My thoughts on writing and technology

As a precursor, I'd just like to say that the format of this blog is not how I will format my paper that I will turn in. I'd like to use the casual atmosphere of blogging to simply get my ideas out, and I will restructure my ideas into an organized fashion later.

First off, I'd like to discuss the idea of the accessability of our writing when it is put onto the internet. Normally, when we need to write a response to something we've read, we type something up and either print it to give directly to our professor or we e-mail it directly to our professor. The idea of blogging a response to a paper, where everyone and anyone can see what you've written, can be a little bit intimidating. It's not so much an issue of strangers reading what I've written that bothers me, rather having my own peers reading what I've written. For the first few blogs I had to write for this online class, I wasn't really worried about them because I knew that, most likely, no one in my class would take the time to read what I had written. However, when we were asked to review other people's blogs, I suddenly realized that the blog my group partners would be commenting on was one that I didn't think anyone would read in the first place! Because of this, I became a little self-conscious of how open I had been in my blog. I think if I had realized others would in fact be reading my blog in advance to writing it, I would have written my blog a little differently with perhaps not so much personal information. This is one of the disadvantages to writing on the internet under the circumstance that one's writing is accessible to the public. The information written may not be as open as if someone were writing simply for their professor's eyes or in a private journal. There are, however, blogs that are private which people use as diaries on the internet. Even this would make me a little nervous because I'd have a hard time trusting that absolutely no one would read what I've written.

While knowing others will read your writing can be intimidating and in effect ruin your writing, it can also have the opposite effect and improve your writing. Many students who aren't very interested in getting an A in a class will write papers that are only half-good. They write just well enough to get them through the class with at least a passing grade. Perhaps for these kinds of students, having to write on a public blog that will be read by their peers would give them a little push to write better. Not because they want a better grade but because they don't want to be embarassed in front of their peers that their writing isn't very good. A perfectly good writer who would have otherwise slacked on an essay would write something much better because they know it will be read by their peers. This sort of positive "peer-pressure" can be very good for students.

When it comes to online discussions like we have had in our English 201 online class, I think that there are many benefits. One of the main benefits is that everyone gets to say something. Sometimes in an actual classroom, there are a few students who talk a lot and a lot of students who hardly talk at all. Perhaps some of the quieter students would say something if the more confident students would stop talking for a somewhat extended period of time. The odds are, however, that a shy student will never talk in a classroom setting because they are simply to afraid to say anything for fear of sounding stupid or perhaps they didn't read and therefore have nothing to say. Having an online discussion allows for each individual to say at least one thing about what they've read, especially if it is a requirement for the grade to post something on the discussion board. This way, each student gets his or her say in the matter. Also, the shy students who would otherwise have chosen not to participate in a classroom discussion will participate in an online discussion because it takes away some of the pressure. As Baron states, “while writing cannot replace many speech functions, it allows us to communicate in ways that speech does not” (75). In an online discussion, there's no one staring you down and judging you. There are simply words on a computer screen that are hardly associated with anyone in particular. I think this is a major benefit of the use of online discussions. I had a class last semester where myself and one other person were basically the only people that ever talked. There were about 12 people in the class, but for whater reason hardly anyone would discuss our readings. There would be long awkward silences and the same few people would fill in the silence with some ideas of theirs, even if the ideas were just made up to fill the silence. In an online discussion, this awkward silence is never an issue; everyone will say something, and everyone will respond to something. It allows a shy student to become an intelligent part of a discussion they would have otherwise opted out of being a part of, had it been in front of peers in a classroom.

Another advantage of the form of digital text is that it can be easily revisited or revised. Printed text can certainly be revisted as well, but not in as easy of a fashion as digital text can. With a few swift keystrokes on google's search engine, anyone can find what they're looking to read within seconds. Printed text is accessilbe if it's on your home bookshelf, but if it's not, then there might be a hunt involved in finding the text one would like to revisit. From the writers perspective, the nice thing about digital text is that it can be revised at any time. It's not like a printed book where it goes through a lot of editing and is then published and is only revised a couple of years later perhaps. Writing on the internet, in a blog especially, can be revised at any time. If a writer decides they'd like to reword a sentence or two, or to completely change their entire work of writing, all they need to do is log on, hit backspace or delete, and fill in their new ideas. All of this happens within a few quick moments.

Delpit and Kosut

The readings that we have focused on this week, written by Delpit and Kosut, both discuss the issues of children learning to fit into an academic world when they come from one that is not focused on academic achievement. In order to further analyze their discussion, I'd like to share my own personal story regarding these issues of family and education.

I grew up in a middle-class home with both parents working full-time. They divorced when I was 12 years old, and both are now happily remarried to other people. A little background on my mom and her husband: My mom has an undergraduate degree in nursing, worked as a nurse for about 15 years, and she is now a successful case-manager in a hospital. My step-dad has a journalism and mass-communication degree and works as an engineer for Brewers radio and is the voice of the women's Marquette basketball radio. Background on my dad and his wife: My dad barely finished high school, got a job at a battery shop and later found a suitable blue-collar job that he has been working at for many years. My step-mom's highest education is also high school, and she now works part-time at a blue-collar job. As you can see, on my mom's side there are only college degrees and extremely successful careers. On my dad's side however, there is no college, and jobs that give them enough money to get by.

When I was in my junior year of high school, I was picking out the different colleges that I wanted to go to. My mom largely played the role of the parent who took me to visit colleges and she had strong opinions about which colleges were preferable. She helped me with my applications, financial decisions, and degree choices. My dad, on the other hand, didn't see the sense in going to college. He figured I could pull it off, but as soon as I was in college and talked about how difficult it was, he and my step-mom both decided that college was not for me. When I talked with my mom about my struggles in college, she would encourage me to lay off of my social life more, study more, and get more sleep. It was difficult receiving mixed opinions from my different sets of parents. Even now, when school gets difficult, I hear my dad's side telling me that I'm "like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole" (quoting my step-mom).

Reading the articles that Delpit and Kosut have written makes it so much more clear to me why I'm receiving such mixed ideas from my parents. Their dreams and aspirations for me are only to the extent that they have seen themselves succeed. Delpit experienced a family a lot like my dad's side of my family. Delpit's family didn't understand why she was staying in school for so long and why she was getting her Ph.D. Delpit and Kosut explain this as an issue of discourses. Both sets of my parents come from different discourses, and therefore have different opinions about the academic discourse that I am in in college.

Gee

I think that the story about the nurse becoming a part of a secondary discourse is a perfect example of what Gee is talking about. He seems to want his readers to understand that it's not easy to obtain a second discourse, so don't stress over it. Rather, he urges readers to learn by acquisition, experience the discourse, in order to fully know it and be a part of it. This actually reminds me a little bit of Haas case-study. Eliza (the student) felt more a part of the scientific world when she joined a research-assistant program where she worked side-by-side people who knew much more about science than she did. She was able to aquire an identity kit from the woman she worked under. Her identity kit included understanding of scientific terminology, no doubt ways of dressing, and also what is appropriate to discuss in lab and outside of lab.

I get the sense from Gee that he does want aquiring of a second language to, in a way, be fun. At the end of the "What is Literacy?", he very obviously pushes his desire for students to obtain a discourse via acquisition rather than just learning. He still mentions that learning is an element that can be used, but that it is not good enough without the practice of acquisition being integrated in as well.

Because I am going to school to be a high school Chemistry teacher, I take these sort of ideas seriously and hope to apply them to my own experience as a teacher someday. I remember my experiences of high school Chemistry as very vague and as something I could not relate to. (Who has time to think about that homework assignment when the homecoming game is tonight?) Had my Chemistry teacher involved acquisition in her classroom, the learning experience may have come easier and been interesting or even fun. For example, while we did have labs in high school where we saw "Chemistry in action", we didn't see chemists in action. Perhaps if we had taken a field trip to visit industrial parks where Chemistry is the main focus of product development, we could have more tangibly understood what we were studying. In addition, to perhaps meet and talk with scientists who regularly use Chemistry and chemicals, we may have had a greater respect for the subject in general. I hope someday to apply this sort of acquisition/learning combination in my own classroom.

Haas and Bartholomae

"The inexperienced writer is left with a more fragmentary record of the comings and goings of academic discourse" (523). Bartholomae makes a good point that inexperienced writers have not had the opportunity to learn from being corrected by professors, and therefore will struggle to write in the authoritative acadmic discourse.

Haas similary understands experience as a key role toward becoming a better writer, but also a better reader. "As a senior, Eliza was trying to find or make a place for herself within an academic community, and she used reading to help her reach that goal" (371). Similar to writing experience, Eliza was able to learn from her reading what the academic language is.

Both of these quotes show that, for many students, pure talent is not what makes them a great writer or reader. It takes experience and practice in order to learn from mistakes and improve. If a student is involved in reading material that uses the language of the esteemed academic discourse, then they will learn to write that way. In the same way, if a student starts out as a basic writer, the only improvement on their writing will most likely be correlated to the number of papers they turn in and then have returned to them with teacher's comments and suggestions. I think that Haas makes it very clear that experience is of the utmost importance, since her study follwed a student who steadily improved her reading skills over a span of four years at a university.

Reflection on Bartholomae's Inventing the University

Honestly, the idea of Bartholomae reading and discussing my creativity essay is a little daunting. I could just see him saying, "Here is a prime example of a basic writer who uses commonplaces." It's difficult to say which of the sample essays mine most corresponds to because it's not as basic as the "White Shoes" essay, but my essay is also not as analytical as the "successful" music essay. It's somewhere inbetween. Perhaps my essay didn't have as much of an academic tone because I didn't think of my audience as a scholarly, powerful persona. In fact, I didn't really think of my audience at all.

I did explore the idea of creativity on an analytical level, but I could have dug deeper into the "why" of things. For example, I wrote that creativity is inspired by extreme emotion. I described an artist who is experiencing anguish as someone who would probably have the most creative ideas for making an intricate and abstract painting. What I didn't do, however, is discuss why people are creative when they're emotional. I don't really know why people are like that, but I could have at least tried to explore that "muddier" idea as though I was an expert on human emotion. On top of that, I could have thrown in some big words like the ones you have to memorize to get a high score on the GRE. Then, Bartholomae would have liked my essay.

I initially was a little perturbed by Bartholomae's Inventing the University, but after the discussions we've had, I'm beginning to have more of an appreciation for his ideas. He sounds a little offensive to the student reader at times, which is probably because he wrote Inventing the University to an audience of scholars rather than students. Although I'm not inspired to start writing in the discourse of "power and finesse" after reading his essay, I will take some points to heart such as "forming something to say out of what has been said and out of what [I] have been saying."