Toyhacking: Maker Literacies for the Play Revolution

• In Event: Playful Possibilities of the #playrevolution: Narrating Necessary Stories of Literacies in Play

Abstract

Objectives
Literacies are expanding rapidly to encompass new technologies and innovative practices, especially in makerspaces (Peppler & Bender, 2013) where digital storytelling in iPad animation and moviemaking combines with manufacturing technologies (e.g., sewing, crafting, robotics). How might literacy teaching and textmaking change to integrate maker literacies?  

Framing
Maker literacies make and remake texts through playful tinkering with materials and technologies to invent and share new artifacts. Examples include:

1. Collaborative play creates action texts (Author 9, 2011), stories enacted collaboratively with bodies, toys, props, and puppets rather than print on paper. During play, players agree upon pretend scenarios, revising the meanings of realities, bodies, materials, and actions (Vygotsky, 1935/1975; Author 1, 2015).

2. Toyhacking redesigns toys’ materials but also their embedded texts (e.g., characters, narratives, histories of use) (Rowsell & Pahl, 2007)

3. Digital filmmaking saves a played story, making durable and shareable text (Buckingham, 2003)

4. Video-editing remakes filmed texts by altering particular modes (e.g., color, animation, music, sound effect) (Kress, 2009)

Methods
Excerpted from a 5-year study on literacy play, the data document a digital puppetry module in four literacy methods classes at a US Midwestern university (3 instructors, 140 university students). During three sessions, students engaged in toyhacking by cutting up, gluing, combining, and decorating inexpensive commercial mass media toys (e.g., Happy Meal toys), filmmaking live-action videos with the toys, video-editing, and sharing. Data sources include video of students’ toyhacking and filmmaking, the videos they made with hacked toys, and their reflective writing.

Mediated discourse analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2004; Author 9, 2007, 2014) analyzed teacher candidates’ crafting and film production as assemblages of players, actions, materials, and texts to track collaborative meanings and shifts in participation.  Content analysis tracked maker literacies and patterns of meanings and participation as assemblages developed, from toyhacking to video-editing. MDA identified moments of collaborative transformation (e.g., agreements to change characters’ texts, storylines, students’ roles). Patterns in the video data were cross-checked with students’ reflective blog posts for resonances and tensions.

Findings
Multiple fluid transformations occurred through four maker literacies: altering toy features but also stereotypical character texts in toy-hacking, thickening story texts by negotiating multiplayer ideas for plot threads in both collaborative play and digital filmmaking, and remaking film genres (e.g., music videos, game quests) in video editing. Students’ post-project reflections revealed a) children’s increased interest during elementary tutoring in filmmaking sessions with toys and b) university students’ planning considered young children’s literacy strengths, funds of knowledge (Moll, et al., 1992), and learner interests in popular media narratives and toys.
 
Significance  
Maker literacies open an opportunity to radically update teacher education, when supported by a playshop model that empowers children to collaboratively produce with digital literacies with new technologies. When pre-service teachers experience maker literacies in makerspaces, they visualize new possibilities for their teaching and see dramatic play with toys and digital technologies as engaging literacy curricula.

Authors

• Karen E. Wohlwend, Indiana University - Bloomington

• Casey Pennington, Indiana University

• Jill Scott, Indiana University - Bloomington