User talk:Arided/Learner Profile

Novel?
What's the plan for your novel? That said, I don't think it applies here. I think writing fiction (as I myself am also doing daily) is separate from a learner profile, though I am intrigued by the ways writing a novel (perhaps the most solo event any person can do) can work with crowdsourcing, though I also feel that might hurt the novel ... --Charles Jeffrey Danoff 03:23, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I've been writing a combination of stream-of-consciousness-poetry and journal-style notes, experimenting with different media (e.g. typewriter, computer, pen, voice.) and different paces of writing. The long-term attempt is to trace out how I think about things, out of this to develop some realistic material on which to base different "characters", and to stitch the notes and ideas together in a more traditional narrative/storytelling/dialog-based framework later. Both when there's more material, but more importantly mainly when I have written some computer programs to help with the "stitching things together" stuff!

This interjection of computer programming into fiction writing might sound a bit weird... but for me, creative writing is among other things a good "check" on my computer programming work, and vice versa -- bottom up and top down thinking working together, maybe? Anyway, all things considered, I do think the novel as I'm conceiving of it, might fit in with learning, if it was described more as a "learning journal". It just happens that in my learning journal I like to use some techniques of fiction! Via the computer stuff, I definitely plan to look for themes (learning analytics); and it's called "The Penmaster's Apprentice" with reference to a certain kind of learning curve...

The material itself isn't gonna be crowdsourced -- except from the big population of "me at different times"! In a way this sort of simulates "normal" crowdsourcing, however, because the way I'm working on it comes with the challenge of splicing together different snippets into one coherent work. Maybe I'll invite people to submit pictures for an illustrated version of the work... :) And maybe some of the computer stuff I'm working on will help with eventual "real" crowdsourcing for novels.

It did occur to me recently that collaborative (screen-?)playwriting might be easier than collaborative novel-writing, because scripts come broken into very natural and interpersonally obvious chunks of various sizes (speeches and scenes). One of the many programming ideas I want to work on.

What I think is most missing from the Learner Profile as it currently stands is a real sense of my learning goals as opposed to work or productivity goals. The novel is just one example of something I want to do, but the whole profile as it stands isn't doing so well at describing what I need to learn to do the things I want to do. I'll adjust that and hopefully the whole thing will be more coherent.

Thanks kindly for the feedback Arided 12:39, 6 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I like where you're headed with the novel and writing experimentation/intertwining computer programming. Do you have interest in publishing portions before its actually finished, or are you going to keep them all to yourself and drop an atomic bomb on the world of fiction in 2013?
 * I still don't know if the novel belongs, unless, perhaps, are you trying to learn how to write a novel?
 * Regarding your "learning goals" I might have an idea of what you're saying, but I'd like to see you put out what you're imagining so I can know if I'm right, or totally wrong, and so I can follow suit with my profile. --Charles Jeffrey Danoff 07:56, 7 November 2010 (UTC)