Justification of Selection

The Planet Slayer is an interactive website supported by the ABC that can be used with students in Stage Three. Students easily become engaged within this medium making it an effective way to build critical literacy skills, whilst simultaneously building knowledge about the greenhouse effect.

The site was chosen as it relies heavily, not just on the written text, but on a multimodal communication style. Music, games, cartoons, images, and moving characters act as aides to assist students in the reading relationship. With the large number of visual aides available, this site would be particularly good for building confidence in students whose first language is not English.


Written Text of Site and Visuals

The written text in this site is informal and personalised, for example, "It depends on heaps of things, but we did the calculations for keeping a 10 year old car vs buying a new one…” (The Planet Slayer, 2007). An attribute of the site is that whilst the language is quite basic, students are encouraged to develop a metalanguage by building the relationship between text, imagery and video files. Through cooperative learning activities students are able to discuss aspects of the topic area and bring to the discussion their personal views and background knowledge.

The site is broken into seven, easily accessible categories, which all linked back to the home page via a menu at the top, for ease of manoeuvring between screens. The images offer an example of how easy it is for students to access information and build confidence not only with ICT but critical literary skills.

From the homepage students can select an activity. For example a student has chosen to enter the ‘This is Your Lifestyle’ link by clicking once then selecting to either complete the questions with or without audio. The student then moves to 'Image A’ the instructions to ‘This is Your Lifestyle’ . After reading the instructions students then select 'next' and move to 'Image B’ for further instructions on how to answer the questions and understand the visual representation of their answers.

Students then read through each question and choose their answers. If they are viewing with audio they will also receive comments as they answer. Once all 7 questions have been completed, students move to Image ‘C’. This page offers students an explaination of how their answers were calculated in relation to environmental damage. These questions are written with a practical application. This is an example of the multiliteracies and multimodal texts.

There appear to be three dominant text types apparent. These are factual descriptions, exposition, explanations. Factual descriptions have been used within the ‘Factoids’ link to describe activities that cause harm to the environment. Within the ‘Greenhouse Calculator’, students are required to complete a number of questions. Following the calculation, the rationale behind the rating to each answer is given, arguing for the more environmentally-friendly side. ‘Greenhouse FAQ’ can best be described as examples of explaination. They describe technical and natural phenomena.

The site clearly advocates for the environment and better care towards greenhouse emissions. The site is written in a casual form using technical language to assist students to develop a metalanguage within the knowledge area.

As discussed earlier, The Planet Slayer incorporates visuals in the form of animation, headings and graphics to assist students to build a relationship between the written and visual. The saliant point of the main page is the cartoon frame of ‘Greena’. When the page is first open, there is a full length shot of Greena, who then appears to come towards the viewer untill only her upper body and head are framed. She is in the centre of the page and demands the attention of the audience with her direct eye contact. In relation to the other characters on the page, she is larger in size. She is the character that features throughout the site.

Links to ‘This is Your Lifestyle’ game offer students an opportunity to consider the impact that varying activities play in contributing to greenhouse gases. After completing the questions, an explaination is given as to how these activities affect the environment, increasing students knowledge using a number of modes. The “Planet Slayer Game” doesn’t appear to offer much in terms of information to students at this level.


Examples of use in the ClassroomTwo cross-KLA activities based on the theme: Saving the Planet

(1) Students could navigate through The Planet Slayer, to build confidence with ICT and read the section concerning “Greenhouse FAQ”. The class then formed into 10 groups (groups of 2-3) to read through each of the topics. Groups are to prepare a small presentation to the class, reporting salient points.

Students then individually continue researching a topic of interest that could form the basis of a discussion to be completed at the end of the unit.

(2) In small groups of 2-3, students now view an episode of “The Adventures of Greena”. Students are to comment on the cartoon, considering the message, how effective, the appropriatness of images, salience, colours setting, long/short shots developing students metalanguage about the mode and the topic. This activity allows children to direct their own learning and search for individual meaning.

Overall, I found The Planet Slayer an example of a website that could be used in the classroom that uses a range of text types, multiliteracies and multimodal texts. It is engaging and offers links to other relevant sites.