Comics, manga and teen culture

I have been reading a lot about comics recently. I didn't grow up with comics (Dorset had no comic shops) but my wife's media consumption is heavily cult - Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Sin City, V for Vendetta, Alan Moore, Frank Miller etc etc.

Through this she has gotten into comics and graphic novels, and I guess some of it has rubbed off by osmosis.

In Wednesday's Guardian, there was an article about female figures in comics, and in the comic scene. There is a definite move away from the "male fantasy" figures of Wonder Woman and the "expendable reason for revenge" roles for helpless women in distress, which is all good stuff.

The thing that really caught my eye, however, was Plain Janes - a graphic novel (by a woman) aimed at a female teen audience. The story concerns a group of girls at a school in suburbia carrying out "guerilla" art projects in their neighbourhood as a way of making their surroundings more interesting. Plain stands for "People Loving Art In Neighbourhoods". We then see the reactions of the people around the area - both good and bad. I have yet to read more than the free pages on the Minx website, but the Guardian journalist described it as "genuinely inspiring" -so I plan to get the book!

There was also a quote from 15 year old Londoner Louise Carey: "If you can draw manga now it's considered really cool in my secondary school. People who can draw in a manga style are sought after for decorating posters and designing things - the characters with the big eyes, and the hair that's all spiky and stylised. People love that."

The manga theme resurfaced in an old copy of Wired magazine (Nov 07). Wired is an American import magazine which I read obsessively every month. They did a whole issue on Manga, including the history of it in the USA and Japan. The link is a great read (but be aware you read it right to left in traditional manga style!) and explains loads of the technical details (flopped Vs unflopped, the different genres (shojo, shonen and seinen) etc)

There was also an article about the "fan fiction" and self publishing (dojinshi) surrounding manga in Japan. Imagine an exhibition at Olympia or Earls court, filled with people selling their own stories - around 300,000 books at a single exhibition - which use characters from existing comics. It is like me writing and selling a Simpsons comic, and not paying anyone to use the characters. Matt Groening's lawyers would be on me like a shot! But dojinshi is huge in Japan, and is allowed to continue. The publishers view is that the fan fiction actually creates a demand for, and promotes, the original titles.

So what has this comic and manga rant got to do with Walking to School?

1. I think comics and similar graphical styles could be a great way of reaching teen audiences (at least some of them!) - here are some other "educational" examples.
   
2. The lines between "author" and "reader" are now blurred by the prescence of MEdia (everyone can create their own media - which will often reference existing material)
   
3. Looking at the dojinshi provides the Manga publishers with market researchers - the biggest fans are also the ones that are writing their own material. What they think is hot, is likely to be mainstream hot in a short while.

Gaming in the UK amongst 11-15 year olds

Flicking through the BBC's Gamers in the UK research, I was struck by how little the sustainable school travel sector are using games as a way of encouraging walking and cycling to school.

STAT ATTACK!!!!*:

• 97% of teens (11-15 year olds) are regular gamers - with 56% of those gamers playing every day, and 98% playing at least once a week.
• 45% agreed they get greater enjoyment out of gaming than any other entertainment form!
• While they tend to opt for consoles first (PS2 - see *), PCs are still a second place with mobile gaming third.
• 63% of the group enjoyed puzzle/board games/quizzes - the biggest group of any gaming genre.

The whole document is well worth a read.

* The only downside to this research is that it was commissioned in 2005. Since then we have had the rise of myspace/bebo/facebook et al, and also the third generation (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii) of computer games. These will have had an effect, the question is what. I think it is still fair to say that electronic media (and gaming) is still important to them!

Reward schemes - what we can learn from Cafe Nero

I just read an interesting scientific paper article about reward schemes: basically the closer people are to earning a reward, the harder they try.

The example given is for coffee - buy 10 cups and get one free. As people get closer to their free cup of coffee, they speed up how often they buy coffee!

This is probably relevant to the WoW (Walk once a week scheme) too - the closer they are to earning the badge, the more likely they are to walk!

The really interesting bit was when they changed the system to make people think they were closer to the reward. Rather than "collect 10 stamps to earn a free coffee", they said "collect 12 stamps to collect a free coffee - but here are two stamps for free". Although the collectors were the same distance to their coffee (10 stamps), they acted as if they were closer to earning their reward!

SO, we could tweak WoW by giving free "WoW ticks" while simultaneously making the reward harder to earn.

What have I been up to this week?

This week I have been mostly...running around like a blue arsed fly. I started the new job on Monday, but, because there is no-one to do the old job (primary school Walk to School) yet, I have been trying to keep that ticking over too.

On Wednesday we ran some training in London for School Travel Advisors from the East and South East of England on "school walkability audits". This is where we go out with a group of parents and children and analyse a popular route to school in depth. They look for all the things that are nice, and not so nice, on the streets and we, as facilitators, log their comments and report back. I was running one of the groups, and it always impresses me (having been on these sessions before) how different people react to them.

One of the biggest challenges in the area we were looking at (near moorfields eye hospital) was the amount of "stuff" on the street - A boards, bins, motorbikes etc. There was also a lot of street furniture (lamp posts, phone boxes etc). We are so used to walking round them we often don't think "does this really have to be here?".

On Thursday I thought I'd just "pop in" to BETT, - the education technology show at Olympia. Five hours later I managed to leave - knackered but very inspired. The show is free, so if you get the chance to go, do! I met some very inspiring people - the guys who run infomapper.com were there (it lets you plot routes to school on an online ordnance survey map, then share the results), as well as truetube.co.uk - a sort of moderated documentary Youtube but with debates for schools - really cool!

I was also chatting with the sales guys from Quark (a desktop design and layout package) and Adobe (who make Photoshop) about how I might be able to use their products to work with schools.

Finally, just before I left, I went to a really good session about the use of gaming in education. There were four members on the panel:

• Derek Robertson from Learning and Teaching Scotland who went into schools with DS's to get the pupils to analyse the games - for instance learning about forensics from Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney!
• Alice Taylor from Channel 4 who (I believe) are going to not be making any more "schools programming" for TV, but are (instead) going to be investing in educational games. Although most of their output has been/is through web based games, they are also looking at delivery through Xbox live, and the other online gaming platforms. She has moved to C4 from the BBC where she carried out research into gamers and their media habits.
• Gobion Rowlands (an educational games developer). He pointed out the role that teachers have in games - most of them are not gamers, and don't like being shown up by the pupils! As someone who once showed his history teacher how to use a fax machine (the teacher thought the piece of paper physically went into the phone line, and was perturbed when it kept coming out!), I know where he was coming from!
• Aleks Grotowski. She is a journalist and researcher (she is also working on a PHD) who had some very interesting things to say about the role of computer games, and play more generally, in talking with teens. You can see her blog, admire her hair, and read her take on the session here:

I have also been ill - snotty and horrible! I blame the teachers I bumped into at BETT!

My First Post!

Hello. Is there anybody there?


Probably not! Seeing as no-one knows I am here yet. That's OK though - I have to start somewhere.


My idea is that, by documenting the development of our new Walk to Secondary School campaign online, people can get a feel for where it is heading and - more importantly - help me to make it better.


It also gives me a chance to play with some ideas before I actually spend money on them! So wish me luck!


Andrew