First Grader Creates iPhone App of His Version of “The Three Little Pigs”

3 Little Pigs for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store via kwout

Here is a terrific example of how even the youngest learners can demonstrate transliteracy! Henry Dewey created his own illustrations to interpret “The Three Little Pigs” and then with the assistance of his father, created an iPhone app for people to read his version of the story, which includes Henry’s narration of the tale.

Henry Dewey is a typical 8-year-old. He loves to build with Legos and annoy his little sister, hoping to someday own a reptile to terrorize her with.

The first-grader at Trinity Episcopal School in Rollingwood is also doing some nontraditional things: Henry just released his first iPhone application, an e-book version of the folk tale “The Three Little Pigs.”

Using pen and ink, Henry spent the entire fall semester creating the illustrations for his book during an after-school art program at Trinity.

“I like being creative, making bobbleheads on paper,” Henry said.

Early in the process, he decided he wanted to transform his project into an iPhone application to provide more options on the gadget for children.

He told his father, Mark Dewey — himself an iPhone application developer — about his idea. When Henry finished the illustrations, the drawings were converted into a digital format. Then his dad helped turn the project into the application, rewriting the story and having Henry narrate it.

“At a young age to know you can be a creator, in the mainstream of American culture, that can be powerful,” said Mark Dewey, whose digital media company, Geoki, published the app. “We hope that carries on through his growing and his life.”

Watch young author and app developer Henry Dewey discuss his app in this video! You can also click here to view and purchase Henry’s app for his story.

This story reinforces the call from the Knight Foundation for libraries of all kinds and schools to step up to the plate in positing transliteracy as a primary literacy to close the digital divide and participatory gap.

Free Readings on New Media for Your Kindle Device or Kindle App

Amazon.com: Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media: A… via kwout

Many thanks to Texas school librarian Donna Bills for pointing me via Twitter to these terrific and free readings from the MacArthur Foundation that can be accessed either with your Kindle or Kindle App for iPhone, Blackberry, Mac, or PC!  Here is a sampling of the free reports you can read via Kindle or Kindle app:

• Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media: A Synthesis from the Good Play Project
• Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century
• New Digital Media and Learning as an Emerging Area and “Worked Examples” as One Way Forward
• The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age
• The Civic Potential of Video Games

Helping Educators Learn About New Media Practices

Although the book,  Teaching Tech-Savvy Kids Bringing Digital Media Into the Classroom, Grades 5-12, highlighted in these  interviews by Henry Jenkins with author Jessica Parker and additional contributors is geared toward educators, the conversations and content are also applicable to librarians who work with youth in a public or school library setting.   You can read both Part 1 and Part 2 of Henry Jenkins’ interview on his blog, Confessions of an Aca-Fan. Here is a short excerpt from Part 1 of the interview:

With regard to new media practices making youth less literate, it’s a version of an old argument that surfaces every time there’s a new wave of practice. Each new wave of media practices encounters resistance. Literary scholar, Nina Baym (2006), chronicles magazine and journal articles from the early 1800’s in which editors asserted the need for reviewers to exercise surveillance and provide direction to the newly literate masses who had taken up the habit of reading fiction. Novels were dangerous! There was a similar kind of backlash in response to comic books. If anyone had taken that criticism seriously we would never have the incredible array of graphic novels we enjoy today.

As Henry Jenkins has pointed out, the critical change in the latest of the new literacies is that of convergence. The problem with “either/or” thinking with regard to traditional and digital literacy is that it fails to capture the experiences of youth. The child who is reading a novel from a traditional text, or listening to it on her ipod, downloading it onto her e-book, and visiting a website where she can play a game as a character from the book, participate in a forum discussion, and answer challenge questions, is transforming the practices of reading and writing. The sad fact is that she is not allowed to bring her e-book to school, even though some of her classmates wear outfits that cost more than her Kindle. She only sees a computer when her teacher beats out the thirty other teachers attempting to sign-up for the school’s only computer lab on Wednesday, after lunch. Though at home she rarely writes with a pen, during the school day it is the only tool she is allowed to use in most of her classes. Even her cell phone must be kept in her locker or it will be confiscated.

Chapters in the book include:

1. Understanding Youth and New Media

2. Hanging Out With Friends: MySpace, Facebook and Other Networked Publics

3. YouTube: Creating, Connecting and Learning Through Video

4. Wikipedia: The Online Encyclopedia Based on Collaborative Knowledge

5. Role Playing: Writing and Performing Beyond the Classroom

6. Virtual Worlds: Designing, Playing and Learning

7. Remix Culture: Digital Music and Video Remix, Opportunities for Creative

8. Conclusion

You can also join the website/social network  for the book for supporting content and discussions related to the themes of the text:

TEACHING TECH-SAVVY KIDS – Bringing Digital Media into the Classroom via kwout

Writing Visually: YouTube, New Media Literacy, and the College Admissions Race

In this fascinating post, scholar S. Craig Watkins, author of  The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future, argues  why “more educators should begin taking the new media practices of young students more seriously.”

The Young and The Digital » Writing Visually: YouTube, New Media Literacy, and the College Admissions Race via kwout

Henry Jenkins: Fandom, Literacy, and Scholarship

Reading, writing, and understanding words on a page won’t cut it anymore. In a digitized world, Henry says young people need new skills that go way beyond basic composition and comprehension. Skills like play (“the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving”), collective intelligence (“the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal”), and transmedia navigation (“the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities”).
~Henry Jenkins~

Read this April 16 article at Boing Boing in which Henry Jenkins discusses the relationship between fandom and literacy:

Reducing the World’s Suck with Henry Jenkins – Boing Boing via kwout