Task Overview
For this exercise we will be practicing how to write frames for stories. To do this, perform the following step:
1. On your computer, open up your “object story” which you wrote earlier in the semester.
2. Save your file on your computer with a new name, such as object story version 2.
3. Leaving your story open on your computer, get up an move to a new computer.
4. Read someone else’s story. At the bottom, insert a row of stars:
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Frame #1: Central Frame
5. Next, write in a paragraph or two your understanding of what you think is the writer’s central frame for his/her story of learning. (The frame may or may not be easy to see.):
- Think of this as trying to construct the writer’s frame (that is, capturing what the writer was hoping the story was to be about)
- What point of view/perspective do they seem to be taking (see p. 119 in Meyer)?
- From what vantage point do they seem to be telling the story (student, educator, disinterested bystander, all knowing/omniscient narrator, innocent participant in the events, etc.)?
- What sort of response does the story generate in you? What type of response is the story likely to generate?
- Where do their sympathies lie?
- What are they trying to convince us of?
- What does the point/lesson of the story seem to be?
6. Once you finish, add another set of stars *******************, then click save just to be safe. Now move to another computer, read the next story, and then go to step 7.
Frame #2: Alternative Frame
7. Read the story and the original frame. Then, write a new, alternative frame for understanding the story. You may have to extend some of the story’s ideas to make this possible:
- Think of this as a reader’s frame rather than the writer’s frame (that is, what the writer was hoping the story was to be about)–here you think of other ways to read the story, perhaps slightly resistant ways
- Take a different point of view about what the story might mean; consider a drastically different way of interpreting what the story means
- Think about how another character in the story, or related to the story, might understand it
- Focus on a different moment in the story with more clarity; perhaps, if one moment were given more attention, it would recast the story in a new light
- Offer a perhaps less obvious interpretation of the story; try to unpack some of the story’s hidden meaning(s)
8. Once you finish, add another set of stars *******************, then click save just to be safe. Now move to another computer, read the next story, and then go to step 9.
Frame #3: Scholarly/Theoretical Frame
9. This time, we’ll try to create a scholarly/theoretical frame for the story. Warning: Do not try this task at home (at least, not without books, articles, and other references). Read everything written so far, then write the type of frame below:
- Offer a theory for why the story is told the way it is told
- Use the theory of some scholar whose work you are familiar with to help interpret/critique the story
- If possible, reference a school of thought which supports this way of looking at the world (Marxism, feminism, expressivism, social constructionism, etc.)
- Your effort now is to create a frame that links the story to larger issues in the world; to pull the story up and out of the person toward all of us
10. Click save one last time to preserve all this interesting work. Then return to your own computer so you can read the frames people wrote for you.