Making Sense of a Reading Community. Lesson at ASK Centre (Art, Science and Knowledge) at Bocconi University about the social reading community of TwLetteratura.

1. Il social reading comincia dalle persone
May 9th, 2016
Making Sense of
a Reading Community

2. LET’S PLAY A GAME
Warming Up
2

3. A Farewell To Arms
By Ernest Hemingway
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4. Read and Tweet
• Read the text
• Rewrite it in 140 characters or less,
including the hashtag #Farewell
• Fill the form below with your tweet
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5. Example
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“The war was changed too.”
No, Mr. Hemingway. The war never changes.
#Farewell

6. Example
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“ T h e w a r w a s c h a n g e d
t o o . ” N o , M r H e m i n g
w a y . T h e w a r n e v e r c
a n g e s . # F a r e w e l l h
.

7. Rules
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“ T h e w a r w a s c h a n g e d
t o o . ” N o , M r H e m i n g
w a y . T h e w a r n e v e r c
a n g e s . # F a r e w e l l h
.
One space per character
No hyphenation at the end of a line
Spaces between words

8. Findings
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While summarizing, we select.

9. Findings
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We (should) imitate the style of the original.

10. Findings
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We take a position: we adhere to the original
or we distance ourselves from it.

11. Findings
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We move the original to a new context.

12. Findings
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We adapt our style to the space constraint.

13. Findings
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We talk about ourselves.

14. Findings
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We connect to other texts or content.

15. Even More Difficult
• Rewrite in bureaucratic style (pastiche)
• Rewrite describing one sense in terms of
another (synesthesia)
• Rewrite avoiding the vowel E (lipogram)
• Rewrite using all words which start with the
same letter (tautogram)
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16. Findings
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While summarizing, we play and share.

17. Findings
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The text is a proxy between people in a
conversation.

18. “I wouldn’t take a single book to a desert island,
because […] I must at least be able to say that I’ve
been reading.”
Peter Bichsel
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19. FROM TWLETTERATURA
TO BETWYLL
Part One
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20. TwLetteratura (TWL) is a community
of people using Twitter and its
paradigms – brevity and sharing – to
engage themselves in reading texts.

21. The single rewriting may be
paraphrase, variation, comment, free
interpretation, as long as contained
in the limit of 140 characters.

22. Tweets are recombined into a new
meaningful paratextual apparatus,
using online editorial platforms like
Storify or Tweetbook.

23. BOOK
READERS/REWRITERS
COMMUNITY
The text is dissected
through the work of
rewriting that is carried
out by each member of
the community.
TWEETBOOKINTERNET
A new content is
published, which
synthetizes the work
of reading, decoding
and interpretation of
the community.
CURATORS
COMMUNITY

24. 24
15,000 user, 5,000 students and 120
schools engaged, workshops with
universities, projects with local
governments and cultural institutions.

25. Texts are intended as any kind of cultural content:
books, paintings, sculptures, musical compositions,
movies, architecture and other artefacts.
Photo: Chris Jones

26. We do not read texts on Twitter.
We use Twitter as a social space
where individuals can turn
reading into a shared experience.

27. While commenting, summarizing, and
rewriting, we do not produce new texts. Our
tweets are rather metatexts or epitexts: they
refer to texts that already exist.

28. “The act of writing is literally moving
language from one place to another, boldly
proclaiming that context is the new
content.” (Kenneth Goldsmith)

29. TWL developed betwyll, a web-
based app designed for reading,
annotating and sharing comments
about texts. betwyll is currently
available in invite-only private beta.
Betwyll leverages the dynamics of
gamification and an ad hoc user
interface to improve the experience
provided today via Twitter.

30. 30
Use cases for betwyll?

31. 31
CORPORATIONS
Internal communication and change
management

32. 32
SCHOOLS & EDUCATIONS
Support to learning

33. 33
MEDIA & PUBLISHING
Promotion of editorial products and
audience engagement

34. 34
TOURISM & LOCAL GOVERNMENTS
Promotion of cultural heritage

35. THE COMMUNITY
Part Two
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36. Social Reading Forum
• Between 20 & 31 January 2016 a panel of
teachers provided feedback and discussed
over 30 topics.
• We used a dedicated TWL-branded
community platform set up and hosted by
CMNTY, compliant with ESOMAR.
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37. Respondents’ Profile
• All Italian residents and Italian speaking
• Women: 19; men: 1.
• Age: 30+, variety of professional seniority
levels.
• Primary schools: 8; secondary schools: 12.
• Multi-disciplinary panel: teachers in
literature & languages (predominantly),
history, arts, mathematics.
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38. 38
Key insights

39. Reading, A Way of Life
• Reading arouses a myriad of emotions and
experiences.
• It relates to escapism, relax and dreams and
thus ignites a heightened sense of freedom.
• It stimulates reflection and connection with
themselves and with the world(s) outside.
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40. Offline/Online
• Print books remain the preferred format,
but teachers are fond of e-books as well.
• Teachers are all using multiple devices and
social networks are commonly used.
• Teachers are convinced that they can help
millennials to unleash the full/true
potential of social media.
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41. Literature in the Classroom
• Reading at school stimulates openness,
dialogue, sharing of ideas and reflections,
fantasy, discovery.
• It’s even better when it is done in the form
of reading aloud.
• Otherwise it is an overwhelming “fatigue”
related to attitudinal and economic aspects.
• Therefore it might result in a feeling of
frustration and isolation.
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42. Strength of Method
• TWL forces students to to pay attention to
spelling, grammar and semantics.
• It enhances creativity.
• It encourages to formulate/exchange ideas.
• It increases self-esteem among students.
• It enables contacts with other schools.
• It stimulates books purchase or visits to
libraries.
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43. Community as a Brend
• Teachers who apply the TWL method feel
part of a strong community.
• They see themselves not as mere users or
contributors but experience their bond with
TWL as a kind of co-ownership.
• The vast majority of the teachers who took
part in the research are actual promoters, as
the +86 Net Promoter Score demonstrates.
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44. Net Promoter Score
• It measures the likelihood to recommend
(on a 0-10 points scale).
• The score is the delta between the
percentage of promoters (those giving a 9
or 10 on 10) minus the percentage of
detractors (those giving a 0-6 score).
• In the case of TWL the score is based on n =
14, with 86% promoters and 0% detractors.
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45. TOWARDS A
QUANTITATIVE MEASURE
Part Three
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46. Measuring Impact
• First feedbacks from schools show that we
make people read more and better.
• We are currently defining a protocol to get a
quantitative measure of the impact.
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47. Social Impact
• Do we encourage students to read books?
• Do we contribute to the prevention of
school dropout?
• Are we able to leverage cultural heritage as
an engine of innovation?
• …
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48. Learning Objectives
• Linguistic skills: decoding, fluency,
vocabulary, comprehension
• Collaborative skills
• Critical thinking skills and literary
competence
• Media literacy skills
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49. More
@twletteratura / @paolocosta
www.twletteratura.org
www.betwyll.com
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