Pied Piper of Hamelin Town Myth or Truth?

In the Virtual Worlds project (http://www.literaryworlds.og) we are creating immersive, interactive, and engaging virtual reality environments to support reading literature and more deeply involve students with the language, characters, and settings of literary works. In the free on-line spaces we are making, students can explore and interact in virtual literary environments, role playing and interrelating as characters, extending and altering character conduct in purposeful ways, exploring on-line museums and cultural materials, analyzing the impact of setting, language, and dialogue on behavior and events all directly related to the specific works they are assigned to read in their secondary or university English classes. Some of the projects are also aimed at the K-12 classroom experience, such as the Pied Piper literary world.
These virtual worlds are based on a model developed in the last two years by English Department doctoral researchers and faculty working with Professor Allen Webb at Western Michigan University. The first prototype was designed around the novel Brave New World (Rozema, 2003). In these virtual reality spaces, students are able to engage with literary works from the inside out, to enter into and more deeply understand specific cultural and historical contexts as they explore in their own imaginative voice the dilemmas, controversies, and issues that face literary characters. These worlds take an important step toward enacting the values of immersive reading (Murray, 1997; Wilhelm, 1997). By using the relatively simple, free, open-source software EnCore 4 (http://lingua.utdallas.edu/encore), patterned on Lambda MOO, we make it possible for schools and students to have easy access to the virtual world environments and for teachers to design and build their own spaces.
For this presentation, the truth or myth of The Pied Piper of Hamelin Town will be the subject of discussion. The Pied Piper story is a surprising complex and historically rich fairy tale that lends itself to student exploration in a virtual world. The fun part about this story is most people know just one small segment of the legend. Discovering historical contexts and alternative aspects of the tale within a virtual world makes the learning process holistic, deconstructive and informative. In this virtual world there are a series of investigative choices that can lead students on a literary expedition in search of the truth as represented in historical fact and related in the fiction.
The purpose of the online literary investigation is to form a closer understanding of the literature under study, the conditions under which the literature was formed, the reception of the literature by the intended audience and the meaning of the literature for todays audience. Additionally, other reading/writing activities can stem from the role playing environment of the literary world into dramatic performance, recitation of poetry, creative writing and non-fiction writing/reporting.
I propose to discuss how my college level students entering the field of education have evaluated this educational tool; the merits of the virtual literary exploration as it applies to cross-curriculum issues; the pedagogical theories that support the deconstructive form of literary analysis and last but not least, how to have fun with technology and literature.

Presentation date: June 4-5, 2007, at the "Interacting with Immersive Worlds" in Brock University, St. Catherines, Ontario.
Contact John Mitterer for more information: 905-688-5550 x3459