Curriculum Studies

ISSN: 0965-9757 (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpcs19

Poststructuralist analysis of reading and writing

through/with technology

Judy M. Iseke-Barnes

To cite this article: Judy M. Iseke-Barnes (1997) Poststructuralist analysis of reading and writing
through/with technology, Curriculum Studies, 5:2, 195-211, DOI: 10.1080/14681369700200008

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14681369700200008

Published online: 19 Dec 2006.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 410

Citing articles: 1 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rpcs20
 READING AND WRITING THROUGH TECHNOLOGY
Curriculum Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1997

Poststructuralist Analysis of Reading

and Writing Through/With Technology
JUDY M. ISEKE-BARNES
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education,
University of Toronto, Canada

ABSTRACT This paper draws upon poststructuralist theory in its

examination of issues of reading and writing through/with technology. A
research study which examines high-school students’ productions of stories
in a multimedia environment and their responses to these activities is
described. Each student has an image of him-herself including: director of a
TV show, programmer creating a video game program, designer of a
program about the space shuttle, teacher creating a story for students, and
camera person recording an interactive shopping sequence. An analysis of
student’s productions and responses is undertaken. The tension between
‘informational’ and ‘expressive’ writing objectives is explored through these
students perceptions. This discussion includes issues of intertexuality and
the re-production of dominant and alternative discourses from a
poststructuralist stance.

Gutenberg made everybody a reader. Xerox made everybody a

publisher. (Marshal McLuhan)

Personal computers are making everybody an author.

(Stewart Brand, in Woolley, 1992, p. 165)
This paper draws upon poststructuralist theory in its examination of
issues of reading and writing through/with technology. A research study is
described which examines high-school students’ productions of stories in
a multimedia environment and their responses to these activities. An
analysis of student’s productions and responses is then undertaken. This
discussion includes issues of intertextuality and the reproduction of
dominant and alternative discourses from a poststructuralist stance.

A Poststructuralist Stance
A poststructuralist stance takes meaning to be produced through
discourse. ‘Discourse’ is the way in which we organise and explain lived
experience through language. Discursive fields (or groups of related
discourses) “consist of competing ways of giving meaning to the world and

195
JUDY M. ISEKE-BARNES

of organizing social institutions and processes” (Weedon, 1987).

Understanding of these notions has the potential for playing an important
role in bringing about social change by understanding how discourses are
socially constructed and how meanings are shaped in discourse.
Meaning, from this perspective, is seen as intersubjective and is
created through competing discourses. Engagement with texts of various
kinds plays a central role in this process. In any society there are
dominant discourses and discourses of resistance. This study views the
discussions of high-school student’s production of stories in a multimedia
environment as culturally based. Through their activities, these students
are participating in a range of discourses and discursive fields. As such,
these discourses may contribute to the reproduction of hegemonic and
oppressive meanings within society but may also participate in discourses
of resistance and thus contribute to the production of new meanings.
Maxine Greene (1994) describes an aim of postmodern research as
“perspectivism and divergence of point of view: [where the] voices of the
long disqualified, the long silenced are being attended to” (p. 28). The
voices of high-school students are being heard in this research. David
Smith (1991, p. 201) reminds us “that I always interpret others from within
the frame of our common language and experience so that whatever I say
about you is also a saying about myself”. This ‘saying’ provides a way “to
make proposals about the world we share with the aim of deepening our
collective understanding of it” (Smith, 1991, p. 202). It is through a sharing
in conversations with high-school students that shared meanings were
created in what Benhabib (1992) has termed “situated knowing”. This
research draws upon poststructuralist theory and deconstruction
(examining the play of meaning in texts of various kinds) in outlining a
politics of technology studies. These theoretical perspectives enhance our
understanding of “knowing from the perspective of actually lived
encounters with others, of entanglement in a variety of language games”
(Greene, 1994, p. 209). The language games in this case are those created
in computer-based stories, in discussions with high-school students, and
in examination of literature in regard to reading and writing through/with
technology.
Writing is very plastic, especially in this age of technology and
hypertext, because it can ‘express us’ at a particular time and then we can
change it to ‘express us’ in another moment (Joyce, 1995). Unlike speaking
which is presented and gone, the written text stays available to be
rewritten, revised, changed. Ong (1982, p. 13) explains that “discourse has
commonly been thought of … as weaving or stitching – rhapsoidein, to
‘rhapsodize’ basically means in Greek ‘to stitch songs together’”. Within a
computer document, participants can ‘stitch together songs’ from the
texts of others in conjunction with their own stories. In this intertextuality
(a poststructuralist construct) the creating of meanings is shaped by other
voices, texts, and understandings (Barthes, 1979; Kristeva, 1980). Meaning
is continually negotiated and renegotiated through dialogue and
interactions (Bakhtin, 1973, 1981; Vygotsky, 1962, 1978).

196
 READING AND WRITING THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

Readers and writers can move between texts and thus engage in
intertextual weaving of paths between texts. Rosen (1984) suggests that, in
telling a story to others, we create new meanings. This idea is elaborated
by Hanssen, Harste & Short in their statement that “[w]hen a story is
shared, that text becomes a source of further dialogue and storying by
both the writer and the reader” (in Bogdan & Straw, 1990, p. 263). This is
important because this process can enrich our understanding of texts and
the world and help us make new connections. Joyce (1995, p. 64) suggests
that in hypertext there is a “balance [of] the energy and immediacy of
interaction with thoughtful contemplation”. Producing hypertext becomes
writing or storying in a computer context.
Cixous (1991) suggests that through writing we come to read/write
ourselves in this intertextual weaving. Our lived experiences, through the
stories we tell, are negotiated, organised, structured, interpreted. This
sense-making is within the context of broader social and cultural
narratives. As Peter McLaren asserts “[n]arratives form a cultural contract
between individuals, groups and our social universe” (1993, p. 203). Goals
and intentions of individuals, groups and communities are comprehensible
as wholes through narratives. We can consider effects of actions and alter
our directions through narratives (Richardson, 199, p. 117). The process
of weaving texts into narratives can contribute to “rescue[ing of] the
specificities of our lives from the burden of everydayness to show how
they reverberate within grander schemes of things” (Smith, 1991, p. 200).
Computer document production can create new spaces for such
everyday stories to be told and contemplated. Users of computer writing
environments can generate expression though text (word process), link
expressive accounts together in a non-linear presentation of text
(hypertext), and incorporate graphics, sound animated sequences, and
other information media (hypermedia). I have chosen to call products of
students’ generated stories multimedia stories. In these stories students
do more than generate text as in word processing and more than linking of
other peoples’ text and media. These students generate and incorporate
text, graphics, sound, animation, and movies into a story of their own
creation. The teacher of these students referred to these projects as ‘living
essays’. As an example of what she meant by this term she described a
possible living essay which would present data from the Olympics, images
of athletes in their sports, and written descriptions of the events and
athletes. In the following descriptions of high-school students’ perceptions
of themselves as generators of multimedia stories you will see reference to
living essays.

Method
The paper is based upon a broader research programme composed of a
series of other studies in which the nature of students’ multimedia
productions were explored. The implications for education and research
were discussed based upon data collected through observation and

197
JUDY M. ISEKE-BARNES

researcher notes, taped-interviews, audio-taped researcher/student

interactions, audio logs of students’ activities working in a hypermedia
environment (over a 6-month period), extensive video-recordings of
student’s computer screen while working, and students’ written
hyperdocuments. The data presented here (from the third study in the
series) are drawn from transcripts of audio-taped conversations and
interviews between the researcher and students, by watching the tapes of
students’ activities while producing multimedia stories, by looking at
students’ multimedia stories (saved daily as they were being produced),
as well as from descriptions and transcripts from video-tapes of students’
activities and computer screens while they engaged in interacting with the
computer while using the multimedia environment.
This study examines high school (computer studies) students’
perceptions of interacting with an authoring and multimedia environment
to ‘author’ multimedia stories. Students engaged in using Authorware
Professional (AP) [1] (which has been described as a limited hypermedia
environment). I created and provided an instructional package (IP)
(Barnes, 1994) to students. It contains four instructional simulations (IS)
interspersed with eight activities in which students created small
documents. The IS was used by students to explore concepts and skills I
deemed important for use of AP. Following the completion of the IP or
through an extension of some of the activities, students created a larger
multimedia story containing graphics, text, animation, interaction and
sound. Students drew upon their experiences with AP and the lessons
learned from the IP in generating these stories.

Participants
Thirty-two grade 11 students (16 or 17 years of age) in a large urban high
school in an urban centre in western Canada participated in the study.
Five students’ data are reported here in some detail. Two of these
students were identified by the teacher as being very articulate and these
two were studied intensively by videotaping their activities while
interacting with AP and through a series of interviews about their work.
The other three students were those with whom I had worked in the class
and who had reached a point in their work where interviews were
appropriate.
All students in the class had completed a previous computer
processing course which emphasised applications during their 10th year
of schooling. This previous computer course had used IBM [2] computers
so this course was the first introduction to the Macintosh [3] computer for
these students. The computer processing course outlined students’
introduction to a word processor, a graphic drawing package, and then
Authorware Professional. During the first two weeks of class (meeting
three times per week, one-hour each class) students were introduced to
the Macintosh and used a word processor to complete a typing
assignment. Following these activities students were introduced to

198
 READING AND WRITING THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

computer graphics generation and then used AP for several months (time
was dependent upon the students).

Students Introduction to the Materials

Students were first introduced to a graphics package. They were asked to
open a graphic of their choice (from the file server) and to edit it in some
way. The following day they were introduced to AP and asked to open
their graphic and place it in a display icon in AP following the teacher’s
verbal instructions. Some students had saved their graphic only to the
hard drive on the computer. Their graphics has been removed by other
students using the computer. These students needed assistance from the
teacher in finding another graphics to import. While the teacher helped
them with this task I provided instructions to the other students to
animate their graphics across the screen using the animation icon. Each
students had completed an animated sequence which moved their still
image across the screen by the end of the second class. The manipulation,
generation and creation of an animation was important to the production
of their eventual ‘living essays’ which was a special type of ‘text’ which
incorporated moving images as part of telling students’ stories.
How were students able to complete this task so quickly? To ‘author’
in AP the user must select icons from a menu and ‘drag’ them to a
‘flowline’, the flowline being the path by which the execution of the icons
is accomplished. In this case students ‘dragged in’ two icons: (1) a display
icon to contain the graphic and (2) an animation icon to move the graphic
and placed them on the flowline. The flowline and the icons together form
a flowchart. The icons on the flowchart are executed one by one in the
order of the flowline. For these students their graphic containing the
display icon was placed first so the graphic would appear followed by the
animation (placed second) which moved the graphic. Each icon ‘stands
for’ a particular set of operations.
To set the operations within the icons in AP, choices must be made
from the options and toolboxes provided by each icon. Students set the
options for the animation icon by moving the graphic across the screen.
This activity told the icon which graphic to move and how long it should
take to move it. Students explored changing the time setting so that the
graphic would be moved in different numbers of seconds (typically
between 3.5 and 10 seconds). Icons in the flowchart can be ‘filled’ with text
and graphic information, as well as parameter settings either during an
interrupt while executing (running) the flowchart or prior to its execution.
For these students the information was set prior to execution. The
programming code (set through parameters) and the information
contained in the icons is executed and displayed based upon the
flowchart’s definition and sequencing. The flowchart may be edited
before, during, or after execution.

199
JUDY M. ISEKE-BARNES

Results
Five cases are reported below introducing data from five students. The
first two, Anne and Carson, were studied in more detail by videotaping
their computer interactions while generating their multimedia stories and
through a series of interviews. Data from 3 other students are then
reported. Students self-selected topics of their multimedia stories and
generated ‘texts’ of these stories. Discussions of students’ generation of
these ‘texts’ is presented.

Anne – ‘A director of a TV show’

Anne’s graphic, drawn the previous day and saved to the hard drive of the
computer, had been removed from the hard drive so was not available for
her use during the introductory activity. In order to work in the animation
sequence she drew two simple graphics (a person, and restaurant) in AP
display icons and added them to the flowchart along with an animation
icon. When the animated sequence was executed the restaurant appeared
followed by the person. The person moved to the restaurant and
disappeared into the doorway of the restaurant. Anne giggled at her
simple graphics (the stick-man and the box-like restaurant) and her
animation but still seemed proud when showing it to her classmate.
Anne used the instructional materials and then completed
assignments for class. For Anne’s final few assignments, instead of creating
each assignment as a separate computer program she incorporated the
new programming sequences into the existing program. As a result the
activities of animation, drag object, and graphics import all were
incorporated into one program. This program eventually emerged as
Anne’s major course assignment which had been termed ‘living essay’ by
Anne’s teacher. Part way through the creation of the living essay Anne was
asked if she would talk about her activities. She agreed to respond to
researcher questions. This conversation was held in a quiet conference
room near the school office. Near the end of this rather free-flow
conversation about Anne’s work in AP she was asked to describe her
work. She provided a description which I found interesting. From this
discussion a new research direction and research question emerged.
I asked, “If you were to tell somebody else in another class what you
are doing and what kind of things you are creating what would you tell
them?”
Anne responded, “I already tell my family all that.”
“Oh, and what do you tell them?”
“I tell them that we are learning how to use this program that will
enable us to draw. It allows us to do lots of things. You can make …a test
on the computer and it can …mark it itself by using the question icon. You
can make cartoons on it …But you can also do calculations and things like

200
 READING AND WRITING THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

that. …What I tell them I’m doing is …animating things …. It’s sort of like a
video game in a way I guess.”
“For you as the creator it’s like a video game or for someone else
using your stuff it’s like a video game?”
“Oh both! Because I like to go back and do it myself. But for other
people that go into it it would be like a video game.”
“How is it like a video game?”
“Well in the aspect that I [emphatically] am able to choose what I
want to do and I can take things and put them wherever I want to put
them. In a video game you can move your man just the same as I can move
the fish or the bear [in my story]. Things like that.”
A research question emerged from this early conversation with Anne.
Anne views her multimedia story like a video game. What is this program
like to the student? Who is the student as the creator? I reflected upon the
conversation with Anne and decided that these questions should be
pursued.
In a later conversation with Anne she indicated that she had shown
her program to fellow classmates. She said that she enjoyed getting the
reactions of these students since their responses told her “if her
expectations were where they should be.” She stated that “I found out
whether I should change it or what I should do”. From Anne’s preliminary
investigations (perhaps even formative evaluations) of her living essay
with other students she learned that sometimes animations have to “move
quicker because you don’t really want people to lose interest in it,
especially when there’s more”.
Anne’s living essay created a story of a bear living in Yellowstone
Park which endured many trials and tribulations of bear life. In one of her
sequences Bob, portrayed as a cruel hunter, shot at the bear.
Anne described her program, “It was just like watching a show on TV
except there were no words or sounds. I could have done that but I didn’t
have enough time.”
I asked her “So when you were creating this living essay was it like
making a story [the teacher called it a living essay] or a show on TV?”
“Yeah and I was the director.” When asked to elaborate on being a
director she described her activities by stating that “I’m creating the
ideas. If there was a person helping me we might not have agreed on
certain things and in that way it might not have turned out. I mean if
there’s two people you have to please both of them but this way it’s just
me – that way if I get reaction from other people then I can change it
myself to what way it should be .... With two people, like me and Susan she
might have had some different ideas .…Suppose we used the bear and she
wanted it to go to Yellowstone Park, maybe she wanted him [the bear]
chained up somewhere. That way I wouldn’t have been able to add those
things in like feeding the fish and bringing in all the other characters that I
did ... If I would have done something on the Olympics [as originally
outlined in the teacher’s description of the assignment], …I would just be

201
JUDY M. ISEKE-BARNES

repeating news but I wanted to be creative and doing this bear, that was
original.”

Carson – ‘A programmer creating a video game program’

Carson was one of Anne’s classmates. It was apparent form his first
drawings in the graphics program that he had an ‘artistic flair’. During the
introductory activities for the unit on AP Carson drew a realistic rocket
and animated it across the screen as it was taking off. He has positioned
this initial graphic on the screen so that it appeared to be resting on the
bottom of the screen. When he animated the graphic a fiery flame
appeared from below the screen and extended from its base as it moved
upward. In addition to being in the computer class using AP Carson was
also enrolled in the computer programming class at the grade 11 level. In
this programming class Carson had demonstrated to his teacher a
developing programming ability. His teacher recommended him as a
capable student whose visual work might be interesting to observe.
Carson had an interest in video games which was important in his
multimedia story development. As one of Carson’s AP assignments, he had
created a multiple choice question which asked which video games
system was the best. Four possible choices were listed but the ‘correct’
answer to his question in his program was “Genesis”.[4] When asked
about this Carson stated that he had this system at home so he made this
the correct answer. Carson was asked to describe his final multimedia
story.
“You are supposed to drag the prince (the hero) up the mountain to
save the princess. And then a dragon comes out and this guy is supposed
to kill the dragon and they live happily ever afterwards.”
Carson’s description of his project and his interest in video games
led me to ask if the program he was creating was similar to the electronics
games he played.
Carson responded “I got some of my ideas like the knight and the
mountain move from a game I played.” However he said that the story of
the knight and the princess was mainly his own creation.
In Carson’s game many graphics were provided. These graphics
faded in and out, sometimes appearing to interact with each other because
of the fading. He was asked if these procedures were also present in games
he had seen.
“I don’t think so. I think it just looks nicer if I put it in fade in and stuff
instead of just nothing.”
Carson had been observed demonstrating his projects to friends
from outside this class during lunch hour. He used these friends as
advisors for his graphics generation by asking them “how to draw these
pictures, how to do shading, and stuff like that”. When asked what kinds of
things he was making in AP Carson responded that “Authorware
[Professional] is too slow for making good games” but “average games …
[or] basic games” were possible. When asked if the story he was making

202
 READING AND WRITING THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

could be a game he responded that the object of this game was: “To save
the princess and kill the dragon”. Since Carson had not yet created this
part of the program he was asked to describe it: “Dragging the prince out
of nowhere and then the princess tells the guy [prince] that the dragon’s
weakness is the neck or something so then I’ll get the guy to throw …[I’ll]
get [the] user to drag the sword to the neck of the dragon and he dies.”
Carson was asked what he would tell his family about his school project.
He stated “I would say making stories, drawing pictures, and stuff. I will
probably print out hard copies so I can show them what it looks like”.
Where did the ideas for this living essay come from? “From games I
played and from stories I read. Fantasy novels. There is always a hero
saving a country, saving a princess, fighting off evil, and all that stuff.”
From where did the idea of the dragon emerge? “Well I think it’s from a
game I played. Well my whole story is based on that game I think.” He
described the game he had seen as one of pure commands and no action
on the part of the user. He said that he “liked the story”. But is Carson’s
story like this professional video-game? “No. …The style is totally different.
…My story is pretty straightforward I think. You just have them drag the
person up the mountain and drag the sword into the dragon’s mouth. I
think even a child could do it.” He describes his story as suitable for use
by children “if there were more things to do. Mine just has two things to
do and the rest are just like reading the screen for what’s going on. …If I
am to do a new one I would put, make it look more animated like those
games I have … [incorporating] smoother animations instead of just
zooming in and zooming out, zooming in. I want to make it look like it
actually moves. Like first I move my left foot and then right foot, left foot,
right foot. If it [the character in the story] attacks when it approaches
instead of just dragging the sword into the mouth [of the villain].
Something like that.”
Carson referred to his productive efforts as a story. Carson was
asked if he was himself an author in writing this story?
“No.”
“You weren’t being an author when you were writing this story?”
“I didn’t feel like being an author when I was doing it.”
“What would you call it? It wasn’t like being an author. What was it
like?”
“I feel like a programmer.”
“A programmer. So what you are really creating then …. ”
“Was a program. … That’s why I like Authorware [Professional]. I
don’t mind spreadsheets and stuff in 20a [computer class]. I just like
Authorware [Professional] because I find it’s like the closest thing to being
a program [and] Pascal. Spreadsheets are totally different from
programming . It’s just doing assignments.”
“Well you were just doing assignments in Authorware [Professional]
weren’t you?”
“But you feel like being a programmer.”

203
JUDY M. ISEKE-BARNES

“So it’s the way you feel when doing Authorware [Professional] that’s
different than when you are doing a spreadsheet?”
“Uh huh.”
“So the feeling when you are doing a spreadsheet is?”
“I just want to complete this assignment, get good marks on it so I
can get good marks on the report card.”
“And that’s it.”
“Yeah.”
“But in Authorware [Professional] it’s different?”
“Yeah it’s different.”
“How is it different? If it’s not just that what is it?”
“Like in spreadsheets and stuff you are more restricted. Like it they
should give you this assignment, like this inventory and stuff you are
supposed to type this into a spreadsheet. Like that’s very restricted. You
can’t do much … with it. … In Authorware [Professional] you can do
whatever you want.”
“Even though the assignments are set for you?”
“See like the living essay is not very set. You can do anything you
want.”
“What type of things can you create in Authorware [Professional]?”
“A living essay … a movie if you have the time to do it ... and a
non-fiction story. … I think it’s just something of your own creation.
Something you made all by yourself.”

Further Perceptions of Multimedia Story Creation

Based upon these earlier interactions with Anne and Carson I decided that
it would be interesting to explore what other students thought about the
process of creating a living essay. I had often acted in a teacher role during
classes. As a result I frequently interacted with students in regard to their
assignments. Sufficient trust had been developed in the relationship
between students and I to enable my request of interviews with three
students as they embarked upon the creation of their stories. Each of
these three students was asked a number of questions about the story and
the creation of it. Excerpts were drawn from transcripts of the discussion.
Steve, upon completion of the class assignments, began creating his
living essay which he described was going to be about the Kennedy Space
Center and Cape Canaveral.
He wanted to incorporate images of the “space shuttle and the
different cargo bays” with informational notes about these areas which he
thought would provide “interesting stuff that people might want to
remember about the space shuttle”. When asked if he could be thought of
as an author in these activities he considered the suggestion and
countered that “an author doesn’t necessarily mean you’re writing a book,
a novel, or a short story. I’m designing my own program, I guess you could
say, so I consider myself an author”. He also described himself as a
designer “in a sense of a creator”. He stressed the importance of his own

204
 READING AND WRITING THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

decision making: “I decided what is going in there. I decide what I want,

what I want to cut, what I want to add to it.”
Tracy’s project was “a storyline. …Basically a story using pictures
and words. …I was going to do a modern version of Goldilocks and the
three bears. …It’s called Tracy and the Three Babes. …I had to modernize
it – I’m going to follow basically Goldilocks story line but it will be more
revised. You will have options of where to go – if you want her to go into
the house or go for a walk – so you can choose which story.” She
described her activities as using her imagination in being like an author
creating a children’s story including the illustrations. She also “directs”
the story – its sounds and moving images – and programs the story
because “you have to put the commands into the computer and you have
to put the choices into the program.” In addition she was like a teacher
because her story provided ideas to those who used it of both how to use
the story and how to use the computer to create stories. The role of the
teacher was also evident in that her story, as with any story, could be
used for learning to read.
Nadine’s project was to create an interactive shopping sequence. In
this sequence she was going to build in the ability to ‘walk’ into a variety
of stores and a cashier would ask if she could be of assistance. “I don’t
know if I will put it in a story format or that a person will just walk in and it
will start talking “Can I help you? Would you like to see this tennis racquet
or this shirt?” Nadine described her role in this project as the one who
videotapes a movie. She would be “an on-looker.” She would be a
programmer except that she would be writing her program from within AP
and thus her program would not be created “from scratch”. Her program
would be like a story in that there is a main idea, characters, and a scene.
It was conceived of as a large program incorporating many parts “taking
all the information and you’re putting it all together.”

Discussion
What is a Living Essay?
The term ‘living essay’, it seems, was used by the teachers to imply a
visual, dynamic, and interactive multimedia product. But how was this
essay living? It was continually enacted by the person using it and by the
students-as-producer recalling it or changing it. Students were encouraged
to explore and be creative as they produced their essays. The teacher
initially described a project about the Olympics in which students would
present results, describe events, and display images of athletes. But
students chose to explore ideas of what the project might be and the
meaning of the projects for the teacher emerged post-structurally.
These projects ‘play’ with the traditional conception of the essay and
its structure as taught in English classrooms. Layers of meaning are added
including elements of narrative and interaction not traditionally important
in essays. They may be more in keeping with the definition of essay from

205
JUDY M. ISEKE-BARNES

the French, meaning “to try”. The traditional school essay is more like “I
tried”. These projects offered these students ways of moving beyond this
traditional form by adding layers and enriching the form.
The projects, ever-changing, had new meaning continually. In Anne’s
initial description it was “like a video game”. Later it was like “a show on
TV”. The ever-changing cycle of activity through the codetermination of
subject and environment is evident through the discussion of students’
perceptions of their productive efforts. Students looked back upon where
they had been. This act was “not a passive mapping of external features
but a creative form of enacting significance on the basis of the …
[student’s] embodied history” (Varela et al, 1991, p. 175). In this looking
back they were not telling what had happened but describing their
perceptions now of what they understood to have occurred. They
described who they were in the moment of the interview through the story
of where they had been. They told their current interpretations of what
had taken place.

Expressive and Informational Objectives of Multimedia Stories

Each student had a different conception of what a multimedia document
might be. It was a television programme or a video game (Anne), a basic
interactive game (Carson), a story (Tracy), an information package (Steve)
and an interactive sequence (Nadine). These images of multimedia stories
illustrate both the ‘expressive’ and informational’ objectives of
multimedia. One way of achieving the expressive objective is to generate a
document with elements of story including characters, plot, setting and
theme. Anne, Carson and Tracy each created stories in which these
elements were present. The products would be experienced by classmates
(or other viewers) as stories, video sequences or video games. The
sequence included in the stories gave each story a sense of plot and
theme.
Anne’s comment: “If I would have done something on the Olympics
[as outlined by the teacher] I would just be repeating news” seems to
express the intent of the informational document, to transmit a particular
meaning. Nadine’s project seemed to be about structure rather than story.
It had a very different flavour than some of the others as she intended to
make it an interactive system which would simulate some shopping
activities by structuring video and textual information to be accessed by
users of the information sharing system. Steve’s multimedia document was
to inform others about information in regard to the space shuttle and
Kennedy Center in the form of text and graphics. These two examples
illustrate the informational objectives of multimedia.
Slatin (1990, p. 875) described those involved in hypermedia
environments as ‘browser’, ‘user’, or ‘co-author’. The first two categories
involve the participant in hypermedia as recipients of information. These
users of hypermedia are to act upon information provided by others.
Slatin’s third classification extends the possibilities to include co-creation

206
 READING AND WRITING THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

of hyperdocuments (text and media documents created in hypertext and

hypermedia environments) with the texts of others. But the students in
this study did more than create in-between other peoples’ information,
they generated the content of the text and the links between the text. They
were more than readers of hypermedia, they were authors of it. They were
creators of their own multimedia stories. They were not merely co-authors
but entered into creation of stories as authors, directors, programmers,
designers, teachers, and camera persons.

Reading and Writing of Selves in Text

How does one acquire a story? The culture in which one is born
already has an image of time, of the self, of heroism, or ambition,
of fulfilment. It burns its heroes and archetypes deeply into one’s
psyche. The tendencies and fears of one’s parents, the figures one
hears described in church, the living force of teachers and uncles
and grandparents and neighbours, the example of companions
along the way, the tales read in books or visualized in legend,
cinema, the arts: all such influences impress one’s imagination
with possible courses of action, possible styles of life. (Novak,
1978, p. 49)
Consider the stories that each of these students told from the perspective
of where stories come from. Anne’s living essay created a story of a bear
living in a park in which a cruel hunter shot at the bear. The popularity of
parks, sympathy toward wild animals, and discussion of hunting as cruel
are all popular themes on television and in other media. Anne described
her story as “just like watching a show on TV”. Perhaps television has
played a role in her making of this story. Carson’s story is of a prince
saving a princess from a dragon. He indicated that he got his ideas from a
game he had played, from books he had read, from “Fantasy novels. There
is always a hero saving a country, saving a princess, fighting off evil, and
all that stuff”. He also indicated though that mainly the story was his own
idea. In generating and responding to texts, students draw upon a
repertoire of stories they know from their own lives, the re-told stories of
others, from film, television, books, and other media. They make sense of
one text in terms of others and in so doing they express their intertextual
knowledge.

Poststructuralist Perspective
Meaning, from a poststructuralist perspective, is seen as intersubjective
and is created through competing discourses. Engagement with texts of
various kinds plays a central role in this process. Anne and Carson
express ideas that are evident in scenarios on television and in video
games, as well as in texts in fantasy novels. They reflect these media in

207
JUDY M. ISEKE-BARNES

their stories. Carter (1990, pp. xxi-xxii) discusses story telling in a

technological world:
Now we have machines to do our dreaming for us. But within that
‘video gadgetry’ might lie the source of a continuation, even a
transformation, of storytelling and story-performance. The human
imagination is infinitely resilient, surviving colonization,
transportation, involuntary servitude, imprisonment, bans on
language, the oppression of women.
The texts from media sources may act to enrich the story telling and
media, by providing places in which to tell stories, may transform our
story telling (Yeoman, 1994). Tracy explained that she wanted to “do a
modern version of Goldilocks and the three bears”. Within the multimedia
story she has the capacity to build a number of possible orientations to
Goldilocks and the three bears and can facilitate ‘readers’ of her story
choosing amongst these alternatives. She can facilitate ‘readers’ of her
story exploiting a number of ways of telling and retelling the story. The
potential for multiple readings of her story and a multiplicity of meanings
for the Goldilocks story being played out is evident in the description of
her multimedia story. Tracy retells the story of Goldilocks within the
multimedia story. This provides her a place to produce new meanings in a
discourse of resistance to the dominant discourse evident in the
Goldilocks story, readers might have the opportunity to engage the story
in many ways and engage in questioning the dominant discourses evident
in the story. The world views of writers and readers may be changed in
this process.

Conclusions
Gordon Wells has suggested that the roles of stories in schools needs to
be expanded:
What I found was that, beyond the primary years, stories received
little official recognition except in the literature class. School is for
learning about the ‘real’ world, and stories are perceived by most
teachers as frivolous and pupils’ personal anecdotes as annoying
and irrelevant interruptions of the official matters of the curriculum
...

The first mistake is in assuming that the imaginative and affective

response to experience is of less value than the practical or
analytic or, indeed, in thinking that they are in competition with
each other. A fully mature response is one that achieves a balance
of the practical, the moral and the aesthetic. To help students to
achieve such a balance should be the concern of all teachers,
whatever the curriculum content for which they are responsible.
This is fast becoming apparent with respect to science and
technology: unless our students learn to respond to scientific

208
 READING AND WRITING THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

knowledge is a balanced manner there is little hope that their

world will remain worth inhabiting. (Wells, 1988, pp. 16-17)
This study offers the potential of the computing classroom and multimedia
story development as a place where students can tell their stories. These
students saw themselves as authors, directors, programmers, designers,
teachers, or camera persons in generating multimedia stories. Their
multimedia documents were intended by students for the expression of
ideas, the dissemination of information, the creation and exploration of
environments, the teaching of reading, and as an example of multimedia
production which is potentially useful for instruction about multimedia.
These documents can be characterised as expressions of ideas,
informative, explorative, educational and instructive. Multimedia seems to
have the potential to be many things in computing classrooms and to be
used in many ways by students. There is also educational need for
poststructuralist views and analysis and pursuits of the narrative in
educational settings. Research needs to look closely at the human element
in computer interactions and to question the pedagogic and
epistemological stance in educational computing settings. When we look
closely we may be surprised at the diversity which we see.

Acknowledgements
Research reported in the paper was supported in part by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant 752-91-0350.
Special thanks are extended to Elizabeth Yeoman whose work has inspired
me to write and whose interactions have deepened my thinking. Mary
Kooy’s thoughtful comments and editorial assistance were also greatly
appreciated.

Correspondence
Judy M. Iseke-Barnes, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University
of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1V6, Canada.

Notes
[1] Authorware Professional is produced and distributed by Macromedia Inc.,
San Francisco.
[2] The IBM is a product of International Business Machines.
[3] The Macintosh is a product of Apple Canada.
[4] Genesis is a video game system produced and distributed by Sega Systems,
Irwin Toys, Inc., Toronto.

209
JUDY M. ISEKE-BARNES

References
Bakhtin, M. (1973) Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. New York: Seminar
Press.
Bahktin, M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: four essays. Austin: University Texas
Press.
Barnes, J.M. (1994) Human-Computer Enaction. Unpublished Doctoral
Dissertation. Edmonton: University of Alberta.
Barthes, R. (1979) From work to text, in J.V. Harari (Ed.) Textual Strategies:
perspectives in poststructural criticism, pp. 73-81. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press.
Benhabib, S. (1992) Situating the Self: gender, community and postmodernism in
contemporary ethics. New York: Routledge.
Bogdan, D. & Straw, S. (1990) Beyond Communication: reading comprehension and
criticism. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook.
Carter, A. (Ed.) (1990) The Virago Book of Fairy Tales. London: Virago Press.
Cixous, H. (1991) Coming to Writing and Other Essays. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
Greene, M. (1994) Postmodernism and the crisis of representation, English
Education, 4, pp. 206-219.
Joyce, M. (1995) Of Two Minds: hypertext, pedagogy and poetics. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press.
Kristeva, J. (1980) Desire in Language: a semiotic approach to literature and art,
trans. T. Gora, A. Hardine & L.S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University
Press.
McLaren, P. (1993) Border disputes: multicultural narrative, identity formation
and critical pedagogy in postmodern America, in D. McLaughlin & W. Tierney
(Eds) Naming Silenced Lives, pp. 201-235. New York: Routledge.
Novak, M. (1978) Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove. San Francisco: Harper
& Row.
Ong, W. (1982) Orality and Literacy: the technologizing of the work. London:
Methuen.
Richardson, L. (1990) Narrative and sociology, Journal of Contemporary
Ethnography, 19, pp. 116-135.
Rosen, H. (1984) Stories and Meanings. Sheffield: National Association for the
Teaching of English.
Slatin, J.M. (1990) Reading hypertext: order and coherence in a new medium,
College English, 52, pp. 870-883.
Smith, D. (1991) Hermeneutic inquiry: the hermeneutic imagination and the
pedagogic text, in E. Short (Ed.) Forms of Curriculum Inquiry. New York: SUNY
Press.
Varela, F. Thompson, E. & Rosch, E. (1991) The Embodied Mind: cognitive science
and human experience. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1962) Thought and Language. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in Society: the development of higher psychological
processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

210
 READING AND WRITING THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

Weedon, C. (1987) Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory. New York:

Blackwell.
Wells, G. (1987) Apprenticeship in literacy, Interchange, 18, pp. 109-123.
Woolley, B. (1992) Virtual Worlds: a journey in hype and hyperreality. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Yeoman, E. (1994) Tales told in school: children, stories and issues of justice and
equity. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Toronto: Graduate Department of
Education, University of Toronto.

211