Final Projects: Writing in a Digital Age
We have studied the evolution of print culture, the disruption of the Internet, and now we look ahead to the future of the book. The final project is your chance to share your vision for the future of writing and publishing. This page offers some examples and provocations to prompt your thinking as you embark on the final research project.
Final Project
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Final Project Template (Google Docs)
Your final project will have two main purposes.
Option 1. The Textbook of the Future How would you create the ideal textbook of the future? Would it be a printed book, a website, a mobile app, all of the above, or something entirely new? How would it work? How would it support learning and engage learners? I have shared with you the mobile app I designed with Gadget Software, and you can use that as one example if you choose this topic. Some other examples are posted on the course website. You can write about an existing book or platform, or you can create your own vision for the textbook of the future. As we have seen in this class, learning and reading have been transformed by the emergence of ebooks and online courses. What do you think would be the ideal model for textbooks of the future? Why? Option 2. Writing in a Digital Age How does the nature of the writing process change when authors write for online readers? In an era when everyone can be an author, what is an author? How does the technology of the web (blogs, social media, mobile) change the way writers think about and practice their craft? You can focus on any type of writing (technical writing, academic, scholarly, or literary). You can choose a particular author to focus on, or a particular medium or technology (blogs, for example) as a way of narrowing your focus. Or you can talk about the writing process more generally and reflect on how digital technologies and publishing platforms change the way writers and authors go about their work today. Option 3. The Future of Storytelling From oral folktales to novels to interactive fiction and videogames, storytelling has a long history. Today, storytelling comes in many forms: ebooks, interactive fiction, video games, podcasts. Interactive graphic novels combine verbal and visual storytelling in a new medium. Videogames put readers and players directly into the story, giving them choices and options in how the story unfolds. We seem to be in a golden age of storytelling. For this option, you can choose a particular example of digital storytelling to explore and analyze, or you can focus on a particular genre, like narrative podcasts, graphic novels, or videogames, for example. Project Format You have three options for the form your project can take. (If you want to propose something different, send me an email and we can discuss.)
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Core Readings
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Regardless of which option you choose for the final project, these core readings are useful and important resources. They provide context and interpretations that you can respond to and use as sources in your final project.
Be sure to check out the numerous additional readings and resources posted on the Readings page, too! |
The Future of Storytelling: Common Ground for Pages and Screens
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For those of you writing about the future of storytelling, this video may be a useful source. Even if you are not a gamer, you may enjoy this interview with two of the leading writers in the game design industry.
Digital interactive storytelling has matured in recent years. The depth and quality of the writing and emotional experience in some games rivals the best literary narratives. Books and games are not in direct competition for reader attention. Gamers are hungry for good stories, in any form or medium, and they will pay for them. There is a large and insatiable audience who plays games, reads graphic novels, and buys books. Games and books have an overlapping, synergistic relationship, not an either-or / zero-sum competitive relationship. This video is a presentation I gave at the PubWest conference in Portland in February 2017. If you play video games, you will especially appreciate my special guests: Karla Zimonja, of Fullbright Studios, who wrote and designed a game called Gone Home (a story exploration game), and Jakub Szamalek, all the way from Warsaw, Poland, who works for CD Projekt Red and wrote the story for the bestselling game franchise, The Witcher (an open-world action/adventure game).
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Frankenbook
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Frankenbook is a collective reading and collaborative annotation experience of the original 1818 text of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. The project launched in January 2018, as part of Arizona State University’s celebration of the novel’s 200th anniversary. Even two centuries later, Shelley’s modern myth continues to shape the way people imagine science, technology, and their moral consequences. Frankenbook gives readers the opportunity to trace the scientific, technological, political, and ethical dimensions of the novel, and to learn more about its historical context and enduring legacy.
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MIT's PubPub Seeks "New Info Ecosystem"
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An audio interview with the creators of Frankenbook. With a stated mission is to transform research publishing by incubating and deploying open source technologies meant to build a new information ecosystem, the Knowledge Futures Group is a leading edge/bleeding edge endeavor. Yet it’s worth noting that MIT Press and MIT Media Lab have deep roots in computing and communication. Since 1986, the MIT Media Lab has harnessed technology for creative expression. In 1995, MIT Press published in print and digital form one of the first “open access” books – William Mitchell’s City of Bits, in which the author presciently observed the ways that online communication was a powerful and liberating force.
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Beyond the Book
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Beyond the Book is a podcast series from Copyright Clearance Center. The weekly episodes cover a range of topics in digital book publishing. There are many ideas in here for final projects.
I have been a frequent guest on the series, and you can find my appearances over the years archived on their site. Most of my conversations are relevant to the Textbook of the Future topic! This episode, in particular, talks about the Gadget Software TOTB mobile publication and some of the experiences and issues around making textbooks mobile. 
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The Textbook of the Future
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Not to be too self-promoting ;-) , but here are links to a series of blog posts I have written or co-authored in recent months about the process of writing and designing the TOTB mobile text. These were all published on "The Abstract," a blog hosted by the Textbook and Academic Authors Association
Those of you working on the textbook of the future or the writing in a digital age topics will probably find some ideas in here! How to reimagine and redesign textbooks to reach and engage students Students lead the march toward mobile: Three strategies for adapting and responding Re-engineering the modern textbook: A conceptual shift from content delivery to learning design Learning science and textbook design: The value of pre-testing to jumpstart student learning |
Writing in a Digital Age
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For those of you interested in Option #2, Writing in a Digital Age, these resources may be useful.
The Muses of Insert, Delete, and Execute, by Jennifer Schuessler This article from the New York Times is based on a lecture and interview with Matthew Kirschenbaum, who later published a book called Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing (Harvard UP, 2016). Track Changes asks "What was the first novel written with a word processor?" and leads readers on a fascinating chronicle of literary writing in the computer era. The book includes chapters on Stephen King, Isaac Asimov, and many other well-known writers. Track Changes would be a great source for anyone writing on this topic. Tool for Thought, Steven Johnson Steven Johnson, one of the influential thinkers shaping this course, talks about his own writing process and his use of DEVONThink software. Why Writing Books Is More Than Processing Words, Steven Johnson Another great essay on the process of writing as it changes when writers use different digital tools. As Johnson writes, "I’ve been looking for a better system for book writing for more than two decades now; ever since I started writing my first book in the mid nineties. And I think I have finally found a solution that does justice to the actual realities of moving from initial idea to finished manuscript." |
The Future of Storytelling
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For those of you interested in Option #3, The Future of Storytelling, these resources may be useful.
Twine. An Open-Source Tool for Telling Interactive, Nonlinear Stories. You might think of Twine stories as a digital version of the famous Choose Your Own Adventure books. Some Twine narratives are like branching novels; others are more like interactive games. But they are all fascinating examples of digital storytelling, reinvented. You could even create your own interactive fiction! First Person Scholar With a pun on first person shooter video games, FPS is an academic blog focused on gaming and game culture. As they write on their About page, "The articles we publish encourage players—be them developers, scholars, critics, or enthusiasts—to consider alternatives to popular interpretations of games, game play, and games culture. Through this discourse we seek to establish and sustain a critical conversation amongst those producing and playing games, demonstrating in the process that the player is a figure capable of enriching and challenging our understanding of games and what they are capable of." 8 Steps to Great Digital Storytelling Written primarily for educators, this post includes a model process and a wealth of links and resources for writers and teachers who want to use digital and multimedia storytelling as a teaching tool. |