Newest Inanimate Alice member Dale Luckwitz

Hello. My name is Dale Luckwitz, educational technologist, editor and newest member of the Inanimate Alice team. I will be handling social media aspects of Alice — Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and other outreach medium.

I came to Inanimate Alice initially as a fan, and this mindset boosts my excitement about unfolding developments, not just with Inanimate Alice as a digital narrative, but also with the varied ways it is being adapted for classroom instruction by educators. The sense of this project as a living, growing, adapting entity is what I love the most, and that sentiment is echoed in comments I have read from educators.

I will be writing a number of blog posts in upcoming months, and will focus on brevity, offering concise discussions of particular elements of Inanimate Alice — the useful, the innovative, and the entertaining.

For this introduction, however, forgive my complete abandonment of brevity, but I want to share with you the elements of Inanimate Alice that captured me, and hopefully capture you.

Inanimate is Art.
Above all, I appreciate the craft of Alice, from the controlled, understated observations of our young Alice (written by author Kate Pullinger) to the melancholy visuals and haunting music of digital artist Chris Joseph. Other contributions, from photography, typography, and virtual product design, show a level of pride, commitment and creativity that make Inanimate Alice a joy.

Inanimate Alice is Adventure.
From Alice in a remote area of China to the wonder of watching an online series grow and develop as an energetic work in progress, the entire story and process of story is an adventure.

Just as the production values of each subsequent episode grow in complexity, mirroring Alice’s increasing skill as a game designer, so do the ways in which educators adapt the story of Alice to teach writing, literature, English as a second language, and other subjects.

In fact the series itself did not begin with the education field in mind. Instead, that aspect grew out of the series organically, and now we are looking at the future roll out of a number of high-quality teaching tools (don’t worry – we will keep you posted). For an educational technologist, that is adventure!

Inanimate Alice is Innovation.
From the blending of fiction with gaming to the progressive development of episode complexity as a type of of storytelling tool to the creative education plans created by Dr. Jess Laccetti, the Inanimate Alice project continually moves with purpose, but not limitation. We as a team attempt to look not at what has been done, but what can be done. That is thrilling for all of us involved in the new world of digital fiction, both for entertainment and education purposes.

Inanimate Alice is … a Bit More than All of the Above.
I am a lifelong learner — the type of person who never liked the limiting question of “What do you do for a living?” Inanimate Alice represents that good something that refuses to be too tightly categorized. The project is beyond the individual creators and is more than just a story, or a teaching tool, or a piece of digital art. It is all of those, but more. And how I do like that more.

I thank all of the blog readers for granting me this rare indulgence (550 words and going!), but I wanted to let you all have a sneak peak into my thoughts and relationship to this project.

I look forward to hearing from you all, and hope you will follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/InanimateAlice and at Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Inanimate-Alice/125007357446.

We are all going to have some fun.

Dale Luckwitz -- social media for Inanimate Alice

Sincerely,
Dale Luckwitz