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             <li><a href="">Special Issues</a></li>
         </ul>
     </nav>
-<div id="content"><h1 id="title">Title</h1>
+<div id="content"><h1 id="title">Wink- A Prototype for Interactive Children's Literature</h1>
 <h3 id="grad-project-description">Grad project Description</h3>
-<p>This is where your grad project goes</p>
+<p>Wink is a platform which contains a children’s story I wrote called Bee Within and am making into an interactive experience, in relation to my research. Throughout this year, I hosted three workshop with kids between the ages 6-8 where we read "Bee Within" and played improvisation games around this theme; games including sound, acting, drawing. The main aim is to make the reading experience more fun for children and to make them re-visit the text to read through the multiple narratives in the story. </p>
 </div>
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+++ b/irmak/index.md
@@ -5,6 +5,6 @@ author: Stephen
 ---
 
 # Title
-Interactive Children's Literature
+Wink- A Prototype for Interactive Children's Literature
 ### Grad project Description
-Wink is a prototype which contains a children’s story I wrote and am making into an interactive experience, in relation to my research. Throughout this year, I hosted three workshop with kids between the ages 6-8 where we read "Bee Within" the story I wrote and played improvisation games around this theme; games including sound, acting, drawing. The main aim is to make the reading experience more fun for children and to make them re-visit the text to read through the multiple narratives in the story. 
\ No newline at end of file
+Wink is a platform which contains a children’s story I wrote called Bee Within and am making into an interactive experience, in relation to my research. Throughout this year, I hosted three workshop with kids between the ages 6-8 where we read "Bee Within" and played improvisation games around this theme; games including sound, acting, drawing. The main aim is to make the reading experience more fun for children and to make them re-visit the text to read through the multiple narratives in the story. 
\ No newline at end of file
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@@ -16,9 +16,618 @@
             <li><a href="">Special Issues</a></li>
         </ul>
     </nav>
-<div id="content"><h1 id="title">Title</h1>
-<h3 id="thesis-description">Thesis Description</h3>
-<p>This is where your thesis goes</p>
+<div id="content"><h1 id="title">Fair Leads</h1>
+<h3 id="thesis-description"> Fair leads or Fair winds is a saying sailors and knotters use to greet each other. It comes from the working end of a
+    string that will soon be forming a knot.</h3>
+<p>
+    I would like to clarify and introduce some terms for you in order to read this text in the desired
+    way. For a while, we will stay in the bight of this journey as we move into forming loops, theories
+    and ideas on how interactive picture books can be used to foster curiosity for reading and creativity
+    for children. I am building a web platform called Wink that aims to contain a children’s story I
+    wrote and am making into an interactive experience, in relation to my research.
+    <br>
+    Through this bight of the thesis, I feel the necessity to clarify my intention of using knots as a
+    “thinking and writing object” throughout my research journey. Although knots are physical objects
+    and technically crucial in many fi elds of labor and life, they are also objects of thought and
+    are open for wide minds’ appreciation. Throughout history, knots have been used to connect, stop,
+    secure, bind, protect, decorate, record data, punish, contain, fl y and many other purposes. So if
+    the invention of fl ying -which required a wing that was supported using certain types of knotswas
+    initiated with the knowledge of how to use strings to make things, why wouldn’t a research
+    paper make use of this wonderful art as an inspiration for writing and interactive reading?
+    <br>
+    KNOTS AS OBJECTS TO THINK WITH
+    There is a delicate complexity of thinking of and with knots, which ignites layers of simultaneous
+    connections to one’s specifi c experience; where one person may associate the knots with struggles
+    they face, another may think of connecting or thriving times. In a workshop in Rotterdam, I
+    asked participants to write three words that comes to mind when they think of knots. There were
+    some words in common like strong, chaotic, confusing and anxious. On the other hand, there
+    were variations of connection, binding, bridge and support. Keeping these answers in mind or by
+    coming up with your words on knots and embodying them in the practice of reading would make
+    a diff erence in how you understand the same text.
+    <br>
+    Seeing how these words, interpretations of a physical object were so diff erent to each other was
+    transcendental. In this thesis, I am excited to share my understanding of knots with you. My three
+    words for knots are resistance, imagination and infi nity. Keeping these in mind, I experimented
+    with certain reading modes as you will see later on.
+    <br>
+    Knots are known to be used 15 to 17 thousand years ago for multiple purposes. These purposes
+    were often opposing each other. For example, it could be used to let something loose or to restrain
+    it; for pleasure or pain; for going high above or down below… I believe this diversity of uses can
+    also be seen in how people approach knots as an idea or a metaphor. One can think it represents
+    chaos where someone else might see it as a helpful mark. Essentially, this diversity is what got
+    me interested in knots years ago and since then, I have found ways to implement this “loop of
+    thought” in my daily life and research methods.
+    <br>
+    There are two main reasons to why I chose to write this essay in a “knotted” format. One is that I
+    would like to share my process and progress of research on this project and this involves “thinking
+    with an object”, in this case types of knots. In Evocative Objects, Sherry Turkle, who is a sociologist
+    and the founder of MIT initiative of technology and self, refers to the object in the exercise
+    of thinking as emotional and intellectual companions that anchor memory, sustain relationships
+    and provoke new ideas. I completely agree with this statement through personal experience. The
+    second reason is that I see this as an opportunity to experiment if I can use knots as an interactive
+    (which is not in knots’ nature since they are mainly practiced in solo) and playful element in
+    writing. This is also why I would like to take a moment to mention what happens to the interplay
+    of processes in which we call thought when we think with knots in specific.
+    <br>
+    For Turkle and Seymour Papert, who is a mathematician, computer scientist and educator that
+    did remarkable research on constructivism, being able to make a reading experience tangible, or
+    even physically representable makes the process of thought more concrete. Concrete thinking in
+    this sense is a way of thinking that I adapted to in the past years, where you think with the object
+    and imagine it vividly during the process and address meanings to it as you read or write along.
+    This way it’s easier to compartmentalize or attribute certain parts of a text to an imagined or real
+    physical item which makes the mind at ease with complex chains of thought.
+    Imagine you are reading a story… What if you think of the string itself as the journey and the
+    slip knot (which is a type of stopper knot) as a representation of an antagonist because of its specific
+    use in hunting, would this change your approach to reading this story? I believe so…
+<br>
+    What if instead of a slip knot a Bowline was on the string, would that represent something else in
+    the story because of its usage in practice. A Bowline is commonly used to form a fi xed loop at the
+    end of a string; it’s strong but easy to tie, untie. Due to these qualities, we can imagine the bowline
+    to represent the conclusion in a story. What if we have a Square Knot, how would that change the
+    course of a narrative? Square knot is used to bundle objects and make the two ends of the same
+    string connect. From just this, we can use it to represent the connection between the beginning
+    and end of a story. My point is, there are limitless implementations on how to use knots in literature
+    because of their versatile purposes and the narrative vocabulary they create. Topologists are
+    still trying to identify seemingly infi nite numbers of combinations which we simply call “knots”
+    and I see this as an inspiration to keep writing.
+    <br>
+    One example of the wondrous versatility and potential of knots is how they are used to archive
+    and encrypt information. Incan people from the Andes region recorded information on Quipus,
+    dating back to 700 CE. Quipus are textile devices consisting of several rows of cotton and/or
+    camelid string that would be knotted in a specifi c way to record, store and transmit information
+    ranging from accounting and census data to communicate complex mathematical and narrative
+    information (Medrano, Urton, 2018). Another example is the Yakima Time Ball, which was used
+    by North-American Yakama people to show life events and family aff airs.
+    This is why I humbly decided to document my research process with a Quipu of my own. I am
+    trying to symbolize the twists, decisions and practices throughout this year with knots of my
+    choosing. I was inspired by Nayeli Vega’s question, “What can a knot become and what can become
+    a knot?”
+    <br>
+    WEAVING INTO THE TEXT
+    This thesis expects participation from its reader. You have the option to have a mode of reading,
+    where you will be guided by strings to start reading from a certain section according to the type of
+    reader you are and read the loops one by one until the end, weaving through the text. To determine
+    the string or mode of reading, there are some simple questions to answer.
+    The three modes of reading are combine, slide, build . After you discover the starting point
+    with the yes or no map in the upcoming pages, you will continue the reading journey through the
+    strings of diff erent colors that will get you through the text. This way, the linear text will become
+    in a way, non-linear by your personal experience.
+    Bear in mind that you can choose to read this thesis from beginning to end as a single string too if
+    you wish so.
+    <br>
+    Combine mode of reading is for readers who are more interested in the journey and the connections
+    between process and result. Slide mode of reading is for more laid back readers who
+    aren’t looking to connect ideas but are more focused on the motivation and purpose of the
+    project. Build readers are detail oriented and academic readers who would prefer a “traditional”
+    lead to reading.
+    <br>
+    Alongside the different strings to follow the text, there will be little drawings in the margins as seen
+    above, which will have diff erent representations like in a Quipu. Certain knots represent the experiences
+    that raise interesting opportunities for research and distinct events I went through while making
+    the project and underneath the drawing you can fi nd the relation to the knot itself explained.
+    For example if I couldn’t manage to do something I planned to do, this will be represented with a
+    broken knot. Bend knots which are used to connect two strings, will be representing the relation between
+    theories and my ownexperiences/motivations. Hitches which are knots that are formed around a
+    solid object, such as a spar, post, or ring will be representing the evidence or data I have collected on
+    the subject. We move on now with the working end and make some loops!
+<br>
+    This map will reveal your mode of reading. The order of reading will be indicated with a loop sign
+    Please hold a string in your hand as you read the text and make knots or loops as you weave through the
+    reading as an exercise for concrete thinking. See you at the standing end!
+    and a number on top of the sign with a color. This is the numeric order you can follow to read the thesis.
+    
+    Working End
+
+    Why am I doing this?
+    <br>
+    My desire to write a children’s book about grief and memory ignited when I was studying in college
+    and doing an internship in a publishing house in Ankara. I was struggling to process a loss I
+    experienced at the time and to fi nd something to cling to on a daily basis. Then one day I started
+    hearing a buzzing sound in my bedroom at my family’s house. I searched everywhere but couldn’t
+    fi nd the source for this noise. I asked my father and he started searching too. A couple of days
+    passed and the buzzing was still there.
+    <br>
+    One day I found a bee on the fl oor in my bedroom and realized that the bees nested on the roof
+    and were coming inside my room through a gap in the lamp. I was terrifi ed because I have an
+    allergy to bees and thought they might sting me in my sleep. This moment was when I realized I
+    was so determined to fi nd this buzzing sound for some time that I forgot about dealing with the
+    loss I was experiencing. This made me feel very guilty and I remember thinking I betrayed the
+    person I lost.
+    <br>
+    As funny as it may appear, I felt like I was sabotaged by these bees that I thought were here to
+    hurt me but in the end they made me understand that its ok to let things go and every being does
+    what it has to do to fi nd its way of survival. The little habitat that they chose to create in my room
+    seemed like a calling or a sign that I can aff ect another living being signifi cantly without being
+    aware of it. This goes for everything, no matter if some people leave us in this world, they have
+    living matter in us that keeps pulsing. So then I started researching bees and their ecosystems. I
+    read Alan Watts, Alan Lightman, Emily Dickinson, Maurice Sendak, Meghan O’Rourke, Oliver
+    Sacks, Joanna Macy, Rilke, Montaigne and theories on order in chaos, correlative vision, harmony
+    of contained confl icts and the mortality paradox. I wrote a lot and erased a lot and fairly
+    fi gured out the wisdom of not knowing things.
+    <br>
+    Years passed and I wrote and deleted and rewrote the story that I am working on to make interactive
+    today so many times and was waiting on it because it always felt incomplete. In a way it
+    will always be incomplete because of the natural ambiguity the topic carries. Years later, grief was
+    back in my life with the loss of my grandfather. So therefore, the story I wrote and abandoned
+    changed again as I attempted to rewrite it as a diff erent version of myself with a diff erent understanding
+    of death. And this went on… The story remained hidden and I forgot why it ever existed
+    in the fi rst place.
+    <br>
+    Last year when two earthquakes hit Syria and Turkey, I was drowned like everyone I know, by a
+    collective trauma and grief. Then this horrible feeling fl ared up by neglect and desperation. It was
+    and still is impossible to mourn so many strangers at the same time. I lost two dear friends, I was
+    furious, away from home, mostly alone and remembered vividly my failed attempt to understand
+    or place grief in one of the piles in my mind.
+    <br>
+    Previous months, I was working on this story (yes, again) but didn’t know how to tackle the text
+    because it was so diff erent to what I was experiencing now, when compared to the last time I rewrote
+    it. A tutor asked me why I wrote this story in the fi rst place and I couldn’t remember. I kept
+    tracing back to 2016 and step by step, remembered why, as told above. The consciousness that this
+    story is actually a personal history of how I went through grief in diff erent stages of my life, made
+    me realise that it doesn’t have to be or even can be a perfect story.
+    <br>
+    In the end with the experience I had with loss, I believe the story turned out to be an ode to
+    remembering or might I say an ode to not being able to forget or an ode to the fear of forgetting
+<br>
+    Loop 2
+    The effect of storytelling knowledge on kids’ development and creativity. What can
+    we learn from open ended and multiple ending stories?
+    ability to form basic stories or to express their emotions through fi ctional characters or events.
+    Children are not born with a wide vocabulary of emotions and expressions. They learn how to
+    read, mimic and express their feelings over time. The more children read, write and are exposed
+    to social environments, the more they widen their sense and ability of expressing themselves. The
+    language gained as kids comes in many forms and storytelling plays a crucial role in this development.
+    The exposure to stories prepares the kids to the era of reading and writing. Children come
+    to understand and value feelings through conversation (Dettore, 2002). When children are off ered
+    to read or share stories, they also learn to understand people around them better and gain emotional
+    literacy.
+    <br>
+    Storytelling has been a means of communicating with others for many centuries. It is not only
+    a way to discuss important events, but also a way to entertain one another (Lawrence & Paige,
+    2013). Stories have been told orally, in writing or with drawings for thousands of years and some
+    of these stories are still alive. This is because language is a living thing that travels through time
+    and still remains brand new. When necessary, it just adapts form, evolves and blends in with the
+    changing world. Children comprehend the idea that they have a story to tell by hearing other
+    stories and this ignites the imagination. We tend to forget many things but almost everyone remembers
+    one small story they heard or read when they were a kid, this moment we remember is
+    the moment a certain story sparked for us.
+    <br>
+    Nowadays storytelling takes many forms. For example, some readers’ story might even begin from
+    here although it isn’t the beginning. Interactivity is one of the storytelling forms that can signifi -
+    cantly improve children’s creativity. This is mainly because children as readers or listeners get to
+    contribute and aff ect the story. This of course requires and improves creative and active thinking.
+    Getting the chance to choose a path for a fi ctional character gives the child the freedom and confi
+    dence of constructing a world, a character or an adventure. Although this is essentially “writing”
+    as we know it, children think of this as a game, yet to discover they are actually becoming writers.
+    What kind of reward can we expect from active participation in a story? Narrative pleasure can
+    be generally described in terms of immersions (spatial, temporal, emotional, epistemic) in a fi ctional
+    world (Ryan, 2009). When we are set to create or co-create a world, the narrative has eff ects
+    on us such as curiosity, suspense and surprise. At this point, we start creatively producing ideas to
+    keep these three emotions.
+    <br>
+    Interactive storytelling reminds everyone but especially children that there are limitless endings to
+    a story that is solely up to the maker’s creation. Learning to think this way instead of knowing or
+    assuming an end to a story, I think infl uences the children’s decision making abilities and sense of
+    responsibility towards their creations. It is basically the same in theatre where if an actor chooses
+    to create an imaginary suitcase on stage, they can’t simply leave this object they created on stage
+    and exit the scene because the audience will wonder why the actor didn’t take the imaginary
+    suitcase as they left. In this case, when kids decide to choose a path or item or any attribute for a
+    character in a story, they feel responsible and curious to see it through to the end or decide what
+    to do with it. This interactivity therefore creates a unique bond between the reader/writer and
+    the text.
+    <br>
+    There are many theories on how to approach interactive literature for children. Multi-literacy theory
+    and digital literacies are some of the theories which I fi nd relevant to my aim with Wink. Multiliteracy
+    theory in a nutshell is an education oriented framework that aims to expand traditional
+    reading and writing skills. This theory was developed by the New London Group. They were a
+    collective of scholars and educators who addressed the changing nature of literacy in an increasingly
+    globalized, digital world. The theory explores multiple modes of communication consisting
+    The sense of storytelling settles for kids, starting from age three. By this time, children have the
+    of multimodal communication, cultural and social contexts, critical inquiry, socio-cultural learning
+    theory and pedagogical implications. Multimodal communication focuses on the variety of
+    communication techniques. This was groundbreaking in the 90s because of its acknowledgment
+    of a diverse range of literacies and its departure from traditional approaches to literary texts. This
+    theory includes new media and communication studies such as visual, digital, special and gestural
+    literacies.
+    <br>
+    I kept this theory in mind as I chose the interactivity elements to use in the picture book. I think
+    the usage of multiple media such as sound, image and games is a good way to start and diff erentiate
+    from a regular interactive e-book. The fact that this theory has an educational perspective and
+    is taking the rapidly changing qualities of literature seriously, made me consider it as a guide in
+    designing the prototype.
+    <br>
+    Looking through the perspective of multiliteracies, questions come up for me that lead to the
+    rest of this thesis: What is an interactive picture book? Is it a book? Is it a game? Is it an exercise?
+    What is it defi ned as? How can we design an interactive reading environment without confusing
+    children?
+    <br>
+    Loop 3
+    Diff erences and similarities between interactive e-books and storytelling games
+    Storytelling games and interactive e-books have many things in common. To begin with, they
+    both centralize the narrative to engage the audience. While both of these formats are storytelling
+    tools, e-books tend to stay more in a linear narrative and format when compared to storytelling
+    games where the audience is commonly the main character. Reading experiences are also a way
+    to be in the shoes of the narrator or the character but in a storytelling game, you embody the mission
+    and the experience overrules the story most of the time. In the specifi c example of a child,
+    storytelling games are complicated and puzzle driven where the player has missions to complete.
+    Whereas in an interactive e-book, the missions are solely based on the interactive elements implemented
+    in the text and images.
+    Another diff erence is that the visual world in an interactive e-book is less cinematic and has limited
+    movement. The imagery plays a massive role in a storytelling game where the world created is
+    off ered to the player. In an interactive e-book, the text itself is designed to be playful and ready for
+    readers to discover.
+    The main diff erence in my opinion that separates these two methods of storytelling is the reward.
+    In a game, we expect to be rewarded by a victory, passing a level or unlocking something throughout
+    the experience. In an interactive e-book, we work with the story and in return we expect a
+    good experience and there is no reward other than that. But, the whole design of interactivity
+    involves aspects of a game where the reader –not the player- is captured by surprise eff ects or
+    elements that come up on the pages. This ignites curiosity but not ambition, which is a good start
+    to foster the love for reading.
+    <br>
+    Loop 4
+    Ways of using interactivity in digital platforms
+    CASA theory, also known as the Cognitive-Aff ective-Social Theory of Learning and Development,
+    is a framework used in educational psychology to understand how learning occurs within
+    the context of cognitive, aff ective, and social factors. Research on cognitive learning with keeping
+    in mind the limited attention span and memory factors. For children in specifi c, I think these are
+    very important factors to keep in mind when trying to design an interactive experience. This is because
+    children get bored very easily and can be disengaged because of failure of solving/understanding
+    something in a story. This is something I kept in mind as I wrote for children and chose
+    the interactive elements in the story. 
+    <br>
+    Finding the balance between making the interactive element surprising and making it easy to
+    interact with is the key to designing for kids in this scenario. We don’t want to make them struggle
+    and use the limited attention span in a non-engaging way but we want to keep the reading interesting
+    enough so they want to continue.
+    Digging deeper into how to do this, I found Children Computer Interaction (CCI) study very
+    useful. This study examines how children of diff erent ages and developmental stages interact with
+    digital devices and how these interactions can support their growth. This made me think about
+    digital gestures; how they change through generations and how to use these to design a platform
+    where children can navigate easily and freely. CCI suggests that when introducing a new media
+    to children its better to start easy and clear when they try it. Through this I think the best easy
+    interaction is the tap or click for children. It is easy to do, instinctive and common. So I decided to
+    base the interactive elements on click animations.
+    There are multiple ways to use digital gestures in storytelling to make the experience more intriguing.
+    These are usually elements such as sound, animations, voice-overs that are ignited with a
+    click or tap by the reader. For children younger than 5, its usually just tapping over the page and
+    experiencing an action-reaction. For older kids between the ages 6-8, I made some workshops to
+    fi gure out which types of interactive elements are most useful in engaging them in the reading
+    process.
+    It is true that sound and animations are very inclusive and it is engaging for kids to fi nd out which
+    part of a page is interactive by clicking on images. Another thing I found out is that kids enjoy
+    being a part of the story. For the prototype of Bee Within (the story I am using to test interactivity
+    also can be read in the appendix) I will focus on color, sound and click based animations according
+    to the results of my research.
+    Loop 5
+    What is the target age group for the designated prototype and why?
+    It is tricky when it comes to choosing the right age spectrum for children’s interactive literature.
+    Children between the ages 3-5, referred to as preschoolers have more developed social skills and
+    day by day increasing interest in play. They can take on roles in imaginative play scenarios. They
+    can also share and take turns more, listen and think about rules of a game. They can form friendships
+    and connections easily.
+    School age children are between the ages 6-12, which is Wink’s chosen age group is a little diff erent.
+    These kids can form more rooted friendships and engage in more complex narratives. They
+    learn to negotiate and compromise around this time as well. This age group is desired for Wink
+    because kids this age are open to creative problem solving, connecting events and comprehending
+    slightly more complex narratives. Moreover, this age group would benefi t the most from the interactive
+    stories and the reading process because of the developmental phase they are in.
+    The average amount of time children between these ages use on a daily basis is depending on
+    their parents and circumstances. But to be fair, it is often not less than 2 hours. If a child isn’t very
+    interested in spending these hours reading a book, why not ask them: “Would you like to be a part
+    of a story?”
+    Today, kids from age 3 can use digital gestures successfully and experience these as simple as
+    fl ipping the page of a book. This is why it is fairly easy to create an interactive picture book which
+    kids can navigate themselves and be able to browse through with or without their parents. But for
+    Wink, I chose to design for older kids because I want to experiment on multi-leveled narratives
+    and I want to avoid the risk of confusing children.
+  <br>
+    Loop 6
+    Limits of interactivity in narratives for children and why do we have less modes of
+    reading and writing for children?
+    Although there are many upsides of creating digital environments for children due to their advanced
+    skills in technology from early ages, there are also risks involved in this where the kid can
+    be overwhelmed and confused due to the autonomy they receive. Reading a story is supposed to
+    be eff ortless and a good free time activity but with interactive picture books, it is slightly more
+    than that and more complicated as an experience.
+    First of all, with the story at hand, called Bee Within, there are two other stories in one. Although
+    the main story is about a little girl’s journey, kids get the chance to hear the Queen Bee’s story and
+    the tree’s story as well. This is not a must but if they interact with certain pictures on the page,
+    they will be led to the bee’s perspective or the trees. This is where the storyline can get a little bit
+    complicated for younger kids. The child reader at this point should be able to follow the main
+    storyline after visiting the side quests or stories presented in the interactive book. To create this
+    balance I tried to limit the interactive elements I used in the main story. I tried to keep the picture
+    animations limited and focused more on the storylines.
+    Another aspect I am concerned about after the workshop I did with the kids, is the risk of confusion
+    due to an undefi ned and multimodal design for a “book”. Kids tend to be confused when
+    they can’t defi ne things or are asked to improvise without knowing the purpose.They know what a
+    book is and that it is similar to what they encounter on the screen. But the method of reading and
+    interacting with Bee Within is diff erent than what they are used to. This concerns me because they
+    might prefer to just read a book or play a game instead of discovering a new thing, which they
+    are exposed to daily because they are always in a process of active learning. So one more thing to
+    learn might come as exhausting. Therefore, in designing, I want to make interactions as clear as
+    possible for them.
+    Loop 7
+    Interactive reading and writing examples and surveys done with kids
+    As an improvisation theater enthusiast myself, I tried to engage the kids with the story through
+    some exercises and games during the workshops. My aim was to see how involved they want to
+    be in storytelling. Improvisation has a certain way of storytelling and interaction where there are
+    either too many options or none. You need to have good empathy and harmony with the person
+    you are acting with and you are designated to be creative in your own way. I tried to use several
+    improv games and warmups to involve the kids in the story more and see how they see certain
+    characters from the picture book.
+    My first attempt was to make a survey at the end of workshops with kids to whether they liked it
+    or not, but when I researched further, surveying with kids has very diff erent methods and complications.
+    Most kids either really like or really dislike things. Finding the in between emotions with a survey,
+    ends up being vague. Most surveys done with kids use emoticons as representation of a good or
+    bad or average time. Instead, I chose to observe the environment and understand how much empathy
+    kids can off er in an interactive reading or playing environment.
+    Loop 8
+    What does the joy of destruction and the awe eff ect have to do with interactivity?
+    Indeed, why did we ever start playing games? The most important aspect of a game for me is that
+    it surprises you and leaves you in awe towards something you weren’t expecting happened. I feel
+    like every reaction I give when I’m surprised, is a mirror of what I felt when I was playing freeze
+    and had to stop moving at any given time or when I found the last friend hiding somewhere in
+    hide and seek. This feeling of appreciation and unexpectedness is why most people remember
+    certain games, movies from their childhoods very vividly. Its an introduction to a feeling we experience
+    maybe for the fi rst time because we don’t necessarily learn from books how and when to
+    feel surprised, that is why it’s a surprise; we live it, experience it and it leaves and impression with
+    us.
+    <br>
+    In my opinion, what drives everyone as a common denominator is amazement; because it takes
+    us to our childhoods or distant memories where we fi rst felt that feeling of awe. This is the main
+    purpose behind any kind of interactive design and I think books can be an amazing medium to
+    experiment this with. Specifi cally because this ancient device can take us to numerous worlds.
+    For me as a millennial, books give me enough amazement as it is. But as I worked in publishing
+    through the years and observed, I think kids today need something more to ignite their interest.
+    There are so many factors in a picture book such as the image, the text and sound which can be
+    played with to create an experience that is more surprising. This is the main purpose behind my
+    research and protoype. Today’s world being visually stimulating and serving very short attention
+    spans with social media, it is a tough task to insert a story or reading experience that requires full
+    attention and patience. There are examples of Tiktok stories, Instagram reels, audio books and
+    games that try to tell stories worth listening with attention. Wink is also an attempt to do this and
+    I believe the key is to make an already engaging story enriched with interactive elements that
+    appear to you through a click if you choose to. I think this is also the key to nourishing a new way
+    of storytelling.
+    Loop 9
+    Interactivity in reading and writing in history. What changed?
+    Interactivity has always been an experimental area in literature from inscriptions to narrative
+    games then to playable stories and artifi cial intelligence. I will expand some of these examples
+    from the rich history of interactive fi ction. When I dig a little bit into the media archaeology there
+    are three still relevant aspects that strike me and change/improve my approach to Wink. The fi rst
+    is the need to connect that remains untouched through centuries of human communication, the
+    second is how there were multiple projects concerning interactive media especially for kids that
+    later turned into narrative games or remained as prototypes and lastly how the integration of media
+    and literature has been such a grand topic even before information and technology era. Some
+    examples to this is music, masks, puppets, props used in storytelling.
+    Ancient texts with annotations such as The Odyssey, The Mahabharata are maybe the earliest
+    written interactive experiences in a historical context. They are published with notes and explanations,
+    clarifi cations which make the text inhabit diff erent opinions and approaches in an engaging
+    way where the reader can choose to hop on and off from the annotation and margin texts.
+    From the 70s to the present there have been many examples but I will be focusing on a few here.
+    One of them is, Choose your own adventure books which allowed the reader to participate in
+    the plot. These still exist as picture books where you are directed to certain pages according to
+    the choices you make throughout the story. Along with this were also board games and cards that
+    required interactive inputs. Some examples to this is exploding kittens or cards against humanity
+    where the player has the autonomy to be creative and fi ll in the blanks to win the game. Simultaneously,
+    text-based adventure games such as Zork and Adventure were popular. Early days of
+    computing off ered a wide space for exploring virtual worlds. In the early 80s, hypertext fi ction
+    contributed to electronic literature. Hyperlinks were used as a tool to navigate a text and choose
+    paths of reading. This inspired me to write this thesis with diff erent modes of reading as well.
+    After the 80’s, Interactive fi ction gained popularity as a genre of interacting with text based input.
+    Dynabook by Alan Kay was prototyped during this time as a promising reading and writing device
+    designed for children.
+    <br>
+    The 21st century off ers a combination of text and illustrations in augmented reality books that
+    have animations, sound and external interactions. These are followed by digital storytelling platforms
+    like Wattpad and Storybird and interactive e-book apps such as Pibocco, Bookr and Tiny
+    Minies. Most of these apps are dedicated to education however and not solely to creativity. Their
+    aim is to use creative elements to foster education for kids.
+    With Wink, I want to use a mainly educational tool (a book) to foster creativity and expression. So
+    I believe it is the opposite purpose as to these examples in certain ways. I am trying to combine
+    the delicacy of a narrative where you can only be a reader and the excitement of autonomous
+    writing and experiencing.
+    This is because I think the understanding and usage of media changed in the last years. Some
+    tools that created the awe eff ect for users faded and left their place to more compact designs.
+    Although audio books were very welcome at some point, younger users nowadays prefer book
+    summary apps or podcasts to them. Of course they are still used and not outdated but there is
+    certainly a visible change to where media is heading.
+    Loop 10
+    Experimentation of creative exercises to be used in WINK. Exercises of storytelling
+    with words, images, drawing, sound and gestures.
+    Before I completed the prototype of Wink, I reached out to an international school in Rotterdam
+    to make a 20 minute workshop with kids between ages 6-8. The aim here was to grasp the
+    interactive elements in the picture book to implement in the digital framework. I wanted to see
+    which parts of the story the children found exiting and which ones are not so thrilling for them.
+    It also helped me draw the pictures for the book accordingly and edit the text with their reactions
+    in mind. Due to a privacy agreement, I couldn’t record or use any data from the workshop but I
+    made some helpful observations from my time there.
+    The fi rst workshop I planned consisted of two main parts that made up 20 minutes. The fi rst 10
+    minutes we read Bee Within (attached in the appendix) together in a circle and the last 10 minutes
+    we played little improvisation games, focused on the three main characters in the story (the bee,
+    the kid and the tree). I made three groups and gave these groups the three characters. I asked
+    them to embody a character throughout the workshop and be loyal to it. Each group of three had
+    1 minute on the stage to silently improvise their characters. They were to use one sentence if they
+    wanted to speak.
+    During the fi rst part, I couldn’t observe as I was busy reading but their teacher kindly took notes
+    during this time, regarding the children’ reactions to parts of the story. I inserted the bees and
+    trees narrative to the reading by tossing the paper I had in my hand and picking up a new one as I
+    kept reading the bees and trees story. This was crucial because I wanted to see if this multiple stories
+    in one concept would be confusing for kids. The teacher told me that they were excited about
+    my gesture of juggling papers as I seemingly read one story. They were intrigued and confused
+    at fi rst but they did keep up with the storyline and understood all. Her notes basically said they
+    were very focused and less interested in the kids journey. They really liked the bee and were a bit
+    confused with the tree.
+    There were 12 international kids and 3 of them didn’t want to join the workshop, they wanted to
+    observe. I told them that they could paint and draw what they see. The drawings they made were
+    of their classmates acting as trees or bees. They drew their classmate with a stinger and the other
+    was of a classmate as a tree with his hands wide open as he was performing.
+    What struck me most on the second part of the workshop was how these kids used the room
+    so freely and in relation to their characters. Because we read the story before the improvisation
+    games, some of their characters were infl uenced by how it is in the story we read. Next workshop,
+    I am planning to not tell the story but to talk about it before and give context. This is because I
+    want to see how their understanding changes without a limitation of a story.
+    <br>
+    Bees in the classroom that day were all very active and they used chairs, tables and windows to
+    position themselves in a higher perspective. Children who played the kid were usually standing
+    closer to the trees and looked very calm. Trees were all very diff erent. One of the kids used postits
+    as leaves. Some of them didn’t have leaves because it is winter. Trees didn’t move at all and
+    the bees were buzzing all around. “The kid” usually sat near the tree, on the tree (as in the other
+    performers’ lap or hugged them).
+    Overall only 2 groups used the option to say a sentence which were,
+    “I want to go on an adventure”
+    “I don’t wanna leave Gray(the tree)”
+    This was a good feedback for me because I realized they are very perceptive of actions and facial
+    expressions rather than words.
+    The workshop we did in the studio with XPUB 2 students was harder than the session with the
+    kids because everyone felt so restricted to obligations and were not comfortable to let go of bodily
+    control. No one actually attempted in using objects from the room which is a huge diff erence with
+    the kids because they drew on their faces, used plastic bags as wings for the bee and made sounds
+    with their mouths as trees.
+    The next workshop was to discover how improv would work without reading the story fi rst. This
+    workshop was fruitful because it helped me realize how much information or guidance I have to
+    off er for children in order for them to be comfortable to participate and interact without confusion.
+    We made a circle and I summarized the story to the kids, acting in the middle of the circle. This
+    broke the ice completely because I was a part of the workshop and they thought I was funny. For
+    the next part, I divided the group in three and assigned a character to them. After this, I asked
+    them to decide on an attitude, pop in the middle and tell or act out their character. I went fi rst
+    and they followed easily. They were not under the infl uence of the story so the performances were
+    diff erent but they still got infl uenced by each other, which in my opinion is inevitable. Some of the
+    kids were buzzing/running around, the “kids” were walking around, acting like they are playing
+    which I found very interesting. Some trees were small some were mighty and old. It was helpful to
+    see the diff erent attributions they gave to the characters.
+    After the circle session, they separated in three groups: the kids, the bees and the trees. I asked
+    each group to come up, walk around randomly, embodying the character they chose. Then as I
+    rang the bell, I asked them to change the character. I asked them to be a busy, tired, injured, happy
+    and scared bee one by one. They kept walking randomly and acted these feelings out. For the
+    “kids”, I asked them to be angry, sad, scared, and curious. For the trees I asked them to be wise,
+    mad, funny and happy. The results were amazing. They adapted very quickly to the changing of
+    emotions which showed me that this age gap was good to work with. The trees stopped walking
+    as I changed the emotions and this was an affi rmation to not animate the tree with movement but
+    more with changing of color and tiny animations. They mostly used arms and face expressions
+    to show the emotions, some of them ducked or made sounds. As I said mad, one of the kids ran
+    and put her red jacket on. This made me think about using color to show emotions for the tree. It
+    was good to see that they weren’t scared or discouraged by negative emotions as well. We ended
+    the workshop by drawing our characters. It was nice to see them own their imaginary characters
+    enough to draw them with joy.
+    <br>
+    The last workshop was dedicated to discovering the sound aspect. The tree in the story speaks
+    in verses so I chose one verse and read/performed it in a circle to begin with. Then I gave them
+    some instruments: a drum, a bell, aluminum folio, a balloon and a bubble wrap. I asked for a few
+    volunteers and they made sound eff ects as I read the verse very slowly. This went good and I saw
+    that they like to dramatize the sounds and make them funny or unexpected. They used the bubble
+    wrap to make sounds for snowing or aluminum folio for the volcano. They had great fun but I
+    think I made a mistake by making a few kids do foley at the same time because they didn’t know
+    how to take turns and were hesitant at fi rst. Then quite impressively, they made their own system
+    where they took turns to make eff ects for each sentence.
+    Then I made four groups of three. 3 kids as actors and 3 kids as foley actors. They buddied up
+    and made short scenes where one group made sounds eff ects to the others acting on stage. This
+    was the best part of this workshop because they could lead the actors with the sounds they made
+    or vice versa. This I think is very important because it shows that they like to be a part of or be
+    eff ective to the story itself. They were very creative in using the objects in the room and turning
+    them into a tool for sound. They enjoyed to foley the bee and the other characters not so much.
+    Which showed me that I should focus on the sound of the bee in the prototype.
+    Overall, the workshops were very helpful for me to understand where to focus on as I develop. I
+    realized that some of the sound, color and movement animations I planned were too complicated
+    and I decided to make them more simplistic. I decided to animate the tree with only color because
+    I was eff ected by this one participant who took the red jacket to represent the tree was mad.
+    For the bee I decided to focus on sound more. For the kid I decided to use more visual animations
+    to make it more interesting.
+    <br>
+    One other thing the workshops helped me with is the multiple stories I am planning to tell in one
+    narrative. The book I have has two side quest/stories so it nice to see that kids weren’t confused
+    with these narratives. I decided to make the story of the tree as a click game where the lines
+    appear by clicking and the bee’s story through a text based game. I wanted to use click game with
+    the tree because it seemed like they needed more stimulation to be interested in that story and I
+    though a ‘reveal the story’ click game could keep them interested. For the bee, knowing they like
+    the character, I wanted to make it more like a game to give the kids a chance and autonomy to be
+    a part of the story itself.
+
+    Loop 11
+    The diff erences of these exercises in WINK than the already existing interactive
+    e-book platforms
+    The interactive e-book apps existing today, made especially for children, are quite similar in both
+    format and purpose. If we take a look at Bookr, Piboco, and Kotobee, we can see they seek a new
+    way to tell a story but have one mode of reading. The stories are linear and can be read once,
+    without side quests. This is the main diff erence with what I am trying to design.
+    Wink acts as a tool to play with and choose paths. The story isn’t linear in the traditional way
+    where you interact with the pictures and fi nish the book but there are side stories to the main
+    story that they can discover or choose not to. I think this is a solid diff erence. This makes it a playable
+    narrative, diff erent from a book.
+    This prototype is a good start to see how far I can get with the interactive elements and side
+    stories without confusing or discouraging the children. There are many other aspects that can be
+    implemented to this design such as writing elements and drawing but for the meantime, also in
+    correspondence with the workshops, I choose to test the sound and image along with one main
+    and two small narratives.
+    For future prototypes, I envision space to draw and write as a contribution to the story and maybe
+    turning Wink into a hybrid format with more autonomous features. For me, at this point, it’s valuable
+    and essential to see if my technique of combining narratives is working or not.
+    Loop 12
+    Standing End
+    After many loops of thought, we are here at the standing end of the thesis. There is room for
+    more loops and knots in the future to secure this string of thought but for now, we have come to
+    the dock and rest ashore.
+    Reading this thesis with a string, using concrete thinking as a technique to go through a research
+    and text was a helpful exercise for me and helped me mark my thoughts and ideas. The overarching
+    theme of knots and experimental approach to modes of reading was valuable for me to share
+    and try as an enthusiastic young writer. I like that I asked the reader to interact with the thesis and
+    follow paths accordingly.
+    It was enlightening to see the results of working with kids and be able to see from their point of
+    view and alter everything according to these encounters. Using CCI and Multiliteracy theory as
+    a guide to approach the design and prototype was helpful in understanding how to approach and
+    tackle the desire of making something for children.
+    Now from where I stand, I feel more rooted and have a clearer idea of what works and doesn’t
+    work. Some features that I think would work very well like the choice of writing didn’t go as
+    planned because multiple narratives is already too much. I realized I underestimated the eff ect of
+    introducing a new media to children. This is why I decided to take it step by step with the interactivity.
+    Taking a step to make Wink and using the story I wrote and feel is important in my personal history
+    as a prototype was a breakthrough. I feel like my interest and desire to discover new ways of
+    writing, reading and experiencing literature is ongoing and it was a beautiful journey so far. I am
+    looking forward to making more knots on this long and mysterious string at hand.
+<br>
+    Bibliography:
+    Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (2009) ‘“multiliteracies”: New Literacies, new learning’, Pedagogies: An International
+    Journal, 4(3), pp. 164–195. doi:10.1080/15544800903076044.
+    Dettore, E. (2002) “Children’s emotional GrowthAdults’ role as emotional archaeologists,” Childhood education,
+    78(5), pp. 278–281. doi: 10.1080/00094056.2002.10522741.
+    Ingold, T. (2015) The life of lines. London, England: Routledge.
+    Lawrence, R. L. and Paige, D. S. (2016) “What our ancestors knew: Teaching and learning through storytelling: What
+    our ancestors knew: Teaching and learning through storytelling,” New directions for adult and continuing education,
+    2016(149), pp. 63–72. doi: 10.1002/ace.20177.
+    Papert, S. and Papert, S. A. (2020) Mindstorms (revised): Children, computers, and powerful ideas. London, England:
+    Basic Books.
+    Ryan, M.-L. (2009) “From narrative games to playable stories: Toward a poetics of interactive narrative,” StoryWorlds
+    A Journal of Narrative Studies, 1(1), pp. 43–59. doi: 10.1353/stw.0.0003.
+    Smeets, D. and Bus, A. (2013) “Picture Storybooks Go Digital: Pros and Cons,” in Quality Reading Instruction in the
+    Age of Common Core Standards. International Reading Association, pp. 176–189.
+    Strohecker, C. (ed.) (1978) Why knot? MIT.
+    The Effect of Multimodality in Increasing Motivation and Collaboration among 4th CSE EFL Students (no date).
+    Turkle, S. (ed.) (2014) Evocative objects: Things we think with. MIT Press.
+    Urton, M. M. &. (2018) The khipu code: the knotty mystery of the Inkas’ 3D records, aeon. Available at: https://
+    aeon.co/ideas/the-khipu-code-the-knotty-mystery-of-the-inkas-3d-records.
+    Vega, N. (2022) Codes in Knots. Sensing Digital Memories, The Whole Life. Available at: https://wholelife.hkw.de/
+    codes-in-knots-sensing-digital-memories/.
+    Appendix:
+</p>
 </div>
 </body>
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diff --git a/irmak/thesis.md b/irmak/thesis.md
index 2e9a082..e4030ec 100644
--- a/irmak/thesis.md
+++ b/irmak/thesis.md
@@ -7,4 +7,612 @@ author: Stephen
 # Title
 
 ### Thesis Description
-This is where your thesis goes
\ No newline at end of file
+<p>
+    I would like to clarify and introduce some terms for you in order to read this text in the desired
+    way. For a while, we will stay in the bight of this journey as we move into forming loops, theories
+    and ideas on how interactive picture books can be used to foster curiosity for reading and creativity
+    for children. I am building a web platform called Wink that aims to contain a children’s story I
+    wrote and am making into an interactive experience, in relation to my research.
+    <br>
+    Through this bight of the thesis, I feel the necessity to clarify my intention of using knots as a
+    “thinking and writing object” throughout my research journey. Although knots are physical objects
+    and technically crucial in many fi elds of labor and life, they are also objects of thought and
+    are open for wide minds’ appreciation. Throughout history, knots have been used to connect, stop,
+    secure, bind, protect, decorate, record data, punish, contain, fl y and many other purposes. So if
+    the invention of fl ying -which required a wing that was supported using certain types of knotswas
+    initiated with the knowledge of how to use strings to make things, why wouldn’t a research
+    paper make use of this wonderful art as an inspiration for writing and interactive reading?
+    <br>
+    KNOTS AS OBJECTS TO THINK WITH
+    There is a delicate complexity of thinking of and with knots, which ignites layers of simultaneous
+    connections to one’s specifi c experience; where one person may associate the knots with struggles
+    they face, another may think of connecting or thriving times. In a workshop in Rotterdam, I
+    asked participants to write three words that comes to mind when they think of knots. There were
+    some words in common like strong, chaotic, confusing and anxious. On the other hand, there
+    were variations of connection, binding, bridge and support. Keeping these answers in mind or by
+    coming up with your words on knots and embodying them in the practice of reading would make
+    a diff erence in how you understand the same text.
+    <br>
+    Seeing how these words, interpretations of a physical object were so diff erent to each other was
+    transcendental. In this thesis, I am excited to share my understanding of knots with you. My three
+    words for knots are resistance, imagination and infi nity. Keeping these in mind, I experimented
+    with certain reading modes as you will see later on.
+    <br>
+    Knots are known to be used 15 to 17 thousand years ago for multiple purposes. These purposes
+    were often opposing each other. For example, it could be used to let something loose or to restrain
+    it; for pleasure or pain; for going high above or down below… I believe this diversity of uses can
+    also be seen in how people approach knots as an idea or a metaphor. One can think it represents
+    chaos where someone else might see it as a helpful mark. Essentially, this diversity is what got
+    me interested in knots years ago and since then, I have found ways to implement this “loop of
+    thought” in my daily life and research methods.
+    <br>
+    There are two main reasons to why I chose to write this essay in a “knotted” format. One is that I
+    would like to share my process and progress of research on this project and this involves “thinking
+    with an object”, in this case types of knots. In Evocative Objects, Sherry Turkle, who is a sociologist
+    and the founder of MIT initiative of technology and self, refers to the object in the exercise
+    of thinking as emotional and intellectual companions that anchor memory, sustain relationships
+    and provoke new ideas. I completely agree with this statement through personal experience. The
+    second reason is that I see this as an opportunity to experiment if I can use knots as an interactive
+    (which is not in knots’ nature since they are mainly practiced in solo) and playful element in
+    writing. This is also why I would like to take a moment to mention what happens to the interplay
+    of processes in which we call thought when we think with knots in specific.
+    <br>
+    For Turkle and Seymour Papert, who is a mathematician, computer scientist and educator that
+    did remarkable research on constructivism, being able to make a reading experience tangible, or
+    even physically representable makes the process of thought more concrete. Concrete thinking in
+    this sense is a way of thinking that I adapted to in the past years, where you think with the object
+    and imagine it vividly during the process and address meanings to it as you read or write along.
+    This way it’s easier to compartmentalize or attribute certain parts of a text to an imagined or real
+    physical item which makes the mind at ease with complex chains of thought.
+    Imagine you are reading a story… What if you think of the string itself as the journey and the
+    slip knot (which is a type of stopper knot) as a representation of an antagonist because of its specific
+    use in hunting, would this change your approach to reading this story? I believe so…
+<br>
+    What if instead of a slip knot a Bowline was on the string, would that represent something else in
+    the story because of its usage in practice. A Bowline is commonly used to form a fi xed loop at the
+    end of a string; it’s strong but easy to tie, untie. Due to these qualities, we can imagine the bowline
+    to represent the conclusion in a story. What if we have a Square Knot, how would that change the
+    course of a narrative? Square knot is used to bundle objects and make the two ends of the same
+    string connect. From just this, we can use it to represent the connection between the beginning
+    and end of a story. My point is, there are limitless implementations on how to use knots in literature
+    because of their versatile purposes and the narrative vocabulary they create. Topologists are
+    still trying to identify seemingly infi nite numbers of combinations which we simply call “knots”
+    and I see this as an inspiration to keep writing.
+    <br>
+    One example of the wondrous versatility and potential of knots is how they are used to archive
+    and encrypt information. Incan people from the Andes region recorded information on Quipus,
+    dating back to 700 CE. Quipus are textile devices consisting of several rows of cotton and/or
+    camelid string that would be knotted in a specifi c way to record, store and transmit information
+    ranging from accounting and census data to communicate complex mathematical and narrative
+    information (Medrano, Urton, 2018). Another example is the Yakima Time Ball, which was used
+    by North-American Yakama people to show life events and family aff airs.
+    This is why I humbly decided to document my research process with a Quipu of my own. I am
+    trying to symbolize the twists, decisions and practices throughout this year with knots of my
+    choosing. I was inspired by Nayeli Vega’s question, “What can a knot become and what can become
+    a knot?”
+    <br>
+    WEAVING INTO THE TEXT
+    This thesis expects participation from its reader. You have the option to have a mode of reading,
+    where you will be guided by strings to start reading from a certain section according to the type of
+    reader you are and read the loops one by one until the end, weaving through the text. To determine
+    the string or mode of reading, there are some simple questions to answer.
+    The three modes of reading are combine, slide, build . After you discover the starting point
+    with the yes or no map in the upcoming pages, you will continue the reading journey through the
+    strings of diff erent colors that will get you through the text. This way, the linear text will become
+    in a way, non-linear by your personal experience.
+    Bear in mind that you can choose to read this thesis from beginning to end as a single string too if
+    you wish so.
+    <br>
+    Combine mode of reading is for readers who are more interested in the journey and the connections
+    between process and result. Slide mode of reading is for more laid back readers who
+    aren’t looking to connect ideas but are more focused on the motivation and purpose of the
+    project. Build readers are detail oriented and academic readers who would prefer a “traditional”
+    lead to reading.
+    <br>
+    Alongside the different strings to follow the text, there will be little drawings in the margins as seen
+    above, which will have diff erent representations like in a Quipu. Certain knots represent the experiences
+    that raise interesting opportunities for research and distinct events I went through while making
+    the project and underneath the drawing you can fi nd the relation to the knot itself explained.
+    For example if I couldn’t manage to do something I planned to do, this will be represented with a
+    broken knot. Bend knots which are used to connect two strings, will be representing the relation between
+    theories and my ownexperiences/motivations. Hitches which are knots that are formed around a
+    solid object, such as a spar, post, or ring will be representing the evidence or data I have collected on
+    the subject. We move on now with the working end and make some loops!
+<br>
+    This map will reveal your mode of reading. The order of reading will be indicated with a loop sign
+    Please hold a string in your hand as you read the text and make knots or loops as you weave through the
+    reading as an exercise for concrete thinking. See you at the standing end!
+    and a number on top of the sign with a color. This is the numeric order you can follow to read the thesis.
+    
+    Working End
+
+    Why am I doing this?
+    <br>
+    My desire to write a children’s book about grief and memory ignited when I was studying in college
+    and doing an internship in a publishing house in Ankara. I was struggling to process a loss I
+    experienced at the time and to fi nd something to cling to on a daily basis. Then one day I started
+    hearing a buzzing sound in my bedroom at my family’s house. I searched everywhere but couldn’t
+    fi nd the source for this noise. I asked my father and he started searching too. A couple of days
+    passed and the buzzing was still there.
+    <br>
+    One day I found a bee on the fl oor in my bedroom and realized that the bees nested on the roof
+    and were coming inside my room through a gap in the lamp. I was terrifi ed because I have an
+    allergy to bees and thought they might sting me in my sleep. This moment was when I realized I
+    was so determined to fi nd this buzzing sound for some time that I forgot about dealing with the
+    loss I was experiencing. This made me feel very guilty and I remember thinking I betrayed the
+    person I lost.
+    <br>
+    As funny as it may appear, I felt like I was sabotaged by these bees that I thought were here to
+    hurt me but in the end they made me understand that its ok to let things go and every being does
+    what it has to do to fi nd its way of survival. The little habitat that they chose to create in my room
+    seemed like a calling or a sign that I can aff ect another living being signifi cantly without being
+    aware of it. This goes for everything, no matter if some people leave us in this world, they have
+    living matter in us that keeps pulsing. So then I started researching bees and their ecosystems. I
+    read Alan Watts, Alan Lightman, Emily Dickinson, Maurice Sendak, Meghan O’Rourke, Oliver
+    Sacks, Joanna Macy, Rilke, Montaigne and theories on order in chaos, correlative vision, harmony
+    of contained confl icts and the mortality paradox. I wrote a lot and erased a lot and fairly
+    fi gured out the wisdom of not knowing things.
+    <br>
+    Years passed and I wrote and deleted and rewrote the story that I am working on to make interactive
+    today so many times and was waiting on it because it always felt incomplete. In a way it
+    will always be incomplete because of the natural ambiguity the topic carries. Years later, grief was
+    back in my life with the loss of my grandfather. So therefore, the story I wrote and abandoned
+    changed again as I attempted to rewrite it as a diff erent version of myself with a diff erent understanding
+    of death. And this went on… The story remained hidden and I forgot why it ever existed
+    in the fi rst place.
+    <br>
+    Last year when two earthquakes hit Syria and Turkey, I was drowned like everyone I know, by a
+    collective trauma and grief. Then this horrible feeling fl ared up by neglect and desperation. It was
+    and still is impossible to mourn so many strangers at the same time. I lost two dear friends, I was
+    furious, away from home, mostly alone and remembered vividly my failed attempt to understand
+    or place grief in one of the piles in my mind.
+    <br>
+    Previous months, I was working on this story (yes, again) but didn’t know how to tackle the text
+    because it was so diff erent to what I was experiencing now, when compared to the last time I rewrote
+    it. A tutor asked me why I wrote this story in the fi rst place and I couldn’t remember. I kept
+    tracing back to 2016 and step by step, remembered why, as told above. The consciousness that this
+    story is actually a personal history of how I went through grief in diff erent stages of my life, made
+    me realise that it doesn’t have to be or even can be a perfect story.
+    <br>
+    In the end with the experience I had with loss, I believe the story turned out to be an ode to
+    remembering or might I say an ode to not being able to forget or an ode to the fear of forgetting
+<br>
+    Loop 2
+    The effect of storytelling knowledge on kids’ development and creativity. What can
+    we learn from open ended and multiple ending stories?
+    ability to form basic stories or to express their emotions through fi ctional characters or events.
+    Children are not born with a wide vocabulary of emotions and expressions. They learn how to
+    read, mimic and express their feelings over time. The more children read, write and are exposed
+    to social environments, the more they widen their sense and ability of expressing themselves. The
+    language gained as kids comes in many forms and storytelling plays a crucial role in this development.
+    The exposure to stories prepares the kids to the era of reading and writing. Children come
+    to understand and value feelings through conversation (Dettore, 2002). When children are off ered
+    to read or share stories, they also learn to understand people around them better and gain emotional
+    literacy.
+    <br>
+    Storytelling has been a means of communicating with others for many centuries. It is not only
+    a way to discuss important events, but also a way to entertain one another (Lawrence & Paige,
+    2013). Stories have been told orally, in writing or with drawings for thousands of years and some
+    of these stories are still alive. This is because language is a living thing that travels through time
+    and still remains brand new. When necessary, it just adapts form, evolves and blends in with the
+    changing world. Children comprehend the idea that they have a story to tell by hearing other
+    stories and this ignites the imagination. We tend to forget many things but almost everyone remembers
+    one small story they heard or read when they were a kid, this moment we remember is
+    the moment a certain story sparked for us.
+    <br>
+    Nowadays storytelling takes many forms. For example, some readers’ story might even begin from
+    here although it isn’t the beginning. Interactivity is one of the storytelling forms that can signifi -
+    cantly improve children’s creativity. This is mainly because children as readers or listeners get to
+    contribute and aff ect the story. This of course requires and improves creative and active thinking.
+    Getting the chance to choose a path for a fi ctional character gives the child the freedom and confi
+    dence of constructing a world, a character or an adventure. Although this is essentially “writing”
+    as we know it, children think of this as a game, yet to discover they are actually becoming writers.
+    What kind of reward can we expect from active participation in a story? Narrative pleasure can
+    be generally described in terms of immersions (spatial, temporal, emotional, epistemic) in a fi ctional
+    world (Ryan, 2009). When we are set to create or co-create a world, the narrative has eff ects
+    on us such as curiosity, suspense and surprise. At this point, we start creatively producing ideas to
+    keep these three emotions.
+    <br>
+    Interactive storytelling reminds everyone but especially children that there are limitless endings to
+    a story that is solely up to the maker’s creation. Learning to think this way instead of knowing or
+    assuming an end to a story, I think infl uences the children’s decision making abilities and sense of
+    responsibility towards their creations. It is basically the same in theatre where if an actor chooses
+    to create an imaginary suitcase on stage, they can’t simply leave this object they created on stage
+    and exit the scene because the audience will wonder why the actor didn’t take the imaginary
+    suitcase as they left. In this case, when kids decide to choose a path or item or any attribute for a
+    character in a story, they feel responsible and curious to see it through to the end or decide what
+    to do with it. This interactivity therefore creates a unique bond between the reader/writer and
+    the text.
+    <br>
+    There are many theories on how to approach interactive literature for children. Multi-literacy theory
+    and digital literacies are some of the theories which I fi nd relevant to my aim with Wink. Multiliteracy
+    theory in a nutshell is an education oriented framework that aims to expand traditional
+    reading and writing skills. This theory was developed by the New London Group. They were a
+    collective of scholars and educators who addressed the changing nature of literacy in an increasingly
+    globalized, digital world. The theory explores multiple modes of communication consisting
+    The sense of storytelling settles for kids, starting from age three. By this time, children have the
+    of multimodal communication, cultural and social contexts, critical inquiry, socio-cultural learning
+    theory and pedagogical implications. Multimodal communication focuses on the variety of
+    communication techniques. This was groundbreaking in the 90s because of its acknowledgment
+    of a diverse range of literacies and its departure from traditional approaches to literary texts. This
+    theory includes new media and communication studies such as visual, digital, special and gestural
+    literacies.
+    <br>
+    I kept this theory in mind as I chose the interactivity elements to use in the picture book. I think
+    the usage of multiple media such as sound, image and games is a good way to start and diff erentiate
+    from a regular interactive e-book. The fact that this theory has an educational perspective and
+    is taking the rapidly changing qualities of literature seriously, made me consider it as a guide in
+    designing the prototype.
+    <br>
+    Looking through the perspective of multiliteracies, questions come up for me that lead to the
+    rest of this thesis: What is an interactive picture book? Is it a book? Is it a game? Is it an exercise?
+    What is it defi ned as? How can we design an interactive reading environment without confusing
+    children?
+    <br>
+    Loop 3
+    Diff erences and similarities between interactive e-books and storytelling games
+    Storytelling games and interactive e-books have many things in common. To begin with, they
+    both centralize the narrative to engage the audience. While both of these formats are storytelling
+    tools, e-books tend to stay more in a linear narrative and format when compared to storytelling
+    games where the audience is commonly the main character. Reading experiences are also a way
+    to be in the shoes of the narrator or the character but in a storytelling game, you embody the mission
+    and the experience overrules the story most of the time. In the specifi c example of a child,
+    storytelling games are complicated and puzzle driven where the player has missions to complete.
+    Whereas in an interactive e-book, the missions are solely based on the interactive elements implemented
+    in the text and images.
+    Another diff erence is that the visual world in an interactive e-book is less cinematic and has limited
+    movement. The imagery plays a massive role in a storytelling game where the world created is
+    off ered to the player. In an interactive e-book, the text itself is designed to be playful and ready for
+    readers to discover.
+    The main diff erence in my opinion that separates these two methods of storytelling is the reward.
+    In a game, we expect to be rewarded by a victory, passing a level or unlocking something throughout
+    the experience. In an interactive e-book, we work with the story and in return we expect a
+    good experience and there is no reward other than that. But, the whole design of interactivity
+    involves aspects of a game where the reader –not the player- is captured by surprise eff ects or
+    elements that come up on the pages. This ignites curiosity but not ambition, which is a good start
+    to foster the love for reading.
+    <br>
+    Loop 4
+    Ways of using interactivity in digital platforms
+    CASA theory, also known as the Cognitive-Aff ective-Social Theory of Learning and Development,
+    is a framework used in educational psychology to understand how learning occurs within
+    the context of cognitive, aff ective, and social factors. Research on cognitive learning with keeping
+    in mind the limited attention span and memory factors. For children in specifi c, I think these are
+    very important factors to keep in mind when trying to design an interactive experience. This is because
+    children get bored very easily and can be disengaged because of failure of solving/understanding
+    something in a story. This is something I kept in mind as I wrote for children and chose
+    the interactive elements in the story. 
+    <br>
+    Finding the balance between making the interactive element surprising and making it easy to
+    interact with is the key to designing for kids in this scenario. We don’t want to make them struggle
+    and use the limited attention span in a non-engaging way but we want to keep the reading interesting
+    enough so they want to continue.
+    Digging deeper into how to do this, I found Children Computer Interaction (CCI) study very
+    useful. This study examines how children of diff erent ages and developmental stages interact with
+    digital devices and how these interactions can support their growth. This made me think about
+    digital gestures; how they change through generations and how to use these to design a platform
+    where children can navigate easily and freely. CCI suggests that when introducing a new media
+    to children its better to start easy and clear when they try it. Through this I think the best easy
+    interaction is the tap or click for children. It is easy to do, instinctive and common. So I decided to
+    base the interactive elements on click animations.
+    There are multiple ways to use digital gestures in storytelling to make the experience more intriguing.
+    These are usually elements such as sound, animations, voice-overs that are ignited with a
+    click or tap by the reader. For children younger than 5, its usually just tapping over the page and
+    experiencing an action-reaction. For older kids between the ages 6-8, I made some workshops to
+    fi gure out which types of interactive elements are most useful in engaging them in the reading
+    process.
+    It is true that sound and animations are very inclusive and it is engaging for kids to fi nd out which
+    part of a page is interactive by clicking on images. Another thing I found out is that kids enjoy
+    being a part of the story. For the prototype of Bee Within (the story I am using to test interactivity
+    also can be read in the appendix) I will focus on color, sound and click based animations according
+    to the results of my research.
+    Loop 5
+    What is the target age group for the designated prototype and why?
+    It is tricky when it comes to choosing the right age spectrum for children’s interactive literature.
+    Children between the ages 3-5, referred to as preschoolers have more developed social skills and
+    day by day increasing interest in play. They can take on roles in imaginative play scenarios. They
+    can also share and take turns more, listen and think about rules of a game. They can form friendships
+    and connections easily.
+    School age children are between the ages 6-12, which is Wink’s chosen age group is a little diff erent.
+    These kids can form more rooted friendships and engage in more complex narratives. They
+    learn to negotiate and compromise around this time as well. This age group is desired for Wink
+    because kids this age are open to creative problem solving, connecting events and comprehending
+    slightly more complex narratives. Moreover, this age group would benefi t the most from the interactive
+    stories and the reading process because of the developmental phase they are in.
+    The average amount of time children between these ages use on a daily basis is depending on
+    their parents and circumstances. But to be fair, it is often not less than 2 hours. If a child isn’t very
+    interested in spending these hours reading a book, why not ask them: “Would you like to be a part
+    of a story?”
+    Today, kids from age 3 can use digital gestures successfully and experience these as simple as
+    fl ipping the page of a book. This is why it is fairly easy to create an interactive picture book which
+    kids can navigate themselves and be able to browse through with or without their parents. But for
+    Wink, I chose to design for older kids because I want to experiment on multi-leveled narratives
+    and I want to avoid the risk of confusing children.
+  <br>
+    Loop 6
+    Limits of interactivity in narratives for children and why do we have less modes of
+    reading and writing for children?
+    Although there are many upsides of creating digital environments for children due to their advanced
+    skills in technology from early ages, there are also risks involved in this where the kid can
+    be overwhelmed and confused due to the autonomy they receive. Reading a story is supposed to
+    be eff ortless and a good free time activity but with interactive picture books, it is slightly more
+    than that and more complicated as an experience.
+    First of all, with the story at hand, called Bee Within, there are two other stories in one. Although
+    the main story is about a little girl’s journey, kids get the chance to hear the Queen Bee’s story and
+    the tree’s story as well. This is not a must but if they interact with certain pictures on the page,
+    they will be led to the bee’s perspective or the trees. This is where the storyline can get a little bit
+    complicated for younger kids. The child reader at this point should be able to follow the main
+    storyline after visiting the side quests or stories presented in the interactive book. To create this
+    balance I tried to limit the interactive elements I used in the main story. I tried to keep the picture
+    animations limited and focused more on the storylines.
+    Another aspect I am concerned about after the workshop I did with the kids, is the risk of confusion
+    due to an undefi ned and multimodal design for a “book”. Kids tend to be confused when
+    they can’t defi ne things or are asked to improvise without knowing the purpose.They know what a
+    book is and that it is similar to what they encounter on the screen. But the method of reading and
+    interacting with Bee Within is diff erent than what they are used to. This concerns me because they
+    might prefer to just read a book or play a game instead of discovering a new thing, which they
+    are exposed to daily because they are always in a process of active learning. So one more thing to
+    learn might come as exhausting. Therefore, in designing, I want to make interactions as clear as
+    possible for them.
+    Loop 7
+    Interactive reading and writing examples and surveys done with kids
+    As an improvisation theater enthusiast myself, I tried to engage the kids with the story through
+    some exercises and games during the workshops. My aim was to see how involved they want to
+    be in storytelling. Improvisation has a certain way of storytelling and interaction where there are
+    either too many options or none. You need to have good empathy and harmony with the person
+    you are acting with and you are designated to be creative in your own way. I tried to use several
+    improv games and warmups to involve the kids in the story more and see how they see certain
+    characters from the picture book.
+    My first attempt was to make a survey at the end of workshops with kids to whether they liked it
+    or not, but when I researched further, surveying with kids has very diff erent methods and complications.
+    Most kids either really like or really dislike things. Finding the in between emotions with a survey,
+    ends up being vague. Most surveys done with kids use emoticons as representation of a good or
+    bad or average time. Instead, I chose to observe the environment and understand how much empathy
+    kids can off er in an interactive reading or playing environment.
+    Loop 8
+    What does the joy of destruction and the awe eff ect have to do with interactivity?
+    Indeed, why did we ever start playing games? The most important aspect of a game for me is that
+    it surprises you and leaves you in awe towards something you weren’t expecting happened. I feel
+    like every reaction I give when I’m surprised, is a mirror of what I felt when I was playing freeze
+    and had to stop moving at any given time or when I found the last friend hiding somewhere in
+    hide and seek. This feeling of appreciation and unexpectedness is why most people remember
+    certain games, movies from their childhoods very vividly. Its an introduction to a feeling we experience
+    maybe for the fi rst time because we don’t necessarily learn from books how and when to
+    feel surprised, that is why it’s a surprise; we live it, experience it and it leaves and impression with
+    us.
+    <br>
+    In my opinion, what drives everyone as a common denominator is amazement; because it takes
+    us to our childhoods or distant memories where we fi rst felt that feeling of awe. This is the main
+    purpose behind any kind of interactive design and I think books can be an amazing medium to
+    experiment this with. Specifi cally because this ancient device can take us to numerous worlds.
+    For me as a millennial, books give me enough amazement as it is. But as I worked in publishing
+    through the years and observed, I think kids today need something more to ignite their interest.
+    There are so many factors in a picture book such as the image, the text and sound which can be
+    played with to create an experience that is more surprising. This is the main purpose behind my
+    research and protoype. Today’s world being visually stimulating and serving very short attention
+    spans with social media, it is a tough task to insert a story or reading experience that requires full
+    attention and patience. There are examples of Tiktok stories, Instagram reels, audio books and
+    games that try to tell stories worth listening with attention. Wink is also an attempt to do this and
+    I believe the key is to make an already engaging story enriched with interactive elements that
+    appear to you through a click if you choose to. I think this is also the key to nourishing a new way
+    of storytelling.
+    Loop 9
+    Interactivity in reading and writing in history. What changed?
+    Interactivity has always been an experimental area in literature from inscriptions to narrative
+    games then to playable stories and artifi cial intelligence. I will expand some of these examples
+    from the rich history of interactive fi ction. When I dig a little bit into the media archaeology there
+    are three still relevant aspects that strike me and change/improve my approach to Wink. The fi rst
+    is the need to connect that remains untouched through centuries of human communication, the
+    second is how there were multiple projects concerning interactive media especially for kids that
+    later turned into narrative games or remained as prototypes and lastly how the integration of media
+    and literature has been such a grand topic even before information and technology era. Some
+    examples to this is music, masks, puppets, props used in storytelling.
+    Ancient texts with annotations such as The Odyssey, The Mahabharata are maybe the earliest
+    written interactive experiences in a historical context. They are published with notes and explanations,
+    clarifi cations which make the text inhabit diff erent opinions and approaches in an engaging
+    way where the reader can choose to hop on and off from the annotation and margin texts.
+    From the 70s to the present there have been many examples but I will be focusing on a few here.
+    One of them is, Choose your own adventure books which allowed the reader to participate in
+    the plot. These still exist as picture books where you are directed to certain pages according to
+    the choices you make throughout the story. Along with this were also board games and cards that
+    required interactive inputs. Some examples to this is exploding kittens or cards against humanity
+    where the player has the autonomy to be creative and fi ll in the blanks to win the game. Simultaneously,
+    text-based adventure games such as Zork and Adventure were popular. Early days of
+    computing off ered a wide space for exploring virtual worlds. In the early 80s, hypertext fi ction
+    contributed to electronic literature. Hyperlinks were used as a tool to navigate a text and choose
+    paths of reading. This inspired me to write this thesis with diff erent modes of reading as well.
+    After the 80’s, Interactive fi ction gained popularity as a genre of interacting with text based input.
+    Dynabook by Alan Kay was prototyped during this time as a promising reading and writing device
+    designed for children.
+    <br>
+    The 21st century off ers a combination of text and illustrations in augmented reality books that
+    have animations, sound and external interactions. These are followed by digital storytelling platforms
+    like Wattpad and Storybird and interactive e-book apps such as Pibocco, Bookr and Tiny
+    Minies. Most of these apps are dedicated to education however and not solely to creativity. Their
+    aim is to use creative elements to foster education for kids.
+    With Wink, I want to use a mainly educational tool (a book) to foster creativity and expression. So
+    I believe it is the opposite purpose as to these examples in certain ways. I am trying to combine
+    the delicacy of a narrative where you can only be a reader and the excitement of autonomous
+    writing and experiencing.
+    This is because I think the understanding and usage of media changed in the last years. Some
+    tools that created the awe eff ect for users faded and left their place to more compact designs.
+    Although audio books were very welcome at some point, younger users nowadays prefer book
+    summary apps or podcasts to them. Of course they are still used and not outdated but there is
+    certainly a visible change to where media is heading.
+    Loop 10
+    Experimentation of creative exercises to be used in WINK. Exercises of storytelling
+    with words, images, drawing, sound and gestures.
+    Before I completed the prototype of Wink, I reached out to an international school in Rotterdam
+    to make a 20 minute workshop with kids between ages 6-8. The aim here was to grasp the
+    interactive elements in the picture book to implement in the digital framework. I wanted to see
+    which parts of the story the children found exiting and which ones are not so thrilling for them.
+    It also helped me draw the pictures for the book accordingly and edit the text with their reactions
+    in mind. Due to a privacy agreement, I couldn’t record or use any data from the workshop but I
+    made some helpful observations from my time there.
+    The fi rst workshop I planned consisted of two main parts that made up 20 minutes. The fi rst 10
+    minutes we read Bee Within (attached in the appendix) together in a circle and the last 10 minutes
+    we played little improvisation games, focused on the three main characters in the story (the bee,
+    the kid and the tree). I made three groups and gave these groups the three characters. I asked
+    them to embody a character throughout the workshop and be loyal to it. Each group of three had
+    1 minute on the stage to silently improvise their characters. They were to use one sentence if they
+    wanted to speak.
+    During the fi rst part, I couldn’t observe as I was busy reading but their teacher kindly took notes
+    during this time, regarding the children’ reactions to parts of the story. I inserted the bees and
+    trees narrative to the reading by tossing the paper I had in my hand and picking up a new one as I
+    kept reading the bees and trees story. This was crucial because I wanted to see if this multiple stories
+    in one concept would be confusing for kids. The teacher told me that they were excited about
+    my gesture of juggling papers as I seemingly read one story. They were intrigued and confused
+    at fi rst but they did keep up with the storyline and understood all. Her notes basically said they
+    were very focused and less interested in the kids journey. They really liked the bee and were a bit
+    confused with the tree.
+    There were 12 international kids and 3 of them didn’t want to join the workshop, they wanted to
+    observe. I told them that they could paint and draw what they see. The drawings they made were
+    of their classmates acting as trees or bees. They drew their classmate with a stinger and the other
+    was of a classmate as a tree with his hands wide open as he was performing.
+    What struck me most on the second part of the workshop was how these kids used the room
+    so freely and in relation to their characters. Because we read the story before the improvisation
+    games, some of their characters were infl uenced by how it is in the story we read. Next workshop,
+    I am planning to not tell the story but to talk about it before and give context. This is because I
+    want to see how their understanding changes without a limitation of a story.
+    <br>
+    Bees in the classroom that day were all very active and they used chairs, tables and windows to
+    position themselves in a higher perspective. Children who played the kid were usually standing
+    closer to the trees and looked very calm. Trees were all very diff erent. One of the kids used postits
+    as leaves. Some of them didn’t have leaves because it is winter. Trees didn’t move at all and
+    the bees were buzzing all around. “The kid” usually sat near the tree, on the tree (as in the other
+    performers’ lap or hugged them).
+    Overall only 2 groups used the option to say a sentence which were,
+    “I want to go on an adventure”
+    “I don’t wanna leave Gray(the tree)”
+    This was a good feedback for me because I realized they are very perceptive of actions and facial
+    expressions rather than words.
+    The workshop we did in the studio with XPUB 2 students was harder than the session with the
+    kids because everyone felt so restricted to obligations and were not comfortable to let go of bodily
+    control. No one actually attempted in using objects from the room which is a huge diff erence with
+    the kids because they drew on their faces, used plastic bags as wings for the bee and made sounds
+    with their mouths as trees.
+    The next workshop was to discover how improv would work without reading the story fi rst. This
+    workshop was fruitful because it helped me realize how much information or guidance I have to
+    off er for children in order for them to be comfortable to participate and interact without confusion.
+    We made a circle and I summarized the story to the kids, acting in the middle of the circle. This
+    broke the ice completely because I was a part of the workshop and they thought I was funny. For
+    the next part, I divided the group in three and assigned a character to them. After this, I asked
+    them to decide on an attitude, pop in the middle and tell or act out their character. I went fi rst
+    and they followed easily. They were not under the infl uence of the story so the performances were
+    diff erent but they still got infl uenced by each other, which in my opinion is inevitable. Some of the
+    kids were buzzing/running around, the “kids” were walking around, acting like they are playing
+    which I found very interesting. Some trees were small some were mighty and old. It was helpful to
+    see the diff erent attributions they gave to the characters.
+    After the circle session, they separated in three groups: the kids, the bees and the trees. I asked
+    each group to come up, walk around randomly, embodying the character they chose. Then as I
+    rang the bell, I asked them to change the character. I asked them to be a busy, tired, injured, happy
+    and scared bee one by one. They kept walking randomly and acted these feelings out. For the
+    “kids”, I asked them to be angry, sad, scared, and curious. For the trees I asked them to be wise,
+    mad, funny and happy. The results were amazing. They adapted very quickly to the changing of
+    emotions which showed me that this age gap was good to work with. The trees stopped walking
+    as I changed the emotions and this was an affi rmation to not animate the tree with movement but
+    more with changing of color and tiny animations. They mostly used arms and face expressions
+    to show the emotions, some of them ducked or made sounds. As I said mad, one of the kids ran
+    and put her red jacket on. This made me think about using color to show emotions for the tree. It
+    was good to see that they weren’t scared or discouraged by negative emotions as well. We ended
+    the workshop by drawing our characters. It was nice to see them own their imaginary characters
+    enough to draw them with joy.
+    <br>
+    The last workshop was dedicated to discovering the sound aspect. The tree in the story speaks
+    in verses so I chose one verse and read/performed it in a circle to begin with. Then I gave them
+    some instruments: a drum, a bell, aluminum folio, a balloon and a bubble wrap. I asked for a few
+    volunteers and they made sound eff ects as I read the verse very slowly. This went good and I saw
+    that they like to dramatize the sounds and make them funny or unexpected. They used the bubble
+    wrap to make sounds for snowing or aluminum folio for the volcano. They had great fun but I
+    think I made a mistake by making a few kids do foley at the same time because they didn’t know
+    how to take turns and were hesitant at fi rst. Then quite impressively, they made their own system
+    where they took turns to make eff ects for each sentence.
+    Then I made four groups of three. 3 kids as actors and 3 kids as foley actors. They buddied up
+    and made short scenes where one group made sounds eff ects to the others acting on stage. This
+    was the best part of this workshop because they could lead the actors with the sounds they made
+    or vice versa. This I think is very important because it shows that they like to be a part of or be
+    eff ective to the story itself. They were very creative in using the objects in the room and turning
+    them into a tool for sound. They enjoyed to foley the bee and the other characters not so much.
+    Which showed me that I should focus on the sound of the bee in the prototype.
+    Overall, the workshops were very helpful for me to understand where to focus on as I develop. I
+    realized that some of the sound, color and movement animations I planned were too complicated
+    and I decided to make them more simplistic. I decided to animate the tree with only color because
+    I was eff ected by this one participant who took the red jacket to represent the tree was mad.
+    For the bee I decided to focus on sound more. For the kid I decided to use more visual animations
+    to make it more interesting.
+    <br>
+    One other thing the workshops helped me with is the multiple stories I am planning to tell in one
+    narrative. The book I have has two side quest/stories so it nice to see that kids weren’t confused
+    with these narratives. I decided to make the story of the tree as a click game where the lines
+    appear by clicking and the bee’s story through a text based game. I wanted to use click game with
+    the tree because it seemed like they needed more stimulation to be interested in that story and I
+    though a ‘reveal the story’ click game could keep them interested. For the bee, knowing they like
+    the character, I wanted to make it more like a game to give the kids a chance and autonomy to be
+    a part of the story itself.
+
+    Loop 11
+    The diff erences of these exercises in WINK than the already existing interactive
+    e-book platforms
+    The interactive e-book apps existing today, made especially for children, are quite similar in both
+    format and purpose. If we take a look at Bookr, Piboco, and Kotobee, we can see they seek a new
+    way to tell a story but have one mode of reading. The stories are linear and can be read once,
+    without side quests. This is the main diff erence with what I am trying to design.
+    Wink acts as a tool to play with and choose paths. The story isn’t linear in the traditional way
+    where you interact with the pictures and fi nish the book but there are side stories to the main
+    story that they can discover or choose not to. I think this is a solid diff erence. This makes it a playable
+    narrative, diff erent from a book.
+    This prototype is a good start to see how far I can get with the interactive elements and side
+    stories without confusing or discouraging the children. There are many other aspects that can be
+    implemented to this design such as writing elements and drawing but for the meantime, also in
+    correspondence with the workshops, I choose to test the sound and image along with one main
+    and two small narratives.
+    For future prototypes, I envision space to draw and write as a contribution to the story and maybe
+    turning Wink into a hybrid format with more autonomous features. For me, at this point, it’s valuable
+    and essential to see if my technique of combining narratives is working or not.
+    Loop 12
+    Standing End
+    After many loops of thought, we are here at the standing end of the thesis. There is room for
+    more loops and knots in the future to secure this string of thought but for now, we have come to
+    the dock and rest ashore.
+    Reading this thesis with a string, using concrete thinking as a technique to go through a research
+    and text was a helpful exercise for me and helped me mark my thoughts and ideas. The overarching
+    theme of knots and experimental approach to modes of reading was valuable for me to share
+    and try as an enthusiastic young writer. I like that I asked the reader to interact with the thesis and
+    follow paths accordingly.
+    It was enlightening to see the results of working with kids and be able to see from their point of
+    view and alter everything according to these encounters. Using CCI and Multiliteracy theory as
+    a guide to approach the design and prototype was helpful in understanding how to approach and
+    tackle the desire of making something for children.
+    Now from where I stand, I feel more rooted and have a clearer idea of what works and doesn’t
+    work. Some features that I think would work very well like the choice of writing didn’t go as
+    planned because multiple narratives is already too much. I realized I underestimated the eff ect of
+    introducing a new media to children. This is why I decided to take it step by step with the interactivity.
+    Taking a step to make Wink and using the story I wrote and feel is important in my personal history
+    as a prototype was a breakthrough. I feel like my interest and desire to discover new ways of
+    writing, reading and experiencing literature is ongoing and it was a beautiful journey so far. I am
+    looking forward to making more knots on this long and mysterious string at hand.
+<br>
+    Bibliography:
+    Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (2009) ‘“multiliteracies”: New Literacies, new learning’, Pedagogies: An International
+    Journal, 4(3), pp. 164–195. doi:10.1080/15544800903076044.
+    Dettore, E. (2002) “Children’s emotional GrowthAdults’ role as emotional archaeologists,” Childhood education,
+    78(5), pp. 278–281. doi: 10.1080/00094056.2002.10522741.
+    Ingold, T. (2015) The life of lines. London, England: Routledge.
+    Lawrence, R. L. and Paige, D. S. (2016) “What our ancestors knew: Teaching and learning through storytelling: What
+    our ancestors knew: Teaching and learning through storytelling,” New directions for adult and continuing education,
+    2016(149), pp. 63–72. doi: 10.1002/ace.20177.
+    Papert, S. and Papert, S. A. (2020) Mindstorms (revised): Children, computers, and powerful ideas. London, England:
+    Basic Books.
+    Ryan, M.-L. (2009) “From narrative games to playable stories: Toward a poetics of interactive narrative,” StoryWorlds
+    A Journal of Narrative Studies, 1(1), pp. 43–59. doi: 10.1353/stw.0.0003.
+    Smeets, D. and Bus, A. (2013) “Picture Storybooks Go Digital: Pros and Cons,” in Quality Reading Instruction in the
+    Age of Common Core Standards. International Reading Association, pp. 176–189.
+    Strohecker, C. (ed.) (1978) Why knot? MIT.
+    The Effect of Multimodality in Increasing Motivation and Collaboration among 4th CSE EFL Students (no date).
+    Turkle, S. (ed.) (2014) Evocative objects: Things we think with. MIT Press.
+    Urton, M. M. &. (2018) The khipu code: the knotty mystery of the Inkas’ 3D records, aeon. Available at: https://
+    aeon.co/ideas/the-khipu-code-the-knotty-mystery-of-the-inkas-3d-records.
+    Vega, N. (2022) Codes in Knots. Sensing Digital Memories, The Whole Life. Available at: https://wholelife.hkw.de/
+    codes-in-knots-sensing-digital-memories/.
+    Appendix:
+    </p>
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