Trailfire Project

I thought this FAQ page would be a good place to begin as I'm not going to spend any time on the "how to" of Trailfire, but will instead be reflecting upon how Trailfire can be used in an educational setting generally, and a writing setting specifically.  Take a moment to examine the FAQ and read what you need to.  This marker will stay here.  To come back to it just click on the "Starting with the basics..." link in the Trailblazer sidebar (right).  If it's not open, choose it from the little dropdown that comes from the "fiery T" symbol in the tool bar portion of your browser.  Having said all that, some discussion of the ins and outs of Trailfire is necessary.

Typically, when a new marker is added to the page, it's placed in the upper right hand corner of the window.  If you scroll up this page you should see a marker with a "T" in it . . . that one was put there by Trailfire, it's part of a "Getting started" tour.  I put a new marker on the same page and then dragged it down to sit next to the "create new trail" link (to the left). 

It isn't possible to directly build links to or from a specific lexia on a web page, it is possible to place commentary such as this next to the text block to which we may wish to draw a reader.  In a classroom application this could mean that the teacher sets the mark next to text that he wishes the student to read and makes a brief comment as to what he wishes the student to read.

Also, note that it is possible to have many markers on a single page.  It would be possible for a teacher to send all students to a single online article, for example, and instruct the students to build their own trails from that central page, out into the web.  Students could see the trails and research of others and see the way that different students investigated a topic.  The teacher could even instruct the students to not put marks on the same page after the first page, thus creating diverse lines of investigation, as well as providing some impetus to get started sooner rather than later (after all, the "easy" pages will come earlier if searched for on google). 

It would be ideal if  students could be instructed to introduce their research trails as comments under the teacher's original markerand embed a hyperlink to their research trails, but this isn't currently possible.

Clicking on the "right" arrow on the top right of this marker to advance to the next marker, where I will give an example of the "Hub" article concept. 

A Teacher could begin with an article (such as this one on Karl Marx), directing the students to it in the usual manners (e-mail, Blackboard, etc) and then write directions for the student's assignment in a commentary (such as the one you are reading now).  The students could be told something like "Read this article and summarize it in your own marker,"  Each student could then be directed to find one aspect of the article to explore further and to search the web for information and leave markers along the way, explaining in the commentary at each marker what they have found out.

The teacher could specify the length of the summaries and the length of the trails that each student would need to build.   The teacher could furthermore specify that each student place comments on each other's trails.  This latter approach would be time consuming, but would permit students to thoroughly investigate a topic along lines that interest them, and then see what other things their peers have found out. 

An alternative would be to group students and have each group working on a trail, adding to it independently.  The "leave a comment" feature" could be a method of communicating between group members.  The teacher could also add comments and guidance (as is always possible) in the same manner.  Trails can be semi-private, meaning, only certain people can be admitted to the trail.  A group could work on a trail semi-privately until they have completed it and then make it public, thus sharing it with other groups in the class.

I've placed two additional mark as "mock" student research trails below this one.  Look at them and when you're done reading this.  Notice how the links in the trail appear in the sidebar when you are in a trail.  Use this or the marker's back button (or the browser's back button for that matter) to move back to this page and continue on the "Trailfire Project" trail.  Incidentally, to close a marker box such as this, click on the little "x" in the upper right hand corner.

[Note to trailfire users who happen upon this accidentally: this trail is part of a school project demonstrating the use of Trailfire and suggesting uses for it in the classroom. I will be removing this trail when the project is over.]

My first experience playing around with Trailfire was to use it to save a line of research for a paper on high stakes testing that I was doing. I came to Google to do my research, and whenever I found a page that I thought contained useful information, I simply placed a marker at the site, went back to Google, and went to the next one. Once I began writing the paper, the trail of research I had established a very convenient way to move through the information I had connected.  Indeed, I was reminded of what I had read of Vancouver Bush's MEMEX,  in Landow.  Indeed, compare this quote from Bush's original, 1945 article, and what we have been speaking of within this commentary: "When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in hs code book, and taps it out on his keyboard . . . the two items . . . joined . . . at any time . . . can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button" (Landow, quoting Bush, p.11).  While it's not exactly a memex simulator, it does a good job of allowing the linking of web information.

 I used the sidebar to easily click on a link to a site, but whereas this is not so different from placing researched sites in a "favorites" or "bookmarks" list, the ability to add comments to the sites made a world of difference for being able to refer back and find the information that I specifically wanted. What's more, if it were a particular part of the page that I wanted to find, I moved the marker next to the specific information.

The only real limit I discovered was an inability to mark pdf pages, but I simply placed the marker beside the link leading to the pdf, made a note in the comments, and moved on. What's perhaps most exciting was that, even as brief as I was in some of my descriptions and comments, I could save the trail for "public" sharing, so that other Trailfire users, should they desire, can look at the sites that I've seen, use my research as it were. I know people have looked at it because Trailfire tracks views for me and tells me how many people have looked at the information.

There is also a sense of validation about discovering that other people have been viewing a trail that you have built.  (For instance, thirteen people have looked at this one, though I attribute that quite possibly to having put a link here on the Google homepage.  HA, it would be funny if little clusters of these markers started littering popular sites like Google!).  There is a democratization that takes place, though.  For example, I've had several views of my high stakes testing trail, too.  Over time a Trailfire user who's built multiple trails could see exactly what trails were of interest to people and devote more time to working on those topics. 

In a classroom application, the links to the "trail heads" of each student's individual research project trails could be posted in a Blackboard discussion thread, or could be hyperlinked off of a common, teacher posted trail (if the trail were set for "wiki," that is, able to be edited by viewers). In either case, as with the "Hub" type of project proposed at the Marx article: students and the teacher can examine each other's trails and commment upon them.

Here's a link to my high stakes testing research trail.  There is no return link from the trail, and though you could use your browser's back button to return here and continue on this trail, or just come to the Google homepage, Trailblazer's "Recent Trails" tab in the sidebar provides an excellent "map" of the trails you've been working with, so you can simply find the link here and come back that way as well, though items are listed by "marker" so it does require that you are aware  of the title of this marker. 

This constantly "on" list of trails and markers sitting off in the side bar provides a ready "map" of where one is in the trails, which is especially handy when links begin interconnecting multiple trails.  That there are four distinct ways to move around (browser back button, directly going to a web site, using the trail/marker list/map in the Trailblazer sidebar, or links embedded directly in the comment's text) points up the freedom of the reader to create his or her own means of encountering the larger text of the various lexia on a given trail (or trails).  Indeed, the reader can go gallivanting off on links within the underlying web page and, as long as he knows the title of the marker where  she left, she can use the sidebar to come right back again and pick up where she left off.

Thus far I've been discussing using Trailfire in a research capacity, but its use could be extended to fiction and poetry as well . . .

Much of the hyperfiction and poetry encountered on the web requires that one download other platforms or programs in order to engage the narrative.  However, going to sites such as Dreamingmethods and others (return link provided) can open a one's mind to just how much can be done with interactive fiction and poetry.

Creating hyperfiction with Trailblazer, of course, requires the Add-On itself, and it is limited to what can be created with hyperlinks, but by using the one-to-many format available by placing mulitple links within each marker, it's possible to imagine fairly complicated arrangements being constructed. 

In creating hyperfiction or hyperpoetry with a program like Trailfire, the Web becomes a page, a backdrop to the comments in the marker's themselves.  Students can essentially "appropriate" existing web sites for purposes of juxtaposing what they write with the images and words on the underlying web site that they choose to leave the marker on.

I've set up a quick hyper poem called "Furniture" to demonstrate one way that Trailfire's linking ability can be used in conjunction with underlying web pages.  You can click here (No link to return) to go read it (though I warn you, the term poem is perhaps a bit stressed as a description of what you'll find.  Remember, it's for demonstration purposes only.)

One idea for how Trailfire could be used in a writing class to write fiction would be to have students, either individually or in groups, block out a basic "choose your own ending" story together, then each work on a particular "area" of the story.  Next, the students (or groups) would have to work to link the stories into a larger whole.  Structure, flow, and transitions would be emphasized and keenly felt as the pieces were put into a larger whole.  The result could be left up for others to view, and there would probably be some pleasure found by students the first time they went "all the way through" the story.

Another form of fiction writing that could only really be done with hypertext is linking out of a story.  Students could be given the beginning of a story and told to build links from words or phrases in the story.  From these links the student would be told to take the story in a different direction.  This would be set up as a wiki trail (where readers can manipulate the text).  It wouldn't even have to be particularly "deep" literature, but merely entertaining.  For example:

"I awakened just at dawn from a pageant of horrible dreams, my ears ringing as from some metallic peal. I saw the sun peering redly through the last gusts of a little sandstorm that hovered over the nameless city, and marked the quietness of the rest of the landscape. Once more I ventured within those brooding ruins that swelled beneath the sand like an ogre under a coverlet, and again dug vainly for relics of the forgotten race. At noon I rested, and in the afternoon I spent much time tracing the walls and bygone streets, and the outlines of the nearly vanished buildings."  (From Lovecraft's Nameless City)

Consider, too, the ease with which much of the text online may simply be cut and paste into a commentary such as this. A portion of a book such as Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations can easily be copied into a marker's commentary area. For example

"Scarce any nation has dealt equally and impartially with every sort of industry. Since the downfall of the Roman empire, the policy of Europe has been more favourable to arts, manufactures, and commerce, the industry of towns, than to agriculture, the industry of the country."

Was copied off of this page. Students can likewise cite sources online, (or the teacher too) and place a hyperlink to the source (Adam Smith)

Two or more excerpts from different authors might be placed side by side on a trail, or perhaps a series of such juxtapositions, which the students then respond to, writing a paragraph comparing and contrasting the excerpts in the "leave a comment" area of a marker. 

Landow points out that "because hypertext media interlinks and interweaves a variety of materials at differing levels of difficulty and expertise, it entourages both exploration and self-paced instruction" (Landow, 276) 

 A teacher can guide students to ideas, set the ideas side by side, and then allow the students  to explore the various information available and add to a growing web of ideas and discourse about and around a subject in a class.  The teacher can then quite easily reuse, modify, "tweak" the material as necessary from year to year.  Furthermore, "The medium's integrative quality, when combined with its ease of use, offers a means of efficiently integrating one's scholarly work and work-in-progress with one's teaching" (Landow, 277).

Landow concludes Hypertext 3.0 by discussing the politics of the web.  While the early days of the wild west world wide web are reined in by the forces of commercialization, a program like Trailfire "permit students to choose their own way.  The political and educational necessity for [reader controlled texts] provides one reason why hypertext systems must always contain both bidirectional links and efficient navigational devices; otherwise developers can destroy the educational value of hypertext with instuctional systems that alienate and disorient readers by forcing them down a predetermined path as if they were rats in a maze"  (Landow, 343).   

The use of the internet by students is a reality that will only go away with the net itself.  Trailfire allows students to build their own networks and thus short-circuit the hyperlinks that are built into web sites and that attempt to force them into pre-determined routes of inquiry.

It's possible to imagine more ways that Trailfire's ability to overlay networks on the web, to appropriate and connect the content of the web, could be used to both engage students in the political and commercial forces that are shaping and influencing their lives.  Indeed, Trailfire decenters the very notion of a central web site by allowing a flowing fluxuating trail to be overlaid onto other web sites.  Rather than coming to a site such as this and following links out (possibly never to return) a student (or politically charged teacher, or anybody) can link together whatever ideas are in pages, comment upon them, and allow others to comment upon them without being limited to "official" blogs, or burying ideas in forums.  In a very real way, Trailfire allows its users to become graffiti artists, tagging their opinions on the official sites of the web.