While sanding my deck I am mulling over what I will do for the Web Story assignment in ds106. I have my target and plan in mind, and hope to hatch it over the next day or two.
An idea I had discarded as pointless was doing one on Wikipedia- pointless because one can already edit the content. But then a flash came to me- what if I were to edit the Wikipedia page about Wikipedia, and hatch a story that it is a giant scam on the world, that we think we are freely editing, by we are really being manipulated by some malicious malefactor.
It was starrting to resonate until I looked at the length and volume of content there. While I know I could remove parts, it was looking like a huge amount of effort.
But I also saw it as a good chance to practice some Firebug editing, so took a play at the first paragraph:
I’ve got more work to do outside, and will think more if I really want to go down this road (and I can see I lopped some edits, working in Firebug takes some patience).
Again, major kudos to Martha Burtis for conceiving a devilish and challenging assignment (get them into the code! people cannot do that technical a task is the conventional wisdom we are seeing trashed).
The thing is, what makes a web page redo a “story” versus just a pun or a joke (like mine above, it would need much more editing to go from joke to story). Or is it really in the creators eye as to what the story is?
CogDogBlogged: The Web Story I am Not Doing http://bit.ly/fjmfJG
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New Post: The Web Story I am Not Doing: While sanding my deck I am mulling over what I will do for th… http://bit.ly/dXuBwq by @cogdog
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The Web Story I am Not Doing – CogDogBlog http://bit.ly/fDsh5s
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This question about what really is a story is one of things I think we can really push on with this assignment.
Don’t get me wrong: I love me a story. The kind that have clear beginnings, middles, and ends. The kind with richly-drawn characters and intricately woven narratives.
But I also have this sense that “story” (at it’s most fundamental) is really about making meaning. Taking things that otherwise are simply loosely connected pieces and weaving meaning into and out of them.
I think the intervention in these sites provides great opportunities to create these kinds of stories.
I was not trying to suggest a web story had to have an arc or character development, but wondering what differentiates a web story from just modding a page. Maybe it is fuzzy.