Written by Meryl Alper on Feb 14, 2012  

Kidscreen Summit, with 1,500 delegates representing 800 companies and 43 countries, is part conference, summit, networking event, exhibition and trade show.  With every major children's media industry player (and everyone who very much wants to be a major player) under one roof, pre-conference iKids and Kidscreen delivered a number of highlights, recurring themes and critical questions about the past, present and future of children and digital media. Trying to toggle between industry and academic lenses, I've summarized a few key issues raised below:

Transmedia "_____."  At iKids, Stacey Matthias, co-CEO of Insight Strategy Group, presented qualitative research from depth interviews conducted with a small sample of kids (aged 7-14, across 8 US states) on how they would define "transmedia" (abridged version PDF available here.)  Two notable points from Matthias' presentation:

1. Developmental differences in how children ages 7, 10 and 13 described how their experiences with character-driven narratives across different media story worlds "helped them do the work of growing up," as Matthias described
2. That none of the children they interviewed entered the story world of their favorite media property through that franchise's original media (e.g. Harry Potter, not through the books or even the movies, but through Lego Harry Potter)

In relation to the work I am doing with my advisor, Prof. Henry Jenkins, and Erin Reilly, Managing Director of the Annenberg Innovation Lab, I'd caution that if "transmedia" in its most basic sense means "across media," then we need to be more specific about what "transmedia" means in very different mediated contexts.  Matthias' presentation primarily focused on children's "transmedia" as branding and storytelling, but understandably less so (given the setting) on transmedia's potential applications as learning, ritual, performance or activism (such as the work of the Harry Potter Alliance).

Non-digital game app inspirations.  David Kleeman moderated a "hypothetical app" creation challenge between Andy Russell of Launchpad Toys, Jason Krogh of zinc Roe Design, Carla Fisher and Anne Richards of No Crusts Interactive and Juliet Tzabar of Plug-in Media.  David's rules were that the app had to 1) Be targeted to 5-8 year-olds, 2) Promote "pass back and forth" between children and caregivers, and 3) Use as many possible affordances of smart phone and tablet computers.

The result was a number of apps with non-digital counterparts.  One type of app was the digital version of the "exquisite corpse." "Le cadavre exquis" was a parlor game favored by French Surrealists, involving players making a contribution to the whole (be it an image or set of worlds) without having knowledge of anyone else's contributions. This "pass along" game involves one person writing or drawing on a piece of paper, folding that paper over to hide all but one piece of their creation, and then passing it along for the next person to add, fold, and pass along again.  The completed "corpse" (revealed when the paper is unfolded) can be the basis for collective creation and creative communication, regardless of language.  No Crusts also drew inspiration from analog games like Telephone, and the panel discussed the possibility of incorporating non-digital elements from improvisational theater games with their "Yes, And" philosophy.

One area into which the panel did not get a chance to dig deeper was the distinct qualities that separate the physical folding and unfolding of paper from the "metaphorical" folding and unfolding of an app (e.g. a child's fine motor and metacognitive skills needed to choose and fold a select portion of their drawing to pass along.)  It is differences such as this that leads me to another note of caution for fellow children's media researchers.  Just because one has knowledge of child development, and even how children learn from pseudo-interactive television, does not necessarily apply whole cloth to an understanding of how children learn from apps, nor how to research and design user interfaces (UI) and user experiences (UX) for this age group. Nor, on top of that, how to account for cultural differences in child development.  As David Kleeman stated at the conclusion of the panel (and I apologize for paraphrasing), "The more functionality there is in these devices, the harder it is to separate what's possible/fun/cool from necessary/usable."

Monetizing "digital natives" rhetoric. "Co-creation" with young "digitally native" media audiences is a rather warm and fuzzy notion that was shared over the course of the conference, but there needs to be more open and honest discussions about the ethical implications of monetizing crowd sourced user generated content from kids under 13, as well as the serious social, economic and educational consequences for children across the globe who do not fit the ideal consumer profile.  Under the umbrella of what counts as "content," there's more than just posting YouTube videos.  Do children's anonymous click-through data, collected and delivered to advertisers, count as "user generated content" too?  "Gamifying creativity" could end up, and perhaps already is, what Georgia Tech games rhetoric scholar Ian Bogost calls "exploitationware."  Surely, an understanding of children's media literacy in the 21^st century involves a critical understanding of what goes on under the mostly-opaque hood of our increasingly networked society, such as how Wikipedia pages get edited, how data is collected based on each badge-like goal obtained on a website, and how electronics get made in China.

More youth in the US may be viewing video on YouTube (as noted in research presented by Dubit Research at iKids), but that doesn't mean by virtue of the year they were born that all these young people have the opportunities (e.g. free time to spend on the Internet, informal mentorships) to gain the cultural capital, knowledge and social skills to participate, learn and engage in their world.  Young people can find incredibly innovative ways to overcome some of these inequalities, but in order to learn more about these strategies, the first step is to stop pretending that all kids have, or even will one day soon have, iPads both at home and at school.

Readers, do you have any thoughts, comments or feedback you'd like to share below?

Meryl Alper is a Ph.D. student in Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, as well as a Research Assistant at the Cooney Center-partner USC Annenberg Innovation Lab. She attended the iKids Conference and Kidscreen Summit, the largest annual children's entertainment industry event in the world, in NYC on February 6-10.  Meryl shares some of her thoughts on the event here (and the original post appears on her blog, teething on tech).

• How should communities, schools, and teachers address the issue of students wanting to bring their own digital devices to school?
  
• What new opportunities and challenges would a pro-BYOD--or an anti-BYOD policy--present?
  
• How do educators manage a BYOD world?

I recently had a conversation with someone whom I consider to be very bright and reasonable in matters of educational technology in which she argued that we should say no to BYOD. I pointed out that she didn't have the option. BYOD won. Kids already bring their devices to school and often use them in ways we don't like because we have yet to define ways to use them that we do like. We are left to figure out how to manage the situation, often in reactive mode, as we scramble our way up a new learning curve. 
 
As a management mantra, I am going to suggest we brand our efforts with BYOD with the following: On/Off.
 
On/Off means that we say yes to BYOD, and then manage the situation by asking students to use them sometimes, and turn them off at other times.
 
It is up to educational systems to figure out how to use them when they are in the On position. And before we holler "technological determinism," just remind yourself that many of you didn't even have the Internet 15 years ago. Now you wouldn't consider living without it. The same has become true for your cell phone, for adults as well as kids. The average adult wouldn't dream of living in a world that wasn't BYOD at work. We set the stage for BYOD by adopting it in the real world of work. Our kids are just following our lead.
 
Likewise, it is up to learning managers to determine when to ask students and teachers to turn their devices off; that is, to unplug so we can talk, think, and collaborate face to face. On/Off. It's balanced. It's healthy.
 
If we tell students to turn their devices off all the time, they will turn them on anyway, sometimes defiantly, and do at least some things we wish they would rather not. But if we tell them to turn them on sometimes, and engage them in using their devices to pursue learning exploration in ways that we deem beneficial, they are more likely to turn them off when asked to. If the rhythm is On/Off, rather than "always off," we may find we are much more pleased with what happens when they are on.

... it is up to learning managers to determine when to ask students and teachers to turn their devices off; that is, to unplug so we can talk, think, and collaborate face to face.

But there is a much more important issue in a BYOD environment than simply engaging students to use the technology that feels so second nature to them in ways we deem beneficial. We need desperately to talk to them about their technology, something we can't do if they don't have it with them.
 
The fact that their technology is so invisible to them is their Achilles Heel. Because they don't see it, they don't think to question it.
 
They need us to help them put their technology in a social context, and to ask questions about how it connects and disconnects them, or, in McLuhan's parlance, extends and reduces them. We need to talk about how their technology impacts themselves, their communities, and their environment.
 
In the Preamble of my book Digital Community, Digital Citizen, I ask the question: Our choice for our children: Two lives or one? That is, do we expect students to live a digitally deluged lifestyle outside of school, then unplug when the bell rings? Or is it time to help them integrate their digital and non-digital lives into one healthy life based on a single identity, and talk about their technology in critical terms so that they become the kind of digital citizens the world needs?
 
I say it is time to help them pursue one life. And to do so, I say we brand BYOD: On/Off.
 
Are there issues with this? Of course. There are always issues with technology. After all, technology connects and disconnects--always. Most notably, there are three issues that vex us:

1. How do we keep kids safe when they are online?
2. How do we keep them on-task?
3. How do we address those who can't afford a device?

The first two issues are important, but I believe best addressed in an On/Off culture in which we actually discuss, as a matter of normal fare, the up and downsides of our BYOD lives. Make no mistake--we are looking at a new era of teaching and learning. Professional development will never be the same. An On/Off culture will require teachers to do many things they never had to do before, like manage students who are constantly plugged into the Internet. But certainly we can make no progress about this if we aren't teaching students the skills needed to address these issues. And we can't do this effectively if they don't have their technology with them, and on, at least part of the time.
 
The last issue, affordability, is certainly real. But when touch pads and other key technologies become so inexpensive that they can vie with supplying each student with a number of textbooks, a development that seems all but certain, this issue can be addressed, whether through lending programs, or easy-buy programs or other approaches that will present themselves as vendors and schools get creative.
 
I don't think cost will end up being the issue. Rather, once we have the technology because it is so inexpensive, we will need to return the issue that has always vexed in education: just what does an educated person look like?
 
On/Off. Balanced. Healthy. Possible.

Beyond the conceptual exploration of dystopia and the future of technological interfaces that I described at length in my previous post, another key theme that struck me, and that was evident in so many of the works presented, was that of the constantly reimagined relationship between the familiar and the new. Although many of the designs did represent entirely novel technologies and artifacts, I was impressed at how many of the works exhibited consisted of a pure conceptual reframing of a very familiar object or space. Sebastian Bettencourt's project, aptly titled Beyond the Fold, for instance, is a prototype for a newspaper of the future but, unlike many other similar technologies and interfaces aiming for this goal, "Bettencourt's design abandons the now-familiar elements of digital interfaces, such as buttons and icons, to focus on the newspaper's spatial properties, presence, and relationship to a reader's motions, looking beyond the transfer of information to evoke the reading experience. Familiar motions steer the interaction: unfolding the device activates it, turning pages navigates through it, and shaking refreshes content." In this way, "cutting-edge technology is maximized while the timeless ritual of reading the newspaper is honored." And this - this transcendental mixture of technology and ritual - is precisely the aim behind Soner Ozenc's El Sajjadah, a Muslim prayer rug that makes use of electroluminescent printing technologies to point the person in the direction of Mecca, increasing its brightness as it is rotated in the correct direction.

Oftentimes, this fusion of the familiar and the new means a blend of the real and the virtual, and many of the most impressive and innovative concoctions are quintessential experiments with virtuality. Keiichi Matsuda's ambitious Augmented City 3D is a hybrid depiction of urban space as an "immersive human-computer interface", where the quotidian experience of living and functioning in an urban milieu is enhanced by an added layer of augmented reality - storing, organizing and displaying digital information along a sophisticated yet familiar three-dimensional space.

Marc Owen's Avatar Machine toys with the notion of self-presence, and our (post)modern conception of our own bodies. His innovation is "a wearable apparatus (including a camera on the back) that simulates the third-person gaming experience in real space, down to the spiky helmet, padded torso, and armored gloves." The user controls his own avatar, but simultaneously sees it in the traditional videogame mode, "as if hovering a few feet behind." Interestingly enough, during the testing of his Avatar Machine in public spaces, Owens noticed that the modified perspective of their own bodies led users to involuntarily pick up gaming movements and behaviors, such as taking larger steps and swinging their arms in motion.

For the users of Chromaroma, an intricate application developed by the design company Mudlark, a mere subway trip on the London underground turns into a real-time social game. According to the game description, "commuters sign up to play using their Oyster cards, a form of electronic ticketing used in Greater London, and then are grouped into one of four teams, where they rack up points with each journey and strategically complete specific tasks and missions. Some missions rely on an evolving story line (such as a diamond heist or a ghost hunt), and others have players altering their daily routines (getting off a stop earlier or going all the way to the end of the line) in order to gain a new perspective on the city. The players' physical movements are recorded by their Oyster cards and can be charted on three-dimensional interactive maps and published on Twitter or Facebook, making everyday journeys into social experiences. Chromaroma thus injects the often mundane process of commuting with a sense of playfulness, encouraging people to explore the city and ally themselves with strangers." I must admit this was one of my favorites, as I love the way it builds on an existing - and oh so familiar - infrastructure to create an exciting and completely new social and cultural platform. I also appreciate how comparatively low-tech it is, in the spectrum of the present exhibition and beyond: the game does not rely on smartphone technology and is accessible to any subway user with a low-cost Oyster card. According to the designers, there are plans to expand the game to other cities around the world in the near future.

But beyond entertainment or social connection, interfaces have the unique and consequential ability to enable, to empower, to inspire - and, in my perspective, some of the most impressive ideas in this stellar exhibit had to do with this very special feature of enabling the human body to overcome its limitations and reach new dimensions of ability. Several innovations were targeted at facilitating the communication of visually impaired users: the be-B Braille Education Ball and the Rubik's Cube for the Blind are two fantastic examples. I was also floored by the amazing potential of the EyeWriter technology, which enabled a graffiti artist to continue drawing from his hospital bed, after being completely paralyzed by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS): the EyeWriter captures his eye movements and projected his graffiti designs in real time from his hospital bed to downtown LA - all with just a laptop computer and $50 worth of equipment.

Finally, beyond the extraordinary qualities of the designs themselves, what impressed me was the demographics of the artists involved. Going through all the exhibits, I couldn't help but feel moved by the very young age of the designers (most of them born in the after 1980!), and by the multitude of countries and cultures represented. This is truly a global generation of young artists and designers, and seeing their creations build such a coherent, unified statement on the future of communication is as hopeful as it is exhilarating.

I am swept off my feet. Talk to Me, the new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York is a brilliant collection of new media artistic experiments and an open experimental space in itself. The theme of the event is the concept of design in the 21^st century, and its primary foundation in the communication between people and objects. 

Paola Antonelli, the senior curator of the exhibition, describes the initiative's rationale and cultural commentary:

Whether openly and actively or in subtle, subliminal ways, things talk to us. Tangible and intangible, and at all scales--from the spoon to the city, the government, and the Web, and from buildings to communities, social networks, systems, and artificial worlds--things communicate. They do not all speak up: some use text, diagrams, visual interfaces, or even scent and temperature: others just keep us company in eloquent silence. [...] 21st-century culture is centered on interaction: "I communicate, therefore I am" is the defining affirmation of contemporary existence, and objects and systems that were once charged only with formal elegance and functional soundness are now also expected to have personalities. Contemporary designers do not just provide function, form, and meaning, but also must draft the scripts that allow people and things to develop and improvise a dialogue.

New branches of design practice have emerged in the past decades that combine design's old-fashioned preoccupations--with form, function, and meaning--with a focus on the exchange of information and even emotion. Communication design deals with the delivery of messages, encompassing graphic design, wayfinding, and communicative objects of all kinds, from printed materials to three-dimensional and digital projects. Interface and interaction design delineate the behavior of products and systems as well as the experiences that people will have with them. Information and visualization design deal with the maps, diagrams, and tools that filter and make sense of information. In critical design, conceptual scenarios are built around hypothetical objects to comment on the social, political, and cultural consequences of new technologies and behaviors.

Talk to Me explores this new terrain, featuring a variety of designs that enhance communicative possibilities and embody a new balance between technology and people, bringing technological breakthroughs up or down to a comfortable, understandable human scale. Designers are using the whole world to communicate, transforming it into a live stage for an information parkour and enriching our lives with emotion, motion, direction, depth, and freedom.

The exhibition, which runs from July 24^th to November 7^th, is organized around subcategories (objects, bodies, life, city, world, and double entendre), all speaking to the dialogue - textual, paratextual or, most often, atextual - between us and the objects and technologies that increasingly structure our quotidian existence. Since there are way too many exhibits that I can name as my favorites, I will have to devote a follow-up blog post to do justice to all, but for now let me start by observing a strong dystopian undercurrent to many of the artworks. It is a kind of dystopia that is beautiful in its poignancy, where the line between comfort and conflict is unnervingly - and fabulously - thin.

In Reyer Zwiggelaar and Bashar Rajoub's project Happylife, a special camera equipped with biometric sensors detects fluctuations in a person's mood by taking thermal images of his or her face. Its designers envision it being used to prevent future criminal activity (yes, Minority Report does come to mind) and even "keeping the peace at home." The technology is designed to differentiate between family members using facial recognition software and "a dial, one for each family member, registers current and predicted emotional states, based on data accumulated over the years by the machine." The designers, together with writer and poet Richard M. Turley, have even created vignettes its familial use in the household. These imaginary scenarios are simultaneously touching and eerily disturbing: "It was that time of the year. All of the Happylife prediction dials had spun anti-clockwise, like barometers reacting to an incoming storm. We lost David 4 years ago and the system was anticipating our coming sadness. We found this strangely comforting." But would it really be comforting? The artist scientists are currently looking for research subjects, so perhaps soon enough we shall know.

From German designer Jonas Loh comes the equally grave Amæ Apparatus, which he calls "an early-warning system for stressed-out people, soliciting sympathy and allowing assistance to be provided in a timely manner." The concept was born out of his concern regarding the high suicide rates in professional environments, caused by the suppression of feelings in the workplace. Thus, the Apparatus, worn like a backpack, makes the wearer's feelings explicit to those around him by interpreting stress levels through a skin sensor; then, "color-coded smoke erupts from a spout in a canister to alert coworkers to various emotional states."

And for us busy women out there, for us digitally native daughters of the new millennium, young artist Revital Cohen brings us the Artificial Biological Clock, a pseudoindustrial manifesto on the female detachment from natural body rhythms, womanhood, and childbearing. Explains the artist, "A woman no longer in touch with her body's rhythms could rely on the Artificial Biological Clock to remind her of her fertility's "temporary and fragile nature." The clock is fed information via an online service from her doctor, therapist, and bank manager. When these complex factors align perfectly, the clock lets her know that she is ready to have a child." Doctor, therapist, and bank manager? I cannot help but smile. The bra-burning days are gone, sisters. We have reached an unexpected apex.

Central to the use of this technique in educational settings was the work of Paulo Freire, a noted Brazilian sociologist who pioneered the "dialogic pedadogy" approach as a non-hierarchical, dynamic and transformative process of learning. Conducting a literacy project in Peru in 1973, Freire asked slum dwellers to respond to the query of "What is exploitation?", but instead of documenting their oral responses, he handed them cameras and asked them to provide their answers by using photographs. In response to this question, most participants took pictures of landlords, grocers or policemen. One child, however, simply photographed a nail on the wall. This depiction of exploitation made no sense to the adults, but the other children seemed to understand it. The reason for the choice then transpired in the ensuing discussion surrounding the photograph. Many of the young boys in that neighborhood worked as shoe-shiners, but their clients lived in the city, far from the slums. Since the shoe-shine boxes were too heavy for them to carry to the city every day, these boys used to rent a nail on a wall, usually in a shop or business, in order to hang their boxes there overnight. Thus, in their eyes, it was that nail that best embodied the concept of exploitation (Singhal et al, 2007).

As illustrated by this account, the principal objective of visual participatory communication methods is to facilitate the voicing of "narratives that were previously marginalized, silenced, overlooked or rejected" (Singhal & Rattine-Flaherty, 2006). Due to its lack of dependence on linguistic or textual literacy, as well as its nuanced and highly introspective qualities, this strategy has proven particularly useful in working with difficult or sensitive populations. Thus, visual participatory methods have been commonly used in qualitative research with children, mentally disabled persons, traumatized or disempowered communities, and illiterate populations.

In addition, these methods are exceptionally suited for use in international contexts, where the language barrier may render the oral or written interactions between researchers and participants logistically problematic. Perhaps due to this cross-cultural feasibility and the potential to stimulate self- and collective empowerment, a particularly fruitful application of visual participatory methods has been in the field of community development initiatives, where these methods can be used at all staged in the research process: in formative research (baseline), impact monitoring (midpoint) and program evaluation (endline). Among these development strategies, entertainment-education has overwhelmingly led the way in popularizing the application of this methodology in both formative research and impact evaluation, and meticulously documenting the research process and results.

However, perhaps the primary benefit of using visual participatory methods in communication research is their quintessentially inclusive and interactive nature. As such, and in accordance with Freire's dialogic pedagogy, this technique discourages the sense of a hierarchy between researcher and subject, and it is comparatively more horizontal than alternative textual approaches. Because of its co-constructed design, which enables the participants to take charge of framing their own realities in an expressive and personally relevant manner, this strategy holds a vast potential of stimulating individual and community empowerment through the facilitation of self- and collective efficacy. According to Albert Bandura, self-efficacy is understood as an individual's needed confidence in his or her own skills and ability to implement specific prosocial behaviors; collective efficacy, on the other hand, is the degree to which individuals within a system believe that they can effectively organize and carry out courses of action in order to achieve collective goals. The practice of sharing the visuals generated by the participants with the larger community further facilitates the feeling of collective efficacy among that particular social group. Moreover, another advantage of this method is that it lends itself extremely well to a follow-up reflective discussion, which can both complement and augment the findings extracted from the images.

In addition, another major benefit of employing this research method is that it is inherently more nuanced than traditional (written or oral) research methods, and - unlike more conventional research strategies - can even uncover subconscious or unrealized feelings and perspectives (Rattine-Flaherty & Singhal, 2007). As illustrated by the classic account of Freire's work with the shoe-shine boys, the analysis of such visual modes of representation can reveal more subtle messages and more obscure realities than textual-based research methods. Furthermore, these visual techniques, by allowing the participants to freely decide on the content and framing of their images, can highlight both presences and absences: significance thus lies in both the visible and the omitted. And last but not least, within the spectrum of qualitative research methods, it is a comparatively more expressive, engaging and fun activity, turning the research study into an enjoyable experience for those involved, and helping maintain the participants' attention in situations where their enthusiasm or concentration levels are of concern, such as in research with children or cognitively impaired participants.

Overall, however, the use of visual participatory strategies in communication research is surprisingly understudied. What is also missing is an attempt to build theoretical bridges between this approach and other methodological frameworks of empowerment, participation or co-constructed research. Hopefully, given the method's rising popularity in recent years, scholars and practitioners will increasingly turn their attention to the documentation and analysis of such visual participatory strategies, and help shape a better understanding of their practical knowledge-generating potential within international communication research.

On the seat in front of me were a young Hispanic girl, aged around 12-13, and her working-class father, with paint stains on his overalls. The girl, with an iPod Touch in her hand, had put one of the headphones in her father's ear, and was demonstrating how to play music from the iPod. The father's thick fingers were not used to a touch-screen and he was smiling coyly at his inability to select the songs. The daughter made him practice until he was finally able to do it, and his face lit up with a wide grin. At that point, the girl felt empowered by her new role as a teacher and took it a step further, showing the dad how to take a picture with the iPod, and snapping a photo of the two of them on the bus, each with a headphone in one ear.

When I got home later that day and Skype-d with my parents, I told them about this scene, since it had really left an emotional mark on me. "Of course," they said. "If you really think about it, the reason we are talking on Skype right now is because you taught us how to work on a computer and use email, messaging, video-chat and all this!" And that is when I realized the immense significance of the role of children as brokers of new technologies in immigrant families.

Although the function of children as technological brokers is not restricted to immigrant families, in these particular familial contexts, the acquisition of technological or digital skills is seen as a crucial part of a more complex process of adapting to the contemporary American cultural environment, which places an increasing emphasis on the integration of digital technologies into everyday life.

Furthermore, in a new cultural environment, it is often a challenge for the older generation of immigrants to become acclimatized to the cultural landscape of the new society. Thus, children and teenagers often shoulder the responsibility of mediating the new culture for their parents, and facilitating their transition and adaptation within the new environment. This process of cultural mediation, or brokering, most frequently involves linguistic and bureaucratic brokering, but it is not limited to these aspects. In the case of immigrants in the United States and other similar media-saturated environments, a vital dimension of children's cultural brokering also refers to the intergenerational transmission of technological and digital literacy skills, which are increasingly necessary for a full participation in the new cultural spectrum that characterizes technologically progressive societies.

I would love to explore this topic in greater detail within a future research project, and I'd be curious to find out more about both the children and the parents' perspectives on the brokering process. Also, if anyone has heard of current or recent projects in this area - since a literature review indicates a vast predominance of writing on linguistic brokering but not very much on digital skills - please let me know, as I would be glad to continue and expand this conversation.