Category: INF533

Literature in Digital Environments

When is it digital literature?

I’ve been busying myself with looking through a number of different formats of digital texts in order to write some reviews for my next assessment item.  According to the (adapted) criteria of Nesbit, Belfer and Leacock (2004) one can look at (cited in Leacock and Nesbit, 2007):

Category of resource

  • Content quality
  • Alignment with curriculum or program purpose
  • Value of digital affordances for the literature Possibilities for feedback and/or adaptation
  • Intrinsic motivation of the digital environment for users
  • Presentation design
  • Interaction and usability
  • Accessibility and reusability

Today I was looking at a few audio-visual formatted items.  A Calendar of Tales, Beowulf in a Hundred Tweets,and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries,  Each of these were in different resource categories, however they all overlapped in the fact that I could access and read them on my computer, and with the exception of the first two (Calendar of Tales and Beowulf) involved a greater percentage of looking and watching time than reading time.

I foundCalendar Tales a Calendar of Tales a wonderful selection of stories, and found the concept of basing writing on questions in tweets to be an interesting way of involving the audience.  Neil Gaiman writes very well, and the stories would stand up to literary scrutiny on their own without any digital bells and whistles. 

There was however a considerable amount of redundancy over formats – you could read the story online, you could read it as a pdf, or you could listen to it as an audio file.  So the various formats did not enhance the experience in a new or unexpected way.

 

 

Screen Shot 2014-08-19 at 5.48.45 pmAs someone who did not have prior literary knowledge of Beowulf, nor any particular interest in the poem / ancient English language, (shock horror!) I found the Twitter Beowulf to be an interesting experiment, but not one which I wanted to spend any amount of time reading through in detail.  It also didn’t pique my interest in the original text.  Which one would hope would be one of the aims of such an endeavour.  I can imagine this had a following and would be a useful addition to a curriculum, and apparently had a very avid following as it unfolded – I think also due to the (academic) authority of the author.

 

 

Lizzie Bennett Diaries The Lizzie Bennet diaries have had extraordinary success and won an Emmy Award in 2013– which recognises excellence excellence in the television industry. And that’s the point where I start to wonder where the line can be drawn between what is digital literature and what is an audio/visual/digital adaptation of literature.

Prima facie it is a Vlog (video blog) based adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.  The question is what makes it different from say the BBC series Pride and Prejudice, besides being updated to fit current times.

 

(Lizzie Bennet Diaries: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ncnZjwF50k)

(BBC – Pride & Prejudice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgkS5_PTfZQ)

The interactive elements of the Lizzie Bennet diaries include: a twitter account and feed;  Facebook account, tumblr account,  google+, and pinterest.  Are these merely marketing devices in order to promote the main product – the videos – or those an integral part of the package?  Whereas one could watch all the videos and not feel a lack for having missed out on the other channels, I doubt the other channels would be equally “stand alone”.  However, the series has received some serious academic and literary interest, for example in this article from the Jane Austen Society of North America, as well as being the topic of various theses and a conference presentation.

In her presentation, Marilyn Francus made some interesting points about multiple levels of immersion in a literary work and how the unmediated interactive experience through the social media channels enhanced this immersion. This made me wonder if the experience and engagement is different if one is following and participating in the type of medium as it unfolds versus in retrospect as I have been doing.

All in all it has been an interesting experience and one that has perhaps raised more questions than answers for me.

 

References:

When is it digital literature?

I’ve been busying myself with looking through a number of different formats of digital texts in order to write some reviews for my next assessment item.  According to the (adapted) criteria of Nesbit, Belfer and Leacock (2004) one can look at (cited in Leacock and Nesbit, 2007):
Category of resource
  • Content quality
  • Alignment with curriculum or program purpose
  • Value of digital affordances for the literature Possibilities for feedback and/or adaptation
  • Intrinsic motivation of the digital environment for users
  • Presentation design
  • Interaction and usability
  • Accessibility and reusability
Today I was looking at a few audio-visual formatted items.  A Calendar of Tales, Beowulf in a Hundred Tweets,and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries,  Each of these were in different resource categories, however they all overlapped in the fact that I could access and read them on my computer, and with the exception of the first two (Calendar of Tales and Beowulf) involved a greater percentage of looking and watching time than reading time.
I foundCalendar Tales a Calendar of Tales a wonderful selection of stories, and found the concept of basing writing on questions in tweets to be an interesting way of involving the audience.  Neil Gaiman writes very well, and the stories would stand up to literary scrutiny on their own without any digital bells and whistles. 
There was however a considerable amount of redundancy over formats – you could read the story online, you could read it as a pdf, or you could listen to it as an audio file.  So the various formats did not enhance the experience in a new or unexpected way.
Screen Shot 2014-08-19 at 5.48.45 pmAs someone who did not have prior literary knowledge of Beowulf, nor any particular interest in the poem / ancient English language, (shock horror!) I found the Twitter Beowulf to be an interesting experiment, but not one which I wanted to spend any amount of time reading through in detail.  It also didn’t pique my interest in the original text.  Which one would hope would be one of the aims of such an endeavour.  I can imagine this had a following and would be a useful addition to a curriculum, and apparently had a very avid following as it unfolded – I think also due to the (academic) authority of the author.
Lizzie Bennett Diaries The Lizzie Bennet diaries have had extraordinary success and won an Emmy Award in 2013– which recognises excellence excellence in the television industry. And that’s the point where I start to wonder where the line can be drawn between what is digital literature and what is an audio/visual/digital adaptation of literature.
Prima facie it is a Vlog (video blog) based adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.  The question is what makes it different from say the BBC series Pride and Prejudice, besides being updated to fit current times.
https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/9ncnZjwF50k&source=uds
(BBC – Pride & Prejudice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgkS5_PTfZQ)
The interactive elements of the Lizzie Bennet diaries include: a twitter account and feed;  Facebook account, tumblr account,  google+, and pinterest.  Are these merely marketing devices in order to promote the main product – the videos – or those an integral part of the package?  Whereas one could watch all the videos and not feel a lack for having missed out on the other channels, I doubt the other channels would be equally “stand alone”.  However, the series has received some serious academic and literary interest, for example in this article from the Jane Austen Society of North America, as well as being the topic of various theses and a conference presentation.
In her presentation, Marilyn Francus made some interesting points about multiple levels of immersion in a literary work and how the unmediated interactive experience through the social media channels enhanced this immersion. This made me wonder if the experience and engagement is different if one is following and participating in the type of medium as it unfolds versus in retrospect as I have been doing.
All in all it has been an interesting experience and one that has perhaps raised more questions than answers for me.

References:

Blog Task #1 – state of current knowledge

 Blog Task #1

Using your readings and interaction with the subject to date, develop a statement about your current knowledge and understanding of concepts and practices in digital literature environments, tools and uses, within the context of your work or professional circumstances.

======================================================================

In this post I would like to reflect on a starting point of my knowledge and understanding (or lack thereof) about digital literature.  Reading and literature has an impact on my life – in my roles as a parent, a librarian, an educator and a reader and learner.

When embarking on this course, I considered what was meant by digital literature.  The first part – “digital” is possibly the easiest and most intuitive, as it speaks of the medium.  To answer this, various categories or types of digital formats or reading environments have been suggested, including e-books and e-readers (Doiron, 2011), e-stories for early readers, linear e-narratives, e-narratives and interactive story contexts, hypertext narratives, hypermedia narratives and electronic game narratives (Unsworth, 2006 cited in Walsh, 2013) or e-books, interactive storybooks, reference databases, hypertext and interactive fiction, and transmedia storytelling (Lamb, 2011).

In its definition of “E-lit”, the Electronic Literature Organization, emphasizes the literary aspect of Digital Literature (Electronic Literature Organization, n.d.), while James and de Kock ask about the role of the digital format in fiction (James & de Kock, 2013) –  this appears to be the exception.  Many other authors in the field appear to focus on the literacy aspect, and write about literacy and reading (Doiron, 2011; Edwards, 2013; Foley, 2012; Leu et al., 2011; Levy, 2009; Unsworth, 2008; Yokota & Teale, 2014),  e-learning (Walker, Jameson, & Ryan, 2010), and story-telling (Alexander, 2011; Malita & Martin, 2010; Yokota & Teale, 2014).

Just like there is endless pedantic discussion on the definitions, nuances and overlap between information, knowledge and wisdom, so too is there a blurring of the lines between what is meant by literature and at what point fiction, narrative text, novels, and storytelling becomes literature. I’ve noticed a presumption on the one hand that “literature” is the highest form, but on the other that “any reading is good” because parents, teachers and librarians want to “hook” children on reading.

I think where some of the confusion arises, is that like in my own family and with my own students, each individual is somewhere on the literacy / literary continuum – from beginning reader to being capable of a deep understanding and analysis of complex literature, and somewhere on the digital participation continuum –consumption, communication, collaboration and creation. In this course we are overlapping the two, and this coincidence can occur at so many different points we need to be able to cater for all alternatives and permutations.  We would be doing any learner a disservice if we did not meet them where they are and find a way guide them further.

It is an interesting process. I have one child who is fully engaged digitally and where I often bemoan him not sitting down with a book, and him retorting that I have no idea how much reading he’s doing each day, but that it’s just not in the traditional form.  I have another who prefers to be curled up with a book, if at all possible, an old musty edition of a “classic” from my youth, and who I continually have to remind of the treasures in information augmentation and enhancement that is available digitally.   I straddle the two, preferring some text digitally, and some in print.

So after the first few weeks of this course I think perhaps the name of the course is a slight misnomer, but that as other contenders – such as digital literacy – have their own meaning and body of research, I’m happy to ride with it and keep it as broad and all encompassing as it is.

References:

Alexander, B. (2011). Storytelling: A tale of two generations (Chapter 1). In The new digital storytelling: creating narratives with new media (pp. 3–15). Santa Barbara, Calif: Praeger.

Doiron, R. (2011). Using E-Books and E-Readers to Promote Reading in School Libraries: Lessons from the Field. In Student access to new and emerging technologies. Puerto Rico.

Edwards, J. T. (2013). Reading Beyond the Borders: Observations on Digital eBook Readers and Adolescent Reading Practices. In J. Whittingham, S. Huffman, W. Rickman, & C. Wiedmaier (Eds.), Technological Tools for the Literacy Classroom: (pp. 135–158). IGI Global. Retrieved from http://services.igi-global.com/resolvedoi/resolve.aspx?doi=10.4018/978-1-4666-3974-4

Electronic Literature Organization. (n.d.). What is E-Lit? Retrieved August 13, 2014, from http://eliterature.org/what-is-e-lit/

Foley, C. (2012). Ebooks for leisure and learning. Scan, 31, 6–14. Retrieved from http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/schoollibraries/assets/Foley_ebooks_Scan_31-4.pdf

James, R., & de Kock, L. (2013). The Digital David and the Gutenberg Goliath: The Rise of the “Enhanced” e-book. English Academy Review, 30(1), 107–123. doi:10.1080/10131752.2013.783394

Lamb, A. (2011). Reading redefined for a transmedia universe. Learning and Leading with Technology, 39(3), 12–17. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.csu.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/ login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=67371172&site=ehost-live

Leu, D. J., McVerry, J. G., O’Byrne, W. I., Kiili, C., Zawilinski, L., Everett-Cacopardo, H., … Forzani, E. (2011). The new literacies of online reading comprehension: Expanding the literacy and learning curriculum. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 55(1), 5–14. doi:10.1598/JAAL.55.1.1

Levy, R. (2009). “You have to understand the words…but not read them”: young children becoming readers in a digital age. Journal of Research in Reading, 32(1), 75–91. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9817.01382.x

Malita, L., & Martin, C. (2010). Digital Storytelling as web passport to success in the 21st Century. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2(2), 3060–3064. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.465

Unsworth, L. (2008). Multiliteracies, E-literature and English Teaching. Language and Education, 22(1), 62–75. doi:10.2167/le726.0

Walker, S., Jameson, J., & Ryan, M. (2010). Skills and strategies for e-learning in a participatory culture (Ch. 15). In R. Sharpe, H. Beetham, & S. Freitas (Eds.), Rethinking learning for a digital age: How learners are shaping their own experiences (pp. 212–224). New York, NY: Routledge.

Walsh, M. (2013). Literature in a digital environment. In L. McDonald (Ed.), A literature companion for teachers (pp. 181–194). Marrickville, NSW: Primary English Teaching Association Australia (PETAA).

Yokota, J., & Teale, W. H. (2014). Picture Books and the Digital World: Educators Making Informed Choices. The Reading Teacher, 67(8), 577–585. doi:10.1002/trtr.1262

Blog Task #1 – state of current knowledge

Blog Task #1

Using your readings and interaction with the subject to date, develop a statement about your current knowledge and understanding of concepts and practices in digital literature environments, tools and uses, within the context of your work or professional circumstances.
======================================================================
In this post I would like to reflect on a starting point of my knowledge and understanding (or lack thereof) about digital literature.  Reading and literature has an impact on my life – in my roles as a parent, a librarian, an educator and a reader and learner.
When embarking on this course, I considered what was meant by digital literature.  The first part – “digital” is possibly the easiest and most intuitive, as it speaks of the medium.  To answer this, various categories or types of digital formats or reading environments have been suggested, including e-books and e-readers (Doiron, 2011), e-stories for early readers, linear e-narratives, e-narratives and interactive story contexts, hypertext narratives, hypermedia narratives and electronic game narratives (Unsworth, 2006 cited in Walsh, 2013) or e-books, interactive storybooks, reference databases, hypertext and interactive fiction, and transmedia storytelling (Lamb, 2011).
In its definition of “E-lit”, the Electronic Literature Organization, emphasizes the literary aspect of Digital Literature (Electronic Literature Organization, n.d.), while James and de Kock ask about the role of the digital format in fiction (James & de Kock, 2013) –  this appears to be the exception.  Many other authors in the field appear to focus on the literacy aspect, and write about literacy and reading (Doiron, 2011; Edwards, 2013; Foley, 2012; Leu et al., 2011; Levy, 2009; Unsworth, 2008; Yokota & Teale, 2014),  e-learning (Walker, Jameson, & Ryan, 2010), and story-telling (Alexander, 2011; Malita & Martin, 2010; Yokota & Teale, 2014).
Just like there is endless pedantic discussion on the definitions, nuances and overlap between information, knowledge and wisdom, so too is there a blurring of the lines between what is meant by literature and at what point fiction, narrative text, novels, and storytelling becomes literature. I’ve noticed a presumption on the one hand that “literature” is the highest form, but on the other that “any reading is good” because parents, teachers and librarians want to “hook” children on reading.
I think where some of the confusion arises, is that like in my own family and with my own students, each individual is somewhere on the literacy / literary continuum – from beginning reader to being capable of a deep understanding and analysis of complex literature, and somewhere on the digital participation continuum –consumption, communication, collaboration and creation. In this course we are overlapping the two, and this coincidence can occur at so many different points we need to be able to cater for all alternatives and permutations.  We would be doing any learner a disservice if we did not meet them where they are and find a way guide them further.
It is an interesting process. I have one child who is fully engaged digitally and where I often bemoan him not sitting down with a book, and him retorting that I have no idea how much reading he’s doing each day, but that it’s just not in the traditional form.  I have another who prefers to be curled up with a book, if at all possible, an old musty edition of a “classic” from my youth, and who I continually have to remind of the treasures in information augmentation and enhancement that is available digitally.   I straddle the two, preferring some text digitally, and some in print.
So after the first few weeks of this course I think perhaps the name of the course is a slight misnomer, but that as other contenders – such as digital literacy – have their own meaning and body of research, I’m happy to ride with it and keep it as broad and all encompassing as it is.

References:

Alexander, B. (2011). Storytelling: A tale of two generations (Chapter 1). In The new digital storytelling: creating narratives with new media (pp. 3–15). Santa Barbara, Calif: Praeger.
Doiron, R. (2011). Using E-Books and E-Readers to Promote Reading in School Libraries: Lessons from the Field. In Student access to new and emerging technologies. Puerto Rico.
Edwards, J. T. (2013). Reading Beyond the Borders: Observations on Digital eBook Readers and Adolescent Reading Practices. In J. Whittingham, S. Huffman, W. Rickman, & C. Wiedmaier (Eds.), Technological Tools for the Literacy Classroom: (pp. 135–158). IGI Global. Retrieved from http://services.igi-global.com/resolvedoi/resolve.aspx?doi=10.4018/978-1-4666-3974-4
Electronic Literature Organization. (n.d.). What is E-Lit? Retrieved August 13, 2014, from http://eliterature.org/what-is-e-lit/
Foley, C. (2012). Ebooks for leisure and learning. Scan, 31, 6–14. Retrieved from http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/schoollibraries/assets/Foley_ebooks_Scan_31-4.pdf
James, R., & de Kock, L. (2013). The Digital David and the Gutenberg Goliath: The Rise of the “Enhanced” e-book. English Academy Review, 30(1), 107–123. doi:10.1080/10131752.2013.783394
Lamb, A. (2011). Reading redefined for a transmedia universe. Learning and Leading with Technology, 39(3), 12–17. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.csu.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/ login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=67371172&site=ehost-live
Leu, D. J., McVerry, J. G., O’Byrne, W. I., Kiili, C., Zawilinski, L., Everett-Cacopardo, H., … Forzani, E. (2011). The new literacies of online reading comprehension: Expanding the literacy and learning curriculum. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 55(1), 5–14. doi:10.1598/JAAL.55.1.1
Levy, R. (2009). “You have to understand the words…but not read them”: young children becoming readers in a digital age. Journal of Research in Reading, 32(1), 75–91. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9817.01382.x
Malita, L., & Martin, C. (2010). Digital Storytelling as web passport to success in the 21st Century. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2(2), 3060–3064. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.465
Unsworth, L. (2008). Multiliteracies, E-literature and English Teaching. Language and Education, 22(1), 62–75. doi:10.2167/le726.0
Walker, S., Jameson, J., & Ryan, M. (2010). Skills and strategies for e-learning in a participatory culture (Ch. 15). In R. Sharpe, H. Beetham, & S. Freitas (Eds.), Rethinking learning for a digital age: How learners are shaping their own experiences (pp. 212–224). New York, NY: Routledge.
Walsh, M. (2013). Literature in a digital environment. In L. McDonald (Ed.), A literature companion for teachers (pp. 181–194). Marrickville, NSW: Primary English Teaching Association Australia (PETAA).
Yokota, J., & Teale, W. H. (2014). Picture Books and the Digital World: Educators Making Informed Choices. The Reading Teacher, 67(8), 577–585. doi:10.1002/trtr.1262