Writing in the Wild

Writing in the Wild: Motivation in Fan-Based Affinity Spaces by Jen Scott Curwood

Contemporary affinity spaces have 9 defining features:

1. A common endeavor is primary.
2. Participation is self-directed, multi-faceted, and dynamic.
3. Portals are often multi-modal.
4. Provide a passionate, public audience for content.
5. Socialization plays an important role in affinity spaces.
6. Leadership roles vary within and among portals.
7. Many portals place a high value on cataloguing content and documenting practices.
8. Knowledge is distributed across the entire affinity space.
9. Affinity spaces 

To action in your classroom, here are four steps that you can start right away

•  Design a survey and ask students about their experiences with fan culture and online communities. Inquire about their reading and writing practices in out-of-school contexts and then create literacy learning activities to connect with these experiences. 
• Expand the boundaries of your classroom by incorporating an online space, such as Ning or Scholar. In this space, you can model the peer- review process for your students, both during an in-class workshop and an online demonstration. They can then share their writing and offer constructive feedback to others. 
• Encourage students to engage in collaborative and multimodal responses. For example, students can create a podcast in which they take on the perspective of a specific character and react to key events or they create a blog that explores composers or themes. Alternatively, students can use a video game engine to create machinima based on classroom texts. 
• Online affinity spaces depend on technology, but teachers can create affinity spaces within the physical environment, too. For instance, teachers can draw on workshop-based approaches to student writing and share this work with a wide audience by creating a gallery, holding a poetry slam, or crafting a literary.