Story Planet

Fighting Words is a creative writing centre in Dublin run by Sean Love and Roddy Doyle – yes, the Roddy Doyle that writes such fabulous books as The Commitments, The Van and Paddy Ha, Ha, Ha and children’s books, Rover Saves Christmas and The Meanwhile Adventures.  The centre gives free creative writing workshops for 8 to 88 year olds and since opening its door in Jan of 2009 has served a staggering 6000 primary school kids, over 2000 older kids and over 2000 adults!  The passion and dedication is infectious and the fact they have 400 loyal volunteers speaks to that!  In fact, since opening, they haven’t had to do any overt recruiting or marketing – the strength of what they’re building is in the word of mouth they have built – clearly people are just talking about Fight Words, they are yelling about it.  Inspired by 826 Valencia, this is another great model that Story Planet can build upon.  Not only that, we now have a relationship we can forge ensuring that kids globally are getting locally the kind of inspired creative mentoring they so deserve.  Check it out!  www.fightingwords.ie

An African proverb:

“If you teach a boy, you educate an individual, if you teach a girl, you educate a community”

It turns out giving girls an education is not just a question of equity, its imperative if the world is going to change in any meaningful way.  Research has shown the dramatic effect teaching girls to  read and write has, specifically in  impoverished countries, in fact its the single most likely agent of positive social and economic change:

When girls’ are educated, they are more likely to earn higher wages and obtain better jobs, to have fewer and healthier children and to enjoy safer childbirth.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Message on World Population Day, 2009

So, it seems, for us to get this world to where is should be, we need to spend considerable time and energy giving girls everywhere, the kind of education that will allow them to affect change not just for themselves but for all of us.  Check out Greg Mortenson’s incredible book about his nonprofit Central Asia Institute and its goal of ensuring girls in particular have access to schools in Pakistan and Afganistan, http://www.stonesintoschools.com/

Now here’s someone, James Paul Gee, professor at the University of Wisconsin, who boldly goes where not many people talking literacy dare to go, into the world of gaming.  He speaks passionately about the need to embrace digital media (games, web) and use it not only as a tool to help develop literacy but as rich way to interact with content.  He also speaks about a “mentorship gap” between the kids that have good digital media mentors and those that do not.  As someone who straddles the world between digital media and traditional literacy, i.e books, I’ve found it challenging to embrace the world of video games for my own kids for fear they will be less creative and less able to occupy themselves without  and external stimulus.  But there is something very compelling about what Mr Gee talks about and that, together with research showing us that kids are actually learning new and important skills through technology, encourages me in some of the work we are doing at Story Planet!      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwouueYlwGo&NR=1

Check out this study by the Kaiser Family Foundation; http://www.kff.org/entmedia/mh012010pkg.cfm looking at what kids are actively engaged in when it comes to media.

One thing to think about is that kids no longer find websites from TV, in fact, it can often happens that kids come to TV because of what they’ve seen on a site.  And broadcasters have some cause for concern as the study found that viewing TV the ‘old fashioned ”  has dropped by 25 minutes per day, while  online and mobile TV viewing has risen!   And should we freak out about all this screen based viewing?  Not according to Michael Rich, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Boston who directs the Center on Media and Child Health.  He thinks  parents and educators should stop worrying about what the kids are doing and start instead to engage children where they’re at,  ‘‘like the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat” media is a natural part of the kids environment and we need to not only get used to that but embrace it too.