Tariq

My next step in developing the first assignment into a project, I thought about how to create a real website for me. However, I am aware that achieving this goal requires a lot of work and efforts that may last long time before the official launching. I added more topics and links to the project so that the project could stand as a formal site for teaching in the future. The Twine project shows more complicated processes that were conducted to create an educational website that serves the educational process. I employed many things that I learned about the program, including sharing a link, uploading pictures, and changing format. In this project, I employed technology not to be my focus in the program, but I want that to yield in better results that lead to facilitating the learning-teaching process when it comes to teaching and exploiting this program in classrooms.

In final my project, I initially used Twine to introduce a theme that I noticed in Earnest Hemingway’s short stories to my students. I discussed the topic in a basic way, using my beginner experience through the program to present that in a classroom. After the course progresses toward the end, I learned many things from the course and from my colleagues’ presentations as well. I employed all of that to incorporate another major topic, which is the “Indication of Colors” in literature. My next step in developing the project focused on connecting this topic to the original one, employing the program to present it to students in classrooms.

A Class Lesson: How to Incorporate Interactive Fiction to Literature Course
Incorporation with Introduction to Literature. Why?
– Interactive fiction is not familiar for some undergraduate
– Several courses on Traditional literature
– Interactive fiction becomes an ingredient part of the syllabus
– designing the program?
Text: Galatea
Burdick thinks that other programs that can stand as texts and games provide     knowledge for students; therefore, “in the digital realm it becomes an interactive site for creating, representing, and navigating knowledge” (47).
Why Galatea?
– This text contains many issues that pertain studying interactive fiction and introduce the idea of digitalized literature as part of digital humanities to students.
– Postmodern literature
– Breaking the routine in teaching literature
– Linguistics
Methodology and Procedure
– Varying instructing methodologies in the learning-teaching process:
o recent pedagogy, educational strategies, technological tools
o class discussion, group work, individual activity, Fun
– Theoretical vs. practical
– Using facilities: networked lab, computer, laptop
– Change classroom: increases the desirability of learning
– Collaborative work: students from different levels
– Print out the text: presentation
– Analyzing the literary texts: Plots elements
– Attempt to incorporate some theoretical discussions
o Postmodern
o Formalism
o Any Possible Theory
Evaluation
– Professor’s Evaluation: initial, constructive, final
– Peer Evaluation
Assignment

I conducted some basic gender studies using Voyant in analyzing some possible data in my analysis.
I tried to analyze a theme that exists in some of George Eliot fiction. The program, Voyant, helped me to apply gender theory on Eliot’s fiction. I selected three novels, which are The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, and Daniel Deronda. I uploaded the three novels to Voyant after I saved them texts, using the Notebook program.
I noticed that Eliot deliberately feminizes the heroes in the novels and give masculine traits to the heroines. Then Eliot punishes the famished men and transgressive women because she thinks that they rebel against the traditions and norms during the Victorian age. As part of the punishment, as the word trends show us, Eliot expels feminized heroes out of their selves, out of the novel, out of Britain. Again the curved lines shows that Eliot punishes heroines with death, spinsterhood, hatred, and expulsion.

Voyant Project
Cirrus
Word Trend

Terminology Statistics

In terms on the terminology of gender theory that exists in the novel. The Words Trend helped me to give statistics on the way these words are employed. We can see how many times Eliot uses the words man, woman, meek, transgressive, death, spinsterhood, masculine, and feminine.
We can notice that, for instance, “man” is used much in Silas Marner because the idea in my suggested theme does not exist in this novel. Therefore, I can trust the program’s outputs because when I read the three novel, I actually found that this novel could be excluded from the discussion about this idea. While it does exist in the other two novels. On the other hand, we can notice the use of the word “woman” in the novels is about the same number in a moderate way.
The same thing is applicable to the other terms that are key terms in gender theory.

This article tackles the relationship between visualization and the meaning it indicates. For example, Ngram is a helpful tool that was invented to tell the relationship between words in many books through statistics. The purpose of such tools is similar to other ones, such as Voyant, that provide statistics for visualization online. The former gives the approximate number of words and how many times they are repeated in a collection of books. The novelty of these programs makes them more educational because of exploiting colors and because of the component of other tools that they engage. This sometimes has undesired educational results because engaging many colors and moving pictures distract students’ attention from the content. Kelly anticipates something similar to that when he says: “I will leave it to the literary scholars and the linguists to hash out the thornier issues here”. He should address the psychologists as well.

Again, pedagogy that deeply relies on colors, motion pictures, and texts as games attract students for better learning and understanding when approaching information, using these programs. Nevertheless, there is a fear that the excessive use of that colorful texts or games attract students’ attention toward the means more than the content. That should be taken into the consideration of educators when launching their programs. They need to be moderate when dealing with these facts. So students have the chance to exploit these programs in the right way as intended when they were launched initially.

The big bulk of Kelly’s article deals with the positive aspects of the visualization information. He describes perfect experiences when engaging this technology inside classes and online; that really forms virtual environment of learning-teaching process even though students do not need to be in the classroom. Distance learning is significant nowadays in which students can communicate and interact easily from many different places. Equally important, Kelly refers to the graphs and their importance in providing facts about words and books online. So he refers to the importance of education through using the phrase, “technical discussion”. That is because they provide exact information, not speculation, on a scientific basis and employs technology in pedagogy.

It is very interesting how this article tackles some issues in “Looking For Whitman: A Multi-Campus Experiment in Digital Pedagogy”; I feel it is an extension for it. First, this article starts with touching on the idea that fossil minds always resist change, especially the change that leads to development and growth, which are necessary to humankind’s prosperity. The history is full of examples of intelligent creatives and discoverers whose ideas and innovations were severely resisted. Ironically, the coming years reveal their exceptional potentialities, and then they are classified as premature because their ideas become authentic and valid even over the following century.

“The Walt Whitman Archive” is a good website that provides a collection of poems with commentaries on them. It can be considered as a good start for education if an educator considers this poet in his/ her syllabus. Whitman has an educational background besides being a poet. Whitman ideas about innovating were seen as unsuitable and did not fit educational positions initially; however, they seem valid after awhile. Digital humanities and recent pedagogy are somehow extensions to such innovations that took place early. It is true that the introduction of a computer inside a classroom was something new that received different reactions, including the fear of approaching technology or the optimism to engage that in education. With the passing of time, using computers and technology become vital components inside classrooms that their use cannot be avoided and becomes an integral part of the educational process. Some of the modernity in education has its roots in the past, and it is considered as an extension to pedagogues’ premature ideologies regarding novelty in education. Today, classrooms members do not need to exist in the same place, there are many programs that connects students with educators while they are away. Digital humanities creates virtual environment through tools and digitals media. Students interact with each other through many activities that universities websites provide. “Looking for Whitman” becomes a pedagogy today, in which educators look for “open education” that is not framed through dull routine. Students learn through fun activities better than many traditional ways. The online learning is part of that activities and part of that fun where students learn at their own pace if limitations and restrictions do not accompany their tasks. “Looking for Whitman” has a great significance to education nowadays, and it seems as if it becomes as a symbol for applying critical pedagogies inside classrooms, exploiting any possible technology to achieve lessons’ goals.

Galatea is a kind of interactive fiction where Emily Short creates a game to convey knowledge. This novelty in writing suggests a sort of query text that engages readers in selecting the text. Therefore, the text in Galatea requires the readers to enter commands and comments, mainly using verbs in order to shape the text. Different commands lead to different texts, so the text in Galatea is not stable, it is volatile and dynamic. What strikes me is the idea that it needs different commands so as I can continue up until the end, but there are different ends that depend on the mood of Galatea. These ends are completely different, and sometimes I feel that they are far-fetched; I feel lost while navigating toward the ends. In such case, I went back to the beginning and repeated the same processes. There are many clues to continue to the end; different clues lead to different ends. Finally, that results in different experiences to readers, different environments according to different moods.

This new kind of literary text, or maybe game, relies on the readers’ commands. Thus, different players, or readers, rarely find the same text; that is why I feel text escapes from readers. Maybe some readers classify Galatea as a game; however, it employs the characteristics and elements of fiction. For example, there is a plot for every story even though there are different plots according to different directions and comments. Then there is a begging and end for the story. Moreover, one important element is the suspense in the story that prompts readers to continue their navigation in the text or game.

This class is going to open horizons in front of the students, in the class, on how to digitalize printed materials, or at least be familiar with how to access them. This gives me a hope that our students in the future find it easy to access and interact. I hope we, as students now and teachers in the future, could mater the course goals to convey them to the new generation through praxis. And that comes true when we feel interested in the course and its materials. This interest could be developed through the interaction and engagement in every topic. I hope I could apply the issues that I am learning when creating a platform for my classes and enhance that with a private wiki that could serve all my futuristic courses. I am sure that I can spend much time on that and allow my pupils to acclimate themselves easily to such technology, in which everything becomes accessible online through using many available tools and websites. That is because technology is invading each branch of sciences; it has become now that it is illiterate if someone cannot use technology, not the one who cannot read and write. Accessing technology reduces time and space and saves efforts for scholars, teachers, and student in everyone’s missions. Digital humanities is very interesting to help materializing these goals. Reading Digital_Humanities carefully is very helpful start point, and it has a great impact in transferring teachers from their traditional roles into monitors of their students’ roles in interacting with technology and exploiting it in their learning process.