Teaching and Storytelling

with Web 2.0:The state of

the art, and on a budget, too

Bryan Alexander,NITLE

Educause ‘09

How to use today’s sessionWe consider:• Low- or no-cost

tools• Practical

pedagogies

• Concepts to build upon

• A spectrum of project sizes

The slide of no work“How does this stuff impact me, if I don’t

plan on making or helping make anything?”

• Object of academic study• A growing body of stories being

consumed and co-created• Influence on other areas: news,

publishing, entertainment, infotainment• New media platforms emerging, driven

by storytelling needs and possibilities

An emergent set of storytelling practices, growing out of Web 2.0 technologies and cultural forms.

What's web 2.0 about?

Quick recap• Microcont

ent• Social

software• Perpetual

beta

What's web 2.0 about?

Quick recap• Multiply

authored content– within

content– located

externally• Boundaries can

be hard to find

But wait, what's storytelling?

“The last man on Earth sat alone in a room.”

But wait, what's storytelling?

“The last man on Earth sat alone in a room.

There was a knock on the door.” (Fredric Brown, “Knock”, 1948)

The pull of mystery, sometimes“It was a bright cold day in April, and the

clocks were striking thirteen.”

“Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. “

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

Or Freytag, sometimes

• Delight and instruct

Or the personal, sometimes

• Delight and instructStories are:• About someone

important• About an

important event

• About what one does

From the CDS Cookbookhttp://www.storycenter.org/cookbook.html

But wait, what's storytelling?

Exercise one: what isn’t storytelling?

Use whatever communication tools you like. Except smoke signals.

• Dictionary• Difference

between event and story

• Silence• Disconnected

images and ideas• Lack of personal

engagement

• Information with no purpose

• Is it a story if no-one’s listening

• Lack of imagination

• Or poaching

What came before Web 2.0 storytelling?

Web 1.0 storytelling, of course

•Hypertext•Multimedia•Evanescent

•Browser-focused

•Connected with offline, analog content (textbooks)

Web 1.0 storytellingExample:

Dreaming Methods (2000ff)

http://www.dreamingmethods.com/

Example: “Ted’s Caving Journal” (circa 2001)

(one copy, from http://www.angelfire.com/trek/caver/page1.html)

Features:• Multilinear• Multimedia• Browserish• Serial

structure

Web 1.0 era storytellingEmail chain

letters, jokes• Social• Boundaries

fuzzy• Microcontent• Virtual

community facilitation (1980s on)(Snopes.com)

(http://www.thenation.com/blogs/jstreet/363133/bailout_satire)

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency…

Digital storytelling roots• Digital Storytelling movement (CDS)

Digital Storytelling at Ukaiah, 2006

Digital storytelling offshootsEducational

projects growing

• Community

• Curricula • Support

(http://connect.educause.edu/Library/Abstract/StorytellingintheAgeofthe/42327)

So why Web 2.0 storytelling?It’s already being done.

http://delicious.com/tag/web2storytelling

Focused platforms• Character (Twitter,

blog, MySpace, audio)

• Setting (wiki, images, audio (Myna, Freesound))

• Objects (images, video)

• Events (blog, podcast)

More multimedia platforms•VoiceThread•Video (Jaycut, Windows Moviemaker)

•Gaming [Venatio Creo+Inform 7; Game Editor, Novashell, Sandbox, and Scirra Construct]

She's a Flight Risk http://esquire.com/features/articles/2003/030922_mfe_isabella_1.html

Blog as story diary

Bookblogginghttp://www.pulsethebook.com/ - “networked

book” (Institute for the Future of the Book)

Publishing new content, in development

Rebookblogging?

Republication of pre-existing content• Pedagogy• Social feedback• Publicity

• Pepys Diary• Dracula Blogged• Ulysses and da Vinci per day

(http://hdt.typepad.com/henrys_blog/)

(http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/)

Creative writing in response to document:•Spoon River Metblog

Platforms Blogosphere and nonfiction character“As one day’s posts build on points

raised or refuted in a previous day’s, readers must actively engage the process of “discovering” the author, and of parsing from fragment after fragment who is speaking to them, and why, and from where whether geographically, mentally, politically, or otherwise.”

-Steve Himmer, “The Labyrinth Unbound” (2003)

Platforms Blogosphere and nonfiction character“As one day’s posts build on points

raised or refuted in a previous day’s, readers must actively engage the process of “discovering” the author, and of parsing from fragment after fragment who is speaking to them, and why, and from where whether geographically, mentally, politically, or otherwise.”

-Steve Himmer, “The Labyrinth Unbound” (2003)

MicrobloglosphereTwitter: a

single narrative

• Good Captain

http://twitter.com/goodcaptain

http://loose-fish.com/

Twitter: Aphoris

m

http://twitter.com/jennyholzer

Twitter: class en masse

http://twitter.com/manyvoices

Twitter: republishing content

http://twitter.com/novelsin3lines

http://twitter.com/oscarwilde

WikistorytellingThe Penguin novel

(http://www.amillionpenguins.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page)

Wikistorytelling

Can a collective create a believable fictional voice? How does a plot find any sort of coherent trajectory when different people have a different idea about how a story should end – or even begin? And, perhaps most importantly, can writers really leave their egos at the door?

“About”,http://www.amillionpenguins.com/wiki/index.php/About

Flickr and storytelling

• Tell a story in 5 frames group

“The Chase” (Benjamin!, 2009)

http://flickr.com/groups/visualstory/discuss/72157611666013264/

Flickr and storytelling

• In the Tell a story in 5 frames group, 'Alone With The Sand'

(moliere1331, 2005)

Social photo storiesExample:

« Farm to Food », Eli the Bearded (2008)

Social photo stories

Social photo stories

Social photo stories

Flickr, Tell A Story in Five Frames group (http://www.flickr.com/groups/visualstory/)

Example: "Food to Farm", Eli the Bearded (2008)

Social photo stories

Example: "Food to Farm", Eli the Bearded (2008)

Social photo storiesPedagogies:• Remix• Archive

work• Social

presentation

• Visual literacy(http://www.flickr.com/groups/visualstory/discuss/72157603786255599/;

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/ )

Social slidesBarbara

Ganley, “Into the Storm” (2007)

(http://www.slideshare.net/bgblogging/intothestormhttp://bgexperiments.wordpress.com/2007/07/13/into-the-storm/ )

Embedded within Slideshare Web platform apparatus

Embedded within blog

Storytelling by podcast

The Yellow Sheet, by Librivox team (2007)

• Text then podcast• http://librivox.org/

the-yellow-sheet-by-librivox-volunteers/

• More: Podiobooks, http://www.podiobooks.com/

Web video storytelling

Connect with I (http://www.connectwithi.com/)

• Serial video• Fan content• Physical

content

lonelygirl15 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonelygirl15)

• YouTube serial video content• Local fan content• Distributed response• Hoax plot

StorytellersterMySpace, Facebook as platform• Example: Silver Ladder

(Two of Clubs character on Myspace)

Multiplicity of platforms

New forms combining categories into one?

Multiplicity of platformsNew forms combining categories into one?

Voicethread

Storybox (http://www.story-box.co.uk/index.php)

Multiplicity of platformsNew forms

combining categories into one?

Jaycut, web-based video editing

• Remember: video can be multimedia

Multiplicity of platforms

http://wetellstories.co.uk/stories/week2/

Twitter feeds, blogs (different platforms), MySpace, maps

“Slice”, from We Tell Stories anthology, Penguin (2008)

How to experience a Web 2.0 story

• A Web page in a browser– Easy or difficult to parse (Web design,

also story style)– Effect of images (visual rhetoric)– “about”– …consider this close reading

• On mobile device (phone, e-reader, game player, mp3 player)

How to experience a Web 2.0 storyBreakdown:• Tags• Social media hooks• Comments• Links to other content

How to experience a Web 2.0 story

• In RSS reader

Podcasts

So why Web 2.0 storytelling?It’s a light but functional form of social gaming.

Eve Online, from site

• Persistent world

• Distributed players

• Distributed knowledge

• Very low cost

• Some portability

Example: social Twitter storytelling: retelling The War of the Worlds

Described http://infocult.typepad.com/infocult/2008/08/alien-

invasion-via-twitter.html

A certain loss of control

Exercise three: edit someone else’s wiki page. Pick the group after you in the alphabet.

Social storytelling is user-generated content… which means some other user’s content next to yours. Which, like too much of a good thing, can be wonderful.

Alternate reality games

• Permeability of game boundary (space and time)

• Focus on distributed, collaborative cognition

• Increased ephemerality

(Perplex City, 2003-2006)

So why Web 2.0 storytelling, again?

Political ARG

(World Without Oil, May 2007)

ARG pedagogy• Creation for

constructivism• Information literacy• Object of study

(Nine Inch Nails game, 2007)

Practices and principlesTime• Wilkie

Collins: "Make 'em cry, make 'em laugh, make 'em wait"

• keep it coming (cf ask a Ninja)

• Big time: serial

• Little time: accretive

Easy to start

Writing prompt (and not necessarily text)•Use social media content, or not•Publish socially, or not

Web 2.0 is a brainstorming tool, a starting story service, a platform for quickly getting into the thing.

Practices and principles

Character• You: persona• Creative or historical character• Blog as character (Kathleen

Fitzpatrick)• Twitter as character (Eric Rice)

Practices and principles

Setting

• Maps, images, wiki, video, sounds

• External link, embededed, or ambient

How to serialize

• Introduction: station id• Recap• Where to cut? Complete bit, or mid-

stream• Sequence: linear or other• Outro: hook; logistics

Practices and principles

Chunking out lexia• Recap/summary of

story• Cliffhanger • Internal organizing

statement• Discrete argument

point

Arranging the pieces• POV• Timeline• Embedded story• Meta, help,

disclaimer

(And they move without you.)

The slide of no work

How does this stuff impact me, if I don’t make or help make anything?

• Academic study• Growing body of stories• Influence on other areas: news,

publishing, entertainment, infotainment

• New platforms emerging

Futures Stories about Web 2.0 storytelling

• Ken Macleod, The Execution Channel (2008)

(http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/15-07/local)

-Bruce Sterling, Wired, 2007

Already used for humor

http://www.much-ado.net/austenbook/

FuturesCopyright• Web 2.0 accelerates opportunities

for copyright practices, from fair use (quotes, snippets) to infringement (copying whole texts)

• Emerging practices: snippet+link, Wikipedia notice

• Other practices: using TEACH, Creative Commons

FuturesMobile devices -> "interstitial fiction”?“it can be fiction or nonfiction, but it is

unlikely to be a single isolated five-minute item, as it would be hard to market or to find such an item. More likely short items will be strung together in an anthology; the thesis of the anthology ("brief bursts about the new administration"; "101 short poems about transistors and current") will suffuse each item with a sense of being part of a whole.”

Joseph Esposito, http://toc.oreilly.com/2008/12/interstitial-publishing.html

The ultimate linkshttp://

web2storytelling.wikispaces.com/

and

http://delicious.com/tag/web2storytelling

The ultimate linksBryan Alexander and Alan Levine,

"Web 2.0 Storytelling: Emergence of a New Genre“

EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 43, no. 6 (November/December 2008)

http://www.educause.edu/library/erm0865

The ultimate linksLiberal Education Tomorrow

http://blogs.nitle.org/let

Bryan on Twitterhttp://twitter.com/BryanAlexander

NITLEhttp://nitle.org