I sat down with the other half this weekend, talking about Scratch and how useful it was for kids to learn the logic of scripting. I then showed him Gobo's story and traced an outline for Gobo's destination (i.e. the rest of the projects). I realise that the other projects have to be different in terms of genre, media and ideas, but the theme of Gobo appeals to me as Gobo, in my perspective, is the central character. Playing around with Gobo also made me realise how we take what we know for granted.
While my first project was simple, I went about it the same way I go about a lot of things. Tinkering and research, or as my friends would say, rtfm. I had also used the other projects as a springboard for my own interpretation of what Gobo's adventures would look like. Through experimentation, I realised that I liked the simple animations that tell a short story. I think in terms of skill sets, I merely appropriated a certain wave file - the Scratch sprite reminded me of an ogre which resulted in a quick Google search for good old ogre sounds.
Now, everyone knows that sorting through information on the net is like finding the contact lenses you dropped on a wet, white sink. It's wasn't necessarily difficult, but it was annoying and also meant discriminating between search results- which again, is a skill that most of us take for granted. Choosing the correct images was also important in telling my story. My protagonist was a cute little flame-like creature, and the antagonist was a big green ogre, which was necessarily ugly. Ah, the conventions of storytelling ... seems simple enough, but again, it involves certain literacies that we take for granted. Later, as I talked about Gobo's future adventures, I began to incorporate more fantastical popular culture, both for the sake of absurdity and amusement. Ah, the possibilities.
In the end, Scratch to me, seems to invoke the continuity that Dewey talks about in Experience and Education. The completion of one project is not the end of the destination, instead it opens up the door to more possibilities and more ideas for experimentation.
Definitely, I like the ties to Dewey's argument that you have here... Active learning is central to work in Scratch. I also thought that there was a narrative thread to your thoughts on Scratch that also seemed to parallel the digital storytelling approach that became obvious in the artifact that you created as well (i.e., there was a central character -- Gobo, a dilemma, search for a resolution, etc.). Does this have anything to do with your interests in games or was this a coincidence? I was thinking about your group's mini-proposal and was wondering if there was a common theme to your work that you are exploring.
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