as engaged by both novice and more experienced members of Rhetoric and Composition

Microworld Writing: Making Spaces for Collaboration, Construction, Creativity, and Community in the Composition Classroom

In order to create a 21st century pedagogy of learning experiences that inspire the engaged, constructive, dynamic, and empowering modes of work we see in online creative communities, we need to focus on the platforms, the environments, the microworlds that host, hold, and constitute the work. A good platform can build connections between users, allowing for the creation of a community, giving creative work an engaged and active audience. These platforms will work together to build networks of rhetorical/creative possibilities, wherein students can learn to cultivate their voices, skills, and knowledge bases as they engage across platforms and genres. I call on others to make, mod, or hack other new platforms. In applying this argument to my subject, teaching writing in a college composition class, I describe Microworld Writing as a genre that combines literary language practice with creativity, performativity, play, game mechanics, and coding. The MOO can be an example of one of these platforms and of microworld writing, in that it allows for creativity, user agency, and programmability, if it can be updated to have the needed features (virtual world, community, accessibility, narrativity, compatibility and exportability). I offer the concept of this MOO-IF as inspiration for a collaborative, community-oriented Interactive Fiction platform, and encourage people to extend, find, and build their own platforms. Until then and in addition, students can be brought into Microworld Writing in the composition classroom through interactive-fiction platforms, as part of an ecology of genre experimentation and platform exercise

Teachers' Decisions on Curriculum and Instruction: Standardized and Contextualized Aspects of Pedagogy in Diverse and Marginalized Contexts During the Era of Accountability.

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2018