Every session I’ve attended here at Open Ed 2009 has—seriously—been great. I will surely recognize many here specifically in days and weeks to come. But I have to refer you to Alan Levine’s Amazing Stories of Openness without delay because it speaks for itself and should really give you a jolt of electricity, reminding us what this education game is really all about.

The video of the session is great too, because Alan is always engaging and funny. At the end of his presentation he made a comment to the effect that he “didn’t really know what these stories led to.” But that’s the beauty of the shared experiences: they don’t lead to anything. In the same way that we don’t have conversations at a table (or tell stories around a campfire, virtual or not) and wonder where they will lead. Those stories are the destination… those experiences are what it is about.

Running into Jamie Smith this morning (and want to talk about some great teaching, check out what Jamie’s been doing with his students this summer) reminded me that I’ve been remiss in putting notes from some of the interesting NMC 2009 Summer Conference sessions I attended.

Ruben Puentedura’s session on “The Infinite Canvas Reloaded: Digital Storytelling, Webcomics, and Web 2.0” (slides in rather large PDF form) was particularly interesting. Using Scott McLeod’s concept of the digital space as an infinite canvas for creation, Ruben explained—and shared examples of—characteristics of the infinite canvas and what they meant to storytellers. Following are my slightly cleaned up notes taken during the session with the all important links to examples and more information… they can’t convey Ruben’s obvious love of the topic and the medium, but they might be a good place to start in considering this important aspect of storytelling. [My personal interjections are in brackets]

Central question: how does the change from the bounds of paper to the infinite canvas of the screen effect the mechanics and conventions of comics?

The "infinite canvas" in 200 words or less…

Example: use of vertical orientation, space beyond what’s possible on paper (note the falling panel) – Scott McCloud’s Zot

Changes with the infinite canvas:

• In a traditional comic, each panel is a "beat" in the story– with the infinite canvas you have as many as you need… pacing is minimally constrained.
• Opening up the "meter" allows the equivalent of pianissimo to fortissimo – dynamic range isn’t (or at least is far less) constrained
• In printed comics, spacing between panels is relatively uniform and constrained… in the infinite canvas distance (can) equal time

A (sometimes) related characteristic: use of groupings/proximity [looks much like the poetic line/stanza] that are conceptual in nature, not dictated by physical requirements.

Example: Scott McCloud – Porphyria’s Lover – note the trails, which are functional and ornamental – one way to indicate when not following standard lexicographic order:

Storis can unfold incrementally (literally). See Demian.5 ’s When I am King. This really looks more akin to film… or a flipbook. Incremental, gradual development of the story, figuratively and textually.

Technique: establish a dominant direction which is then purposefully manipulated [much like using form and meter] to create and then divert/thwart reader/viewer expectations.

Drew Weing – Pup – New comic authors are often purposefully experimental. Note the disappearance and reappearance of panel (frame):

[How have I missed these great comics? I guess the same way I spent so long not seeing graphic novels. But the affordances of digital presentation has some really radical effects!]

Use of visual space to establish time [and a format that resembles instant messaging/texting] – Eros Inc: The Third Degree.

Daniel Merlin Goodbrey – 24:Three (a 24-hour hypercomic):  Excellent design implementation. Experimental in directionality, multiple points of entry, fracturing of the story. Still uses trails, but adds interactivity that carries the reader along the chosen path and zooming for emphasis/de-emphasis.

John Barber – Vicious Souvenirs – some would argue this is less "pure" as an infinite canvas – example of overlays –

Question: why do we (educators) care? Why does this matter?

One reason: infinite canvas provides a rich complex of possibilities [image above, moving really fast here]: image assembly (such as Five Card Nancy) narrative sources; narrative constraints- sequential art: Comic Life – pictorial vocabulary; narrative transitions; text/image integration – moving image Center for Digital Storytellying (CDS) Seven Elements [and CDS Cookbook (PDF)], montage structures- interactive media, Pachyderm narrative structures; narrative flows- interactive fiction, Inform 7 ludic elements

Resource: Puentedura – "Digital Storytelling: An Alternative Instructional Approach" – Slides (Slideshare) and Text (PDF): 

Second reason: Powerpoint, which is so commonly used, has so many intrinsic constraints and default (if not solely available) structures (see Tufte – The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within, 2nd ed.)

Toolkit:

1. The Tarquin Engine (Example: Icarus Tangents)
2. InfiniteCanvas (Mac Only) -  (but no longer being devloped, buggy)
3. Infinite Canvas (microsoft) – example Brad’s Somber Mood (Scott McCloud)
4. Prezi [am I going to have to change my prezi position?] – designed to be an infinite canvas, but not positioning it that way in marketing terms because that scares some people – Prezi still has purposeful constraints, so it’s not just a blank screen, empty page, white canvas – can import flash INTO Prezi – important aspect: the frame acts like the frame around a comic.

Important note about Prezi: the company "gets" the infinite canvas and will be rolling out more features that support this kind of creation.

***

Transitions are particularly important in the comics built on the infinite canvas – understanding the mechanics of panel-to-panel transitions will help clarify when viewing and creating them.

Four approaches to the page (Benoit Peeters): http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v3_3/peeters/

***

Some Prezi examples

• Nice example of almost a concrete poetry approach to using Prezi to convey a piece of Alice in Wonderland (http://prezi.com/56035)
• Second example (http://prezi.com/56151): reenvisioning of a powerpoint presentation, uses proximity and distance, not traditional lexicographic ordering

***

Infinite Canvas as Terrain – the infinite canvas is a terrain; we can apply concepts of mapping to it.

Resource/ToRead: How Maps Work – Alan MacEachren

***

Considerations on "restraints":

• OuBaPo: experimentation on constraints
• Matt Madden – Exercises in Style

Note: music is a better analogy for understanding comics than film– comics aren’t chopped up bits of story akin to chopped up scenes in film.

***

Contact Info:

• Ruben Puentedura (rubenrp@hippasus.com)
• Ruben’s blog: http://hippasus.com/rrpweblog/

If my first day at my first NMC Conference is any indicator, I have an exciting few days ahead!

I chose to attend the Web 2.0 Storytelling in Education Workshop primarily because it was being conducted by Bryan Alexander, who I have been following in various media for a long time, and Alan Levine, who I’m privileged to call a friend and who needs no introduction to readers of this blog. Bryan is one of the busiest people I know (by observation and all accounts) but this was my first opportunity to meet him in person. It’s always fun– and a little intimidating and strange– to meet people in person for the first time, particularly when it’s someone I’ve followed and admired for a long time. I wasn’t disappointed– he is as sharp and funny as I expected and, judging from various allusions and asides we share many common interests– though I was surprised that Bryan isn’t 7+ feet tall (he’s more Gimli than Hagrid) and a little sad that The (infamous) Axe must not have cleared airport security.

[photo by cogdogblog]

As if I didn’t already have a big enough case of "the smalls" with Bryan and Alan leading the workshop, in walked Gardner Campbell, one of my biggest inspirations– as a teacher and as one who elegantly fuses the best of the classical and enlightenment characteristics of humanitas (my TTIX Keynote was, in part, an attempt to be Gardner-esque) with contemporary technology. Like Bryan, Gardner radiates warmth and intelligence… if there are auras, his is bright indeed. Needless to say, I was wholly intimidated within the first 15 minutes!

The workshop itself (you probably thought I’d never get to it) was lightly attended–only 10 participants– but there was a preponderance of people I already "knew" from their blogging and Twittering, including Phil Long and Nick Noakes. We spent most of the time working in small groups, collaborating on creating various elements of creating digital stories: brainstorming for an idea (based on our selection of a Mystery Place) generating visuals and multimedia, character voices.

"Web 2.0 Storytelling" is a term covering a broad set of ideas. I was a bit surprised that we worked together on creating stories. I’ve honestly not thought much about integrating the social element into the creation of stories… for me the Web 2.0 part of contemporary storytelling is the tools used to bring a story out of my head and the environment in which those stories are published, shared, commented on and hopefully remixed or integrated into other projects. I (and my students) work collaboratively using technology of various kinds, but not on projects that directly incorporate narrative. I admire the spirit of collaborative creation– I have various poetry-writing friends who have expressed interest in working together on poems—but, as I noted in the workshop, the thought of creating that way is only marginally more attractive than driving hot spikes into my eyes. That being said, despite believing that the best way for me to create is to retreat into my own mental space, I see value in the exercise, both in the experience and in the product as a rough draft, ready to be crafted, polished, honed, etc.

I also wonder about storytelling without stories—in the sense that activity in social systems and applications often come to tell a story over time. The narrative drive of these long stories is accomplished through accretion. Blogs tell the stories that are us, of course, but the mechanism is most explicit in Twitter, which encourages the vital mixture of formal and informal bits at a heightened pace. It strikes me that “good” blogging and Twittering (I do not hold myself up as an example in either one) demand the same elements of story, but distributed over different temporal periods than conventional stories. Over time, most (but, importantly, not all—there is still plenty of room for more formal and/or consistently information-oriented productions) of my favorite bloggers and Twitterers create a recognizable and unique character, and exhibit a relative consistency of voice (though not necessarily a consistent type of content or routinized philosophical positions).

I have many more open questions about Web 2.0/digital storytelling concerning both philosophy and techniques, but I need to spend some time reading the abundant writings about the genre and process before I start asking them.

The only real flaw in the workshop was its length… it was far too short. A full-day– or even a two-day– event would have been better. There simply wasn’t enough time for conversation and discussion to go long and deep!

Note: You can find all the toolswe used and discussed (and then some) on the workshop wiki page and in bookmark sets from Alan and Bryan.