ST&RT With Alice: A Multimodal Literacy Experience For Science And Technology Learning

Abstract

Inanimate Alice is a multimodal narrative told across six episodes of increasing technological and literary complexity. As Alice grows from age eight to young adulthood, she lives her dream of becoming a game designer. Using her handheld digital device and developing skills, Alice creates a digital best friend, Brad, who is always ready to rush to Alice's aid as she works through the problems and challenges she encounters in her life. The Inanimate Alice series is a coming-of-age tale that leverages the possibilities of transmedia narratives to engage and immerse readers in the story as they adopt a "first-person-reader" point of view mirroring established expectations from game-play in many popular video games. Readers step into Alice's shoes, share her experiences as she travels around the globe, play the games she has created, and join her on the pathway towards becoming a game designer. This brief paper discusses the theoretical perspectives and practical implications for integrating the transmedia series, Inanimate Alice, into STEM curriculum. Public scholarship and a growing body of empirical work point to the benefits to students when Inanimate Alice is integrated into literacy and STEM classrooms. This evidence is provided against the backdrop of the global health crisis, positioning multimodal storytelling as a tool for remote learning that engages learners in subjects as diverse as physical sciences and computational thinking. This paper forwards a multi-theoretical framework appropriate for planning interdisciplinary instruction in literature and STEM.