About that story…
Hi everyone,
Thank you again for a provocative and engaging class. I enjoyed the presentations and the various ways in which we ended up touching upon issues that we’ve been mulling over across much of the course as well as some of the new issues that arose specifically out of the topic of e-literature, both from the reading and the presentation.
I would have liked, however, to have had a bit more of a chance to delve into what is our first collaborative work as a class (well, besides the sequential narrative comments we’ve been posting to this weblog)! We were able to talk a little bit about our experiences of engaging with the seed paragraphs that Teresa set for us from the Stoss story. I made a couple of points about the particular affordances of the wiki space for collaborative writing (something that perhaps Heidi and I will revisit when we talk about social media), but I’d be interested in picking up on a point that Teresa made concerning the experience of students schooled in traditional print literacy (sound like anyone you know), and the ways in which their critique/resistance with e-literature changed somewhat when they shifted from being readers of hypertexts to authors of a hypertextual story.
For those of you who engaged with the wiki story, what did you make of the experience? How did you find your way across the gap from consumer to producer in the context of this particular text? I was talking to Eva at the end of class and I mentioned that I fell into my own approach by the serendipity of searching for one of the words in the text, the word “pronoiac.” Well, in doing a quick Google search of the word, I stumbled upon an allusion to a story that led me into wikipedia, which then led me to the title of the story from which Teresa extracted the passage, and from that point, I decided to adopt a strategy of fleshing out some contextual clues about the original text without (I hoped at the start) giving away the text itself. I did, finally add in the link to Stross’s text, but not until Sunday evening, so as to prevent that link from having significant influence on how we might develop our collaborative story. To link to some of the points raised tonight, I played around with character embellishments rather than bothering much with plot. Others, worked to advance the plot.
How did you engage with the text (if you did)? Once you did engage, what was it like to have to then accommodate the work added by others? For those of you who did not add to the text (and it is certainly not too late to do so…), what stopped you? I know a couple of people had some technical difficulties, and that is really something to think about with such spaces. And what might we make of such spaces and approaches to collaborative authorship in a wiki with the students that we teach? Was any of this experience different than how you typically write when you are using other spaces/context/technologies?
Curiously yours,
Jeff
12 comments
1 Melanie Wong { 11.10.09 at 10:20 am }
Hi!
Jeff, thank you for getting this conversation started. I was a late participant to the Wiki story. However, I found it fascinating reading it. Being schooled in the traditional sense of literature, it was an entirely new experience for me. As I mentioned in previous blog postings, I was never really encouraged to be creative. Wikis provide an opportunity for individuals to be creative.
I am certainly not one of those individuals that are resistant to e-literature. This shift in locus of control provides so many positive things for my ESL students. I believe that when they have some ownership in their learning, they will more likely learn the concepts. I have actually seen this happen in my classroom. The only example I can come up with right now is when my class was asked to present a Chinese myth to the entire school on Chinese New Year. I had read several versions of the same story to my class. As a class we decided to combine the versions and write our “own” (ha ha, I guess it wasn’t really our “own” but it was our version) of the story. The ownership that my students took during this process, really showed in the effort they put in their work. They spent hours on our project and even brought it home to finish up. I remember standing at my SMARTboard recording all their ideas and how excited my students were getting. I can see them doing the exact same thing if we did a wiki story.
Since I came into the wiki-story late, I got to see what everyone else had done. I have to admit that I was very hesitate to change or add to anyone else’s wiki. I have no idea why! Perhaps it was this sense of not wanting to offend anyone? However, in the future, if I am participating in something like this, I will not hesitate to delete “links” (*wink*) or add to someone’s wiki pages. I think that this collaborate environment has many potentials for the learner. I should share that I was very reluctant to be the first one to add to the wiki page. I think I was worried about not doing it right. However after this experience I realize there is no right or wrong answers. My students will enjoy this aspect.
Melanie
2 Genevieve Brisson { 11.10.09 at 5:38 pm }
Hi Jeff!
Thanks for the invitation! I was really interested in discussing the WikiStory, and I was sorry we did not get much time to do it Monday night. I was thinking of creating an entry about it on the blog when I went to bed last night, and “ta-da” it was there this morning!
Something I found a bit difficult with the WikiStory was finding the new pieces and links added by other people. It was such a new experience for me that I did not want to miss any part of it. I wanted to see them all. Maybe when I get use to it, I will not fill this need. Some pages are also cul-de-sacs: you get there, check the links… then what? How do I get back in the story? That was a bit of a frustration for me. The answer to the dead end problem is of course simple: add new links!
I read the seed paragraphs the night after Teresa had posted them, but I had no idea how to add links or continue the story, so I didn’t explore any further that night. When Erin invited us to join in, I went back and read her page about the meme. I logged in and look at the “edit” page, but I was still not sure how it worked. Luckily, my personal IT guy was home, and within a few minutes, I could create external and internal links, and create new wiki pages.
That is when, for me, the fun began. I had no grand idea about plot, characters, neither about beginnings nor ends when I create my first page, the Father page. First I had given Manfred a sister, and she was also an actress. When I found the Corn Flakes commercial, I went back and changed Manfred’s family: he would have a brother with a low and deep voice. I did that within a few minutes, so it was not a problem. But what would have happened if I had done the change the day after and someone somewhere else had already written about Manfred’s sister?
When I got back to the original seed paragraphs, I decided something should happen Manfred. I created the short bit about the telephone. I was thrilled when someone picked up that thread and created news pages and links. I had not thought about Manfred’s mother and I really liked what Eva had done with Angelique. I liked Eva’s videos and her puns. I had so much fun reading and writing! I had no problem to accommodate the work of others. I like the new ideas, and actually did not feel the need to erase or change anything. I simply read their pages, and if something spoke to me, I followed it, be it words and their meaning, or events and possibilities of expansion stemming from them.
I did not even think about trying to find where the text came from: I fully engaged with the fun and creativity of the game.
Bonne soirée
Geneviève
3 Erin Garcia { 11.10.09 at 9:32 pm }
yup, I was one of the first to participate, but I chose to not continue the narrative, maybe out of this same fear of not doing the “right” thing, even when there is no right or wrong. Instead I embraced the randomness of the wiki and created some wacky links, turning the words into Allusions! to mysterious things like HIPSTERS! maybe I’ll go back to the wiki story and add some narrative. oooh scary.
4 Peter Hill { 11.11.09 at 7:23 am }
Hi Jeff,
I was a bit busy with my technically- challenged presentation to look closely at the story. After Erin’s exhortations, I did look up the ‘hippie’ and flash mob. ( I want to do a flashmob of people reciting Hamlet’s “To Be or not to be” in the seabus station). I also checked out the ‘cafe’ song by Genevieve and felt too close to that character!
Still, I didn’t really find an entry point for my mind while looking at the story. I enjoyed that other people were enjoying it though!
p
5 TMD { 11.11.09 at 9:47 am }
It’s interesting to hear about various responses to the project, from engagement to uncertainty. Evidently many variables are at play: the nature of the prompt, the affordances of the writing space, the collaborative aspect of the task, the genre of writing, and so on. It would be impossible to isolate the effect of any one of these variables on individual response.
Wikis have widely been described as anarchistic writing spaces in reference to their ease of use in facilitating collaborative writing projects wherein multiple authors must negotiate content, as well as codes of behaviour in relation to the negotiation of content. The development of these codes is particularly interesting: At what level is it acceptable to modify someone else’s contribution? Should one choose to do so, is it necessary to account for having done so? Is it possible or desirable to enforce any particular rules of writing? There is no pat answer, for the development of such codes is invariably context specific. MediaWiki, which we are using, offers a discussion space to facilitate such negotiations, but this is not a common feature of all wikis. Thinking about social negotiations in social media spaces brings to mind Julian Dibble’s “A Rape in Cyberspace,” which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. The article takes up similar issues in the context of an early chat room called LambdaMoo: http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle_vv.html
Considering applications for writing instruction, of course, our wiki project is but one way forward. Like any technology for writing, wikis can be used for individual, collaborative, creative or expository projects. Linking may be extensive or minimal, hierarchical or highly referential, external or internal.
I look forward to further thoughts on this matter, and to learning more about Mandred’s extended family, perhaps, in one of our other writing spaces . . .
6 Emma Kivisild { 11.12.09 at 11:59 am }
I wish I had contributed more toe the wiki before Monday . Just got stymied technically. Jeff helped. Thanks! I am sill hampered by my typing, so I am choosing between the wiki and the blog right now. I am using the blog to write about the wikr. (!)
I am very fascinated and impressed by the usefulness of the wiki pedagogically.
I am thinking about it more as a creative medium, though, as that sis what I know more about. I have been part of many collaborative writing ventures in the past, ranging from substantive editing that ended up being a rewrite, to essays, to performance, to a novel Collaboration is an odd creative practice. I firmly believe that artists never work entirely alone. If I understand Foucault (and I very well might not). we are working within epistemes, affected by all that is around us personally, culturally, economically, etc. so we are all collaborators, to varying extents.
But when working on the wiki, these levels of collaboration all require overt negotiation, and it is different every time. I love getting others’ ideas to work with, but I get a little freaked out by people deleting things, unless we talk about it, but that would defeat the purpose and the freedom of it. I am most interested in where my own plans for Manfred might go, and hugely disappointed when the group sends him off in a completely different direction. It has been best for me to think of it in terms of music, sometimes people jam, and sometimes they improvise within constraints and sometimes they take others’ ideas an put them in their composition. They’re all ok. We’re jamming, I guess.
Looking forward to what we talk about on Monday.
Emma
7 Janet Pletz { 11.12.09 at 10:49 pm }
Hi everyone,
Jeff, thank you especially..for your wiki lesson last Monday.
My first wiki experience! Where to begin. First, I find myself settled in my personal beliefs and pedagogy with regards to voice and agency. I know I know…that this environment is only fully free if we all accept the liberties afforded within the platform we are ‘performing’. However, I also have a very difficult time with the notion of deleting other people’s writing, as Emma has mentioned. In my years of working with young children, providing confidence and respect in order that each child ‘know’ their own voice, hear their own words, as a cherished gift to share with their world, I’m afraid I could never delete someone else’s words to be replaced by my own. On the topic of voice, my pedagogy is too deeply ingrained I guess. So, even in our big adult world, I carry this with me. Now, about this writing experience! What fun it has been, guarded perhaps?
Being a first timer, I was ‘whelmed’ by all the routes, links, choices I had. I needed a strategy. I read the basic body, just as Teresa presented it. Make sense of that….then went back to the very first sentence. One by one, I opened each link, from L to R, opening, reading, closing, move to the next one. And then sentence #3, and so on…until I reached the end of the passage.
In adding to the narrative, I had all of you sitting behind me, all eyes on the screen, watching, as every word was entered. In terms of ‘hoping to see the story go in one direction or another’ I don’t feel any need to visualize what happens next or control the story plot. The nature of the wiki and the randomness of its development is embracing the unknown in the way it unfolds. THAT! is the exciting part for me. Each of us bring our creative voice and imaginative capacity into the process. Jeff mentioned how specific words called him into entering the text where he did. What was it like for everyone else? Great conversations for Monday. And I look forward to seeing where we go, with Manfred’s ‘destiny’ in our hands!
Janet
8 Jeff Miller { 11.13.09 at 11:12 am }
9 Melanie Wong { 11.13.09 at 7:37 pm }
Jeff,
That cartoon is so cute! Poor Manfred! *wink*
M.
10 Genevieve Brisson { 11.14.09 at 8:16 am }
Thanks for the cartoon, Jeff! I’ll have to explore the site you used!
As Janet and Emma, I am not that comfortable with erasing what someone else has written, but adding to it was not a problem to me. But Like Teresa has written, that’s why the discussion page is there… Maybe we have to get used to the idea of discussing why we write/erase/change something.
cheers
Geneviève
11 Eva Ziltener { 11.14.09 at 9:39 pm }
Hello everyone!
Jeff, thanks for starting this thread, your comments echo my own thoughts at the end of class last week. As some of you may have noticed I got quite “into” our wiki story… although I will admit, that like Genevieve, I had to get a wiki tutorial from my resident IT expert first. I was a little hesitant to take too much control of the story (at first), so I began by pasting in external links, mainly puns that I thought were funny (sorry for subjecting you all to my humour). (= Then I began to imagine who Manfred might be… I was intrigued by the family history Genevieve had begun to create, and I tried to paint a picture of Angelique based on the clues already present in our “text”. I missed all of Jeff’s clues, probably because I was too focused on building my own story. All of a sudden I had a pretty good idea of how the story could be developed. I really enjoyed watching bits and pieces of it take off, as others added links and other narrative threads. Like Janet, I, too opened every link (in an attempted methodical order) and I tried to make sure my additions worked with what everyone else was contributing. I never worried about writing anything “wrong”, perhaps because this medium is so new to me and also because I figured other people could just erase or correct my entries if needed. I did delete one link: Genevieve had linked Mark’s name to my Mark page and I felt it was too early to find out too much about Mark yet. (I added a comment about this on the discussion page). I was hoping others would add other threads dropping clues about this mysterious brother, or even telling us more of his story. I don’t think this ended up happening… please correct me if I’m wrong…. I may have missed seeing a link or two. I also noticed that no one has played with the ending yet. Why is that? I’ve left it alone, because I don’t want to dictate too much of story… I’m really enjoying the game of hot potato where everyone has a go at telling a part of the story and then passes the buck.
From a pedagogical point of view: I love this tool. I didn’t think I’d cotton to e-literature, but this experience has allowed me to dive right into it: learning by doing and loving it! I also like how the flexibility of this tool allows it to be used in various ways by different learners. What I especially enjoyed about this creative collaborative endeavor, was seeing the story change as everyone added not just text, but also video and audio/visual links that helped to tell the story.
I’m really looking forward to continuing this discussion in class on Monday.
Salut,
Eva
12 Genevieve Brisson { 11.15.09 at 8:27 am }
Chère Eva!
Je pense que même si on continuait à travailler sur cette histoire, il n’y aurait jamais de fin. Quelqu’un pourrait ajouter une suite à la scène où Mark, déguisé en Mr. Lobo, rencontre Manfred chez Angelique, mais il y a tellement d’autres petits pages, d’autres idées, que ce ne serait pas la fin, mais une fin. Les autres aspects de la vie de Manfred continueraient à se développer. J’aimerais bien en savoir plus sur Jack et Angelique, personnage que je trouve très intéressant. Et j’aime bien Samuel, l’ami que Mélanie a créé pour Manfred en 2e année. J’ai créé une page où Sam et Manny, devenu ami, utilisent les idées originales de Manfred tout au long de leur primaire. Je pense que Samuel fait encore partie de la vie de Manfred et participent à sa production d’idées originales…
Qu’en pensez-vous?
à lundi!
Geneviève
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