Digital Literacy in Story Spaces

Rebecca Luce-KaplerQueen’s University

Kingston, Ontario, Canada

A narrative isn’t something you pull along like a toy train, a perpetually thrusting indicative. It’s this little subjunctive cottage by the side of the road. All you have to do is open the door and walk in.

We read the incidents of narration as ‘promises and annunciations’ of final coherence, that metaphor that may be reached through the chain of metonymies: across the bulk of the as yet unread middle pages, the end calls to the beginning, transforms and enhances it.

•2 Adolescents •3 Education Students

Metafictivestrands

Narrative strands

•Show me how you began reading the text.

•How did you make decisions about how to proceed?

•Did you develop a strategy in reading this text?

Joanne:I find she’s very stream of consciousness

which is something that I like if it is done really well. I just don’t particularly like the way that she does it. . . .The other challenge I really found was very little dialogue. It’s not usually a huge problem for me, but I don’t feel like anyone’s talking to each other and it all seems so very cerebral. . . . I just find the story felt very fragmented as well. I found it very hard to make connections, and she seemed to almost jump from situation to situation and there was very little transition.

Stevie:

I think it works because the whole story is thoughts basically. . . . I know that my thoughts . . . bounce

from one thing to another so I think it’s . . . almost a stream-of-consciousness. It’s like a written portrait of the human mind almost.

Alice van der Klei, 2002

Do we perhaps linger too much on the text and its concepts, having the habits of the ‘monastic archiving reader’? (p. 54)

http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.deadseaexhibit.com/downloads/Press_Images/Scroll-hi.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.deadseaexhibit.com/ohio_press_promo_items.cfm&h=657&w=900&sz=482&tbnid=k1ErNH_Rw8MJ:&tbnh=105&tbnw=144&start=6&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dscroll%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D

ergon = work hodos = path

ergodic

• 64 symbols or hexagrams which the binary combinations of 6 whole or broken lines• By manipulating 3 coins or 49 yarrow stalks according to a randomizing principle, the texts of 2 hexagrams are combined.• 4096 texts are possible

-Aarseth

Rebecca Luce-KaplerQueen’s UniversityKingston, Ontario, Canada

educ.queensu.ca/~luce-kar