In my Short Stories class a few weeks ago, we were discussing a few short stories and my professor introduced us to this really cool website called LitGenius. Originally, the site was created to share song lyrics written by well anyone, but it has become a place where people create annotation about stories that they know and love.
How it works:
You create a profile, and you search for your favorite story or for a story where you discovered something really cool within the text of that story. If you find it you go to a section where you discovered that really cool think and you comment on it. In the comment you can add pictures and links to help explain your point. This comment is then considered an annotation.
You can also vote annotations up or down depending on if you thought the comment was helpful. You comment on the annotation to tell why you agree or disagree with it, or you can suggest to the author to edit the original annotation so that it explains what they were trying to say more efficiently.
If you can't find the story you searched for it's really easy to add it so you can share your discovery with others and so others can share discoveries they've made while reading the piece.
Why this is so cool!:
This site is really neat because it allows people of all walks of life to share and discuss their favorite stories. It creates the opportunity for people to look more critically at a piece and to share their discoveries.
This new media site also allows easy access for people to discover new stories that have been written and they can see what other people have said about the story while they experience the story themselves. I think this is important, especially for stories that can be hard to understand, because it allows us to give specific details about what the author meant and how the words can have different meanings today that can help create different readings of the story.
Some Examples:
Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"
This is honestly my favorite Shakespeare sonnet, and to find an annotated version is interesting because it allows me the opportunity to see what others have said about it.
Joseph Conrad's "Youth"
This was the first piece that we, as a class, worked on together. We each had to create an annotation within the piece.
Carolyn Kizer's "Bitch"
I studied this piece in my Intro to Literature class and found there were two meanings to the word "mistress" and knowing there were two definitions to the term "bitch", made this a really interesting piece in my eyes and I wanted to see what others have said about it!
No comments:
Post a Comment