Lecturer, trainer, illustrator and graphic designer Paul Driver answers The Image Conference questionnaire.
Your favourite film:
Probably Memento. It’s one of those films that the more you watch, the more layers of meaning you uncover in each scene. It’s a very game-like film in many ways as the disjointed sequencing of scenes challenges the viewer to actively engage with a twisting plot full of puzzles. The acting is great and the themes of temporality and memory, knowledge, media and grief intertwine to create a unique (if somewhat demanding) viewing experience.
Your favourite film to use in class:
That varies a lot depending on the theme or language I want to focus on. I teach a module on consumer culture for an undergraduate course in applied foreign languages and I often use several clips from George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and Edgar Wright’s comedy Shaun of The Dead. After all, zombies are the ultimate consumers…
Useful game-related teaching tool:
Although I do use a lot of digital games in teaching I’m currently exploring the potential of hybrid digital/physical games in the hope that my efforts will coalesce into an applied theory of embodied language learning. For this reason I’ll have to go with the smartphone as my teaching tool of choice, because I use them extensively as gaming equipment both inside and outside the classroom.
Tell us a bit about your session:
It’s about using games and mobile technologies to engage learners with the world outside the classroom. I’ll introduce this first from a theoretical perspective and then provide some practical examples.
Why are you interested in using film / video / images / games in your classes? (choose one or two options)
I’m very interested in using all of the above but I am particularly interested in games (and not just digital games) for the way in which they can structure experience, create context, engage the imagination, generate flow, motivation, immersion… the list goes on.
What should your audience expect to learn?
Of course that depends on what they already know before they come to my talk, but hopefully they will leave inspired to try their hands at game design and to think about how they might use mobile technologies more creatively to engage learners.
What are three words that sum up your session?
Cardboard, GPS (is that cheating?) and escape.
Which other presenter(s) are you looking forward to seeing?
There’s something in every talk that has piqued my curiosity and I’m going to try to see as many as I possibly can.
