Morten Oddvik

Brainstorming Hypertextuality and Literacy

Monday, April 5, 2010 7:01:15 PM

Rock patterns, Malvik kommune, Sør-Trøndelag, Norway.

After reading George Landow's insightful and comprehensive article Is this hypertext any good? I initially started thinking more about the conscious and less concious choices we make when we link. Then I thought of ideas of combining hypertextuality with writing skills.

(...) the defining qualities of the medium include multilinearity, consequent potential multivocality, conceptual richness, (...) reader centredness

Hypertext 2.0, pp. 33-48) Landow
Landow investigates quality in hyperlinking. When is a link serving a purpose, and when is it leading us astray? Doesn't this also lend itself to quality in writing good prose and telling an engaging story or make the reader follow an interesting argument? "Following the link should provide a satisfying experience," writes Landow, and the same applies to constructing an fulfilling story. In our literature course we have been exploring ideas of removing the end, or other parts of a story as part of a pre-reading activity and thus enthise our students in using their creative skills along with their literary competence.[/ALIGN]

I have yet to try this out, but after being presented with ideas in our course on digital competence on hypertext stories, I am keen to try to combine the two ideas. I might use Susie Kretschmer's and summer is gone, and divide the students into groups and then provide them with the first paragraph of the story. I am thinking of using either Wikispaces or Google Docs like I have done here. All the blue words should be linked to other web pages (made as documents in Google Docs and published) in order to create a whole.

I was an artist, always had been, and I would paint in their style - in reds, oranges and rusts, on the rocks by the creek- geometric designs and the Nine Lords of the Night.

Kretschmer, and summer is gone
I still need to work on, what Landow describes as "(c)oherence a perceived analogy" in terms of how much the students will discuss the plot and its direction, whether they can use images, and how much direction they will be given by me. Nonetheless, I am willing to give it a try but I need to do some linking of ideas on my own first.

Anybody else with some good input here?[/ALIGN]

Shoebox Book ReportsUnderstanding Search

Comments

hildego # Wednesday, April 7, 2010 8:32:36 PM

Flott at du ha fått lest Landows artikkel, Morten! Ja, det er interessant å se hvordan sammenhenger i hypertekst egentlig handler om sammenheng i tekst generelt. Det er snakk om kohesjon/koherens i alle tekster, men sammenhengsmekanismene kan være av forskjellig art. Det er strålende om fu får prøvd ut hypertekstfortellinger med elevene dine. Tell us about it!

Kan det være at samskriving av denne type også kan være aktuelt å ta med i masteroppgaven din....?

Hildegunn

Morten OddvikMorteno # Saturday, April 10, 2010 2:08:18 PM

Takk for kommentar. Ja, jeg forsøker å finne modeller og oppgaver med utgangspunkt i hypertekstruktur i forhold til masteroppgaven, og jeg håper også å få prøvd ut noe nå i engelsken eller norsken på tampen av semesteret. Vi får se!