Week 3 - Inanimate Alice

Inanimate Alice is a digital novel which combines video, text, photos, animation,and sound effects to tell the story of Alice, a young girl who lives in different places with her parents. "Designed originally as entertainment, ‘Inanimate Alice’ has been adopted by teachers eager to connect with students through media they inherently understand. Created around a high-quality robust text, the content is suitable for the deep-reading and re-reading necessary for academic investigation" (from the website).

The stories are increasingly complex, with different and more elaborate effects. The work is certainly engaging, but it seems a little slow to me. Sometimes I'd like to skip ahead, but the story needs to be followed one scene at a time. After the story has run through, it is possible to go back to previous scenes, and then forward to later ones, but one can't flip through to the end, and go backwards.

I can see how this could be used in classes as an introduction to activities where students make a similar "book" about their own lives. They could use tools that enable them to add photos or videos to a folio about themselves, their homes and their families. The stories can also be used as springboards for students own fiction. Or the teacher could pause the story and get the students to anticipate what will happen next.

The episodes are quite short, but can also be extended with games and other activities. I think these are distractions in the classroom, and could be followed up by students in their own time if they're interested. It also seems a bit like putting children in front of the television to be distracted by colour and movement.