Combined Art in the Humanities: Multimodal and Game-Based Writing

Combined Session (Overview)
Can students articulate what counts as "writing"? What about storytelling?

Teachers can invite students of all ages into breaking out of the typical writing box through an assortment of activities that yes, brings engagement, but also expands where and when students write. More than creative writing, this session will provide hybrid assignments such as hashtags & other social media postings, infographics, comic strips, recipes/nutrition labels/menus, and how-to books while covering analysis and issues of authorship and media literacy.

Teachers will leave with activities that stretch what "counts" as writing.

Session 1: Multi-Modal Writing to Engage Reluctant Writers in Creation
Description: This session will provide multiple opportunities for current and future middle grades and secondary ELA teachers to write in multimodal formats and develop writing assignments that ask students to think beyond traditional writing formats. It will expand our notion of what "counts" as writing and demonstrate, through student examples and hands-on learning, how we, as teachers, can help disengaged writers deeply engage in writing that is relevant, creative, fun, and purposeful.

Relevance: This session is designed to break out of the traditional writing box and expand both our and our students' conceptions of what is "writing." It offers opportunities to reimagine current writing in a more engaging, creative, and purposeful manner to get even the most reluctant writer writing.

Contributions: This session will share multiple ideas for writing assignments, including, but not limited to, hashtags & other social media postings, infographics, comic strips, recipes/nutrition labels/menus, and how-to books.

Session 2: Video Games in the Writing Classroom: Game Selection and Lesson Structures
The intellectual curiosity we expect of strong incoming college students often hinges on factors such as curriculum accessibility, received knowledge, and familiarity with discourse but, fortunately, whether we’re teaching seasoned, engaged writers or the most tentative beginners, one truth unites them: no one is afraid of Pac Man. For years we have taught video games in our respective classrooms as rich, approachable texts worthy of formal analysis and scholarly interpretation. But what makes a game suitable for teaching, and what sorts of lessons can be taught with them? Games offer an inviting pathway to writing exercises that can be immediately applied to other texts, and they are themselves meaningful texts of 21st century culture. Grounded in the theory of Stephen Greer, Bo Ruberg, Roland Barthes, Michael Foucault, Sherry Turkle, and Jane McGonigal, we highlight four classroom-friendly video games (Pac Man, Queers in Love at the End of the World, One Night, Hot Springs, and That Dragon, Cancer) and our lesson structures for teaching a variety of writing-focused skills with them: concrete and abstract detail, narrative and ludic textual layers, social-semiotic analysis and issues of authorship and media literacy, collaborative group work, and answering bigger philosophical questions like “can empathy be taught?” and “what makes a text art?”