Week 6 Reading

The Curwood reading brought up really interesting points regarding the effect of fan-fiction on writing skills. I think there is a lot of benefit to fan-fiction communities as it provides users with a location to discuss lore, be inspired by other pieces of fan-fiction, and share ideas. All these – especially in the context of a web forum – require a way of expressing one’s thoughts. In addition, being surrounded by all the different pieces of fan fiction might encourage users to write their own. An example is my girlfriend in middle school. I’ve always regarded my girlfriend as a better writer than me and she told me about how she used to write fan-fiction in middle school.  A thought I had, though, is does writing fan fiction help improve literacy/writing or is it because a lot of people who write fan fiction like to read?

Either way, I wonder what would be an effective way of leveraging technology to encourage children to write/ tell stories?