What is ryta? How did i get to it?

Here I present the high-level conjecture that led to the development of the idea for Ryta. That is, the logical reasoning behind it.

Motivation is often an overlooked factor in literacy development (Cambria & Guthrie, 2010).

In my classroom experience, both as a student and as a teacher, the issues that were addressed in writing exercises were rarely connected to learners’ personal backgrounds or interest. Furthermore, the majority of written production activities is argumentative and does not give room for creativity. For that reason, most students only aim to achieve the minimum word count, respecting the rules of the written discursive genre demanded by the task, rarely using a higher level of reasoning.

Making writing a social activity is an option to increase motivation.

Seven years ago, in my freshman year in college, I stumbled upon an interesting writing challenge on the internet. NaNoWriMo (short for National Novel Writing Month) is a worldwide event that aims to bring people together to write a full novel – or at least a first draft – in only a month. The word count goal established by the organizers is 50 thousand words – which corresponds to the length of some great novels, such as The Great Gatsby – but, in some occasions, participants go beyond that goal. That said, every November, thousands of people from different parts of the world sign up on Nanowrimo.org and try to complete this challenge that at first seemed so crazy to me.

That motivation helps the learner/writer to be more productive and achieve specific goals.

However, as soon as November started, I felt like that goal was not unachievable, and that has everything to do with how NaNoWriMo is designed. Every region of the globe has a “Municipal Liaison” who organizes writing events and online groups for discussion and encouragement, so that more people from a specific area can complete their novel within the specified time period. And that’s not overlooked: the NaNoWriMo website presents the data of each region and it’s possible to see how your area stands in comparison to another one. In short, what is generally considered to be an individual task is turned into a massive social experience that provides people with enough motivation to write the equivalent of a 150-page novel in only thirty days.

Not judging the quality of your work helps you to progress in the challenge – and practice your writing skills. Editing comes after.

After turning off my “internal editor” and aiming for word count rather than quality, what seemed like an impossible task became a very enjoyable experience. Along with other participants from Brazil, I participated in “Word Wars”, small timed writing challenges in which you are supposed to write as many words as you can, and discussed my work with my peers. At times, we also talked about our emotional state during that those thirty days of massive writing. These experiences helped me, an 18-year-old teenager who hadn’t written anything bigger than 10 pages long, to finish a 150-page long novel in three weeks.

The whole NaNoWriMo experience is difficult to be transferred to a classroom context, but some aspects of this challenge can be used.

As an English teacher in training, I wondered how the NaNoWriMo experience could be transferred to a classroom context. Giving students the task of writing a full novel in a month seemed unrealistic even with all the motivation involved. And so I looked for alternatives and inspiration came from one of my other passions – gaming.

“Elegy for a Dead World” is an independent game developed by the Boston-based game development company Dejobaan. It is, in short, a writing game. You control an intergalactic explorer who travels to different dead civilizations, and your goal is to simply write about them. In order to make the task engaging, “Elegy” offers a variety of worlds inspired on the work of different poets, such as Byron and Shelley. Moreover, even though there is an option to write freely when exploring, the game also presents writing prompts that challenge the player – or writer? – to exercise his/her creativity. When playing “Elegy for a Dead World”, the connection between this game and NaNoWriMo gave birth to the idea for “Ryta”.

Therefore, my innovation artifact, “Ryta”, is a writing game that offers writing prompts in order to engage students in different types of writing practices, both fictional and academic.

To increase the challenge, word count goals are also established, and if these are not met at the end of the level, the player fails. Difficulty, however, needs to be considered, and the complexity increases as the player progresses. The social aspect of writing is not overlooked: all completed challenges are organized on a webpage where other players can give feedback and/or suggestions for further development, if necessary. My belief is that “Ryta” can increase students’ motivation to write in classrooms by exposing them to a competitive and engaging environment.

Bibliography

Cambria, J., & Guthrie, J. T. (2010). Motivating and engaging students in reading. The NERA Journal, 46(1), 16–29.