- How has your colleague’s experience differed from yours? And how do you know?
For this linking assignment, I wanted to choose Tatianna’s experience with Twine. I quite enjoyed her twine story and appreciated the elements in the game. Tatianna’s experience differed from mine in that what she got from the literature, especially in her reflection focused on hypertext’s shift to allow the learner to be part of the experience. I could see this in her Twine story about taking great care and concentrate on the choices that a user makes. She used this functionality in twice and focused on the features of the scenario on that.
For me, how my scenarios differed in the availability of choices. While we both agree on giving users the choice as per twine, I focused a lot on the availability of choices in hypertext whereas regular text or books allowed for a more linear path. I thought we had similar choices, but Tatianna focused heavily on the experience of choice while I focused on the availability of choices.
- What web authoring tool have they chosen to manifest their work? How does their tool differ from yours in how it allows content-authoring and end-user interface?
Similarly, we both used twine for this assignment and I appreciated how well-written Tatianna’s case scenario was. Tatianna’s reflection was poignant in how she viewed reading as an activity where the definition of how reading is done has changed in the digital age (Kress, 2005). My reflection on Twine and even how I use Wikipedia is quite interesting in that hypertext allows someone like me to open multiple tabs and have different options to read through the content.
- What literacies does their site privilege or deny in comparison and contrast to yours?
With both of our reflections on twine comparatively, the literacies that we were both contending with was this idea that the learner has agency and choice which was exemplified through our twine activity and also the readings with Kress (2005), Bolter (2001) and Bush (1945). Twine and hypertext is also a unique feature of the digital space. You can’t replicate this process in a book where you could jump to different sections or follow a path (choose your own adventure books could probably come close). The way that text works in this space is by being able to recognize what hypertext can allow the user to do (Bolter, 2001).
- What theoretical underpinnings are evident in your/your colleague’s textual architecture and how does this affect one’s experience of the work?
Both of our reflections on this activity is that the digital space has a way where text can be situated with diverse possibilities. Before this, historically, the learner had to follow a linear path which as we dive into different diversities in learning could prove to be difficult.
- How do the constraints of the course design manifest in your architectural choices? How have you responded to the pedagogical underpinnings of this course design in your own webspace?
In a sense, we both utilized Twine to the best of our ability. I can observe that Tatianna has had a background with teaching and experience with text based games at some point in her life. Some of the constraints with the medium was that we were limited with utilizing some of Bush’s recommendations to be able to pair pictures and other mediums such as sound due to time. I would’ve loved to have more time to play with twine to create more choices and using different visuals to cue in the learner for better immersion. In the use of both our blog spaces, Tatianna’s use of the menu screen and the use of my links on the webpage allow for the users to be able to see our different activities available for us.