Week 3

I really enjoyed Robinson’s TEDTalk.  In the beginning he stated that many people are accused of ‘making poor use of their talents’ and ‘don’t believe that they are good at anything.’  I can relate to the whole not being good at anything, as I’m sure a lot of people can.  I have never believed that I am good at any one thing in particular. Instead, I consider myself to be average or below average in most things.  Math and science have always been two subjects that I’ve never enjoyed nor completely understood, making me less than average at both and I don’t see any reason to better the statuses at this point.  Writing and reading, however, are completely different for me.  I have always loved writing stories about my friends and past experiences, and reading is one of my favorite pastimes. Would I say I excel at these? No.  But do I enjoy them? Well, for the most part, yes!

Robinson said that the people who are most happy with their careers are the ones who do not look at their jobs as jobs, but as piece of “who they are.”  We all know that unless an author writes a best-seller, there’s not a whole lot of profit in an English/Writing major’s future.  But, there is the importance of being happy with going to work each day.  And I know for a fact that if I had to crunch numbers  for the rest of my life, day after day, hour after hour, I’d be one miserable person to be around.

Another important topic in this week’s reading and videos was the issue of presenting information to an audience in a useful and effective manner using presentation of fonts, punctuation, and imagery.  In Goetz’s Talk, he discussed his research on making medical data make sense to patients – whooda thunk! – Taking the information and color-coding it good, bad, and borderline should not have taken as long as it did because so many things in the world are categorized according to color to represent data.  But the reason it took so long also makes sense, according to Godin, because the data wasn’t broken for the doctors who were using it for patient testing and were then translating it to their patients.

                All of this started to make me thinking about all of the advertisements about avoiding drinking and driving.  Fonts, which make statements in all pieces of writing,help attract different audiences and reader attention, along with images that are sometimes placed next to the words. Anyways, these advertisements are meant to encourage drinkers to either designate a driver or find other means of transportation home.  Recently, I saw a bumper sticker that looked like this:

First off, the font does not come across as to be taken seriously, nor does he image of the penguin with the devil horns??  Everyone KNOWS drinking and driving is unsafe and should be avoided, but the seriousness of the action is not always portrayed in a serious manner in stickers like this or even on commercials (I’m thinking of the one where the guy calls his friend for a ride…which turns out to be a horse?).  And secondly, do either the bumper sticker or the cute commercial present the issue in as serious a manner as law enforcement and other officials wish it to be taken? Would stronger fonts and presentations make the audience more aware of the consequences?

Proposal

For my Critical Photo-essay I would like to explore the question: How has technology influenced todays writers and how will this impact the sharing of writing in the future?  Writing was originally created for record keeping, rather than for the sharing of the knowledge those records held.  Today, writing is being done on technologies that allow for a very large audience to view an author’s writing within minutes of its publication on the web.

                      Blogs, Facebook, and Twitter allow for a large audience to follow an unlimited amount of “authors” and to read their writing at a moment’s notice.  The sharing of the writing is available after the authors post their latest status update or shares a restaurant discovery on their food blog.  Does this quick transfer of writing and communication weaken the authors’ credibility? How does the quick output of information develop a new, more advanced type of audience?

                Overall, I would like to compare how writing used to be created and shared and how the audience accessed the writing, to how it is presently being processed and what this means for the future of writing.  (I think..?)

Week 2 Blogging

From Pencils to Pixels

All of the articles for this week had to do with the advancements of technology and how these advancements effect communications between people, as well as how texts are read and knowledge is learned.

In Dennis Baron’s piece, From Pencils to Pixels, it was surprising to me that a pencil could cause such uproar and be viewed as an untrustworthy object when it came to writing and creating records. Since the invention of the pencil, technology has expanded to pens, printing presses, computers, iPads, etc. And just as the pencil caused controversy, so do these inventions.  How people communicate, learn, and perform day-to-day task are being “taken over” by technological advancements.

Baron also discusses the integration of computers in the classrooms and what difficulties the instructors had with the technological transition.  The thought that teachers used to have a fit over students using spellcheck before handing in a paper is beyond me.  It is a tool that may not necessarily help students understand how to spell a word, but if used often enough, they could become familiarized with the correct spelling. (This wuld b a nice feetur for FB statises!! J) Spellcheck has become essential for many students as well as those who are in search of a job and need to ensure that everything on a resume is spelt correctly.

Technology has become a vital piece of how we communicate with family members, friends, educators, and coworkers…unless, of course, you are a member of The Lead Pencil Club.

History Now

The libraries at my high school hated Wikipedia with an absolute passion.  We would be scolded if they caught us on it, and if we tried to reference it in a paper it wouldn’t be accepted.  So, I still tend to think that Wikipedia is an unreliable source that can’t be trusted. 

History Now got me thinking…

After reading the article, I see Wikipedia more as an interactive encyclopedia, or blog, that people share information on.  Is it correct information? I don’t know.  But those who take the time to write summaries of topics and subjects on the site most likely know a thing or two about what they are writing and “become active on their own impulse.” Which is encouraging, but I still don’t think my high school librarians would approve.

“…Wiki does not inevitably lead to chaotic contents because for each person who deletes contributions or writes nonsense, there are several others who cancel or improve the change again.”  This statement is reassuring, but what if you’re the poor college student who waited until the last minute to write a final, 20-paged paper and some bored middle-schooler *revised* all the information minutes before you opened the site an no one has popped by to fix it yet?

I feel like Wikipedia is a good place to get started when scoping out information, but that other sources should always be used to decipher if the information is true or not, which should normally be done anyways.

The article also explained the changes of how users of Wikipedia are communicating and interacting, which seemed to resemble a blog-type atmosphere, which I had never thought of before and encourages it’s users to interact with the text in a uniform, yet at the same time, diverse way.  This thought reminded me of Whitacre and his virtual choir.

IText

“Texts provide shared visions around which joint work can be organized.  In this role, texts serve to stabilize knowledge, a function that is important, for instance, in establishing intellectual property.”

This quote made me think about Facebook and the kind of role it plays in our society.  Facebook is a joint work.  It is organized to bring people from all around the world together, in one common “place” on the web.  It stabilizes many different types of knowledge to others who look at ones page.  Things like family members, friends, location, emotions, relationship status, birthdate, and the list goes on.  Facebook has brought about a new way of stabilizing personal knowledge about people and their lifestyles.  Facebook “groups” have become a way of one to establish an intellectual property with people who sharer similar interests and are also members of the social group. 

Facebook, as much as it can be looked down on for intruding privacy and other accusations against the site, helps us “get to know” one another in ways never thought possible, and in all reality, shows a person’s true identity to the world more so than in-person meetings can do.

The Database and the Essay

While reading this piece, I was interested in the fact that the author described writing as a social act, rather than individual.  A description that I think fits writing and the writing process very well.  In my creative writing course this last semester my professor encouraged us to give suggestions to each short-story author in our class, as well as to her.  So we would edit and revise each other’s works and the author could either take or leave them.  This kept the author with the authority of the piece but also gave each piece the influence of the social interaction and influences from other authors.

This piece also suggested that meanings of words come from other words before them.  Without “school” there would be no “teachers”, or “class” nor would there be “students”.  This goes back to the idea of intertextuality and how each and every piece of writing (or given situation) is dependent upon what came before it and inspired that writings creation.

Video Blogs.

I thought that these videos accurately portrayed how many students feel about school and education: “We love learning.  We hate school.”

Today’s college students have more technology available to them than any generation before had ever dreamed of having.  Within arm’s reach I have a laptop, printer, cellphone, TV, DVD player….which I’m sure is a limited supply compared to some other college students out there.  But it’s still a lot.

I agree with Wesch when he says that “walls no longer mark the boundaries of our classrooms.”  Who could even expect to have a marker for boundaries with the world being accessible through our fingertips?

Students are able to research topics outside of their classroom, school, hometown, state, country, and even into other galaxies.  On their own, students are exploring the world and what interests them all throughout their day and during their spare time.  I think that it is important for teachers to become aware of this and to use technology as a way to encourage and inspire student learning and involvement in the classroom.

Intro Video

"If you're gonna be original, you can count on being copied"

Porter's piece takes a look at how there are no original ideas or creations, especially in the arts.  All pieces of artwork and literature have been influenced in some way that had previously been created or written.

"Texts not only refer to but in fact contain other texts."

For a moment, I thought about disagreeing with this statement because Creative writing is not influenced by any other texts, but then I had to stop myself.  Everything is influenced by something, or else how would the thought have come into existence in the first place.

The idea of originality, or the perception of originality, is created when someone masterfully (or onlookers don't look too closely) revise a piece of information or quote and conform it to fit whatever context they need. Just like the example of the boy and his dog in the Pepsi commercial, they are in a desolate area (with tumbleweeds rolling by, of course) and out of nowhere appears a spaceship.  Like Porter explains, all of the visuals had been seen separately, but never within the same context, making a *new* and *original* commercial setting.

Grant-Davie

In Grant-Davie’s piece Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents, he addresses the need of discourse and the importance that it has in regards to rhetoric.  He explains that in order for a discourse to even come about, something prior had to cause a need for it.  The opportune time to speak or write must be brought on by an event or discovery that effects a person so much that they are driven to write or speak about the event, ultimately to a similar group of people who were also impacted by the event, in either an agreed or differed way.

Grant-Davie also expressed that, “Rhetors need to consider who they are in a particular situation and be aware that their identity may vary from situation to situation.”  The idea of switching roles from situation to situation is something that most people do without realizing that they are doing it.  (I know it had never occurred to me before learning about discourse communities and the switches that we make in presence and delivery according to our audience.)  I consider my parents one specific audience, my friends another, coworkers and customers, another.  All of them have different expectations, and different discourses that have been established, which can sometimes be called upon simultaneously. This is where constraints are applied to an audience.  If I am speaking to all three (parents, friends, and coworkers, say, at a company picnic), I am now required to please all three which may call for the coworker discourse rise above the others because they are the priority audience of the moment.

What is rhetoric...to me?

What is rhetoric? It seems as though those who are experts on the subject, don’t have a concrete definition, or one that can be agreed upon.  After having read numerous articles about rhetoric for a number of different courses I still don’t have a sound understanding of what exactly rhetoric is, or even how to put it in my own terms.  I once tried to explain rhetoric to a friend and failed miserably, and finally gave up after stammering a couple of sentences that contained mostly umms and ya knows…

What is Rhetoric?  Was a nice article to begin with for me because it covers the most basic concepts of rhetoric and what it can consist of, depending on who you are talking to.  “The five canons of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery…” are all vital elements of what a success rhetor would use to persuade an audience one way or another.  It would be impossible for an effective piece of literature or speech to go without any of these, and when all of the elements are brought together in a powerful and thoughtful way to an audience, the reception of the piece is recognized for years beyond its original delivery.  One example of this would be Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech.  He used a very specific arrangement and style that made for a powerful delivery.  He spoke to his audience, rather than at the audience, both whites and blacks.  He used questions that many knew the answers to, and quotations from governmental and church leaders and brought all of the diversities together in his speech by referring to every one as “brothers.” 

What I gather most from What is Rhetoric? and rhetoric in general, is how much an audience can influence a piece of writing or a speech.  Audience is a huge influence on my writing.  If I am writing for myself I am more willing to write whatever may come to mind, but if I will have a larger audience like my classmates, I am more careful about what I say and deliver. 

Whitacre

When I first started watching Eric Whitacre and his successes in bringing a variety of people from all around the world together in an intangible place like the internet, I thought that there is no way for people to be ‘brought together’ by means of technological devices.  Computers, cellphones, and other technological advances have gotten the bad reputation of separating people from face to face communications from some who fear technology and the power that it can hold.  While some of this may be true, Whitacre illustrates the thought of what a positive effect technology and global communication can have on a single group of people, which has ultimately had an effect on the world.

I think the thought is beautiful.  Whitacre’s inspiration from the video of the young girl demonstrates what a powerful effect technology has within society today due to the fact that it can bring two people, who are at different ends of the earth, together.  The power of the performance of the 2,000+ people is impressive, but to hear the back story of how each video was submitted separately, at different times, and from different places and different people, creates a larger picture for the endless amount of possibilities that technology can bring to the world today.

Just like how this class is set up, although I have met only a couple of my classmates from this course in person, the personalized blogs allow for me to see, hear, and overall “meet” those who I am not familiar with thanks to blogs, discussions, and videos, generally, allowing us to sing in unison from around the country.

Hey there!

I am a senior this year (finally) and will be graduating in December with a major in writing.  After that, I'm not sure what path I will follow with my degree, but, It'll all work out in the end is generally a motto I like to follow and so far it's worked out just fine. :)

In the summer I love to go camping, hiking, fishing, golfing, and tubing on the lake.  Each of which usually goes hand in hand with consuming a cold, refreshing brew.

I'm looking forward to this course and am hoping to gain a better understanding of writing technology and how it is advancing.

Looking forward to working with you all.

Cheers!