...I guess it's a good idea...but...

remembering I have online texts to look at would be difficult for me...

Often, at the beginning of the semester, when I'm familiarizing my students with the texts we'll use regularly during class, I assign reading responses. FYI: I use A Writer's Resource by Maimon, Yancey and Peritz as well as They Say, I Say by Gerald Graff.

These reading responses are at minimum 1 page long and at maximum 2 pages. Simply, they act as proof for me to ascertain that they have in fact done the reading. I ask them to include a short summary of what they read and then a segment on their reaction to their content. I tell them I don't care what that reaction is, even if it's "Uncle Jim told me about thesis statements because he's an English professor..." Just so that I know if I must expound on this topic in lecture, or have 97% of my students already learned this technique?

Many students ask me why they have to do this. I tell them it's proof for me. An honest answer, but the problem is that it is just for me. There is no outside audience. I think a more effective way to assign what I do on an almost weekly basis for the first 9 weeks of the semester would be to have them blog and explain the reading as though someone who has no idea what they're talking about, is reading it.

It would force them to be more specific and theoretically cut back on the 2nd person used. They know I know what they're explaining, so less effort gets put into it.

As for technological barriers, and I know all about those, hahaha...
I would work into my schedule at least one full class day to explain the modes and mediums I would expect them to use. In addition, this day would include time set aside for everyone to bring in their personal computers (or share if they don't have one) to set up their accounts.
In a first-year composition class like 101, at WSU, I don't forsee access as an issue. Students typically live in dorms which have computer labs, or they have the AML which they already pay a fee for, so they may as well use it for classroom work.

The major barrier I predict would be a problem is actually me reading them on a regular basis. The physicality of a pile of papers in my folder is a way for me to remember that "oh yes, I do have papers to look over and return." Online spaces, unless I write it into my schedule, are great space savers, but don't act as physical reminders. Crap, I might have to be responsible and timely in my comments. Just kidding.

In her article "Teaching With Wiki's..." Rebecca Lundin introduces the idea of online authority and expand the idea of new media composition. After reading that, I almost think it would be best for the students if I forced myself to schedule regular readings, simply because working with a new medium as a regular tool opens students up to a new format and a vast potential audience. I wish my 101 teacher had done this... I might not fear technology as a learning tool so much...

1. Online authority places the responsibility on the shoulders of the students to get the work done. An online schedule, placed at the beginning of the semester, allows students to get the work done on their own schedules (I know I've done these blogs at 1am before...).
2. Lowe and Williams introduce the idea of a narrowing gap that blogs cause between students' private and public writing. It might allow different thoughts about the definition of writing to be brought up in physical class discussion.

My students didn't think that Facebook posts and those "25 things about me" were writing, or that text messages had educational value. Maybe they think they same things about blogs. I might try this next semester. Maybe. Scaaaaary.

Myspace to FB: my transition and what that even means...

Sorry this blog is late!

When I was in high school ('01-'05), Myspace was just making its place in the world. I had thus far resisted creating a profile, because, and I vividly remember this, of my fear of new technologies...

Fortunately, that fear has removed itself to another area of my life! Oh, wait, that's bad.

Anyways, the point is, I still didn't create my first social network profile myself. Two of my pushier friends decided it would be beneficial for me to have one. In hindsight, it was probably just so that they had an easier time getting in touch with me. As boyd explains "some teens went so far as to create accounts for resistant friends in order to move the process along" (19). I went along with it, because as teens tend to follow trends once they're sucked in, I was one of the masses. However, in order to make sure my friends didn't add any of the more embarassing aspects of my identity to my profile, I immediately logged on to edit/delete and was hooked.

Then came college. September of '05 was when Facebook was still at one of its college students only elitist points. I was eager to switch. Everyone at WSU was all "did you see what he put on his status?" and obsessed with SuperPoke (what was that by the way?). Plus, my little sister couldn't have one yet. Ah, the undergrad years...
However, my FB profile still exists, and has a much wider audience. After years of edits, transitions, omissions and additions, my FB profile looks a little different from when I created it.

However, as previously mentioned, technology and I don't always "get along," and I can't figure out how to put in a fancy screen shot a la @Jill Bohle. I am jealous. You all can see my profile at www.facebook.com/maggie.hillmann if you're seriously interested.

So, on Facebook, and let me see if I can list all the hats I put on whenever I log in...I am : a sister, a daughter, a friend, a colleague, a teacher to former students, a grad student, a cousin, a neice, a stranger, an employee...etc...I'm sure. A wide range of audiences as you see. I have conciously avoided putting up certain statuses because I know who I'm writing for/to...

But however, my profile does tend to mimic how I exist in real life, and my socio-economic status, race and gender match exactly what boyd suggests the world of a typical FB user look like. I'm an economically comfortable, upper middle class white girl and I have since abandoned and deleted my MySpace profile. I had to ask myself if I was part of the white flight.

I look at my friends list and while I know almost everybody (yes, I'm "friends" with people I've never met), they mimic the lines I draw between the different groups I consider myself a part of. The people I work with have never met my family, and the my family have never met those kids who didn't like me in high school but apparently like me on FB. My friends on FB are predominately white, but as I am friends with people of other backgrounds in real life, those friendships remain consistent online. In this way, my profile is an example of boyd's statement in which she states from a previous article she wrote:

"Online, status markers take on a new form but ways that are reminiscent of offline practices. For example, the public articulation of connections on social network sites is a way of visibly marking oneself in relation to others and their status" (qtd in boyd 22).

My WHETS classroom...

I've experienced only one long distance learning course here at WSU with Wendy Olson via Angel from the Vancouver campus. The experience was one which simulated a physical classroom as much as was possible.

My first image was supposed to be of Wendy Olson, who was my professor, however, the site would not let me copy the picture, so the URL is:
http://directory.vancouver.wsu.edu/people/wendy-olson

- This class was an opponent to the theory of unbundling. Her aim was to explore the theories of composition in a very real way. She wanted us to put into practice what she taught. Her role as professor was no "deliverer of corporate values and goals..." (Peterson 374).


My second image is of my mom's university logo: She attends the University of Great Falls: Montana where she is en route to acheive her Bachelor's of Science in Nursing using an entirely online program. She has been a nurse for over 25 years with only her AA degree and when the opportunity arose for her to get a second degree, she took as lifelong learning, like Peterson explores.

http://w8.campusexplorer.com/media/376x262/media-6AFD461D.jpg


A lot of factors contribute to the success of a student in a distance learning course. Peterson encourages the uses of many different technologies and teach/student interaction in deciding what works for the whole class via the program (like Angel) being used.

My third image is of a chart mapping the factors which can contribute to the success of distance learning programs through a distance learning website.
http://bestdistancelearning.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/1281537262-35.jpg

2 questions...and a dash of commentary

Sorry this is 2 hours late, I was working at the writing center. These are kind of the same questions that I tweeted but knowing how Twitter and I don't get along, here they are again:

Number one:
What do people think about Lessig's suggestions to revise the currently exisiting copyright laws? Do you think he has a chance?

Number two:
What criteria place one in RO or RW culture? Are there criteria? I feel like I'm stuck in the middle.

I love Lessig's cyncial view of the current copyright laws and his anecdotes on firms prosecuting teens for creating RP Harry Potter games. I was confused by the description of "community spaces," "collaboration spaces," and "community." But what I love most about this book is that I can get it on my Kindle. Not that I did, but I can! Yay for multimedia.

...So very late...

First off, because I'm so late with actually posting this blog, and I know that no one except you, Professor Arola will be reading it at this late date... I'd like to apologize once again for missing this assignment. It won't happen again.

Let's me just start without an tip toeing around a cheesy introduction that says nothing. Basically, what Johndon Johnson Eilola (that is a mouthful of a name huh?) is talking about it what we discussed in class. He wants to use symbolic-analytic work as a means to cross bridges and solve conflicts. Prof. Arola asked us in class how we might use it as a framework for any class in the whole world we could teach. It was a fascinating question and now that I've had an extra week (shame on me) to think about it, I have a more developed answer.

Originally I wanted to teach a class about breaching the gap between print and electronic writing. But now, after re-reading Eilola's definition: "...symbolic-analytic workers are valued for their ability to understand both users and technologies," I would like to hone that potential class down to teaching students the most efficient ways to combine print and electronic sources for research (201). So many electronic sources are looked down upon as being "unworthy," so to speak, and Eilola suggests that it might be possible for me to teach a combo of print sources and e-sources for students to get the most out of research. If I get his theory right. Which I hope I did.

In this potential class I would like to teach, I see a connection to the next article we read, "Web Literacy: Challenges and Opportunities for Research in a New Medium," by Sorapure, Inglesby, and Yatchisin. They speak of using the "World Wide Web" as a source, and the ways to do so effectively (Sorapure et al 333). First they suggest that to use it ("it" being the internet), you must ensure that students have literacy in this type of source. They go on, in sectionalized lines of thought, about evaluating websites, what to value -- "content and authorship -- in a website before using it as a source, how to teach the visual literacy that accompanies the web to students, and the intertextuality that the internet ultimately offers ( Sorapure et al 337).
By linking a potential user to new information, they make using the internet as a source fun and challenging without the risk of a student using "BobsCivilWarSiteGOCONFEDERACYORGO HOME).com" as a legitimate source.

Now, in our FYC classrooms, we know and hopefully encourage students to use the internet as a vast resource at their fingertips. Countless original documents are electronically archived for academic access and to sift through the pile (because there isn't an online reference librarian...yet) takes a literacy that we hope we can teach our students. Michelle Sidler, author of "Web Research and Genres in Online Databases: When the Glossy Page Disappears," states that databases can help narrow the search for the needle in the haystack. The metaphorical needle is of course the one article by the one author who agrees with your reserach.

To know where online to look is something Sidler dubs spatial orientation and it can be used to oriente oneself into an ongoing academic conversation. Databases help with this . Citing Eilola (ah, I'm seeing your connections between these articles a little more clearly now professor), she states "...systems like PROQUEST present 'immense, dynamic spaces through which users move'" (qtd. in Sidler 355).

Okay, now I'm losing my train of thought so I'll just wrap this up. It is our duty as FYC teachers to engage with electronic sources and teach them to our students to bridge the gap between bad and efficient research. Their job is to use the lessons we teach them in future classes and reminisce with bobscivilwarsite.com even for nostalgia's sake.

Blogger.com doesn't like me today...

Sorry all, I took this blog posting deal right past the 5pm wire. I fought a battle with Blogger and won however, so all is well.

"A building circular... The prisoners in their cells, occupying the circumference. The officers in the centre. By blinds and other contrivances, the Inspectors concealed... from the observation of the prisoners: hence the sentiment of a sort of omnipresence. The whole circuit reviewable with little, or... without any, change of place. One station in the inspection part affording the most perfect view of every cell." - Jeremy Bentham

My undergrad degree was a B.A. in Technical and Professional Writing, but I actually also have a minor in Criminal Justice, so I'd actually explored the writings of Bentham before, which I found really interesting. The one thing I'd never conceived of would be the applications of Bentham's machine through a Foucault lens. This MA program got me thinkin' I'd left my CrmJ roots behind...not true apparently.

From a Criminal Justice perspective, some theorists saw the Panopticon as the ideal containment method. It reduced the number of guards, bars and patrols. Foucault reduces this feeling to a discussion of power relations, in which the prisoner knows they are being watched but cannot see by whom.

It reminded me of the computer labs at my high school. Of course they were firewalled so that MySpace (back when it was the "thing") and PartyPoker were not the order of the day, but instead studying. Everyone knew that they (the nebulous "they") could tell who was logged on where and at what time, but no one knew who monitored these sites or when punishment might occur.

"...if they are schoolchildren, there is no copying, no noise, no chatter, no waste of time..." (qtd in Foucault 201).

To apply this sort of control to the FYC classroom, is to cement the hegemony of instructors in place. To expect each student to act -- and learn -- in the same way is ludicrous, an age old lesson that seems to be having trouble exiting the teaching methods of some. "...the worker would sink to the level of general and undifferentiated labor power, adaptable to a large range of simple tasks..." (qtd. in Ohmann 24). If we expect our students to succeed we need to, as Selfe encourages, accept all the literacies that our students bring to our attention but also endow them with the ability to expand those literacies as the definition of that very word changes with them.

I haven't actually blown up a computer yet...but it's only a matter of time...

The Dell I owned was definitely put through its paces during my undergrad years. I remember the day I got my first laptop (the aforementioned Dell laptop), for high school graduation. The sense of freedom that came from owning my own piece of technology was wonderful. After four years it, however, did require a new hard drive. (Because who needs virus protection in a dorm right?) Haha. Not.

Of course this wasn't my first experience with computers. I remember my dad used to bring home old desktops that had "died" (so to speak) and let my younger sister and I loose with screwdrivers to take them apart. I ended up using the shiny bits of metal to accessorize my Barbie Dream House, while she ended up actually figuring out how to fix what she had broken. This anecdote combined with the death of my Dell may explain better than I can my ensuing relationship with computers.

As a student, I use my computer for the internet, Microsoft Word and iTunes.

As for finding it (my computer) "necessary," I don't presume to suppose I could live without it. Having had social, economic and academic access to computers for the majority of my life, I do find the convenience hard to do without. I learned the "home row" method of typing in third grade and I had my first email address for almost 10 years before I upgraded. My fifth grade teacher let me use the classroom computers (I remember when my elementary school got all new Macs...big day)to send emails to my dad from school.

To separate my personal use of computers to the ways I use them as an instructor isn't much. I expect, as Wysocki states, my students to compose on computers only to print them out so I can comment in pen. I communicate with my students via email and require a multimedia project at the end of the semester. But because I didn't (and don't) have much technical knowledge of how computers actually work and don't know how to run anything beyond the most basic of programs; I feel as though I can't expect my students to learn these things from me in a competant manner.

I enjoyed the fact that Wysocki chose, and noted such, not to define new media until almost 20 pages into the book. Her discussion of the materiality of writing, and her entreaty to writing teachers to understand the ways they teach/ understand materiality, had to be discussed before her definition could make sense. I completely agree with her theory that and 8.5"x11" piece of paper with linear text is different than an interactive web page in how it encourages readers to react and engage. Of course she expressed my thoughts in much more detail than I ever could...

I realized today while reading, and actually teaching that I am jealous of the advantages/ and challenges that computer technology provides students with in this technoculture that surrounds me as a teacher. As an example, I was doing a crash course on MLA citation today and they (my students) were bemoaning the Maimon handbook. I attempted to explain to them that this was the way I had to learn citation formatting. No EasyBib or Citation Machine for me. The relatively easy to understand spiral-bound Maimon manual provoked a completely different reaction for them than it does me. Whereas I see those citation machines as the easy way out (my disdain does not allow me to interact with sites such as these) they see the way I was teaching them as old fashioned. Materiality and the way it functions at its finest.