Serious Games for Collaborative Writers
A Faculty Development Workshop with Dan Weinstein
Friday, March 20, 2009
Overview
In this workshop I demonstrate a process of writing that harnesses associative thinking to help individuals and groups not just get writing done, but use writing as a medium for unusually deep communication.
This process is based on the view that our thoughts and perceptions are quite a jumble by default, and that, if we are to produce polished, linear prose on demand, we must accept our jumbled, tossed salad minds as they are; that indeed it is our very fragmentary streams of consciousness themselves that we must shamelessly explore and exploit as sources of material for writing which we organize as occasion, convention, and necessity suggest.
Approach and Process
Derived from the practice of psychoanalysis, and psychoanalytic dream interpretation in particular, the writing process I wish to share with you consists of many steps. At first, as many steps as these may seem like a drag or worse, some kind of torture by Composition, but I hope that, with practice, you will come to find the progression both fun and enabling, as it affords all who take part in it the opportunity to explore and share their perceptions and negotiate what their perceptions might mean, how they might connect, within their own minds and across the minds of collaborators, with presentation (the linear prose product) but a momentary, if necessary, stepping stone within the flow of a much larger and perhaps even more important experience of communion.
The steps of the process are these:
•.timed writing
•.word listing
•.informal outlining
•.sentence outlining
•.drafting
These steps are designed to encourage the generation, sharing, and networking of ideas. The first two, timed writing and word listing, are purely associative and can be considered techniques for “idea processing” rather than word processing. Subsequent steps (informal outlining, sentence outlining, and drafting) are, by contrast, rhetorically directed. The process as a whole is stoked by a variety of catalysts, including the pressure of time, the experience of self discovery, the company of others (both other people and companion texts), and supportive computer tools such as information feeds and a collaborative text editor, embedded within the structure of the routine.
Tools
Tools used in this presentation include the following:
Collaborative Writing Workspace
http://www.homepages.dsu.edu/weinsted/workspaces/serious_games.htm
Grazr Widgets
Dave Winer's OPML Editor (for editing the content of Grazr widgets)
EtherPad
Random.org List Randomizer
Yahoo!
Flickr
Thank You!
Thank you for your interest in this work. If you have any questions about this presentation, please feel free to email me at dan.weinstein@dsu.edu.