"All
the major representational formats of the previous five thousands
years of human history have now been translated into digital form.
There is nothing that human beings have created that cannot be represented
in this protean environment, from the cave paintings of Lascaux
to real-time photographs of Jupiter, from the Dead Sea Scrolls to
Shakespeare's First Folio . . ."
from Janet Murray, Hamlet
on the Holodeck
Hypertext
Zines
Video
games
Blogs
Wikis
Hypertext
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Hypertext is a
fairly new form of electronic writing that attempts to take advantage
of the digital media. Whether published on the web at sites like Hyperizon
at Duke University or distributed on a CD ROM by Eastgate
Systems, hypertext fiction is marked by hyperlinks (as on this
web page) that allow the reader to read the story in any order she
chooses.
Since readers
choose how they want to navigate the work, hypertext fiction cannot
be said to have a traditional linear plot. Works have no beginnings
or endings, pushing the bounds of closure and determinacy still further.
Like much of postmodern writing, hypertext is often encyclopedic in
scope and very concerned with itself as a work of fiction.
Many works of
hypertext fiction predate the World Wide Web. Works from the early
1990s, such as Victory Garden by Stuart Mouthrop offer only
limited graphics and are bundled in software that seems clunky compared
to the sleek web browsers of today. For a look at a multimedia hypertext,
check out Sunshine '69, an interactive
novel by Bobby Rabyd.
Hypertext has
made its way into writing courses, particularly on the college level.
While a professor at MIT, Janet Murray offered a hypertext writing
course called Theory
and Practice of Nonlinear and Interactive Narrative.
Zines
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A zine, or e-zine,
is is an electronic magazine that is published on the Internet. A
zine is typically concerned with a single subject (e.g. rock climbing)
and publishes original essays, fiction, poetry, commentary, and multimedia
on that subject. Ideally, zines take advantage of the new digital
media, conveying information in a way that the traditional media cannot.
While some zines are refereed (e.g. Salon.com),
many have open submission policies, making them more democratic but
generally less credible.
There are thousands
of zines in existence today. In fact, the term zine has broadened
to include the electronic editions of print magazines (e.g. Time)
that are now available on the web.
Zines can be great
resources for English teachers interested in using technology in their
classrooms. Composition teachers on all levels should take a look
at Kairos,
a refereed online journal concerned with rhetoric, technology, and
pedagogy. Each issue presents articles on a special topic, along with
companion pieces, written by language arts educators from all levels,
on how to use technology to approach that topic in the classroom.
Another helpful
zine is TechKnowlogia,
an international online journal dedicated to examining how informational
technologies are shaping education across the globe.
Zines can also
be effective tools in the language arts classroom. For a look at how
to set up your own zine, check out the Book
of Zines: Readings from the Fringe, which includes outstanding
examples of zines and plenty of instructional advice, though it is
not geared toward teachers. For a more educational approach, check
out Florida State's
Computer Writing Center. It publishes zines created by students
in FSU's first-year writing classes.
Video
Games |TOP|
As video games
continue to grow in popularity, more and more people are discussing
them as a new form of discourse. They do have much in common with
traditional fiction: rich settings,developed characters, and sequential
plots. In addition, they are immersive and interactive in ways that
print media cannot be.
The U.S. military
has recently realized the potential of video games as more than just
entertainment. It is offering a new first-person shooter video game
called Army Ops for free.
The purpose of the game is to attract and train recruits.
The most popular
online interactive game is Sony's
Everquest, a fantasy role-playing game that now boasts over 450,000
players. While Everquest charges a monthly subscription, interested
players may download a 30 day trial for free.
Blogs |TOP|
A blog is a web log,
a sort of online personal diary that has grown hugely popular in the
last two years. A recent article in Wired Magazines suggest
that blogging even redefines the way we think about the Internet, from
a network of hyperlinked documents to a network of minds: "What
happens when you start seeing the Web as a matrix of minds, not documents?"
Blogs may be written and published by anyone with access to the Internet,
including celebrities, pre-teens, neo-nazis, and grandmothers. In fact,
blogging is the easiest and most democratic form of web publishing to
date. Of course, critics contend that blogs are too populist: that anyone
can and will publish just about anything.
Nevertheless, blogs are a new form of discourse and may be useful in
English language arts classrooms. There are thousands of blog sites
in existence. Most offer free blogging (with ads) and ad-free blogging
for a subscription. A few popular ones include blogspot.com,
blogger.com, and blogeasy.com.
Schoolblogs.com
was
co-founded by Peter Ford, a teacher at the British School of Amsterdam,
and Adam Curry. Its purpose is to make weblogs available to the schools
around the world. Any educational professional can create and maintain
an individual, customizable SchoolBlog here for no cost.
For a helpful
guide on blogging, check out The
Art of Blogging: Part I and The
Art of Blogging:Part II by George Siemens at Elearnspace.
Wikis
Another new development
in web publishing is the wiki. A wiki is an open-source web page that
can be modified by anyone who has a web browser and a few simple formatting
commands at the ready. This may make the wiki the most democratic
form of all web publishing, since no special skills are required to
create and modify a web page.
There are hundreds
of wikis in existence today. Most of them are quite bare, in comparison
to other web pages that incorporate multimedia effects. This is by
design, to keep things simple. Wiki pages do support graphics, hyperlinks,
and inter-wiki links.
The wiki is the
perfect tool for collaborative work, since wiki pages can be accessed
and revised anywhere and anytime. The best example of a collaborative
wiki may be the wikipedia,
an online encyclopedia where anyone can post entries.
Though still in their early stages, wikis, like blogs,
are making the web more dynamic and a little more user friendly. For
a look at how wikis can be used in educational settings, check out
Teaching and
Learning with Wikis, a development site for Jonathan Aubrey (AUS)
and Jeff Nelson (UAE U). Or visit the recently-constructed English
479 Wiki Page, a brand new wiki designed for an English 479 (Teaching
Writing in Secondary Schools) class at Western Michigan University.
