ETEC 540 – Week 5
by zoe armstrong
WEEK 5
COMPUTER-BASED WRITING: EARLY HYPERTEXT THEORY
My very first Twine:
The inspiration for this story came from some of the debacles I have faced in the last month. “June is always a tough month for teachers,” I remember my Mom sharing that with me my very first year teaching. She wasn’t wrong!
My strategy for this activity was to try to take my own story and make it as relatable for other teachers as possible. I really enjoyed the casual language that was used in The temple of No so I knew I wanted something that felt similar and used humor. I reflected upon things that I often get distracted with when attempting to do school work on the weekends… fun activities like pedicures, indulging in my favorites like beer and ice cream, watching too much Netflix and playing with my dog.
Creating this game/story on twinery.org was quite user-friendly. I decided to number my passages instead of giving them titles to keep my paths organized and easy to remember. Because this was my first experience creating something like this, I struggled to figure out how to add in fun elements like music or photos. Because I hadn’t created an account nor did I ever press “save” somewhere, I was constantly scared I would lose my progress. This made me hesitant to try out different features or buttons within the editing page.
Before this week, I had no knowledge of hypertext. The explanation that Bolter (2001) used of webpages functioning as their own but also as places along a path helped me to gain an understanding of how in depth a concept hypertext is. Twinery.org was a great hands-on and visual experience that added to my understanding of this weeks topic.
References:
Bolter, Jay David. (2001). Writing space: computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. New York, NY: Routledge.