StoryToGo

Exploring storytelling in its many forms in this digital age

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Canadian Artist Denis Nokony Invites Those Who Wish to Celebrate the 46th American Inauguration to Use his Artwork ‘Peace Arch’ Online for Free

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In tribute to the 46th American Inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, our friend and Canadian artist Denis Nokony invites anyone who wishes to celebrate the unity and friendship between Canada and the United States of America to utilize his artwork entitled ‘Peace Arch’ for free online, provided they credit him as the artist, are not making money from sharing the piece, and do not alter the image.

‘Peace Arch’ by Denis Nokony

‘Peace Arch’ – About the Artwork

‘Peace Arch’ is a 38”x 40” acrylic painting on canvas that was first created in 2004, representing our shared border between British Columbia and Washington at Peace Arch Park in White Rock, BC and Blaine, Washington. It’s day has come to be shared on the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Denis Nokony – Meet the Artist

Denis looking like the badass artist in his pandemic mask.

As written by Robert Enright of Denis Nokony’s 1981 exhibition at the Mendel Art Gallery entitled, ‘Figure in Landscape: Drawings’, “The drawings present a synthetic relationship between the figure and the landscape, between being and space, and between quotidian observation and dramatic realism. Mr. Nokony is involved in a process that is both a retrieval and a reinterpretation of prairie space through its human dimensions.”

Landscape and sky feature prominently in much of Denis’ artwork, perhaps as a result of his upbringing in the Canadian Prairies, having been born in Oxbow, Saskatchewan. He became interested in drawing and caricature at an early age. Having, however, only ever taken one drawing course from Canadian painter Reta Cowley, as a young university student at the University of Saskatchewan where he studied political science, he considers himself to be a self-taught artist.

Pre-Covid photo from the Burnaby Blues and Roots Festival with this writer, Matt Andersen, and Denis Nokony.

Over the years, Denis has had a number of careers, in which art has played a prominent role from commercial artist and freelance illustrator to art teacher to arts development officer to Assistant Director for Cultural Services for the City of Burnaby today. Throughout all of this, Denis has continued to create and exhibit his art. While his medium of choice has predominantly been drawings and paintings, it has also include a National Film Board short animated film entitled ‘The Giant‘.

To touch base with Denis or inquire about his art, he can be reached at denis[at]storytogo.ca.

Representation in Digital Gaming, Media Arts and Tech – Lived Stories

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aka the Elephant in the Room that people may dress up and be sickly sweet to, while they stab behind their back and behind closed doors.

Photo care of Ragn27.

Sorry that might sound harsh, but the fact that some people choose to put others down, be aggressive towards them, treat them of lesser value, and / or abuse them because of the colour of their skin, their ethnicity, their gender, their disabilities, their sexuality … etc really makes my blood boil, and leaves me generally feeling sick. Having said that, Representation and Representational Problems is a conversation we need to have to instigate change, and part of doing that is sharing our stories, despite how uncomfortable that might be. Admittedly, that was not something I realized until I became an adult. I grew up in a blissful world where that equality existed, having grown up in a family that was a mix of the arts and science with people from around the world sharing our holiday dinner table and where my parents saw each other as equals (which of course they were). It never occurred to me that that was not the norm (at least in Canada – I had seen racism and sexism in my travels), and that some people would think themselves better than another because of their skin colour, religion, gender, sexuality, or able-body. Or at least it didn’t until I began working in the media arts and technolgy.

As I set off on a walk with my 17-year-old neighbour this past weekend to talk about her aspirations in the media arts, these were all things we talked about as we explored the challenges along with the rewards of the industry she is setting forth into.

Sharing a picture of Ella here, who joined us on our walk, for a bit of grounding in a heavier post.

Importance of Characters Whom Young People Can Relate to

My neighbour is a visible minority in Canada, and so while we talked about the importance of crafting stories that you are passionate about, we also talked about the importance of increasing representation within those stories.

I told her how when I pitched my first kid’s TV series, a Canadian broadcaster told me we couldn’t do a co-production with another country as Canadian kids would not relate with children that looked and sounded different from them. Having grown up on stories from around the world and loving learning about different cultures through stories, I was at a complete loss that this was a Canadian broadcaster’s believe in a country that is made up of people from around the world. My young neighbour then told me that she’d grown up in Canada never having seen Filipino culture (her ethnic heritage) represented within the stories she consumed.

That’s a problem, as while it is great to learn about different people and cultures through your stories, if you never encounter someone like you, you feel at odds with others and a bit alone. As mentioned in Kateryna Barnes’ article on the game Kisima Innitchuna (Never Alone), stories are also an important way of connecting with your cultural roots and sharing that culture with future generations.

While not a visible minority, I do get that sense of feeling alone and at odds with others from a disability perspective. I am dyslexic, and I can’t help but wonder if I’d met a dyslexic kid in my stories growing up, if that might have helped me with my confidence in embracing how my mind works differently at an earlier age, rather than feeling I was not as academically capable as my peers. Instead, when I was younger and I encountered people with a disability in a story, they were usually negatively depicted, teaching me at the time that this was something I should hide, as media treated disability as though it was something to be embarrassed of.

For all these reasons, I am glad to have conversations like this with my young neighbour, and look forward to seeing how she addresses this in her career. I am also glad to see people like Nicole Kang addressing it on Elementari, an animated storytelling and game development platform targeted to kids and schools. If kids can put characters that they relate to in their stories and games, then they can help to start to demonstrate for others the storyworlds they wish to see.

The Dark and Unwelcoming Alley Out in the Open in the Media Arts, Tech & Game Studios

While lack of representation or representation only as evil, weak, and broken characters is destructive to the psyche and identity, what really makes my blood run cold and what I needed to forewarn my young neighbour about is the very real culture of misogyny and sexual harassment. I did not want to terrify her, but I did want her to be aware of the dangers in the media arts (and particularly game design) in order to keep herself safe.

Illustrated by Naomi Ushiyama; Indypendent / Creative Commons

Trigger Warning

I have been very lucky in that I have never been raped, but I have found myself in dangerous situations and I have found myself in psychologically abusive situations by people I thought were my friends. While I didn’t go into all of this with my young neighbour, before you read on, I should warn you that this will not be a pleasant read and may trigger things, so stop here if you need to.

As much as I hate to term it this way, I was ‘eased’ into this culture of misogyny and sexual harassment by the film industry. In that world as a young writer and actor, I learned never to trust that a business meeting was a business meeting and that a man wanting to partner with me wasn’t just them trying to sleep with me. I’m not saying that egotistically, it was just a reality, and not one that helped build my confidence in myself as a young creative. As an example, a talented director chased me for months for a meeting and when I agree and then accept an invitation to a screening party at his house with his friends, I arrived at the screening party to discover no friends and no screening. That was the night a director tried the ‘casting couch line’ on me. He was a documentary director, so I am not sure what I was to be cast as – a victim? Then there was my producer friend, who I discovered on more than one occasion using me as a lure for unstable, stalker men (I am not embellishing here – these men stalked me for months) he wanted to do business with. One of those men, I made the mistake of working for in a remote ferry-in ferry-out community as a writer and a host, before realizing that he was very unhealthily and dangerously obsessed with me. I will be forever grateful to my friend Tristan for insisting on accompanying me when the producer announced he’d only pay me if I came to pick up my pay cheque. I should add that there are some amazing men in the industry, like Tristan, Cam, and Richard who have always looked out for my safety and well-being, and there are some women that contribute to the problem of the misogyny and sexual harassment. With the latter, I am remembering one film festival when a powerful married man in the film industry was rather inappropriately and boisterously hitting on, which I dealt with by falling on my safety net of turning that into a joke. Meanwhile I learned a number of the women in the room thought I was to blame. A tip of my hat at Richard, Cam, Joanne, and Katrina for standing up for me and telling them otherwise, as well as for helping to safely extract me from the situation.

A younger me with my buddy Paul (a wonderful fellow) in our first TV Show.

All of that though was just a warm up act to what I encountered in the tech and peripherally gaming industry in 2007. There I found myself in a world in which the few of us women that were there were treated like sexual play things to use and abuse both for our minds and our bodies. On the surface the parties were fantastic with free food and booze flowing, but then you’d see how the young women were being treated as toys and someone would turn to you and ask you (in all seriousness) for a lap dance. In those early days, the same individual that asked for that lap dance, publicly claimed mine and Megan’s ideas as his own and that Megan and I were ‘working for him’ on an idea of ours that we’d entered into a partnership with his business partner. On one of my calls to their office to try and get some tech answers for that project, after getting nowhere with the lap dance requester, I asked for his business partner’s cell number so I could talk to him, and I was then put on speaker phone to their entire office and told who was I kidding, I had the partner’s number, as I was sleeping with him. I was not sleeping with him, but I am sure there are many in the tech community who still think thats how I got started there. That then lead to an uncomfortable conversation with the business partner, in which he confirmed with those that had been in the office that day that I had indeed been put on speaker phone to the entire office. Despite that, I still had to deal with the lap dance requester on the upcoming project, and when he started aggressively bullying me, the business partner did nothing when I asked him to step in. That was the first time I’ve ever asked for help in such a situation, and as someone who only asks for help when I really need it, I could not believe that no help was given. Another disturbing memory from this time was when a certain large tech company hosted a retreat that began with a drunken and bound to be trouble series of images all hashtagged on the bus ride up, including all the men lined up and peeing at the side of the highway. It was when they reached the camp that things went disturbingly badly. There were only a few women there, and after they reached the camp, one of the men shared one of the woman’s bare breasts on instagram with the trip hashtag. I commented and said that was not cool. The response was something to the effect of “Lighten up, I didn’t share her face.” That didn’t matter, as aside from other reasons, there were so few women there that it didn’t take too much figuring out as to who was in the photo. Thankfully the one female leads at the company stepped in a few minutes later and shut things down, but I still shudder to think what the situation might have been at that retreat for the few women that were there. There was good that came out of all this though, and thanks to few strong women leaders in the industry – I think of Maura Rodgers, Megan Cole, Rebecca Bollwitt, Monica Hamburg, and others, we said enough is enough and began to catalyze change. It wasn’t easy though, and I am sure it still has a long way to go.

Just a few of the strong women who stood up to the misogyny in Vancouver’s social tech industry back in 2007, as photographed by Phillip Jeffrey.
Image care of Alec Perkins, via the Wikimedia.

Just because the misogyny and sexual harassment may be less visible, especially since #MeToo, don’t kid yourselves – the problem is still there. I got a very disturbing reminder of this in the summer of 2018, when I stayed too long at a party of a guy that I trusted and thought was a friend. While that night a married man tried something inappropriate and unasked for with me, it was the friend that disturbed me – attempting to remove my top and that of another woman’s and starting to ask me ‘would I rather’ questions that involved gang rape. The glimmer of hope here was that a young kid, who worked for the two older men stood up for me, and told the aggressor that wasn’t cool.

I extracted myself from the situation in the way I always do, with humour. However, that night has disturbed me ever since, and I’ve found myself avoiding events in that world. Mainly I think, because that was someone I thought was a friend, and the night clued me into just how insidious the aggressor had been for years, doing a number of things to constantly put me down to myself and others. In thinking back, I realize this started with me standing up to him and offering an alternate viewpoint on a panel at a film festival. A disturbing element of realization that I’d been in an insidious and emotionally abusive relationship for years was that he’d been actively putting me down to others through the entirety of my attempting to put my life and career back together following my two accidents that left me learning to live with chronic pain and many new realities. I share this last bit, as the last seven years since the first car accident has opened my eyes up to those that prey on those with disabilities and other vulnerabilities, including this man who I thought was my friend and should have been there to help me back up, rather than further push me down and work to keep me there.

Creating Change

Now, while I didn’t share all of that with my young neighbour, I did share some of it, including the recent story, as I feel if change is going to happen, we need to talk about these things, and for her, I need her to be forewarned and forearmed so that she can stay safe.

Towards the end of our walk we did touch on the fact that she needed to be particularly careful in the game industry. I know for myself, I’d be very wary of entering a mainstream game studio for the reasons shared here and how unhealthy and misogynistic an environment that might be for me. That is part of the problem though, is that if women don’t feel safe in these spaces it makes it difficult to change those ecosystems.

What the face of hope and change look like to me – working with awesome creatives, like Kelly Conlin, who get excited about creating projects with me that share stories of cultural understanding and share the voices of those who should be represented equally.

I think for myself, that is why I finally started building my own teams and finding new ways of creating and producing what is in my imagination, as oppose to waiting for the permission of another to do so. I am not sure whether games will be in that mix for me (although there are a few that have been dancing through my imagination), but certainly there will be more immersive media, in which I hope to continue work with talented and supportive individuals (whether women, men, or those who identify in a different way). I hope that my young neighbour is able to do the same, and who knows, maybe at some point that will involve us creating together.

References

Barnes, K. (2019, July 24). Agniq Suannaktuq and Kisima Innitchuna (Never Alone). First Person Scholar. http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/agniq-suannaktuq-and-kisima-innitchuna-never-alone/

British Dyslexia Association. (2018, February 11). See Dyslexia Differently [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11r7CFlK2sc

Jenson, J. & de Castell, S. (2016) Gamer-Hate and the “Problem” of Women: Feminism in Games. In Kafai, Tynes, & Richard (Eds.) Diversifying Barbie & Mortal Kombat: Intersectional Perspectives and Inclusive Designs in Gaming. Pittsburgh PA: ETC Press.

Innocenceii. (2020, June 8). Why YOU Would 𝑺𝒖𝒄𝒌 at Being a Main Character [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wOEnUtxO7Q

Never Alone – Kisima Ingitchuna. (2014, August 14). Never Alone – Iñupiaq Perspectives – Joseph Sagviyuaq Sage [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK1IsVEjZKE

One Down. (2020, October 1). Filipinos in Entertainment | Breaking The Tabo | Episode 1 | One Down [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jusUSUTfm4

StoryToGo. (2020, March 15). Creating Diversity in Story Characters – a Chat with Elementari’s Nicole Kang [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxmLNc2Q934

Gaming Learning from the Perspective of a Science Educator

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Reflecting on Learning through Games and Constructivism

Image care of Rafael Javier.

Recently, as I read Yasmin Kafai and Quinn Burke’s article Constructionist Gaming: Understanding the Benefits of Making Games for Learning and Kelly Tran’s article “Her story was complex”: A Twine workshop for ten- to twelve-year-old girls, it has had me reflecting on learning through games, constructivism, how I teach, and my own learning styles. With science and science education being central to my development as an individual, storyteller, and teacher, this naturally had me thinking on my years as a science educator, as well as what got me excited about science as a young person, and how that shaped my teaching in other subjects, including media arts. Through these reflections, I recognize that I’ve missed valuable learning experiences to not only create game based learning experiences for my students, but to get them designing the games.

The Predator-Prey Game – a game that taught me a lot both as a kid, and as a teacher when I developed this game for my students. In hindsight, getting my students doing the developing would have been an even richer learning experience. Image care of the Waterloo Nature Club.

The Twine below represents my reflections on Gaming Learning from the Perspective of a Science Educator.

You’ll need to give the Twine below a moment to load, in order for the black box to disappear.

I had another realization while reflecting and exploring project based learning and constructivism through the creation of this Twine, that perhaps this style of learning and education is what we need in order to allow diverse groups of students with different learning styles to succeed. Rather than prescribing how our students should learn and demonstrate their learning, constructivist project based learning allows student to find their own learning path in a way that works for them and allows them to shine. I always knew this is where I excelled as a student, and knew this is what built my confidence in my own academic abilities, and I have seen the same in the students I’ve taught, especially those who like me are considered to have ‘learning disabilities’. It hit me in these reflections that perhaps the reason for this is that when learning in this way, rather than telling others what they can and can’t do, and are and are not capable of, we are giving them the tools, platform, and freedom to create and discover for themselves, in a way that is meaningful for them – allowing them to approach learning and creating in a way that works for their individual needs. We need to make more such learning opportunities available to our young people, so that they too can shine and build their confidence.

Image courtesy of Gordon Johnson.

References

Kafai, Y. & Burke, Q. (2015). Constructionist Gaming: Understanding the Benefits of Making Games for Learning. Educational psychologist, 50, 4, 313-334.

Tran, K. M. (2016). “Her story was complex”: A Twine workshop for ten- to twelve-year-old girls. E-Learning and Digital Media, 13(5–6), 212–226. https://doi.org/10.1177/2042753016689635

Understanding Games and Play from the Mindset of a Tortie Terror (aka my cat)

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Back in my days as a young Biology undergraduate student, I am remember sitting in a behavioural science class and feeling thoroughly frustrated by the ego and rather omnipotent thinking of the professor, who was lecturing us on his believe that non-homo sapien animals don’t play. Rather everything they do was tied in someway to survival. You just have to have well-loved furry or feathery friend in your household to know that is not the case.

Linus nudging Ella into a game.

Going beyond our furry and feathered family members, in truly observing wild animals with an open mind you will see that not all they do is about survival. While not a play example, this was something I pondered one day, as I watched the heartbreaking scene of some ground squirrels who didn’t want to leave a fellow ground squirrel who had been hit by a car. Each time they returned to the dead ground squirrel’s body, they were putting their own lives at risk. This wasn’t about survival for these ground squirrels, quite the contrary, they were risking their lives in mourning the death of a member of their community.

It made me smile as I began to read Johan Huizinga’s exploration of play in his chapter on Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon in The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology that he noted that play is older than culture. Non-homo sapien animals did not wait for humans to teach them to play. They were already playing. As I continued to read Huizinga’s chapter and that of Roger Caillois on The Definition of Play and the Classification of Games, I watched my young cat Ella (aka the Tortie Terror) who throws herself into play with such total abandon, and what I observed echoed so much of what had caused me to question and resist years ago in that behavioural science class. First though, let me introduce you to Ella.

To advance the pages in the story above, click the flashing arrows, and where you encounter an image with a glowing edge, click on those images.

Games and Play from the Mindset of a Cat

Play and the creation of games are paramount in Ella’s life. She plays the regular games of chasing feather wands, catch with toy mice, and fetch with toy springs, but for Ella, the best games are those that she’s invented and taught to me. These include Run, Jump & Startle, Lure & Surprise, and Hide & Go Seek Tag.

Run, Jump & Startle

Run, Jump & Startle is usually started by Ella rampaging past me in a crazy flurry with a little “roo roo” in passing me. This is my queue to more subtly creep in her direction or walk by her and pretend not to see her, and then jump in front of her with my arms out. She then similarly jumps in front of me with her arms out, and usually shows off by parkouring off a wall, at which point we both dash off to hide again and attempt to then non-chalantly creep up on the other to be the jumper.

Lure & Surprise

Lure & Surprise is a relatively new game of Ella’s that is usually played at night in the dark. It involves her finding a way to lure anyone in the house towards her, usually by yowling as though something is wrong. As that creature (this game is played with my Mom’s dog, as well as with me) goes to see what’s wrong, she launches herself at them, and then after startling them goes running off to hide somewhere else in the dark.

Hide & Go Seek Tag

Ella trying to entice her cousins into a game of Hide & Go Seek Tag.

Typically Lure & Surprise then evolves into Hide & Go Seek Tag, which is also played in the light. This is like the children’s game of a similar name, where one hides and the other seeks, but in this case everyone is hiding and seeking at the same time with the goal of being the first to sneak up on the other, making it a much faster paced game.

Characteristics of Play

These games that Ella has constructed follow the fundamental characteristics of play as listed by Roger Caillois and echoed by Johan Huizinga’s in his writing.

  • Free – Elle begins the games with freewill, under no obligation, as do her opponents. If anyone should decide they no longer wish to play, they simply stop or walk away.
  • Separate – These games exist in their own time and space, in which the real world is temporarily suspended.
  • Uncertain – There is never any certainty as to who will prevail as reigning champion. Usually each play results in wins on both sides.
  • Unproductive – Nothing is created over the course of play, rather it is simply a release of joyful energy.
  • Governed by Rules – While the rules are unwritten and created by a cat, all the games have clear and definite rules that have been taught to the other players through demonstration by the feline game creator, who is quite bossy about her expectations of the players.
  • Make Believe – It is clear that within the game each player is entering the realm of make believe, in which in my mind we enter a land of spies and ninjas. As for Ella’s mind, I dearly wish I could see inside her imagination to know, but I do know that within the game I have clearly been transformed into a character of her imagination based on the wild looks looks she gives me mid game.

Imagination Central to Play

A young Ella fancying herself a jungle beast and demolishing the grasses from the garden store.

It is this element of imagination that both Caillois and Huizinga speak of as being such an important component to play that I find most fascinating and amusing as I watch Ella play. She is by far the most active player of any furry family member that I’ve lived with, and that is clearly denoted by a cat with an enormous imagination. When left to her own play, it is not unusual to see her all of a sudden fluff up her fur and start jumping sideways. Is this because she is angry or scared? No, she is simply playing, and something in the imaginative world that she has concocted in her mind is causing this external reaction in her to the amusement of those of us that have been fortunate enough to witness these play acting moments in her life.

Fostering Wellbeing Through Play

Ella’s kitten game of Steal Mom’s Glasses, which she has yet to outgrow, but rather gotten much sneakier at. Always good for a chuckle between us.

For me, Elle has illustrated the importance that play can have on our wellbeing as creatures. She came into my world in a summer in which I was badly concussed after a car accident. It was her imaginative play on her own, and enticing me into the games that she concocted, that got me laughing and moving again, as well as scheming to beat her at the games she laid out before us. It is quite amazing how the simple act of playing can be so incredibly healing.

References

Caillois, R. The Definition of Play and the Classification of Games. In K. Salen and E. Zimmerman (Eds.) The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology (pp. 122-155). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Huizinga, J. Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon.In K. Salen and E. Zimmerman (Eds.) The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology (pp. 96-120). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

OE Global 2020 : A Case for Virtual and Open Conferences to Bring People Together to Share Ideas

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#OEGlobal20 - a virtual and open conference

I had the great pleasure last week to participate in the OE Global 2020 Conference virtually from my home in Richmond, BC, Canada. While I have attended other virtual events and conferences throughout the year, this one was a bit different, and more engaging and exciting for me for a number of reasons:

  • Firstly as I had been invited to speak at OE Global 2019 in Milan, but had not been able to afford to attend, it was wonderful that a virtually hosted conference made that possible.
  • Secondly as I had met a number of the delegates for the first time at another conference in 2019, and I was looking forward to ‘seeing’ them again.
  • Finally, as the conference was designed in such away to accommodate people from around the world, and as Alan Levine had created an online community for delegates to connect before, during, and after the conference.

All the hard work and strategy that the team from Taipei Medical University, OE Global, eCampus Ontario, and TU Delft put into organizing the conference paid off. Just look at the stats below.

The conference statistics from the OE Global 2020 Conference.

It seems I was not alone in the question of affordability and accessibility opening up the conference. “75% of the people were first time attendees. Doing this conference in an online fashion enabled a lot more people to participate, who perhaps wouldn’t have been able to if we’ve done it in-person.” ~ Paul Stacey of Open Education Global

One of the exciting things moving forward, post the conference is that OE Global has made all of the recorded talks open and accessible on YouTube, and will be opening up OEG Connect for others to join in the discussion and begin working together on open educational initiatives.

As you begin exploring OE Global 2020, below are the talks and workshop that I gave with others here on StoryToGo, including Lori Jones, Danielle Dubien, Lori Yearwood, and Kevin Ribble:

  • Drawing Eyes and Building Awareness Around OERs

  • StoryToGo : Building Global Connections, Opportunities and Sustainability in the Middle of a Pandemic

  • Are You Asking? Accessibility of Open Educational Resources in Online Learning

These are all projects and initiatives that we’d love to invite others to participate in. Join in the conversation, brainstorming, and planning on OEG Connect:

Hope to see you in the mix on OEG Connect!

Graphy App : An Analyst’s Report

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We are often approached by new platforms and apps to come onboard as early adopters and to invest time in creating content for the new platform or app. This is something that we enjoy, as we like to experiment, meet new people at the early stages of a platform or app and become a part of their culture, and ultimately study the properties that result in the platform or app thriving long term or closing up shop. Creating content for a new platform or app is an investment of time and money though, so is something that needs to be analyzed for its value. My Master of Educational Technology is encouraging me to take that study and analysis a step further in creating an Analyst Report from the perspective of a potential investor. Hopefully, this will become a semi-regular instalment of Analyst Reports here on StoryToGo.

Potential Investment: Graphy

What?

Launched in June 2020, Graphy is a new edtech platform, designed to deliver vertical courses tailored for smartphones with vertical video. They have a quickly growing catalogue of vertical courses or ‘Graphies’ as they call them – just shy of 250 as of the middle of October 2020 – on a variety of subjects ranging from cooking, to language learning, to music, to science, to technology, to marketing, and the list goes on.

Who?

The team behind Graphy are not new to edtech or elearning. The umbrella corporation of which Graphy is a part of is Sorting Hat Technologies, based in Bengaluru, India, with co-founders Gaurav Munjal (CEO), Roman Saini (Chief Educator), and Hemesh Singh (CTO).

Sorting Hat Technologies also owns Unacademy, which is touted as “India’s largest learning platform.” Unacademy, founded in 2015, is targeted to helping students in India to cracking various competitive examinations. Sorting Hat Technologies has a history of rapid growth of courses and students to their elearning platforms with attracting over 300,000 students to over 2,400 online lessons and specialized courses in a 6-month period. Unacademy has been witnessing an upsurge in usage since the onset of the pandemic, with April 2020 seeing the highest video watch in a month for Unacademy in its five-year-old journey. With this came a 82% surge in revenue from the previous month and 10x the growth from April 2019.

Unacademy is currently valued at $510 million, and received $110 million in Series E financing in March 2020 led by General Atlantic (with 9.94% ownership in Unacademy). Other investors in the company include Facebook (3.31% ownership in Unacademy),  Sequoia India (21.47% ownership in Unacademy), Blume Ventures (3.1% ownership in Unacademy), Steadview Capital (7.39% ownership in Unacademy), and Nexus Venture Partners (3.18% ownership in Unacademy). 

Graphy is led by a separate team with co-founders Sushil Kumar, Sumit Jain, Shobhit Bakliwal and Fiona Leong.

Problem Being Solved

Initially Graphy was positioning the problem they were solving as an interactive alternative to books, as they had the notion that people no longer read books.

In reality though, the problem that they seem to be solving is delivering mobile learning options in a manner geared to learners that are partial to Instagram Stories, TikTok, and Facebook Stories. As Graphy is specifically geared to learning experiences, it leads me to suspect that the problem being solved here related to books was to offer a more interactive and immersive alternative to textbook reading specifically.

Unique Features

Graphies have three key defining features:

  1. The delivery of interactive mlearning courses with vertical design to mimic that of Instagram Stories, TikTok, and Facebook Stories.
  2. Designing the courses to operate like an interactive textbook, of the sort that you might imagine in Hogwarts, with chapters.
  3. The ability to schedule the release of different chapters of your Graphy.

To both market and highlight these features, Graphy has designed its own lingo for course creators and users.

  • Graphy = a course
  • Grapher = a course creator
  • Graphies = multiple Graphy
  • Chapter = a course unit

Target User

While there are certainly Graphies targeted to learners who fall outside this, the list below represents the target consumer groups for whom Graphies are being designed.

  • learners that are partial to Instagram Stories, TikTok, and Facebook Stories
  • undergrad students
  • young entrepreneurs
  • learners interested in areas of the arts, like photography, dance, fine arts, comedy, music … etc.

It should be noted that while Unacademy was targeted to learners in Indian, the goal with Graphy is to create for learners World Wide.

Current Assets (as of October 2020)

  • a unique approach to mobile learning
  • a team that understands what learners in India respond well to
  • a preexisting consumer base in India, interested in elearning
  • resources and coaching for course creators on the development of their Graphy
  • vertical video resources and coaching for course creators
  • an understanding of where to find potential course creators and how to approach them
  • a quality control system
  • financial backing behind the parent company
  • proven success in elearning in India
  • a team of educators, technologists, elearning designers, and marketers behind the parent company
The full Unacademy Team celebrating the New Year of 2019. A group whose elearning expertise are a huge asset to Graphy as it launches.
The Unacademy Team heading into 2019.

Current Challenges (as of October 2020)

The greatest growing pain for Graphy at present seems to be defining who they are and what they do.

They are a company named after a book reference (from JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series of novels), yet their CEO Gaurav Munjal tweeted by way of introduction to Graphy, “Books haven’t changed since a really really really long time. Maybe it’s time to change that?” While the idea of interactive books is cool, this simple statement suggests a lack of understanding of the magic of books and imagination. Perhaps the company’s reference to Harry Potter reflect the movie, rather than the books, as the reader knows the books held far more magic and possibilities than the movies did. And one just needs to look to the popularity and demand for YA fiction to know that young people are still reading and enjoying books.

In being pitched on becoming a Grapher (course creator), I was asked the question posed in this video:

My response was that I’d finished a book yesterday, yet the person pitching me said, “You see, books are dated and need to be replaced.” I was then shown the scene in the Chamber of Secrets, when Harry wrote in Tom Riddle’s diary and a scene and story began to emerge from the pages of the book. The question, “Wouldn’t this be cool?” Yes, it would, but that does not take away the value and appreciation of traditional books and what they allow your imagination to conjure. Ultimately, despite being told that a Graphy is an interactive book, this is misleading, as they are not looking for storytellers to create works of fiction. Rather they are looking for educators to create elearning experiences. If equating this to books, what they are really suggesting is dated here and needs transforming are textbooks.

Based on the shift in their marketing this Autumn, I suspect I am not alone in pointing out this source of confusion and potential to turn readers off.

Other challenges for the platform, include:

  • marketing and attracting learners beyond India
  • crafting quality content that learners respond positively to
  • competition in a marketplace with a number of other elearning providers that are established, including Coursera, Udemy, Learn It Live, and OutSchool.

Insider’s Perspective

I learned about Graphy, as the team behind it are actively searching for and approaching individuals whom they think will create Graphies that will be of value to the learners that they hope to reach with the platform. In looking at the sorts of Graphers that they have on-board already, I am impressed to see that they have been strategically approaching people with diversity in mind – diversity of ethnicity, diversity of abilities, diversity of gender, diversity of ages, and diversity in the content created.

Aside from the mixed messaging around what Graphy is, I was impressed with my initial meeting with Graphy. They had done their research on who I was. In learning how they’d found me and why they’d approached me, it was for a heart filled reason around a mutual believe in learning that I had shared in one of my social media posts around a quote of Gandhi’s. That impressed me, as it suggested they believed in what they were doing for reasons of passion, and wished to find other likeminded people to help grow that vision. This is important for me, as if I am investing my time and money, I want to know that it is with something that the creators are invested in and intend to work at growing. Shared values are also extremely important to me, as life is too short to spend it creating with people that you don’t respect or trust. The fact that they’d done their research on who I am and tailored their meeting with me to that, meant that they were invested in me.

In that first meeting, they also presented me with a number of incentives to get started in creating a Graphy and doing so quickly. I am not a huge fan of the hard sell, but while having said (and thought) that, I realized this was a cleverly strategic approach to getting Graphers involved and invested while you have their attention, and building content to the platform quickly, in order to attract in learners.

While I did not have the time in my schedule to accept any of their fast course building incentives, I have begun to develop my first Graphy as a Grapher, because I think there is potential in what they are creating and I wish to explore the platform further. They also had a fare offer for me that mirrors that of what we are offering our course creators in the StoryToGo Classroom, in that the course creator keep ownership over the materials they create, and the percentage split between the course creator and the platform on learner sign ups is a fair one.

I am still at the early stages of creating my first Graphy, but have been hugely impressed at how organized the platform is in the development of new Graphies and Graphers, and at the support offered, as well as quality control.

Graphers are provided with:

  • Quality Guidelines;
  • the importance of not breaking Copyright laws are emphasized, and Creative Commons resources are shared;
  • resources are provided for preparing your materials from content development, to filming, to editing, to image creation;
  • filming tips for vertical video creation are given;
  • and you are given a learning designer to work with, or SPOC as they are called.

My SPOC has already reached out to me with personalized messages based on my intro video on ways that I can improve upon my vertical filming of myself. They are going for a particular look of being seemingly personal and intimate in your connection with the camera and not appearing to be professionally produced, while at the same time ensuring high quality production value. Part of the job of the SPOC is to approve content before it is published and send you notes where improvements need to be made. This is a good thing, as it means that Graphy is invested in publishing high quality content, and ensures that my Graphies will be in good company.

While my first Graphy is not complete yet, it does appear that the company is invested in marketing individual Graphies. I will update this further once I have reached that stage with the Graphy I am developing.

Would I Invest in Graphy?

Tentatively, yes. I just want to go through all the stages of a Graphy development before giving a firm “yes”.

From my research, Sorting Hat Technologies’ track record, the company’s access to funds, the company’s present investors, and the active and tailored development the company is putting into their Graphers, Graphy presents a safe investment and a lot of potential. Added to that, I believe in their perceived values and the intent in what they are creating.

Takeaways

Whether you are interested in investing in Graphy or not, there is a lot that can be learned from how they are launching this edtech startup.

  • With Unacademy thriving and new investment into the company, this presents an opportunity to create something new, intended for a broader marketplace.
  • Graphy is investing in research and actively seeking out course creators, and demonstrating value and respect for the course creators that are investing their time and trust in creating content for the platform.
  • Graphy has taken the time to develop resources and guides to help their course creators develop quality content.
  • Graphy is providing SPOCs for quality control and coaching in elearning development.
  • Incentives are being offered to early Graphers who create content at an accelerated pace to propagate the platform.
  • Course creators maintain their intellectual property, creating a positive relationship between the platform and the creator.
  • Course creators are being offered a fair percent split of sales.
  • When Graphy realized their initial pitch was not working, they pivoted and refined it.
  • Sorting Hat Technologies invests in it’s people, and rewards them when they experience success.

References

Ravi (2020, February 21). Facebook Backs Indian Education Startup ‘Unacademy’ with $110 Million Investment. The CEO Story. https://theceostory.in/blog/unacademy/

Mitter, S. (2020, August 21). Unacademy wants to ‘spark your imagination’ with interactive storytelling app Graphy. Your Story. https://yourstory.com/2020/08/unacademy-spark-imagination-interactive-storytelling-app-graphy

Upadhyay, H. (2020, June 12). Unacademy introduces new product “Graphy” with a separate founding team. Entrackr. https://entrackr.com/2020/06/unacademy-pilots-new-product-graphy/

Upadhyay, H., & Tyagi, G. (2020, May 12). Exclusive: Unacademy expands ESOPs pool to $42 Mn. Entrackr. https://entrackr.com/2020/05/exclusive-unacademy-expands-esops-pool-to-42-mn/

Vardhan, J. & Tyagi, G. (2020, March 20). Decoding Unacademy’s $110 Mn Series E Round Entrackr. https://entrackr.com/2020/03/decoding-unacademys-110-mn-series-e-round/

White, J. (2020, August 4). Graphy – interactive stories, ideas, books, and more. TapSmart. https://www.tapsmart.com/apps/graphy-interactive-stories-ideas-books/