Jenkins - et al Summary

Children and young adults may not be exposed to more media than in the past, but this new type of media is the kind that invites and expects active participation. Young people collaborate, engage in complex social interactions, and create / shape new forms of media.

This isn't without problems, and many of these problems can be addressed with a pedagogical shift. The "participation gap" can be addressed by ensuring access to lower-income / opportunity students. By normalizing the digital experience, educators can try to shrink this gap. The "transparency problem" - that is, individuals being unable to shift their thinking from the rules of the game to other, more "real" environments - might be solved by furthering education on evaluating information - not only as true, but as relevant. The "ethics challenge" might be addressed by teaching students to reflect on choices made through media and the impact that these choices might have on others.

Reflecting on Learning through Gaming

I wanted to separate this reflection because it's only tangentially related to the reading, but it's more of a personal experience relating to Gee's 6th property - the one that deals with "player-enacted stories or trajectories" (75).

When I was younger, my favorite game series was The Legend of Zelda. I played through parts of the original one at a friend's house got Link's Awakening for my Game Boy, and got Ocarina of Time for the N64. I played through all of them and enjoyed myself, inserting myself into this fantastical story of heroes and goddesses and legends. It was all pretty standard storytelling stuff - be the hero, defeat evil, know sacrifice, all very standard. Without realizing it, I was recognizing standard thematic tropes, stock characters, and plot structures. This isn't to say I didn't love it.

So when I bought Majora's Mask, I expected more of the same. Instead, I got this strange, Groundhog-esque type game. If you aren't aware of the basic plot, Link - the protagonist, is searching through the woods to find an old friend from Ocarina of Time. His horse is stolen by a masked imp, and he gives chase, falling into a hole. When he awakes, the imp transforms his body into this strange plant-monster thing. (A deku scrub if you're familiar.) Chasing the imp, he arrives into this world that's a distorted version of the one he came from. The locations are all different and strange, but the people are doppelgangers from his home. They all act differently though, with unique personalities.

Through some evil magic, the imp has caused the moon to start hurtling toward the earth, threatening to destroy the town, and everyone in it, in 3 days. Through some strange time-manipulation, Link is able to relive the same 3 days over and over, accomplishing tasks, learning about the people and their routines, acquiring items, and discovering the history of this world.

Now, I really engaged in this sort of memorization. I followed each NPC to discover everything they did and said over these three days. Some characters had complex story lines, spanning days and multiple interactions that could go differently based on my actions. These "people" lived their lives while facing this threat of Armageddon. Some ignored it, some laughed about it, some fled the town as the moon approached. All "lived" these three days whether or not I interacted with them.

As games go, Link defeats the great evil, saves everyone, and all these people breathe easier. There is redemption, loss, and all those other familiar adventure things.

The strange thing that happened to me didn't occur until years later.

I have strong memories about this game. Real, visceral memories of interacting with these people, this world, in a complex and real way. I remember dark, twisted things happening in the game - people losing hope when I failed to deliver messages, people cowering in corners, watching people cross each other for money, hold grudges. I remember the history of a desert place being blood-soaked and tragic.

The weird thing about all these things? Most of them weren't actually in the game. I created most of these elaborate backstories and personal conflicts. These interactions could have happened - in fact, many of them probably would have been included if the hardware was more sophisticated.

But this where the 6th property comes in. This game allowed me to enact my own trajectories - to fill in plot points and social interactions. I don't know if this game taught me to "look deeper" into stories - to not assume that people are telling the truth - but it certainly stuck with me. Even now, I prefer games, movies, and books that make me "work" to figure how everything and everyone fits together - something very helpful in my ordinary social interactions and in my managing skills.

Again, I'm not sure how much I buy into the argument, but I can see it.  

Gaming and Learning

While I'm not sure I completely buy Gee's argument, there's a lot of interesting stuff in it. He states that digital games can be used to teach different things in different ways. Instead of focusing on the "trivia" type games - games that encourage memorization of facts and concepts, Gee instead "seek[s] to use games for the creation of deeper conceptual understandings and for problem-solving abilities that go beyond being able to pass paper-and-pencil tests" (65). In here, Gee makes an argument that gaming can promote different ways to approach problems, leading to a deeper complexity.

Gee then goes on to present six properties of digital games that "achieve powerful learning effects" (66) Combining these properties I find a general sense of Gee's argument to be that video games teach this sort of intricate problem solving by modeling an avatar around a set of experiences - which may or may not apply directly to "the real world" - that the player then adopts into his or her own working knowledge.

A quick reflection on this.

Lingering Questions

A few questions and concerns I have about the project.

I'm still not quite sure how I want to pursue the project. I have this idea that's big, and that will take a lot longer than the time left in the semester, but I want to have some sort of functional preview thing of it ready for the presentation. So I'm having a hard time narrowing down which aspect of the utility to focus on - what would most applicable to this class?

So most of these are concerns of scale and a sense of impending failure to address all the concerns I have.

Connecting the reading to life in general

My initial reaction is to either say that:

A)     I’m adopting everything I’m reading into how I’m thinking about teaching.[1]

B)      I’m adopting nothing.[2]

Or I could say that I’m not exactly sure. Every now and then I feel twinges of things as I’m standing in the classroom – like Farman’s notion of digital space – when I see a student check his or her phone, thinking I can’t see them. I consider how using phones in the classroom might be helpful, useful, and enjoyable. But then I remember the practical reasons that I got strict on my cell phone policy.

I think about how I think it’d be fascinating to adopt Shipka’s ideas of a non-traditional portfolio / project. Then I remember the goals and the portfolio reading, and I wonder if encouraging this sort of difference would interfere with passing portfolio review.

It’s easier to adopt some of these ideas into my own scholarship, because I’ve made it through those “hoops” in the past, and am now allowed to try new and different things. Which is a weird thought to have in general. With the Nakamura reading, I’ve started thinking more about access, and how even though we try not to, we limit access.

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[1] The suck-up answer

[2] The being-difficult-and-acting-like-a-child answer

On Shipka's Process Compositions

While I can appreciate Jody Shipka's suggestions toward a class in which students composed non-alphabetic texts only, I can't help but see the drawbacks to such a class. But before I become all negative and start sounding hoarse - what with the constant cries of "get off my lawn" - I want to talk about a few of the things that I find valuable in the reading.

I think that the general idea of having a composition classroom that explores different ways of "writing" is valuable not only at the theoretical level, but also at the practical one. By imagining a classroom that doesn't prescribe to the "freewriting, draft, revision" formula, we can address the notion that it's possible to compose differently. We can isolate each step and examine if there's a different / better way to go about it.

Example - If we isolate the process of revision and look at it through a non-alphabetic filter, we might discover useful strategies and assignments to enhance our own understanding of revision.

Because I wonder what a ballet-shoe revision looks like. Or a revised video. Is a revised video the same as a differently-edited one? Or does the composer go back to the field to take more footage? Is that a feasible thing to do? Maybe that moment for making the video has passed.

Can a moment for revising an essay pass too? Can it be "too late" to go back into the field and get "more footage?"

I don't believe this to be true, but perhaps it is for some students. Once they are "finished" with an essay, going back becomes this incredibly difficult endeavor. And maybe it's more than just being lazy -- maybe there's something to this complaint.

--

Sorry, I got a little off topic. 

I also believe that multimodality should be taught in a different sort of class than a FYC classroom. Otherwise, we run the risk of multimodality as just being this "container"  that content can be poured into. And the thought of teaching to each individual medium while still addressing the needs of some of my students who are struggling with academic writing makes me wonder if this multimodal approach should happen later in a college career.

Because there is some value in what we're teaching now, right? Even if it's hard to pinpoint places in the "real world" that well-formulated essays come into play, there is value in teaching students to write to certain specifications, utilizing certain styles that they may or may not have to use later in their lives.

So I'm conflicted on the whole issue. As much as I enjoyed reading about all the different projects that students really took to - engaging the material in a way that makes sense to them, I worry about some things that we lose. Though the interpretive dance project was probably spectacular to watch and academically rigorous, do we lose the sense of communication that writing seems to rely on? What did the students watching the dance think while it was happening? Was it confusing and disorienting? Does that matter at all?

And with all the successes of the program, what about the failures? How did Shipka judge that a particular presentation wasn't acceptable? How do we take away some of the subjectivity of grading? Or does that not really matter in a whole composition course?

--

How technology shapes writing and how I'm supposed to feel about that

Does anyone write for themselves anymore? I’m sure people do, but I don’t really. I used to. I used to journal in notebooks, in word documents, write little scraps of poetry on little scraps of paper that wind up torn into little scraps in my wastepaper basket. Now it seems like everything I write, I write to produce for someone or some purpose. Those one-time poetry scraps make it into my online journal that 3 people can read. Same with my rambley journal posts about personal things. Three people can read them. In a way, it’s like having a journal / diary that you leave unlocked on your desk in your middle-school bedroom. For whatever reason, you want SOMEONE to read it, even if you say you don’t.

For this reason, I keep coming back to the Martin reading. I’m not sure if it was purposeful, but I kept seeing this theme of writing as a social activity spring up through the text: libraries become useful for conservation of knowledge, Cuneiform develops as a way to keep social contracts, Luther promoting literacy so individuals could develop their own understanding of scripture, the Koran written in classical Arabic to keep a sense of Muslim unity, and indecipherable writings on Roman statues leading others to invoke magic.

It’s all interconnected, and I don’t want to start sounding sappy, but writing seems like a way that we as people connect to other people, and technology shapes how we do this. It’s easier than ever to have others read the things that I write. If once I left poetry in library books or lying on floors, hoping people would read it, now I disconnect that uncertainty entirely and watch as my blog-visit numbers climb.

So these new writing / publishing technologies open others up to this same experience. Even if the writing comes through social networks, it’s still this open sharing of words that others read, and our instant-posting technology allows this seamless transfer between thought and distribution.

In class, we talked about how writing things out by hand slows us down, making us consider each word, and might lead us to more thoughtful writing. We also posited that typing is much faster, and allows for a better stream of thoughts to paper. I’m sure that this phenomenon changes the way we communicate through writing.

Project plans, or something like that

Sometimes, I get stuck on something, read a prompt, and realize that I haven’t thought about that thing in a week. This is one of those times. As I’m always sort of thinking about the project, I have yet to make a decision between the two I proposed earlier.

  

Both of them hold these exciting opportunities, and I can’t decide if they can fit together somehow. It feels like I’d be abandoning an idea before I really gave it an honest try, which doesn’t feel great.

I don’t know how I’d be able to build a self-learning utilityspacething in the next two months, so that feels more like a long-term thing. But if I don’t start working on it sometime, it won’t get done.

On the other hand, I would really like to develop a certain sort of class that focused on publishing constantly. This is making me think about what I want to write for the next blog post, so I’m going to go do that now. I'll be back.

--

Ok, back, and also mentally drained. But I'm going to keep trying. I guess I might be looking for advice on how best to approach this? Would all of you be willing to volunteer your skills and thoughts as instructors to help me build this resource? I'll bring baked goods.

And maybe the other class-design can fit into my 701 project that I'm still not positive about. And then maybe they'll fold together eventually.

Things that might be good to revisit

I think a bit more work with Lingua Fracta might be helpful, especially looking further at categorizing memory as persistence. In my understanding, Brooke proposes this interesting idea on how memory becomes even further detached from the actual information and is instead attributed to remembering howto access that information -- like, remembering to add a blog to an RSS feed. Or bookmarking a site in del.icio.us.

I'm also a little confused on how these canons set up less as static categories and more as relational things (43).

Further, I think it might be interesting to revisit the disembodiment aspect of the Farman reading and frame that as a way to look at a virtual classroom. It feels right to say that it's better / more effective to run a body-in-classroom writing class, but if students occupy this virtual space, even when their physical bodies are in the classroom, can we totally discount online writing education?

What writing means or doesn't mean

When I’m teaching writing, it sometimes seems as though I have two very distinct and different minds about the whole undertaking. It’s a very strange dynamic because, when I sit in my apartment, stewing about how I have yet to receive work from [redacted], I start telling my roommate about how irritated I am with my students.

A quick example: I’m doing conferences this week, and pedagogically / practically, I think group conferences are my best option. I’m a believer in the whole workshop process, and I think it can help so much more than a simple peer review or an individual conference. So, in preparation for this, I told one of my classes that they would be responsible for emailing a copy of their revised to all of their group members by noon. I asked them to CC me on the email, so I could be sure that group members were given a fair chance to look over and make comments on the draft. I promised them that next conference, they would be able to send it in by Tuesday, and my other class would have to have things done by Sunday.

1:00 rolled around, and I had not yet received a revision from 9 people. I sent out an email, doing a little chastising, a little consequence-proposing, and waited another 3 hours to receive most of them.

During this entire time, I’m soft-ranting to myself and my poor roommate, who, let’s be honest, is probably sick of hearing about all this. I’m saying things like “I gave them so many instructions, reminded them so many times, sent reminder emails, what else can I do?” And then I started thinking about how attached to technology we all are, because I started assuming that I had students ignoring my emails. That I expect these emails I send to be received immediately, and responded to accordingly.

Which is probably the wrong sort of attitude to have, but it’s the sort of immediacy that the internet and new technology seems to demand. When students send me emails, I often receive a second one within a few hours if I haven’t gotten a chance to send one back. In fact, I often do see an email come in, but choose to put off answering it for a time if I’m engaged in another project.

I mean, do I owe my students an immediate response if I’m around to give it? What about as we integrate communication technology into the classroom? Do we build some sort of mutual expectation to be available at all times? Did I use technology to encroach on their “own time” that they shouldn’t be expected to respond to me?

This complicates further for me when I start thinking about the way in which I want to talk about writing. Speaking with Ash yesterday, I planned out a rough sketch of a new type of class that I might like to pursue – One that’s totally focused on writing and publishing for an online audience.

Sketch – Students develop a content blog / website for 14-15 weeks, during which they are responsible for not only creating content, but for curating, evaluating, and posting outside content for an audience. Students would choose the direction of their sites, and work to maintain / update on a regular schedule. Perhaps we could also look into promotion strategies, narrowing to an audience, and the economics of running sites.

Ash helpfully pointed out some pitfalls with this, but the one that sticks with me is this notion that students aren’t writing to any real sort of audience – Student blogging usually garners views through the class, or some other manufactured audience.

So is it real writing if it’s not being read by a real audience? That doesn’t quite seem right, because private journaling sure does seem like writing. And this content publishing seems a little like writing too. So I don’t think I’m ready to revise my last definition of writing – still as some sort of relationship between thinking and marking, the evidence of an inner dialogue. But maybe when it comes to technology, we sort of wear down that barrier between thoughtful composing and immediate verbalization. And maybe that’s how writing is changing – speed of content becomes somehow more important than the quality of it. Which becomes sort of problematic at the pedagogical level.

Some ideas for the multimodal projects

A few sentences about the ideas I'm thinking about for my project. I have a couple of ideas I might want to explore.

• One thing I really want to look at involves self-learning some of the basics of language. I'd like to get multiple sources to present some basic grammar lessons the way they might teach it in a classroom, and then offer a way to switch between sources until students find a teacher that "works" for them.

--

• Another thing that I've been thinking about is stems from our last class, where we started thinking about the forms of writing we're teaching. Maybe I'd like to look at developing a beginning writing class that focuses less on analyzing "reader texts" and more on a dynamic sort of project-focused class. Maybe one where students manage a blog/website/content generating sort of thing. Part of the class would focus on curating material, always with proper attribution, but also on the creation of content.
• It's all a little hazy right now.

Reflection on: Reflection on: Writing and Thinking Academically

Maybe reflection is how I know when I'm thinking academically. Whenever anything I write down doesn't seem to say exactly what I'm thinking, or if it only gestures vaguely toward it. Maybe thinking academically means reflecting on your thinking, but reflecting as you're thinking about something. Which gets all sort of muddled, but maybe it's a layer thing. Being able to detach yourself from the moment to reflect as that moment of thinking is occurring. Maybe that's what it means to think academically.

Reflection on: Writing and Thinking Academically

Is that really the only way I know when I'm thinking academically? When I try in a particularly hard way to not use profanity or distasteful / blasphemous metaphors? There has to be more to it than that.

It's difficult because, to be honest, I don't think I know when I'm writing academically. I guess it's an external thing? When someone tells me that I'm doing academic work? Otherwise, it all sort of runs together. Like, the bit of journaling I do a few times a week informs my class writing, as does the conversation I have with a friend, the shower-thinking, the constant self-conversation, all of that.

Does that mean "fuck it. I'm always thinking academically because everything I'm doing can move toward writing academically?" Or is it more complicated than that? Is it a threshold? Because I sure don't feel like I'm thinking academically while yelling at the TV about whatever sport I currently am too invested in.

So maybe I'm not always thinking academically, but maybe it's happening more often than I'm giving myself credit for. Maybe it's anytime I'm engaged with my surroundings rather than numb to them. When I'm trying to look at every single side and dimension of a thing, or at least trying to look past that first visible surface.

But that doesn't seem right either. Because I'm looking at layers of those angry sports thoughts, thinking about how sports are really about parallel play, or something like that. Which can develop into academic writing, so it must be academic thinking?

And this feels like academic thinking/writing, even though I said "fuck" a few paragraphs back.

Writing and Thinking Academically

This separation between academic and non-academic thinking and writing has always bothered me, I think primarily because academic thinking and academic writing seem interchangeable. We seem to take a clear, well structured essay as clear, well structured thinking. But these essays are more like a constructed posturing, adopting a language, a style, and a structure that somehow is seen as "more academic" than any other.

A bit about my history with this:
As an undergrad, I focused on creative writing. It was what I liked to do, it was what I found a weird restricting sort of freedom in. My academic writing, while fairly sound, was something completely different. It was stilted, awkward, and seemed like it came from somewhere else. So I would make uninteresting papers that held to this either imagined or suggested format / voice.

I think that this was my problem - I separated critical writing from creative writing, thinking that critical writing could, in no real way, be any sort of creative. I don't think I was alone in this sentiment.

So how can I tell when I'm thinking/writing academically? There are a few easy signs, like I try to not use profanity in academic writing, but apart from that, I've started to view every piece of writing as some sort of academic writing, even if It's not composed with the purpose of being "honorably" published. And I don't know if this is a good approach at all, but by approaching my "creative" enterprises with this sort of critical mind, I've sort of mixed things up in my mind. So now, when approaching "academic" writing, I try and think about it in a creative way.

Kind of like the Galloway and Thacker. They have all this pertinent information that they separate from the academic writing. But in reality, it's more interesting to see the process behind it. That's how I've started to approach my academic writing - like it's a conversation that I'm still figuring out. Because as I'm writing, that's what I'm doing. And I realize that everything I'm putting down is some manner of posturing, that I'm lying when I deliver this "more authentic" text of the "process behind the conclusion," but it at least points towards how I came to my conclusion. It's at least an attempt to show my own academic thinking.

writing chart / web-circle

Detailed chart - (here)

Ok, so I'm going to give you a link because, for whatever reason, I couldn't get my map to work the way I wanted. The only "mind-mapping" software I had any experience with is apparently from 2004 and therefore won't save a digital copy -- you can only choose to print it out.

So I made a copy of my desktop image, uploaded it to picassa, and am hoping that this link is sufficient. I tried auto-uploading it to blogger, but it messed with the formatting of the blog.

I only was able to make it visible after swearing unreasonably at my poor computer and switching all these privacy settings I put in place years ago.

Hopefully I can fix it all and make my blog look pretty. (I don't think it will ever look pretty).

Anyway, a few words about how I approached the chart --

I don't do well with charts. For whatever reason, seeing everything all at once does something to me, and I can't quite get keep everything straight. I want to say that it's too organized, that it doesn't quite fit with how I think, but I'm not sure what I would mean by that. So visual representations of ideas sort of give me a headache, and I'm going to do my best to explain what I have.

--

I have "Writing" in the center circle, and branching off of there I had the three ways I can really think about writing -- that is, what utility they have / why anyone might write something down / the audience the writing is designed for. I divided them into the personal/private writing, mass consumption writing, and correspondence, which is somewhere between those previous two.

When thinking about personal / private writing, I consider truly private journals, task lists, grocery lists, little encouragement notes to yourself, little notes to yourself containing nasty names when you aren't doing everything the way you want to, and class notes. I think the central thing here is that the only audience in mind is the self -- that is, these writings should work towards being useful to the writer, and possibly not toward anyone else.

Mass consumption - These writings are meant to inform, entertain, or otherwise reach a mass audience, whether they reach that audience or not. In this circle, I place public blog postings, twitter / FB / other public social media updates, writing for TV, radio, newspaper, or other sorts of media geared towards mass consumption by an unknowable audience.

Correspondence - I think that correspondence sits somewhere between self-writing and mass-writing. I don't think it necessarily has to be a small group, but I think the audience has to be known, or at least knowable. Here, I count things like locked blog-journals, "private" social media postings, e-mail, letters, and other things like that.

--

I'm sure I missed categories, examples, and probably produced too much writing for an assignment that was primarily a visual representation.

Tech and Writing all twisted together

It doesn't seem possible to divorce technology from writing because the form that writing takes depends on the technology of the community in a large way.

--

In class, we discussed the possibility of how literacy can alter the consciousness of a human person, allowing that individual to engage with the text, and perhaps even develop an "inner voice." While I'm not sure how convincing that argument is,when technology changes, writing changes along with it. In a primarily oral culture, characters have to be representational of an idea because holding a full, complex character without any sort of record-permanence, is incredibly difficult. Adding more than one might be impossible to remember. By making marks, the task of "memory" is left up to something inanimate, freeing up headspace to develop more complex characters and situations.

--

I think that I would like to focus on the access that new technology seems to allow in writing. New technology, at least in the way I understand it, has made reading and writing more accessible to the general public. Whether computers or simple changes in the paper making process, advances in technology seem to open writing up for those who might not have been able to access it.

And it seems like there has to be some sort of symbiotic relationship here, right? Like sharks and remoras? Writing depends on and shifts with technology, but does technology depend on writing? Maybe not necessarily (so maybe writing is the remora, and technology is the shark?), but if we shift writing out to mean some sort of non-oral communication, I think we can make that sort of conclusion.

New technology doesn't just kind of appear from the shadows, and then we adapt our lives to use the tech. But usually it seems that tech rises to fill some sort of want or need. We need to communicate faster, so we "find" the telegraph. The telephone doesn't let us anonymously write hateful comments at celebrities / friends / family / coworkers. So we started using the internet, right?

--

I keep thinking about it, and I can't separate tech and writing. And I'm still struggling to try and figure out how technology affects how I want to teach and write. The way technology seems to keep everything brief seems important. A few months ago, my friend L. and I were discussing Twitter and how she used it in a business sense. At the time, she was interviewing people to take over a business communications / media writing job, and one of her talking points was Twitter. She needed to know if they could use Twitter in an effective way. Not just because she thought that the program / site / utility was that important, but it was an easy, relevant way to judge whether or not a candidate could communicate effectively while still being incredibly brief -- because people tend not to pay attention to large blocks of text of they can help it. "TL:DR" gets slapped on to any comment / story that goes on for more than a few paragraphs.

(I realize that this is probably starting to approach the TL:DR category, so I'll wrap it up in a second.)

Technology shifts allow readers to dismiss an article if it's simply too much work to read. Consumers want bite-sized summaries that outline what they need to know quickly. And if the source they have doesn't give it to them, there are thousands of other easy-to-access sources they can navigate to in seconds.

Radiolab: Words

http://www.radiolab.org/2010/aug/09/

Why am I in this class?

To answer the question in a broad, fairly uninteresting way: because I'm interested. I'm fascinated with technology and how it transforms the way we interact with the world. Combining tech with writing is something I'm considering pursuing academically, so taking this class was a pretty obvious step in that direction.
--

What do I want to get out of this class?

So, despite being enamored with technology, gadgetry, and things like that, I'm running my two 101 sections fairly tech light. I'm forcing my students to hand in hard copies of all their work. I asked that they refrain from using laptops, and I teach in a pretty bare bones room. I requested a laptop and projector for tomorrow, but I might have put it in too late.

So I don't really understand how to use technology in a meaningful way in a writing classroom. I have ideas about using computers and tablets to enhance revision, collaboration, and peer review, but I also can't figure out how to put it all together. I have students that approach me concerned about affording the books for the class, how can I require them to bring tablets or laptops to our meetings?

--

Beyond the practicality of using technology, I'm worried that adding in tech will serve only as a distraction instead of as learning tool. I created the anti-laptop policy based on my own experience as an undergrad. When I would observe my classmates using their laptops, it was primarily as a way to divert attention from the class. They would have multiple tabs open, flipping between facebook, espn, and their email, and be completely disengaged from the class. As 101 is discussion-focused, this lack of attention not only hurts the distracted student, but also his or her classmates who will not get to consider a differing opinion. I couldn't figure out a way to reconcile this, so I asked them to leave their computers in their backpacks. Which, admittedly, isn't the best option.

--

I hope that this class gives me an opportunity to address these concerns and to develop strategies toward a more technology-focused classroom. New students are getting more and more used to a multimodal approach toward education. If composition classes are to remain relevant, the way we teach them should shift as well. But I'm not sure how.

--

I also have very little experience with teaching in general. So instead of figuring out how to integrate technology with my own philosophy of teaching, I need to develop a philosophy of teaching that hopefully can integrate technology in a meaningful way. I hope that the pedagogical aspects of this class will help me formulate something that I can take into a classroom and make an impact.

Writing definition

As it all runs together, I need to think about what writing is.

--

Writing as marks on a screen or a page:

The scribble on paper or the seemingly meaningless assortment of marks isn't really writing, but more the evidence of writing. The proof that some sort of writing took place. So writing must predate the documentation of writing, which is confusing to me, but I'm going to keep going with it.

So if the marks on a computer screen, paper, rock tablet, aren't writing, just the evidence of writing, then writing itself must be some sort of internal process. Even an oral pronunciation of writing is still just an account of the process of writing.
--

Writing as an internal process:

So maybe writing is a dialogue that occurs within a person's mind. A sequencing of ideas put in an order cohesive with their own understanding. In this way, we make writing something that happens solely in the mind. An author composing a story in her mind. A poet swirling lines together to form a poem. An article shaping up in imaginary columns.

There's a problem with this. Writing also seems to need some sort of communication. It needs an audience, and perhaps a possible external audience. But if we require an external audience, diary writing can't count as writing. Note taking can't count as writing. So there must be some sort of audience, and writing must include a communication with that audience.

--

So writing can't be simply be thought, nor can it simply be markings / audible proof. But it has to include both of those things. So maybe we can think of writing as a relationship between writer and audience, even if the audience is the writer in the future.

Ok. Let's take a shot.

Working definition:

Writing is the relationship and communication between a writer and his or her audience. In this definition, the writer is one who produces a text and the audience is the person or persons who consume the text. Writing is the means that text is transported from the mind of the writer to the minds of the audience. Note that text does not need to be on paper, stone, sheepskin, cardboard, or any tangible material. It can be auditory, communicated through sign language, or experienced by touch. Maybe we can throw smell and balance in there somehow.

--

Shortened definition: Writing is the means that a text is transported from the mind of the composer to the mind/minds of the audience.