Writing With Technology

.... A phrase that grows increasingly common as 3D T.V.s are able to become household objects, and almost every movie theater is upgrading to IMAX. The entertainment industry is constantly pushing for bigger, better, flashier things to grab hold of of waning interest and attention spans. 

“The Boat,” produced by SBS, is an interactive experience of a young girls journey as she flees her country. I call this an experience, rather than a story, because of the platform used to tell the tale of Mai, a Vietnamese refugee. The reader is part of the story; not only do they control the tempo of the text, but the flow of the background images by scrolling, all the while listening to the haunting sounds of the waves crashing. Always influencing their own experience.  

The further I traveled into this narrative, the more immersed I became with the sound, images, and even touch; as I scrolled in a hurry to read what happened next, gathered every eerie image and grew numb to the crashing waves and background sounds, I became a part of the story. 

This type of reading can be the future; to have a multi-faceted experience and the ability to have stimulus in more senses while reading is an exciting concept. I think it is one that we, as teachers, should be open minded towards. How will these types of ‘experiences’ impact our students with attention disorders? Will they succeed to grab and hold their attention in ways that traditional books do not?

I think that this type of media is important to explore, as we more further into a technological age and have to adapt. Encourage your students to read either “The Boat,” or similar media experiences. 

Not only does “The Boat” enrapture the reader through the medium, but it educates many of us who do not know about the repercussions of the Vietnam war and the rich and tumultuous history of that country and its immigrants. The story revolves around Mai, who flees the country as communists take over Vietnam. She ends up on a boat, heading towards Australia, and meets other immigrants that look toward a brighter future. Her tale is one of love and squalor, survival and life. 

In modern society, students are accustomed to working with a whirlwind of changing media. They were born amidst a world already rooted in technology, and consistently adapted to the transforming platforms. My question is, if students are already equipped to learn and operate new forms of technology, why isn’t this skill being utilized in high school English classrooms?

Humans have been working with printed texts for quite some time now (not to mention the handwritten texts that were the norm long before then). Writing on paper is reliable and conventional-- a safe bet. What it lacks though, is the ability to maintain its relevance to current events, the opportunity for instantaneous editing and interaction. There needs to be a greater emphasis on the digital platform in secondary education, because of its incredible versatility and accessibility.

So what is an optimal digital platform that is gaining traction as a new place for serious academic writing?

Surprisingly, Twitter!  Before your thoughts immediately jump to viral memes and petty celebrity feuds, allow me the opportunity to present a case for legitimate journalism in your newsfeed. Take for instance, the news piece called  A Piece of the Wall by Teju Cole. What could have been your typical news article is split up into under 150-character sentences, posted individually. Collectively they make a cohesive essay on immigration, but the separation provides the reader with a moment to consider each sentence on its own.

A major benefit to adopting this format would be the increased interaction with the reader. The conversation does not have to end at the article’s finish. The individual tweets allow readers to voice their responses in very specific areas (and they can choose to comment on multiple points throughout the essay). This gives the text a living quality, for it is continuously expanding. The ability to comment also allows the readers to not only interact with one another, but also with the author. This then brings in the question of whether or not the author’s additional comments should be considered an original part of the piece. Nonetheless, this feature is one of the main reasons that academic writing can serve as a firm foundation for further exploration and discussion of current events.

Additionally, posting an article as a series of tweets might get a greater amount of people to read at least some of your work as opposed to printing it. The ability to retweet and like select parts of the text will generate more exposure. The hope is that when a person who someone is following likes one of the tweets, this will appear in the newsfeed of others. The slightly out-of-context vibe will potentially generate enough curiosity that those who only see a glimpse will want to check out the rest of the series.

So why include this in English classes? It will first engage students because many already spend a great deal of time posting and interacting on twitter. They’ll not only benefit from the aforementioned features, but they will also now have a place to informally discuss important issues with peers in a relatively structured way. There is less of the awkward disconnected quality of some class discussion boards, and now there is a bridge between the student’s social and academic interactions.

Black Box is a twitter narrative posted by Jennifer Egan that starts with this tweet: 

People rarely look the way you expect them to, even when you’ve seen pictures.

The narrative then goes on to give alarming directions on how to use your body to be an effective spy and asset for the American government. Now, there are a lot of interesting aspects to this twitter essay like publishing, plot and character development, societal norms, technology, the list could go on. Personally, I’m fascinated by use of narrative and its impact on the readers

The narrative is constructed through instructions/recommendations/training tips/whotheheckknows. There is a mixture of direct instructions, reflections, and words of comfort that keep the reader hooked and curious about the spy’s adventures and thoughts. 

 It begins on the beach. The reader (most likely) thinks that it is the story of a woman trying to impress a man. And it is. But it’s not. 

The tweet that changes the perspective begins with, “If your Designated Mate is widely feared,” and finally the reader understands why the woman was so self-conscious about her body and its perception. She is undercover for the American government, using her body both as a tool to draw in her target, as well as to combat him/record incriminating information. 

But how do readers get the full sense of the story through a twitter essay, and one that follows an obscure narrative? 

They don’t. 

Readers follow a disjointed narrative, due to twitter character limits, as well as the combination of directives, reflections, and words of comfort that make up this story. Here are two consecutive tweets that show this disconnected storytelling: 

“It is technically impossible for a man to look better in a Speedo than in swim trunks.” 

“If you love someone with dark skin, white skin looks drained of something void.”

How do readers follow this narrative in a way that makes sense? 

Yet, I had no frustration or problems reading this. Due to the breaks in reading, I had time to make predictions, ask questions, and was actively involved in my reading. But this poses more questions. 

Shelley Jackson's (not to be mixed up with the great story writer Shirley Jackson) "The Body" is a hypertext that goes over every part of the body with the narrator giving her own interpretation of the part.

Depending on what the reader starts or how she or he reads can determine what kind of reading experience the reader has.

This has brought up a common question. how then is the reader supposed to read the hypertext if and get the most out of it? The question is simple. One does not read “The Body” to understand the whole body one reads the body to get an idea of the body.

To make this simple first one must try to understand what the text is. That is also simple. Imagine “The Body” as a photo of a woman that your eyes are glancing over. Now imagine that for every part of that body that your eyes have seen has a story behind it one that only the girl in the photo knows. The reader is reading the photo girl’s story for every part of her that her or his eyes have gazed over. To further this understanding, imagine yourself as the woman in the photo with your body being gazed over, with you having to explain the story for every piece of you. Then pretend that all this means nothing to you. After all, how could you possibly see this fateful jumble of self-placements to elude the reader to a possible theme or motive. Well I can and Jackson’s doing the same.