One of the questions that arose while we edited and enhanced David Silver’s blog was whether we could go beyond adding links, references, pictures,  etc., and change what the original author wrote.

I came, I read, I re-wrote:

When an author publishes an article on a collaborative site, doesn’t that imply that the author expects people to add to and alter the content? Also we must remember that the author didn’t actually place his article on the wiki. It was originally a blog that was transferred by us onto the wiki, and therefore Mr David Silver has no real say in how the article progresses from this point forward.

I can see two points to consider here, first the legality and morality of taking someone else’s work and modifying it to suit ones needs, and who decides at what point the text becomes modified substantially enough that it no longer belongs to the original author? The second point is that it certainly seems to be more interesting and useful for any reader to be able to take a piece of text, and decide its meaning for him or herself. In “The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes (1977), he argues:

"To give a text an Author" and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it "is to impose a limit on that text."

“We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.”

Also interesting as was pointed out during board discussions is Reader Response Theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reader-response_criticism

“Reader-response theory recognizes the reader as an active agent who imparts "real existence" to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his or her own, possibly unique, text-related performance.”

“each reader creates his or her own…”: What if a number of people are collaborating on a piece of text?, with each having differing opinions regarding its meaning? How can we fit a number of different interpretations into a single piece of text?  Is it not best to leave collaborative works to articles of science and fact, and leave pieces of opinion and art to individuals so that personal expression can come out? Or is there a way for the ideas of individuals to shine through a compromise created by committee?  

The good old days:

Editing hypertext documents reminded me of those adventure books (Choose your own adventure) I read as a teenager. At the end of each page the reader is given a number of options on how the story can progress, and based on the choice is instructed to go to a particular page in order to continue the story. The entire adventure including all options for progression is contained within the pages of one book, and I can imagine those “choices” as a very early form of hyperlinking long before the internet started to make its mark in business and education.

Using wiki’s, and hyperlinking, stories can also be created intentionally this way. Or even non-intentionally where any online article together with the documents that it links to can be considered to be one story (as long as the hypertexts link to content that is relevant to the general narrative of the original text).

But current technology also gives us the ability to introduce ideas, and empower the reader and the writer in ways which weren’t possible in the “good old days”. Some interesting ideas and examples of what can be done include Editing Stretchfilm by Anders Fagerjord which offers an insight into Landow’s view of how hypertext can be used, enabling readers to select from the content of an article depending on their own needs.

The Mystery web essay is an example of the adventure stories mentioned earlier where the reader can go in different directions depending on chosen hyperlinks. Also going back to the question of author ownership, and reader-response theory, while exploring this essay we notice that the author follows different ideas depending on the paths chosen. Some paths are circular leading back to previous pages. The content is non-deterministic, vague, with statements, media and images that can be interpreted in different ways.

I enjoy mystery, and found this essay fun and interesting to explore. Perhaps the author’s intention is for different endless perspectives to coexist, stretching the imagination of the reader to offer his or her own interpretations of the content.   

But going back to “History, Hype, and Hope: An Afterward” I found it difficult to modify the text itself. It didn’t seem right to do so, and my thinking was that if I have my own ideas and perspectives then I should offer them in a different wiki or blog. I’m sure some would disagree with that, and feel it is ok to modify the content of someone else’s work even if it is opinion, but regardless, web 2.0 offers so many more ways to enrich and enhance works such as these by adding images, hyperlinks, video’s, comments, etc.

Sometimes just a picture, and a few colours, can make an article more appealing to read than one long slab of text.

References:

Roland Barthes,(1977) The Death of the Author: 

http://www.deathoftheauthor.com/

David Silver, (2008): History, Hope, and Afterward:

http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2143/1950

Landow, G (2006) Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in a Global Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press) extracts: 278-291 and 302-309.

Hypertext and social media

Inchoate: Landlow comments that well organised, and well formulated websites (Not inchoate), websites such as “The Victorian Web”, permit students to find what they need quickly. These websites for example provide students with a local site map that makes it easy for them to find the information they need. 

Impinge: Well-designed hypertext encourages students to make connections among learning material they encounter. This creates the habit of discovering how various causes have an impact on single phenomenon or event. Developing this habit is major component of critical thinking.

Inculcate: Hypertext, has the ability to teach and instil the novice student with the unique culture of a particular discipline. This is because hypertext “provides a means of experiencing the way a subject expert makes connections and formulates inquiries”. Also students have the opportunity to follow their curiosities as far as they wish.

Phonocentrism:  One of the factors that can negatively affect group discussion is the social influence of the more dominant group members on the rest of the group.  This social influence can inhibit the quantity of original and creative ideas generated by the group as a whole.  Hypertext can be a tool for additional forms of discussion that can address this problem. Thus using hypertext, team members are able to contribute ideas in writing if they find group discussions inhibiting. As Landlow states, Hypertext can shift the balance of creative debate from speaking to writing.

Autodidact: Hypertext provides the individualistic self-taught learner with the perfect tool for exploring a particular area of study. It enables the learner to move between some familiar and some not so familiar related areas of study, and in the process instilling the important habit of making connections, an essential habit for many professions.

Corollary: Texts in a hypertext environment exist in relation to other documents on the system in a way that printed document and books cannot. From this Landow deduces that any document electronically linked to any other document collaborates with it. This connective quality of hypertext environments creates a medium that encourages collaboration.

Docuverse:  Hypertext places each document in the virtual presence of all previously created document and their creators. This transforms individual documents in to a collective that could have been produced by several people working collaboratively and at the same time.

Incorporating technology into educational practice:

Sophomores: Students in their educational experiences will usually study different courses at the same time such as maths, biology, business studies, etc. And there is nothing usually that connects the various knowledge they gain from these different courses. This contributes to the sense of a fragmented education as students have a series of unrelated educational experiences when they read different works.

Dissonance:

“A central dilemma that schools must address in the consideration of e-safety and Web 2.0 activity is how they can support children to engage in productive and creative social learning while protecting them from undue harm”. (Sharples et al. 2009, p. 70)

Clark et al. (2009) introduce the term Digital Dissonance. The authors use the term to describe the tension related to whether learners can use popular Web 2.0 social technologies in formal school settings.

Epistemology: Ravenscroft reflects on the research needed for evaluating how Web 2.0 technology as social utilities, affect knowledge production.  He points to the need for conceptualization of learning that follows more social, participative, and collaborative understanding of knowledge, and how it is acquired. He goes on to ask, what are the new pedagogical frameworks for implementing social software for learning? What if we rethink learning to account for this new online social way of acquiring knowledge?

This view is mirrored in (Hemmi, Bayne, Land, 2009):

Anachronistic:

“Their tendency is to attempt to render the online learning space familiar through a conservative dependence on pre-digital metaphors, signs and practices which are increasingly anachronistic as digital modes gain in social and cultural significance.”

Instead of trying to force-fit these new exciting ways of acquiring knowledge, interactivity, and collaboration into old pedagogical frameworks, why not change and expand our pedagogical frameworks? And why not change the way we do academic learning to exploit these powerful emerging social software, and new online social habits? 

References:

Clark W., Logan K., Luckin R., Mee A. & Oliver M. (2009) Beyond Web 2.0: mapping the technology landscapes of young learners. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 25, 56–69.

A. Hemmi, S. Bayne and R. Land (2009). The appropriation and repurposing of social technologies in higher education (pages 19–30)

Landow, G (2006) Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in a Global Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press) extracts: 278-291 and 302-309.

Landow, G (2006) Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in a Global Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press) extracts: 278-291 and 302-309.

Sharples M., Graber R., Harrison C. & Logan K. (2009) E-safety and Web 2.0 for children aged 11–16. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 25, 70–84.

A version of "Hypertext Into Practice" can be found on Ellis's Play Ground at the Holyroodpark wiki.