Throughout this hypertext, we pulled from MOO logs and the Survey forms . We wanted to capture threads, pointing to the ability of MOO to record the richness of our brainstorming sessions. At the same time, we also need to assert that this culling of the MOO forum logs was for summation purposes only, not an attempt to impose any one way of reading and responding to these texts. We hope foregrounding just a few of these threads for our distinct rhetorical situation and purpose serves to show, in a concrete way, that the MOO not only functions as an excellent brainstorming environment, but also allows us to reflect back, recursively, seeing new angles, allows us to focus our thoughts, playfully and constructively. In this way we hope to show that MOO is valuable for
revision of previous text and ideas, not just locally, but globally. Claudine Keenan, who has "taught fyc and basic writing on MOOs, covering every phase of the writing process from invention to editing," notes this ability of MOO for all the stages of the writing process:
Interaction, collaboration, decentralization--all in one place. Where can you get a more powerful educational tool? MOO has allowed my students to form a writing community, not only with each other, but with members of a larger community, the global community, whose contributions to our discussions have enriched and informed our writing skills. (Survey 17)
When we quote from the MOO logs, we will point to the section in the log it comes from. Although we have not edited the text of the logs, we had the MOO server hash-mark the logs every 20 lines for easy reference as well as "webbing" them in HTML for easy reading. Since the logs are only marked for every 20 lines, when you follow a link to a place in a log, you might have to look around a little for the text we are refering to. At any time you would like to peruse the logs in their entirety, you can go to the following locations.
The logs will show up in the "link" window of the Kairos frames, or in a new window, if you are looking at this with no frames.
Jester Forum MOOlogs
In our fourth session of MOO meetings, Elsie_guest noted, "we gather logs of our online sessions, but it turns out hardly anyone ever goes back to read em" (MOO4 761). We are here to assure Elsie_guest that not only did we read them, but so did others. Reading MOO logs is likely an acquired skill, like the "skimming and diving" that Michael Day speaks of in CoverWeb for Kairos: 1.2. This skill is not profoundly new to students, teachers and researcher. As Day remarks:
I hope you understand that these skimming skills are applicable to other contexts besides the
Internet. Indeed, how often do we have to skim sources, bibliographies, indexes, tables of contents,
papers, and abstracts, in order to find useful information? Do we have time to read every single
word? (Lost in the Flow)
We hope to entice even more folks to scroll through the logs. We have found them entertaining, informative, great memory prodders -- ink blots of the finest caliber.
We hope, as folks read this text, review the logs for themselves, go over some of the surveys, they will want to join in this conversation. To this end we created a MOOmail discussion "*list* called *jesters and discussed the possibility of extending the conversation to listservs such as MOO-ed. Since we also believe it is fundamentally important that school site administrators become involved in MOOs, if only to be able to evaluate the work their folks are doing, we are developing a MOO form for their feedback to this project as well.
