When Marlene Kane’s sixteen-year-old son Andrew asked her to drive him to the nearby town of Midland last December, she was surprised to hear that he wanted to meet with someone he had met while playing the online game World of Warcraft – and even more surprised to learn that the person he was meeting was a 42-year-old mother of four from Texas. Experts on sexual solicitation of youth online were less shocked however. In fact, for them the only surprising thing was Lauri Price’s sex. Everything else about the scenario – how they made contact, Price’s openness about her age, Andrew’s willingness to meet her, and the lack of deception about her intentions – all fit the evolving picture of how youth are sexually exploited online.

All of this contrasts with the popular image of an “Internet predator,” which over the years has been built up to be similar to the monster in the movie Alien: a pedophile, most likely a man in his forties, who conceals himself within a false Internet identity and uses it to win the trust of a young girl, leading up to an offline meeting which ends in an abduction and rape. Recent research, however – particularly work done by Janis Wolak, David Finkelhor, and Kimberly J. Mitchell of the Crimes against Children Research Center and Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire and by Michele L. Ybarra of the organization Internet Solutions for Kids – has shown that this picture is almost entirely false.

To begin with, the research has shown that social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook are not any more dangerous than other online environments. In fact, the only online environment that does correlate to receiving sexual solicitations is chat rooms, and in general online sex offenders rely on tools such as e-mail and instant messaging (IM) to develop relationships with their victims. What these technologies have in common is that they are immediate and intimate – chatrooms and IM, in particular, mimic a live conversation. In this way we might see the movement of youth away from chatrooms to social networking sites as an improvement in terms of their safety from online sexual solicitation. Although the research available does not specifically consider online games as a means of communication, their chat systems resemble chat rooms and IM, in that conversations are carried out in real time and there are relatively few barriers to contacting someone – you can chat with anyone who is on the same “channel,” and channels are generally public.

While it was once thought that posting personal information online was a particularly dangerous activity, the research has shown that it does not, by itself, increase the risk of receiving sexual solicitations. Instead, it is one of a number of behaviours that may be considered risky. The more of these behaviours a youth engages in, the greater the risk of receiving sexual solicitations. In addition to posting personal information, behaviours identified as being risky are include sending personal information to people not known to you, interacting online with people you don’t know, having unknown people on a “buddy” or contact list, talking to unknown people online about sex, seeking out online pornography, being rude or aggressive towards others online, using the Internet to embarrass or harass others, and downloading images from file-sharing programs. It’s important to note that these behaviours are associated with receiving sexual solicitations online, not necessarily the cause of it. Rather, the evidence suggests that engaging in four or more of these behaviours is associated with a general risk-taking attitude that increases the risk that a youth will receive and respond to online solicitations: research has shown that the same youth are risk offline as online. Although we don’t have a full picture of Andrew Kane’s online behaviour, it’s clear that he had engaged in at least two of these behaviours: sending personal information to someone he only knew online and talking about sex online. Like the vast majority of reported victims, he went willingly to his offline meeting: only one of all the cases in the American study involved an abduction, and only one in twenty involved forced sex. (Investigators have remarked that victims often remain loyal to offenders even after the relationship has been brought to light, which can make prosecutions difficult.)

The most unusual thing about the case was the sex genders of the two people involved: nearly all (99%) of those who solicit sex online are male, and 79% of victims are girls; of the 21% who are boys, most are gay or are questioning their sexuality. At 42, her Lauri Price’s age was somewhat unusual: while American research has shown that 60% of offenders are over 25, recent Canadian data found that only about 35% of those accused of “child luring” were over 35. Aside from those, however, Lauri Price was fairly typical of those who solicit sex from youth online. To begin with she was white, as are 84% of online predators; as well, she had no history of violence (like 95% of predators) or prior arrests (79% of offenders studied had no prior record of non-sexual crimes, although unlike Price some did have records of sexual offences.) Most importantly, Price was absolutely typical in that she did not disguise either her identity or her intentions: 80% of offenders are open about their age and 85% make clear their interest in sex with the victim. Moreover Andrew Kane, at 16, was a fairly typical victim: 99% of victims studied were between 13 and 17 years old, and none were younger than 12.

In order to protect young people online we need to understand – and to make them understand – what we are protecting them from. To begin with, we have to be aware that not all children are equally at risk: certain behaviours, such as seeking out sexual material or talking about sex online, and certain other factors, such as being female, being gay or questioning one’s sexuality, or having previously been abused sexually, substantially increase the risk of receiving and responding to online sexual solicitations. As well, we must recognize that offenders do not generally disguise their identities or their intentions but openly attempt to position themselves as potential sexual partners. In a way, the term “predator” is more accurate than we knew: like predators in the animal kingdom, they target the most vulnerable – those young people who are prone to taking risks, particularly in their sexual behaviour; those who are insecure or confused about their sexuality; and those who have already been wounded. Armed with this information, we can learn to watch for warning signs and risky behaviours in our children, we can be candid with them about the kinds of behaviours and material they may encounter online, and we can teach them about the realities of how adults can exploit young people’s inexperience, insecurity and developing sexuality.

MNet Resources

For Teachers

The Safe Passage section on our Web site contains essential tips for teachers on how to teach kids to enjoy the benefits of the Internet while recognizing its potential risks. Many schools, school boards and provinces have also licensed the Web Awareness Workshop series, which includes a workshop version of Safe Passage that covers the same material in greater detail and provides handouts and worksheets.

For Parents

Resources for parents can be found on our recently updated Be Web Aware site, which covers a broad range of topics including online safety and risk-taking. Parents also have their own version of the Safe Passage section of our Web site. Many community groups have also licensed our Parenting the Net Generation workshop which covers many of the issues that arise when young people go online.

This review has been written by Barry Duncan, an award-winning teacher, author, consultant and founder and past president of the Ontario-based Association for Media Literacy.

Mapping Media Education Policies in the World: Visions, Programs and Challenges, Frau-Meigs and Jordi Torrent eds. The United Nations Alliance of Civilization for UNESCO, 2009

This collection of articles on media education around the world will fulfill an important need: informing us of the struggle to critically understand the global implications of media education.

Few will read this entire collection, but it is worthwhile dipping into a cross section of the articles. Media educators from the developed and developing worlds offer testimony to the enormous difficulties in developing suitable school curriculum. Some of the reports include those from countries such as Canada (Carolyn Wilson and Barry Duncan, both of the Association for Media Literacy, contribute chapters; Carolyn is a member of the UNESCO commission), the United States, Turkey, Spain, the United Kingdom, Zambia, Morocco, India, Egypt and Ghana.

The last section deals with action plans, youth voices, and civic engagement.  The editors write: “It is UNESCO’s hope that the information and knowledge contained in this collection will inspire readers to take action that is informed by expert knowledge.” The United Nations Alliance for Civilization, which commissioned this document, will be making recommendations for implementing best practices in media education. It is fortunate that the commission has made such a good start in making the case for the importance of media education in school curriculum and beyond.

Media Literacy is Elementary: Teaching Youth to Critically Read and Create Media, Jeff Share. Peter Lang, 2009.

Jeff Share worked for Liz Thoman of the Centre for Media Literacy, did his doctorate under Douglas Kellner (a cultural studies guru at UCLA), observed an impressive critical literacy program in some elementary schools and piloted some innovative curriculum. The book reflects all these experiences and offers us some exemplary curriculum.

I like the tough minded, transformative critical pedagogy found throughout, accessing the work of social and media radicals such as Henry Giroux, Paulo Freire, Len Masterman and Robert Ferguson. The book serves in effect as an activist’s guide for media literacy, acknowledging the necessity of social justice and an engaged citizenry. The definition of media literacy as “critical media literacy” (see the work of Peter McLaren for a fuller exploration of this distinction) will make some educators who would prefer bland and depoliticized material wince, but for those who embrace the concept this is an invaluable book.

A Guide to Effective Literacy Instruction, Grades 4-6: Vol. 7, Media Literacy. Ontario Ministry of Education, 2008. 

As school curriculum evolves, new guidelines are created and teachers look for guidance and concrete ideas for their classroom. This new Ontario Ministry of Education Media Literacy Resource will provide significant help, especially for elementary teachers who are new to the game.
(Print copies of this document are scarce; you can access it electronically at here.)

 Using the "media triangle" and the five key concepts of media literacy, the guide provides teachers with a coherent framework to apply to media texts.  There are detailed lesson plans on topics such as creating public service announcements, constructing a Web site and organizing promotions for feature films, all of which will serve as exemplary models. The charts and rubrics will also be welcome. 

My only reservation with the document comes as no surprise: government documents avoid controversy, ideological, values and oppositional activities, which foster social justice. (It is unfortunate that after initial work by the writing team there were no consultations. When will the Ministry come down from its lofty perch and allow stake holders a needed voice?) Despite this one lacuna, congratulations are due to the writing team for their work in creating such a helpful document.

The Struggle for Literacy, Irving Lee Rother. Detsilig Enterprises, 2008.

There are equally positive and negative dimensions in the book by Lee Rother, a Montreal teacher and media educator whose book draws heavily on the program he devised for difficult-to-serve students at the Alternative Career Education Program at Lake of Two Mountains School in Deux Montagnes, Quebec.  The material connected with this project is fresh and his students’ comments demonstrate real growth through the dynamic new ways Rother presents of presenting literature, the students' creativity and the social and cultural values of media studies.

The book has some weaknesses. To begin with, it needs a more specific title, or at least a subtitle, to make its subject matter more clear. As well, when Rother charts the development of the teaching of English he focuses primarily in the United States and the UK, touching on such seminal events as the 1963 Dartmouth conference and the work of the National Council of Teachers of English; except for models for media studies none of his examples are Canadian, and in particular there is no reference to the important work of Marshall McLuhan. As well, there are some simple errors of fact that an editor should have caught: in one unfortunate philosophical comparison, for instance, the views of media gurus David Buckingham and Len Masterman are reversed.

Finally, many media teachers are now encouraged to engage multiple literacies and critical pedagogies, both of which are given short shrift in this book. With too many irons in the fire, The Struggle for Literacy is perhaps too ambitious. Read selectively, however, it will be useful to English teachers who also teach media.

Rethinking Technology in Schools, Vanessa Elaine Domine. Peter Lang, 2009

A PhD in media ecology and an avid media educator, Vanessa Domine brings excellent credentials to the task of rethinking technology in schools. This book challenges the reader to critically and conscientiously investigate new media and communication technology. We should be grateful that media education is a major part of this book and others to be published soon. We have nothing to fear except a proliferation.

On November 5, MNet Media Education Specialist Matthew Johnson participated in the Association of Canadian Studies' conference Knowing Ourselves: The Challenge of Teaching History of Canadian Official Minority Language Communities, speaking on the topic Media, Diversity and Our History. What follows is an expanded version of his remarks.

Is media education relevant to teaching history?

The connection between history and media education may not be an obvious one. Mass media are, after all, a modern phenomenon, and when media is discussed in most history courses it's almost always in the context of the meaning or significance of particular media products. But media studies aren't just about media products: it’s about how different media shape how we think and how we see the world.

To begin with, students see the world through media. If they have any prior knowledge of history, it likely comes from movies or TV – and we have to be aware of the ways that affects how they see history. Not just the factual errors and misconceptions found in movies on historical subjects, though there are certainly plenty of those, but the assumptions and implications that come with a medium and genre. For instance, you'll never see a historical film that tries to communicate how people in the past thought or saw the world differently than we do. You couldn't possibly understand the Middle Ages, or Ancient Greece, without having some knowledge of their mindset -- but when those periods are portrayed in the mass media the characters are fundamentally modern people with funny clothes. This isn't just a consequence of bad filmmaking, it's a consequence of commercial filmmaking as a genre and a medium: to be successful a movie has to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, and having characters with motivations and thought processes that are difficult to understand is going to make that more difficult. (So it is that we wind up with freedom-loving, non-pedophilic Spartans in movies like 300.) This is where media education can help students ask the critical questions needed to challenge and contextualize historical depictions such as these.

We frequently use media products to teach history, and not just movies and TV shows. Another medium that we deal with in history, especially at the secondary level, is the textbook. These, too, we tend to take for granted, but as with other media, they reflect their medium and genre. If students are going to not just memorize facts but actually do history, they need to learn to read textbooks as a media product and not just a text.

Most importantly, in a very real way history is media study. As historians we look at media products -- the primary sources on which history is built -- and ask questions like Who wrote this? What purpose did it serve? In what context was it written? Is there any reason to believe it's misleading or biased? What's missing from the story it tells? These are, in fact, all essential media studies questions. For most of history, the sources that have reached us are those that were written down, copied and preserved: each of these has a significance that may not be immediately obvious today. When literacy was rare, to make a written document had a significant cost; so, too, did copying a document before the invention of the printing press. These facts mean that a primary document isn't simply a neutral record: it embodies a power structure, an economic system and a point of view. It is not unusual for us to question the role of media -- such as radio, television and the Internet – in shaping our perceptions of modern history. The same scrutiny needs to be given to the primary documents from which we form our understanding of the past.

How can history teachers integrate media education into their classrooms?

Teachers do not have to be media experts to bring a media education approach to their practice. Media education is fundamentally about asking the right questions, not knowing the right answers, and we can draw those questions from five key media literacy concepts:
 
Media are constructions. Media products don't just come into existence: they are created by human beings. They have a purpose and are made with particular forms and techniques. Teachers can have their students consider the decisions that were made in creating a media product as well as the factors that influenced its production. Consider, for instance, the Lawrence Olivier version of Henry V: how did its purpose (to inspire the British public) affect its content? What were the effects of the circumstances of its production (it was made during the German attacks on England, at a time when there was fear of a full-scale invasion)? Compare the climactic Agincourt scene to the same scene in the Kenneth Branagh version. How does the same essential content communicate very different meanings in the two texts?

Audiences negotiate meaning. The meaning of a media product is not static: it is created in collaboration with the audience, and different audiences interpret media differently. This is why to fully understand the effects of stereotyping and absent voices we have to try to see things from the perspective of those affected. Take, for instance, the famous painting of the Death of Wolfe, which is often presented in textbooks as the moment when Canada was born -- in English-language textbooks, at least:

How would a francophone student interpret this image differently? Look at the Native character to Wolfe's left -- how would a Native student view this painting? How would an African-Canadian student feel about being portrayed as absent from the "birth of Canada"? Consider, too, that we are not the painting's original audience: we are different from those who first saw it in the 18th Century, those who canonized it in the 19th, or those who enshrined it in textbooks in the 20th Century.
 
Media have commercial implications. Few media products are created without some economic considerations. Most of the media products we use in classrooms are created to make money, and that affects how they are made. Even the most faithful historical movie has to follow the “Hollywood format”: consider how the very bleak, chaotic and realistic opening scene of Saving Private Ryan is followed by a much more standard action-adventure film that rewards audiences in a more comfortable and familiar way. As far back as Herodotus history has been written as entertainment, and this shapes our study of it.

Textbooks have commercial implications too: students should find out who at their school or school board makes the decision about which textbook to buy, and consider how that might have influenced what was left in and left out. James W. Loewen's excellent book Lies My Teacher Told Me examines just this question, and while the textbooks we use may not be as egregious as some of the examples he cites (such as a history of Mississippi that did not mention a single African-American), some of the reasons he identifies for why particular facts are included or left out of textbooks may be more familiar (for instance, U.S. history textbooks must devote space to Chester A. Arthur -- an entirely forgettable president -- if they hope to sell copies in Vermont, his home state.)

Even if they are not intended to make money media products cost money to create, copy and preserve, and that influences the content -- it's a big reason why the history of the rich and powerful comes to us from media products like documents, paintings and tapestries while we largely have to recreate the history of the lower classes from physical evidence.

Values and ideological messages underpin all media.  Even if media products are not created to promote a particular agenda -- as nearly all primary sources, and most textbooks, were -- the cultural values and assumptions of their creators are inevitably reflected in the text. This can be a difficult concept for students to grasp for the same reason that fish don't know they're in water; most often, the assumptions found in the media works we consume are the same assumptions we ourselves hold. It takes an intentional change of perspective in order to even recognize that we have these assumptions, never mind challenging them.

Consider, for instance, the cover of this Canadian history textbook for Grades 3-8. Not that it's precisely inaccurate (though I don't think any coastal Native peoples wore feather headdresses of this type), but by its selection of this image it glosses over the fact that most of the Native peoples that the early Canadian settlers dealt with, such as the Iroquois and the Huron, were settled, agricultural societies. Undoubtedly neither the author, illustrator nor publisher had any intention of demeaning or misrepresenting Natives; it is the fact that this familiar image went entirely unquestioned that shows how important it is to consider the assumptions and values that lie behind each media product. (This textbook was published in 2002, by the way.)

Each medium has a unique aesthetic form. The medium in which history is written or told influences its meaning. A history textbook will follow different codes and conventions than a movie, or a comic book. These conventions can have a significant effect on the meaning we take from a text. For example, consider this photo of the Charlottetown Conference:

The posed quality of 19th Century photos, as well as the lack of colour, contribute to a received meaning of the event as being sober and serious -- one that’s entirely at odds with the fact that everyone in this picture was hung over when it was taken.

Textbooks, too, have their own aesthetic form. Nearly all are locked into a strict chronological format; not an unnatural choice for history, but also not always the best way to discuss or explain complex processes and events. Textbooks have a number of genre conventions as well: James Loewen has pointed out that textbooks rely heavily on the passive voice -- "chaos seems always to be breaking out or about to break out" -- obscuring the genuine causes (and the debate that surrounds possible causes) of events.
 
MNet Resources

Teachers wanting to bring a media education approach to their history classrooms can get started with some of MNet's resources. To begin with, the presentation Media Education: Make It Happen,  available as both a booklet and a slideshow, covers the media education content of this blog in more detail. Several of the lessons in MNet's Lesson Library deal with these topics as well: for instance "Hurricane Katrina and the 'Two-Photo Controversy'" examines how in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, media coverage -- the first draft of history -- reflected the bias and assumptions of the mainstream media. The lesson "Suffragettes and Iron Ladies"  examines how both history and new media reflect bias in their coverage of female politicians. For a broader examination of these issues, teachers can consult our Media Issues section on Stereotyping. Finally, to help students understand the potentially touchy subjects of prejudice, bias and misinformation, teachers can use the educational game Allies and Aliens which addresses these issues through a science-fiction metaphor.

Larry Gonick is a pioneer of non-fiction cartooning; starting with Blood From A Stone: A Cartoon Guide to Tax Reform in 1971, he has made a career out of explaining complicated topics in comic format. In 1978 he published the first issue of The Cartoon History of the Universe as a comic book, starting with the Big Bang and ending with the evolution of humanity. Issues of that series were collected first in 1982 and again in 1990; later two sequels appeared, The Cartoon History of the Universe II and III, and in 2007 the series continued as The Cartoon History of the Modern World. With the second volume of that series, published this fall, Gonick brings his history up to late 2008. Throughout the series Gonick has consistently made history entertaining and approachable as well as accurate (each volume ends with an annotated bibliography) and has shed light on the history of often-neglected parts of the world such as China, India and pre-Columbian America. Among his other works are The Cartoon History of the United States and the Cartoon Guide series, which provide grounding in topics ranging from physics to communication theory to sex; his works have been among the most influential in bringing comics into the classroom. 

MNet. Why do you say the Cartoon History series is "history as it really happened -- in cartoon format"? What makes cartoons a good medium to write about history?

Gonick. When I first said that, I was probably being half glib, but over time I've come to see how much truth there is in that tossed-off line. Cartoons can put badly-needed life back into history. There's no getting around it: historical figures are mostly dead. And traditional textbooks mostly leave them that way. It's hard to sympathize with these historical zombies, to really feel all the passion, thought, conviction, bravery, fear, and, yes, confusion and uncertainty that they experienced. Comics can restore our identification with past actors as living, feeling beings like ourselves, who were as ignorant of their own future as we are of our own. (I say "can" restore, because the comics medium can be misused in the service of history, too. I'm thinking of various history comics where all the characters are idealized jut-jawed types, and everything is rendered in sepia tones. I don't think the past was really sepia!)

In addition, the immense number of drawings in a cartoon history provides an opportunity to deliver a wealth of historical graphic detail such as costumes, landscape, and architecture that isn't readily conveyed in text or even a normal illustrated book. The scene becomes part of the narrative in comics.
 
How did the cartoon medium influence the content of the series? What aspects of history were easier or more difficult to portray in cartoons?

Generally speaking, it's easier to tell stories than to render descriptions or (especially) to explain abstract ideas. But the medium is flexible. The balance of words and images can be adjusted, and they can play off against each other in unexpected ways. In my account of Mecca in Muhammad's day, for example, I wrote a series of narrative blocks that gave an account of its social structure and development—not easy to convey graphically—and superimposed them on images of its empty streets—empty because at the moment the story opens, the town had been evacuated in response to an Ethiopian invasion. Abstract ideas can also be particularized and conveyed through story. And when it comes to story, it's easier to do them when the number of characters is small. Those crowd scenes take a long time to draw! Maybe that's why I've always been more attracted to beginnings, to origins: they are less complicated, provide more degrees of freedom, and fewer actors.
 
Why do you think cartoons have remained such a popular art form and medium throughout history?

It's a bit mysterious, isn't it? My old Pogo collections have fallen apart from repeated reading. As far as I know, comics is the only medium that brings a reader back again and again to the same piece, 20, 50, 100 times. There's just something seductive about that rhythmic combination of words and images. I don't know what it is exactly. Something can strike you funny again and again. Music is the only other art I can think of that repays repetition to this extent.
 
You were one of the first people to work with nonfiction subjects in cartoons. What led you to go into nonfiction cartoons?

When I started doing this—as a grad student in math, many years ago—I had no faith in the staying power of my own imagination. I would never have become a cartoonist if I had to rely on it. At the time, nonfiction appeared to guarantee an unending supply of material. And this has proved to be true.
 
How has your approach to cartooning changed since the beginning of your career? What made it change?

Very little. Not enough, maybe. I've worked hard to improve the composition of my images and pages, and to tighten up my drawing a bit. But I'm afraid the strain of overstated vulgarity that I started with is still in evidence.
 
Over its run, Cartoon History has gone from being an underground comic to being carried by a major international publisher. How has the field of non-fiction cartooning changed since you began doing the Cartoon History, both in terms of the art and the business?

Obviously, the long-form comic book, or "graphic novel," has gained some measure of respectability over the past couple of decades. My entry into aboveground publishing came in the 1980s, before the recent boom, and I suppose I'm one of the first to do this kind of work and see it distributed through bookstores as much as, if not more than, through the old comics distribution channel. Since then the business has increased immensely in aggregate.

I'm not sure how much this has affected my reception, though. I seem to be chugging along steadily, regardless. By and large, I feel as if I occupy a parallel or maybe orthogonal universe to most modern comics publishing. All of us serial graphicists clearly inhabit the same medium; we share the same narrative and graphic conventions, we cut the page into panels, etc. But so much that comes out now is just grim: so many stories of unhappy childhoods in dysfunctional families. It's as if someone decided that comics had to be deadly serious to be respectable. This may be true, but give me humour any day!
 
What are some of the biggest challenges in non-fiction cartooning? What are the parts you most enjoy?

By far the biggest challenge is fitting the material into the space. First drafts are never less than twice too long. I do repeated, relentless winnowing to find the essentials in the midst of all the extraneous chaff. This is not fun, especially writing the first draft, when you just know you're going on and on but can't help yourself. The fun parts are in the research; finding wonderful stories and original ideas; in the writing, the final draft, when so much becomes clear; in the drawing, making a really good one, or a good sequence that tells the story well.
 
Who were your favourite characters over the course of the Cartoon History? Who was the most fun to draw, and why?

So many... starting with the reptiles. Yes, reptiles are definitely the most fun. They lack that strain of complex deviousness you see in people, and they're not always making things with a lot of right-angled edges that are so hard to draw. Among humans, I've always been attracted to those with an enlightened outlook in one form or another. The Buddha. Moses. Jesus. Gandhi. I'd say Muhammad, but I never drew him—he stayed off-camera the whole book. Political figures of that ilk included Liu Pang, founder of the Chinese Han Dynasty, and William of Orange, the Silent, who led the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain and established a country where you could think and write what you liked. Also the great scientists. And speaking of complex deviousness, I suppose the villainous ones can be fun, too. The most recent major player of that lot was Philip II of Spain, who bankrupted his country by battling "evil," i.e., Protestants. I also like the ambivalent ones, who combine idealism with impossible ambition, like Bolívar.
 
What part of Cartoon History are you most proud of? What were you most interested to learn in your research?

I've always felt that the very first volume, The Evolution of Everything, was a high point. Many of its attitudes and modes of presentation have found their way into the standard curriculum since it first came out. As for what I was most interested to learn... oh, boy, there's so much. I wouldn't know where to start. One major item would be the central role of that strait between Europe and Asia known as the Hellespont. It never ceases to amaze me that Medieval European history is taught with only minimal reference to the Byzantine Empire, or that early modern history gives so little coverage to the Turks.
 
Who were some of your influences, both as a cartoonist and a historian? What other cartoonists and writers do you enjoy reading today?

Cartoonists: [George] Herriman (Krazy Kat),  [Walt] Kelly (Pogo), [Harvey] Kurtzman/[Will] Elder/[Wally] Wood (Mad), [Carl] Barks (Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge), [John] Stanley (Little Lulu), Rius [pen name of Eduardo del Rio] (the Mexican cartoonist who founded the genre I work in), Lat [pen name of Mohd Nor bin Khalid] (a Malay cartoonist who has done an extraordinary 2-volume autobiography, among other things), [Gilbert] Shelton (Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers), [Robert] Crumb. Today I mostly read newspaper comics like Dilbert and For Better or For Worse, and a number of webcomics, which I think is an especially exciting area right now.

Historians: I don't know who's an influence in terms of narrative style, but I'm partial to several: Herodotus (maybe my closest model), Ssu-ma Chien (the "Herodotus of China"), [Edward] Gibbon, [Joseph] Needham (Science and Civilization in China), [Barbara] Tuchman, [John Julius] Norwich, and several others who have written magisterial books on one subject or another. Names are escaping me at the moment. Most recently, I've loved Simon Schama's Rough Crossings, about the slaves freed by the British during the American Revolution and what became of them.
 
You were one of the first cartoonists to experiment with interactive comics with the Cartoon History CD-ROM. How have interactive media changed how you work, either from a creative or a business perspective? What do you think about the emergence of webcomics?

Unfortunately, interactive media haven't changed my work nearly enough. The CD-ROM (thanks for remembering!) is pretty much dead. The web is a great publishing platform, but the comics are still a one-way preachment from the creator to the audience. I'm quite taken with several of them, as well as with the fact that so many are done in black and white.  I'd love to take advantage of the computer's potential, but we're still in the infancy of the medium. Maybe I ought to spend more time on Second Life, but my First Life seems to eat up the day.
 
How much take-up has there been of Cartoon History in classrooms? What do you know about how teachers are using it? How would you hope it would be used in schools?

I don't have statistics on this. Teachers do use it. Here in the US, textbooks are adopted on a state-wide basis, and I can't see that happening to the Cartoon History. It's not, em, what's the word, restrained enough. I suppose that sympathetic teachers keep a few copies around and lend them out to students. I've heard from teachers who use them to motivate students to like history; and also from teachers who share them with students who are already motivated and want some extra perspective. And I've heard from plenty of teachers—had an email just this morning—who say that the Cartoon Histories steered them into history in the first place. Today's quote was typical: "thanks to you, I got a 5 on my AP exam in high school."
 
Teachers are increasingly bringing comics into schools, both for students to read and to create. What do you think comics can bring to the classroom that other media can’t? How would you want to use comics if you were a classroom educator? Are there any mistakes you think teachers might be making in using comics?

Complicated question, and I probably can't give a coherent answer in a short space. Let's just say that I regard comics as a medium among other media and not as the illegitimate child of "real" books and illustration. One question we might ask ourselves is, how come it's OK for a teacher to be funny, but it's not OK for a textbook to be funny?

Regarding comics created by students, I always offer the same advice: leave room for the words! Don't try to squeeze them in around the drawing. The blocks of text are separate graphic elements on their own.
 
How do you choose topics for your Cartoon Guide series, and how do you pick collaborators? How does the cartoon format influence how you communicate the content of each subject and how does the subject influence how you tell the "story"?

Topics for the Cartoon Guides, which are all science books, were chosen with an eye to maximum course enrolment. Rather than do The Cartoon Guide to Relativity (which my coauthor, Art Huffman, originally proposed), the publisher, Harper & Row (now HarperCollins), asked for The Cartoon Guide to Physics. Collaborators have come from several directions: some with unsolicited proposals, others through recommendation, etc. In every case, the collaborator has had two essential qualities: expertise and almost always an academic appointment in the field, and the willingness to spew out text on demand.

The cartoon format very much influences the presentation. The unit of information in comics is the page, or the double-page spread. No paragraphs running past the bottom for us! Within each page, information is organized, to the extent possible, as a story that comes to a climax (or sometimes a quiet denouement) when it reaches the lower right-hand corner. I think this is one of the hidden strengths of the medium: graphics aside, it demands a story-like narrative, which, in my opinion, is how we learn most readily.

But of course, we don't really put the graphics aside. Designing pages and information structure is an art that requires the creator to consider weight, texture, pacing, and clarity of illustration. The comics medium affords the artist tremendous flexibility. I can "waste" a page with a single panel, either to emphasize something powerfully (it might even be a small illustration surrounded by a lot of white space), or to show a complicated illustration requiring much explanation. I could cite many other patterns of images and words. The choice is governed by the fundamental question: is this the most effective way to convey the information? In the end, that's the overriding consideration.

On Saturday, September 26, 2009, the US network Nickelodeon did something unusual: it switched itself off. This was in observance of the "Worldwide Day of Play," an event Nickelodeon inaugurated in 2004. The network -- along with its sister channels Noggin, the N, and Nicktoons, and their associated Web sites -- went dark for three hours to encourage its young viewers to "ride a bike, do a dance, kick a ball, skate a board, jump a rope, swing a swing, climb a wall, run a race, do ANYTHING that gets you up and playing!"

While this is certainly a laudable sentiment, it's interesting to take a look at the list of things that kids are told not to do during that time, which includes "read a book," "watch television or movies," "surf the web" and "play video games." This suggests that the Day of Play is somewhat akin to Turnoff Week in its attitude towards media (and, indeed, the Day of Play occurred on the last day of the 2009 Turnoff Week) -- that anything media-related is, by definition, not play, even playing video games. Other efforts to bring back "traditional" play, such as those described in these New York Times articles,  also focus heavily on physical, typically competitive games such as stickball, ringalevio and jump rope.

It’s easy and fairly natural to make this distinction: consuming media has always been seen as a passive activity, in contrast to physical play -- consider the traditional contrast between the "bookworm," or the violin-carrying child off to his music lesson, with the "all-round boy" engaged in physical play. But are play and media really incompatible? For that matter, what exactly is play?

What is play?

This turns out to be one of those questions that is much more complicated than it looks. As children, we are certainly aware of a distinction between those things we do that are "play" and those that are not, but it's difficult to broaden this into a true definition. There is no agreement, for that matter, on why we play: while some varieties of play make evolutionary sense, such as the "rehearsal" play we share with other animals (cats, for example), other kinds of play are harder to justify from an evolutionary standpoint. (A good summary of the leading theories of play can be found here.) Among the few qualities of play that are universally acknowledged are that participants in play share an acknowledgement that they are playing, that play involves activities removed from their normal context, and that play only happens in leisure; in situations of significant stress, such as hunger or other kinds of deprivation, play disappears.

The National Institute of Play  has identified seven types of play, these being:
attunement play (behaviours that build a connection between the player and another person or group)

• body play (motions and activities with no purpose other than to take pleasure in them)
• object play (taking pleasure in the manipulation and observation of objects)
• social play (playing with social roles and hierarchies)
• imaginative and pretend play, storytelling play (distinct from the former because it requires narrative)
• transformative-integrative play (play with ideas, exploring concepts and possibilities.)

The NIP makes the point that adults take part in these activities as much as children: a baseball fan doing "the wave" is engaged in attunement play as much as a baby playing "peekaboo." As well, it should be noted that there is not necessarily a hard and fast line between "play" and "work". Artists, for instance, engage in a sort of "professional play" (and we disdain art that is lacking that feeling of play, calling it "by the numbers" or "hackwork"), while Einstein, as the NIP's Web site points out, was engaged in transformative-integrative play when he performed the famous thought experiments, such as imagining himself riding a beam of light, that led to his theories of relativity.

It's clear, though, that the Day of Play is specifically about physical play. While the decline of outdoor play and the increase in childhood obesity are certainly matters of concern, some experts feel that we've suffered more from a loss of imaginative play. Laura Berk, an Executive Function Researcher at Illinois University, told National Public radio that children have less ability to regulate their behaviour than in the past because they engage in less make-believe play, which requires what's called "private speech": "If we compare preschoolers' activities and the amount of private speech that occurs across them, we find that this self-regulating language is highest during make-believe play. And this type of self-regulating language… has been shown in many studies to be predictive of executive functions." (Indeed, one study summarized here found that sustained imaginative play was one of the only reliable ways of improving children's self-control.) One widely-cited study compared the ability of children in 2001 to stand still with children in the late 1940s, and found that the earlier group was two years ahead (so that a seven-year-old in the 2001 experiment showed the same level of self-control as a five-year-old in the earlier study.)

Media play

Why are kids engaging in less imaginative play? The easy answer is to blame it on the media: children spend more time as passive consumers of movies, TV, video games, YouTube videos and so on, leaving them with no room for imagination. But children in the 1940s consumed plenty of media such as movies, radio and comic books. The screenwriter William Goldman has written of spending entire Saturdays at the movies, by no means an unusual experience, and in many houses the radio was turned on as soon as the children got home from school, broadcasting adventure serials and comedies just as TV does today. This media diet was not absent from children's play, nor did it detract from it: Brian Doyle, whose novel Angel Square is based in part on his own childhood experiences, depicts his heroes re-enacting and elaborating on the stories they saw and heard in the movies and radio. In my own childhood the media certainly played a large role in our imaginative play, but not a limiting one: our Star Wars figures journeyed to places Luke Skywalker never saw and George Lucas never imagined, and our Smurfs were as likely to have adventures drawn from Tolkien or Dungeons and Dragons as from their own comics.

Children have probably always based their play on the media they consumed; where else would classic schoolyard games like "Cops and Robbers" have come from? Certainly children weren't watching policemen chase criminals on their own streets -- but they were watching, hearing, and reading about those stories, directly or second-hand, through the various media of their times. Media play can be seen as a declaration of ownership, of independence, taking the branded entertainments we are sold and warping them into the stories we want to tell.

What's changed is not the role of the media alone but also the decline of unstructured play time, which provides an opportunity for this kind of media appropriation. Two main factors are responsible for this: first, a growing fear over the last thirty years or so that children cannot be safely left to play unsupervised, and a cultural pressure to have children engage in "worthwhile" or "educational" activities rather than unstructured play. (The media is responsible, at least in part, for both of these: the former due to unrealistic depictions of crime, and the latter due to bad science reporting and the relentless advertising of supposedly educational games, videos, and so on, nearly all of which have been shown to have no developmental value -- a toddler gets as much benefit out of wearing a Baby Einstein video as a hat as he does from watching it.) As well, changing patterns in employment -- both an increased number of women working outside the home and longer average work hours for both sexes -- have led to a perception that parents have less time to spend with their children (though in fact Statistics Canada reports the amount of time spent with children is actually on the increase), which may cause parents to enrol their children in organized activities that are seen as being "worth more" than unstructured play.

Play school

What's particularly unfortunate about the decline of unstructured, imaginative play is that it fosters skills that are more important than ever before, and not just the self-control Berk refers to -- though that is surely of importance at a time when our words can be instantly transmitted around the world and may haunt us forever online. In fact, Project New Media Literacies identifies Play as the first of their "Core Media Literacy Skills," defining it as "the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem solving." Simulation is another, and simulation forms the heart of imaginative play. As children "try on" roles and identities in games as basic as "House"; their understanding of these roles is drawn as much from media as from life -- as is ours.  Appropriation, defined as "the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content," is explicitly tied to media play: without knowing it, this is what children have been doing for years when they have Barbie marry G.I. Joe or Superman fight Popeye. Another of these new media literacies, Collective Intelligence -- defined as "the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others towards a common goal" -- has more in common with imaginative play than it does with more structured activities. In a sport, after all, or other organized or "educational" play, the rules and conventions are already set; there is none of the collaboration and negotiation that's involved in imaginative play, whether or not it's media-related ("We're playing Star Wars, but Jeff and Max both want to play Han Solo." "Well, maybe Han has a long-lost brother…'")

Play day

Of course, Nickelodeon should be praised for encouraging kids to engage in active play (though a cynical soul might note that they typically follow their three-hour "blackout" with marathons of their most popular shows, which adds up to a rather mixed message.) But it's important to get past the simple equation of play with exercise and recognize the value of play for what it is: unstructured time in which we can, if we choose, defy Nickelodeon's commandments and "take a nap," "read a book" or "twiddle your thumbs." So, too, must we abandon the notion that free play is wasted time, that it's only useful if children learn something. Children at play certainly are learning things, but they are doing so in ways that cannot be planned or designed.

Exercises for teachers

• How can we incorporate elements of imaginative play into our classes? What are the key elements (creativity, choice, open-endedness, etc.)?
• Discuss ways in which different media can stimulate types of play.
• Think of ways you can encourage students to appropriate and play creatively with the media products they consume. For example, you might ask students to act out a story where an unlikable media character becomes the hero, or where a character defies his/her stereotyped depiction.
• Take an exercise or assignment and convert it into a play-based activity. What has to be changed? How much of the instructional content has to be sacrificed?
• Try to think of a few opportunities for students to just "play" with your class content. Think about applying this to different subjects. Do some lend themselves more naturally to play? Why?
• Think of ways to incorporate extended imaginative play into your classroom. Encourage your students to stay in the roles they've chosen as long as possible and interact with each other according to those roles. Don't forget the "pre-play" period where you and the students negotiate roles and rules: if students are role-playing numbers or elements, for instance, talk about what those roles will mean, both to the individual student and in relation to one another (for instance, larger numbers might boss smaller numbers around, positive ions might be cheerful and optimistic and look to pair with gloomy negatives, and so on.)
• What are the limitations of play in a classroom setting? When should play activities not be used, and why?

It's been widely said that attention is the currency of the 21st Century. In an age where media occupy an increasingly central role in our lives, the need to have that media focused on you becomes intense. For no-one is this more true than for children and teens, who now expect to be connected twenty-four hours a day and for whom the Internet and cell phones are essential parts of their social lives. An interesting Facebook page, amusing Tweets, outrageous YouTube videos, even shocking photos sent by cell phone -- most of us are aware of the ways that young people seek their peers' attention. In today's media environment, is it still possible to teach young people the value of privacy? What, indeed, does the idea of privacy even mean to today's children and teens?

With support from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Media Awareness Network has completed a thorough review and updating of its popular professional development resource Kids for Sale: Online Privacy and Marketing to better reflect today's media environment. While fears of online predators have turned out to be largely overblown, parents and educators need to be aware that there is a powerful and organized force that is trying, and succeeding, to compromise children's privacy: online marketers.

Few adults are aware of just how commercialized kids' online environments are. According to MNet's study Young Canadians in a Wired World, ninety-five percent of young Internet users' favourite sites contain commercial content. In many cases these sites blend advertising and entertainment in ways that would be unimaginable in other media. Embedded with images of logos and mascots, these sites use video, downloadable content and free games to build up exposure to branded material and inspire consumer loyalty. Knowing that kids' Internet time is largely unsupervised, they take advantage of children's inability to discern advertising from non-commercial content. MNet’s research shows that two-thirds of children surveyed who played advergames -- online games which contain branded content and serve as advertising for youth-marketed products -- did not recognize them as advertising.

The privacy concerns of these online environments arise from the data collection techniques that are used. These are found not just in overtly commercial sites such as Candystand but also popular children's sites such as Neopets. In nearly all sites aimed at youth, children must register to gain access to the full content -- giving up personal information they would certainly not tell a stranger offline. Moreover, many of these sites give incentives (such as the "Neopoints" needed to purchase items on Neopets) for completing surveys on such topics as one's favourite candy, breakfast cereal and so on. The result, for the sites' owners, is a wealth of valuable consumer data that can be used to shape marketing decisions, in the case of the overtly commercial sites, or sold to marketers for the same purpose by the others.

What should concern parents and educators is not that the information being collected by these sites is especially sensitive -- no-one can identify or track you by your preference for Hershey over Cadbury chocolate bars -- but that these information-gathering techniques train children to give up personal information without thinking about it. If they are accustomed to trading their privacy for what they want as children -- access to games and other online content or "Neopoints" to customize their online houses -- then they will likely do the same to buy the attention of their peers as teens. Of course, this can lead to unwelcome attention as well -- either at the time, in the form of embarrassment or humiliation when material meant to be private goes public, or later, when material is viewed by unexpected audiences such as employers or university admissions officers.

So does the term "privacy" even mean anything for today's youth? In fact it still does -- ask any teen if she'd want her mother as a Facebook friend and you'll learn that. What's changed is that we can no longer view privacy as an absolute: instead it has become a negotiation, in which information is traded in exchange for other things.

What parents and educators need to do is teach children and teens privacy management, the skill of making conscious and wise choices about what information to give out and why. Kids for Sale: Online Privacy and Marketing, part of MNet's Web Awareness Workshop Series, gives educators a detailed rundown of the privacy concerns facing youth today and provides strategies and resources for dealing with them. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner has also sponsored a two-part lesson series, available for free download from both the MNet and OPC Web sites, that teaches students in Grades 7 to 12 how to balance maintaining their privacy with leading an active online life.

Resources

Kids for Sale: Online Privacy and Marketing, part of MNet's Web Awareness Workshop Series, explores current strategies for marketing to kids and the ways in which children's privacy may be compromised online. The workshop underlines how important it is for kids to know when they are being informed, entertained or marketed to online and also to understand how their personal information may be used. To see if your school, board or ministry has already licensed the Web Awareness Workshop Series, view our list of current licensees.

Privacy and Internet Life, a lesson for Grades 7 to 8 which teaches students how to protect their personal information on social networking sites such as Facebook, and The Privacy Dilemma, a lesson for Grades 9 to 12 which asks students to consider and discuss the trade-offs we all make on a daily basis between maintaining our privacy and gaining access to information services.

MNet's Media Issues page on Information Privacy contains background information on the ways information privacy is compromised online, Canadian and American privacy legislation, voluntary privacy codes in industry and how online marketers target children.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner recently launched a youth-oriented Web site titled myprivacy.mychoice.mylife which includes information on building a secure online identity, tips on protecting your privacy online and a blog on privacy issues.

Today is Safer Internet Day, an annual international event sponsored by Insafe to promote a safer Internet for children. Recent research on Internet life has shown that the greatest threat to kids online comes from kids themselves, both in the form of risky behaviour and online harassment, or cyber bullying. Cyber bullying can take forms such as harassing e-mails or text messages, social exclusion and spreading private photos and videos, among others, and presents a particular challenge for parents and teachers because it often happens outside the home or classroom. Because the Internet has become an essential part of kids' social lives, cyber bullying can also have more devastating effects as youth feel they have no escape.

To help educators address this issue in their classrooms, Media Awareness Network, with the support of the Canada Gazette, has developed the bilingual lesson series Cyber Bullying: Encouraging ethical online behaviour. The resource give students a better understanding of the ethical and legal implications of cyber bullying, while promoting positive and ethical Internet use. 

Intended to support and enhance school-based anti-bullying and empathy-building programs, Cyber Bullying: Encouraging ethical online behaviour comprises the following lessons:

Introduction to Cyber Bullying: Avatars and Identity
Grades 5-6

With the layering of identity through the use of nicknames and avatars, as well as a sense of anonymity, it is easy for young people to sometimes forget that real people—with real feelings—are at the heart of online conversations. In this lesson, students are provided with opportunities to explore this concept and discuss the importance of using empathy and common sense when talking to others online.

Understanding Cyber Bullying - Virtual vs. Physical Worlds
Grades 7-8

In this lesson, students explore the concept of cyber bullying and learn how the attributes associated with online communication may fuel inappropriate or bullying behaviour. Connections between other contributing factors to bullying—online and offline—are also reinforced as students develop an understanding of the role played by bystanders and the ways in which our own responses may fuel or stop this kind of behaviour. As a class, students establish a class “code of (N)ethics” for online conduct.

Cyber Bullying and the Law
Grades 7-8 and Grades 9-12 (two lessons)

In these lessons, secondary and middle school students learn about and discuss the legal aspects of cyber bullying. They review a variety of hypothetical scenarios and a case study, and consider the seriousness of the situations, who is legally responsible, what action (if any) should be taken and by whom. To determine this, students will seek answers to the following questions: How does cyber bullying differ from offline bullying? What aspects of a cyber bullying case make it a cause for legal action? What determines whether it is a civil or a criminal matter? How should rights to freedom of expression, guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, be balanced against rights to security of person? When and how are schools responsible for cyber bullying cases?

Cyber Bullying and Civic Participation
Grades 7-8

This lesson allows students to explore the concept of civic participation in the creation of Canadian laws through a study of the consultation process found in the Canada Gazette. Students will create their own School Gazette by proposing and discussing rules against cyber bullying at school.

Promoting Ethical Online Behaviour: Our Values and Ethics
Grades 7-9

In this 3-part lesson, students learn about online privacy and ethical behaviour by exploring their digital footprints to better understand how our online interactions may not be as anonymous as we think they are. In Part One, students create a digital map of their Web-based activities and the various characters and personas they assume online. In Part Two, students further assess the privacy and ethics of their online activities by applying their cyber-portraits to a questionnaire and, in Part Three, students look at areas in their virtual lives where they can make improvements.