DIGITAL NOVEL HELPS SCHOOL CHIDLREN TO CREATE MULTIMEDIA STORIES

An award-winning digital novel written by De Montfort University's Reader in Creative Writing and New Media is to help school children around the UK create their own multimedia stories.

Kate Pullinger writes the pioneering Inanimate Alice interactive story which is available free of charge online and has just launched the latest episode called ‘Hometown'. See: http://www.inanimatealice.com

The UK government body, the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, has licensed a software tool, iStori.es, which Kate and her colleagues developed to help children write their own multimedia stories.

iStories is available to schools from https://secure.ssatrust.org.uk/eshop/default.aspx?mcid=25&scid=46

Kate said: "iStories is innovative and very simple to use. It's a digital literacy tool which allows students to combine music, pictures and texts to create their own stories. Many sound and picture resources are supplied and others can easily be imported. It can be used in any story telling context."

An education pack has also been created by De Montfort University's (DMU) New Media Researcher, Jess Laccetti, to accompany the series. Educators can download this free resource at http://www.inanimatealice.com/education .

Inanimate Alice is written and directed by writer Kate, who as well as writing novels and short stories teaches for the pioneering online Masters degree in Creative Writing and New Media at DMU, and digital artist Chris Joseph, Digital Writer in Residence at DMU's Institute of Creative Technologies. It is a series of multimedia, interactive episodes which use a combination of text, sound, images, and games as Alice takes readers/players on a journey through her life from the age of eight through to her twenties.

Alice becomes a games animator; a creator of characters for the most successful games company in the world. The episodes become increasingly interactive and game-like, reflecting Alice's own developing skills as a game designer and animator.

As well as other awards, Inanimate Alice was recently nominated in the category of Interactive Productions at the 2008 Learning On Screen awards, which are given each year by BUFVC, the British Universities Film and Video Council. It was the only independent production in that category - every single other production nominated was an in-house BBC production.

Inanimate Alice is also being showcased in a range of European languages on a new EU website to promote intercultural dialogue (http://www.interculturaldialogue2008.eu) as part of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue.

ENDS

Notes for Editors:
For further information or to arrange an interview with Kate Pullinger please contact De Montfort University Press Office 0116 2577021.