Abstract
This article seeks to describe the development of the project “Inanimate Alice: translating digital literature in an educational context”, of the Centre for Portuguese Literature at the University of Coimbra. We will address the different stages of the project and the processes involved, namely, the translation of the first five episodes of the series, the translation and the creation of pedagogical materials adapted to the Portuguese curriculum, the applied research with episodes 1 and 2 of Alice Inanimada in two Portuguese schools, the data collection and analysis relating to the experience and reception of the work by students and teachers, and the teacher training course created to respond to the challenges of teaching a digital literary work, in partnership with the Portuguese National Reading Plan – PNL2027, thereby filling a gap in this area, in Portugal. In addition to a reflection on all the research stages, we will present the plans for the future of the project.
Highlights
The need to equip students with digital skills is a frequent aim of Portuguese and international educational policies (ME, 2017; ME, 2018; UNESCO, 2018)
We see a general “dissonance between what the school curriculum prescribes and what young readers prefer” (Araújo and Frade, 2018: 7) and the presence of electronic literature in schools is not yet a reality, as the school structure is neglecting the creative potential of digital media, the development of digital textual and literary skills in production and reception, and the hermeneutic reflection on digital culture and its impact on reading and writing (Rettberg, 2019: 18)
From the beginning we were moved by the words of Dene Grigar, former president of the Electronic Literature Organization: if students spend 10 times more of their energy with fingers on a keyboard instead of a nose in a book, it stands to reason that we should rethink our notion of literacy and advocate elit [electronic literature] as viable and compelling art form for teaching all aspects of reading, writing, and communicating
Summary
The need to equip students with digital skills is a frequent aim of Portuguese and international educational policies (ME, 2017; ME, 2018; UNESCO, 2018). From the beginning we were moved by the words of Dene Grigar, former president of the Electronic Literature Organization: if students spend 10 times more of their energy with fingers on a keyboard instead of a nose in a book, it stands to reason that we should rethink our notion of literacy and advocate elit [electronic literature] as viable and compelling art form for teaching all aspects of reading, writing, and communicating.2 Since this is a process that dates back to 2014, in order to demonstrate the resistance we faced mainly by publishing houses and private and public investment, it is important to systematize the various stages of the project, to comment on the articles published (and to be published), and the development plans in progress. We will present the initial and ongoing teacher training courses, with the establishing of international relations with colleagues from Canada, Russia and United States of America, and the design of a new pilot experiment
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