Digital Pedagogy

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As I completed the reading from Paul Fyfe, it seemed to connect to a conversation that Michaela and I had a few days ago about digital pedagogy, especially as it pertains to the tools that we’ve learned how to use in this class. We talked about wanting a clearly understanding of how we could take all that we’ve learned (html/CSS, IF, hypertexts) and incorporate it into a “traditional” classroom in a way that would make sense pedagogically. For example, I could always assign students to read an IF as a way to experience another form of writing, but what’s the purpose?

While I don’t have a clear idea about some of the questions we discussed and some of the questions posed in the article, I guess I would want a little bit more specifics about digital pedagogy that isn’t just using some flashy tool or reducing everything to bullet points. How do we create an effective digital pedagogy?

Hypertext vs. codex vs. something else

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I’m still not exactly sure what a hypertext is except for it being a text that has some sort of multimedia imbedded within it. I really liked Shelly Jackson’s My Body-A Wunderkammer because it forced you to click on different parts of the text to get to other parts to figure out the entire story. You can’t get the entire story by just clicking on the parts of the image (the body parts). This was really interesting, but it still seemed really text heavy, but I’m guessing that’s the point.

It just seems to me that if we are trying to do things differently, simply putting a block of text on a screen doesn’t make things any different than reading it in a book. Realistically, it’s harder (for me, at least) to read lots of text on a screen. For example, I chose not to print out the readings for today (Tuesday’s) class and found that I had a huge problem with focusing on the screen and with comprehending what I read. The most interesting part of the reading was the picture of the image from the museum of the Codex, which I found to be a really beautiful and profound image. Along these lines, it was interesting that the authors of the articles are arguing for different types of media, yet they are still writing big blocks of text that just happens to be put in an online space.

But then again, what can we do differently? The Kindle has revolutionize the eBook industry, but it’s still a book that has been transposed into a different medium. There’s nothing special about eBooks (as of yet). For example, you can’t click on a link and it takes you somewhere else online with images of certain things or to the archive of the original text. You can click on a word and get a definition, highlight and make notes, but other than eTextbooks being cheaper than print editions, what’s the point?

Interactive Fiction

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Well, this was interesting. I found Galatea to be really intriguing, but also frustrating because if you don’t know what to say or how to say it, then nothing happens. Unlike the narrative-type video games where you can just push buttons until something happens, IF seems to be a venue where it could get really frustrating very quickly. This could clearly pose problems if there was a more clearly defined purpose for investigating IF.

Another thought — how does IF relate to Apps that are now available that have a literary component? What about online video games that are adaptations of books (the comic series Fables has an interactive video game)? I know IF is different, but how do these other types of interactive modes relate to/affect/or change the concept of IF?