This week is somewhat of a catch-up week for everyone. Make sure to keep your
work up to date.
As an easy week I want us all to understand how the
Web is changing the notion of what constitutes writing.The Internet contains hundreds if not thousands of
examples of experimental writing projects. Web pages, newsgroups, listservs and
chat rooms are arguably new genres of writing by themselves. And there are
dozens of consciously different projects which redefine the exact meaning of the
term, 'writing'.
Exercise:
Your task this week is primarily to discover innovative ways of writing
using the Internet. Use
the Internet to locate unusual and experimental methods of writing both
fiction and non-fiction.
Some possibilities include Web pages, hypertextual pieces, collaborative
Web projects,
multimedia methods, use of chat, MUD's and conversation. Your aim should
be to inform the
class of what you have personally discovered; your outcome should be in
terms of a
pedagogical or instructional article placed online. Imagine
you are writing a short
piece for a newspaper such as Icon (from the Sat SMH). Ideally, you should
actually try out the
ideas and methods that you are reviewing. Moreover, use of simple
hypertext links in your piece
will facilitate others investigating your research finds.
Hint: do not think you have found everything using a Search Engine, and
then give up after 15
mins. Good research on the Web can take as long as in a library i.e.
several hours! I had a
research assistant spend 5 hours one time, looking for survey
results from different
countries, and she still did not find everything. Use metasearch engines,
try unusual keywords,
do not stop after the first 10 hits explored.
Apart from the WOE home page links, here are some other links to check out:
- Trace
Online Writing Community UK based writing site.
- Allan
MacDonald's writing projects This is the writer-in-residence of the above
site.
- The HUT
Writing
project This article describes an ongoing international writing
project which brings students
of universities in Asia, Europe, and North America together via the
Internet so that they can
share their insights and assist one another in writing in English on a
wide selection of topics.
- Katherine
Mullard's Contemporary Writing links Hope you don't mind, but I found this
on a search.
- Voice
of the Shuttle Creative writing links and resources. Check this out,
especially fiction and poetry online.
Try to do some of your own
research here. Perhaps write the piece for a particular audience, country,
magazine.