| Lucky Week Thirteen: I Am Virtual, Hear Me Roar |
[December 02, 2006 @ 10:40pm] |
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A Classroom Memory
When discussing a text, one of my students responds…and the only word I hear coming out of his mouth is “femi-Nazi.” I must have given myself whiplash as I turned to him, and some kind of bracing emotion shot through his facial muscles. “What is a femi-Nazi?” I asked him. “Uh, I just mean, like, a crazy feminist who hates men.” “What is a Nazi?”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Platt.” “I didn’t ask for an apology. Tell me what Nazis are and what Nazis do.” “…” I’ll spare you, dear reader, any more of this exchange. Ah, feminism…the word is both savior and scourge.
The Feminine Mystique, Classroom Edition I agree with most of our class that "feminist pedagogy" describes pedagogy that de-centers an authority figure, that makes the instructor a fellow learner, that fosters collaboration. But after looking at Erin's post, I find myself with the same kinds of questions that she does: what makes this pedagogy distinctly "feminist" and not critical or post-colonial or anything else? The word "feminist" certainly has its share of negative connotations, as I show above, and I can hardly blame anyone wanting to distance themselves from the term. I, too, felt that pressure as a young teenager--before I understood what feminism really was, I avoided the term because I immediatelly associated it with "man-hater."
Such ignorance!
I don't want to be an essentialist, but sometimes, as a poet, clinging to essence is all I've got...My friends: we must put the "fem" back in feminism. Feminist pedagogy can be about empowerment with a special focus on making classrooms safe and nurturing for women.
Yeah, I said it. And our creative writing classrooms are sorely in need of it.
All Classrooms Are Not Created Equal
Can there be a classroom more insidious than a creative writing classroom? Competition exists amongst composition students, surely. But emotional stakes in comp classroooms are relatively lower. Most students don't choose to take composition. Since writing is a severely devalued skill, any particular faculty with it isn't likely to get you far socially, at least in a first-year comp class. In fact, it may get you ostracized, and many students feel the need to hide the fact that they're good writers. Now, a creative writing classroom on the other hand...
I can't speak for everyone in every CW classroom. But I think I have some reason to say these things. Everyone in a creative writing classroom wants to be the best. Even those who claim not to care tend to hide their ambition and jealousy. Oh, yes, and then there was Robert's comment in class that low-res MFA programs are no fun because you don't get to make people cry in workshop. [Yet, we're taught that creativity is something that must be nurtured, that creativity comes from the right brain, the play side, the ludic side. The female side. Ah, feminist pedagogy, can you help us transform this belief? Romanticism is not dead. It is undead.]
Working with both male and female creative writing teachers, with both male and female creative writing students over the (it seems) many, many years I've been doing my creative work in academic environments, I strongly believe that nowhere in the English field does a woman have to fight harder to be taken seriously than in a creative writing classroom. I think it's because the field is considered "soft" and women writers (poets in particular, maybe) are under even greater pressure to prove their intellectual prowess. Males in the field are, because of their maleness, automatically considered more cerebral and intellectual; thus, their poetry, good or bad, is assumed to be inherently more studied and worldly. Okay, I'm going out on a limb here. But I've seen it happen. And I've had to defend my lyric, nonlinear poetry with everything I have in me to male colleagues and teachers, sometimes even to female colleagues and teachers. This in a class supposedly focused around student writing, around writing as a process, around expression!
And then, there were the days when all the guys were absent from the CW classes, and it was just us women poets and our female instructor. You could feel the energy in the room change. It looked as though all of us were trying to supress sighs of relief. The class became about collaboration, about nurturing. I don't mean to say that female teachers are inherently better for female creative writing students, and I've learned a lot from some of my male teachers and colleagues. But there have been some seriously oppressive atmospheres lurking in some of the classes I've been in, with lots of male students and male teachers throwing their weight around.
This has been my experience and I can't argue with it. It's a very, very vulnerable place, more vulnerable than anyone might think. I can't believe I'm saying this, but sometimes I think that some CW classes should be women-only. I've often thought that the women in our MFA program should get together somewhere and share our writing and our experiences in a safe haven. Could cyberspace make this possible? After reading the "Lesbian Lives on the Line" piece, I'm not so sure, but I do have faith. Maybe I will start up a group online. Maybe I will start it next semester.
I understand other oppressed peoples through the lens of my own oppression.
(What the heck am I even talking about? I must be tired. Stick a fork in this blog, because it's done.)
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| Week Twelve: Racing for Representation |
[December 02, 2006 @ 8:51pm] |
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Until I checked out BlackPlanet.com, I was under the impression that African-Americans were the most underrepresented, invisible group in cyberspace. Why? Because I didn’t see them on all of the “white” sites I visit: white news, white music sites, white poetry sites…I feel pretty ashamed of myself. My virtual world is just as inaccessible as any other, even though I’m supposedly an enlightened, liberal educator. I fear that the internet helps white people hide their racism even more insidiously—increased anonymity, increased communication with other hate groups, lack of policing on public sites, reduced hurdles for claiming authority; if the internet can empower everyone, we can’t assume that it is only empowering African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans—it empowers KKK members, neo-Nazis, terror groups, etc. I fear that electronic communication facilitates the production of an even more flat, stoic, emotionless discourse that pretends to be “colorless” but instead is oppressive. As Samantha Blackmon says in her essay: “Let me make it plain here that this representation of the raceless majority is not tied to an actual declaration of whiteness but rather to the fact that in the absence of a specific race, white is considered the ‘default’” (93-4). I struggle very much with issues of race and representation as a teacher. I come from a fairly racist extended family. Even though I rebelled against those influences and tried hard to both love my family and distance myself from their prejudices, I know that there is a certain amount of internalized racism in me. How do I be a welcoming teacher to minority students if I know that inside I’m not free either? Do I expose myself as a recovering racist? I don’t want to hide behind the electronic curtain. I don’t know what else to say. I’m with Erin on this one. Teaching is very, very hard.
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| Week Eleven: Visual Rhetoric Strikes Back |
[December 02, 2006 @ 2:43pm] |
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Week Eleven: Visual Rhetoric Strikes Back I was going to call this post “The Passion of the Visual Rhetoric” but realized instantly how awful that would be… As teachers of writing and reading, I think it’s absolutely critical that our rhetorical study extends to the visual. I’m a little bothered by the fact that in our first-year General Studies Writing classes, teaching visual rhetoric is just an “option.” I get the impression that it’s actually somewhat discouraged because perhaps this program thinks that students at this level “don’t get it.” Perhaps it is taught in more advanced comp classes, but I really think we’re doing a disservice to our first-year students by not offering an entry point into visual rhetoric. Mary Hocks made an excellent point in her essay when she stated that “these distinctions between ‘visual culture’ and ‘print culture’ that separate image and word within humanities scholarship are symptomatic of what Bruno Latour calls modernist thinking—the binary-based thinking that posits radical paradigm shifts from one communications medium to another [. . .] we ought to stress the continuum between visual and verbal forms of expression (204). I think that by ignoring visual culture in our writing classes, we are reinforcing this binary-based thinking Hocks references. Anger Alert I have to say that I think it’s a bit of an insult to our first-year students to assume that they “don’t get” visual rhetoric, or to presume that they wouldn’t understand it even if it was taught to them. No generation of young Americans has been as steeped in visual culture as the generation currently embarking on their first year of higher education. The problem is that our teaching has not caught up. Actually, our entire educational paradigm needs an overhaul if we are going to be able to empower students who come of age in this visual culture.
Soapbox Time At OU, one of our assignments attempted to integrate visual rhetoric; it was a visual analysis/evaluative argument focusing on magazine advertisements. While students were not encouraged to compose visually, they had to provide a hyperaccurate, ekphrastic summary of the visual text they were analyzing before they began to pick it apart. While I don’t deny that there are numerous benefits to ekphrastic exercises, I can’t help but think that this assignment is again reinforcing that binary mode of thinking: “you may look at these visual pieces but you may not touch, manipulate, re-envision or re-create them, and they are certainly not appropriate modes of composition for you (though they are certainly an acceptable mode for those in power, like advertisers).” [Gosh, I’m such a Marxist! Hey, I’m proud to be one.] Another problem: focusing on advertisements defeats the goal of rhetorical education. As Hocks says, “What students don’t always realize is that anything presented on the screen is rhetorical” (204). Students know that ads are meant to sell things. The purposes of other visual media can be more abstract. Once, I had my students analyze CD covers instead of advertisements. Yes, I know that album covers are advertisements, too, but they do serve other purposes. Anyway, my kids really struggled with them at first, even though I gave them a series of questions to ponder. Many of them never got there, and I really despaired of the exercise, until I realized that these students were never given a critical apparatus with which to examine visual culture alongside verbal. Electronic visual culture could help rearrange this binary means of thinking, because the web is so fluid. But, only if students have access to it, and begin composing with it at an early age.
Harrumph!
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| Week 10: Hypertext Is Only Natural? |
[November 14, 2006 @ 8:45pm] |
Jay Bolter's article "Hypertext and the Remediation of Print" in Writing Space brought up a number of interesting ideas to me, but one of the most interesting was Bolter's implied claim that electronic writing is changing the level of inclusiveness in language. Bolter says "the goal of alphabetic writing is to simplify by exclusion. Electronic writing by contrast is inclusive and for that reason resonates with and reminds us of the earlier forms of writing. Eletronic writing seems in some ways to be more like hieroglyphics than it is like pure alphabetic writing" (37). When thinking about this statement, I again considered one of the ideas that interested me most in Bolter's visual rhetoric chapter, that visual rhetoric exists as an attempt to get closer to the "natural sign" that will collapse the space between signifier and signified. So, is hypertext only natural, and does it have the power to include those systems of language (and, consequently, their users) that have been fundamentally excluded since, as Bolter reminds me, the model of the Greek alphabet came to power and began to "drain the pictorial meaning of the written sign?" (36)
The politics of this subject fascinates me, even if I feel a bit skeptical. A fundamental mistake in conceiving of technology, we in the academy remind ourselves time and time again, is that it will be a great equalizing force. We can't afford to allow ourselves to believe that differences don't exist online, but Bolter seems to assert that the associative nature of hypertext writing undermines the relatively strict systems of linearity that have been imposed on composition (and thought) since writing began. Cultures whose systems of communication have historically depended on pictorial writing became more and more marginalized with the advent of alphabetic writing. Could hypertext re-empower them? Bolter almost seems to say as much. I'm not so sure.
I don't know. Since composing with a computer still depends on an alphabetic keyboard, no matter what language system you're using. I'm thinking of my previous post where I mention that electronic composition in Mandarin (a pictorial-based writing system) is done by typing pinyin, at least on most personal computers. Even if one was to create a hypertextual composition using pictorial writing, one would still have to compose using this alphabetic keyboard and, probably, alphabetic software.
Although I agree with Bolter that hypertext really does change the way we read and write, I remain doubtful that it is as inclusive as Bolter seems to imply.
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| Week 9: Writing With(out) a Net |
[November 07, 2006 @ 10:31pm] |
Slowly catching up...
Why No Love for the C-Dub?
I was looking at ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) erin_728's entry for week 9 to get some inspiration. I do want to talk about distance learning when it applies to creative writing, specifically low-residency MFA programs, which are on the rise. I tried to bring it up in class during week 9 but didn't feel as though people were interested. Oh well, I guess part of the reason for that is that I'm the only one currently in an MFA program...
Why are low-res MFAs on the rise? Maybe because they can charge tuition but don't necessarily have to give any kind of assistantship. Another reason seems to be that working people want to get an MFA but don't want to give up their jobs, the same reason lots of people choose distance learning. But the MFA is different in some ways. Because the MFA is a terminal degree, it seems that some people want it so they can teach. But there are lots of people getting MFAs in low-res programs that have no intention of going into the academy--they just want instruction from academy-trained writers. Being a grad student in CW online means that you can dodge a lot of pedagogical and administrative work and take yourself in a large part out of the materiality of the academic environment. I know that academic spaces persist online. However, that you as a student are not a laboring body for the academy puts you in a unique position of choosing how deep into the academy you want to go. Can online spaces such as these change the way MFA programs work? Can they change who gets preferential treatment in these academic spaces? Can they change the way the term "academic writer" is defined?
The Academy Is a Battlefield, Baby
All writers in MFA programs are ostensibly academic writers, but not all are "career academics." I think that it is probably apparent who is a career academic in one of these low-res programs versus who is a "civilian" (my term for someone in a non-academic career field). There are clues in speech, dress, mannerisms, attitude...and use of technology, maybe (how would a civilian use academy technology in an academic space? interesting question, to me at least). It seems to me that there might be some amount of prejudice from academics toward civilians in the F2F discussions, workshops and such that might take place during those "residency" times in the program. We academics are a snotty lot (I include myself as a snot, of course).
Erin listed this quote from the "Virtual Peer Review" reading: "In using the word 'filter,' Lea and Spears remind us that social cues are not eliminated in virtual environments (as critics might argue) but that they are reduced" (43). I was thinking that the online environments of low-res MFA programs might be places where less discrimination takes place...but I know better than that, now. Certainly there's a lot of racism/sexism/homophobia in our MFA programs to some degree: You, woman, must write the woman/feminist poem. You, Asian, must write the "being Asian" poem. You, gay, must write the "being gay" poem. But could a low-res program be one of the safer havens for women and minorities if social cues are reduced? I guess that, by saying such a thing, I'm assuming that reduced social cues necessarily mean mitigated discrimination...
If the above quote applies to civilians versus academics, does academic on civilian discrimination (and vice versa, I suppose) exist in distance education? I would really like to know. Is there some kind of study on this? Is this all in my head? I'd love to talk to some non-academy writers like Lola Haskins (my new hero), and "civilian" low-res MFA students about this.
Can you tell I'm very ambivalent about continuing in the academy? Geez....what's with all this anger? :)
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| Week Eight: The Cyborg History Strikes Back |
[November 06, 2006 @ 8:42pm] |
I was looking over Inman's Chapter 3 again, and one thing that struck me was his mentioning of the different ways of reading text on-screen rather than on the paper page. He mentions traditional Korean script, which is read vertically from right to left. I believe this is similar to reading Mandarin Chinese. Different writing systems pose different challenges for composition in the digital environment. This catapulted me into thinking about my Taiwanese friend, Cindy, and my trips to Asia. What would her technology narrative be like, and what might mine be like if I go back to Taiwan?
Cindy became my roommate in fall of 1999 when she was an exchange student to Saint Vincent College from Fu Jen Catholic University in Taipei. It was not her first time in the United States or any English-speaking country, for that matter; she had lived for a year in Arizona and for two years in New Zealand. She spoke fluent English with a moderate accent. Her college program of study was English.
One of the classes she took at SVC was publication production, which she told me she disliked greatly. As I reflect on why she might have disliked it, I wonder if it wasn't because she felt culturally alienated from that kind of multi-modal composing when it took place in another country, in another language setting, on another kind of keyboard. Maybe that wasn't the case, but her background certainly must have affected the way she came to technology and the way she used it in the US, in New Zealand, and in Taiwan.
When I went to Taiwan in 2000 to visit Cindy and tour the island, I wasn't sure what to expect from a "Chinese keyboard." Because Mandarin is made up of 5,000 to 40,000 characters representing words rather than an alphabet of 26 letters, I half-wondered if the keyboard would have 5,000 buttons (I found out later that early Chinese computers had thousands of buttons). When I saw Cindy's computer, it looked almost exactly like an English keyboard, but with many more symbols on the buttons. Most Chinese-writing individuals use an input method editor. If you type out your word in pinyin (the way that Chinese characters are transliterated into English) it appears on the screen in Mandarin characters. But there's quite a bit of modification that has to happen to get it there. Also, keyboards vary from country to country (a Hong Kong keyboard is different from a Taiwanese keyboard) and the various transliteration systems produce...well, variations.
It's amazing to me how even technoliteracy in Mandarin is dependent on literacy in English. I felt strangely ashamed of myself when looking at that keyboard. Those early Chinese computers with thousands of buttons...does technology privilege an alphabet? It seems to now, but maybe when voice-recognition software becomes more sophisticated things will be different. Or maybe not...technology is risky. Right now it can go either way: it can reinscribe opressive attitudes and assumptions, or help liberate.
If I return to Taiwan to teach English, as I'm considering doing right now, how will my own technology narrative change? Will I remain isolated from the technology narratives of the native Taiwanese, or will I join them? Many foreigners in Taiwan live in so-called "foreign ghettoes" and have little to no contact with the Taiwanese people. I don't want to inhabit a "technology ghetto," using only US-based English and Anglophone technology and websites, but I fear I might end up doing so. When so many people are willing to step outside their native tongue and speak English to you just because you're white, it's both incredibly necessary and incredibly hard to leave your comfort zone.
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| Week Seven: Girl in a Box |
[October 09, 2006 @ 12:09am] |
Curator's Notes
Whee! My Sunday-night blog bender continues with a free-form entry inspired by the box-logic article. I collect some thoughts and images on teaching, writing and technology--some old, some new--and make my own collection.
The Grand Exhibit
 | Discussion is my biggest problem as a teacher--I talk the way I think, which is a mess, and I can't stand silence so I ask question after muddled question, confusing my students. And I never can take the right notes on a passage. | | | | | July, 2006
This means that, on the shortest of notices, I have to take over teaching the class myself for the rest of the session, without a real TA, without much preparation, and certainly without much confidence. During closing ceremonies, I have to conference with all of the parents by myself. I have to do all of the paper grading and lesson prep on my own. Thankfully, I don't have to write evaluations, but I'm being encouraged to add to them as they are sent to me. I thought he was going to go over the last week of lessons with me before he left, but he just told me to basically do whatever I want, and that the last week should be cruise control. He seemed to have an almost frighteningly casual faith in me. I didn't have the heart to tell him how scared I was and how much I wanted him to at least go over the days with me.
How do I feel about all of this? I'm worried about my now-absent instructor. I'm dreading having to essentially to pick up and start over. I'm anxious about my ability to teach material I haven't chosen. I'm really, really fucking scared. |  | It's those moments when I connect to my students--when I remember a student who was so excited about an assignment, or a student telling me that our conference made her realize what she wanted to do with her life--that make all the mistakes worth it. | | | | | There was a poetry reading on a plane. Actually, on two planes that were connected together at the door, and you had to leap across a little patch of sky--just large enough to scare--to get from plane to plane. Megan and Wancz were there, and somehow were married. Megan was very agitated, and I kept following her around like I always do. After the plane landed, I got off at the bridge and followed a little girl with bound feet as she tried to scale a snowy embankment after her mother. The border guards chased me back into the high school, where the administration revealed to me that I had somehow forgotten about my senior year history class and therefore, had never graduated. I screamed that I had a master's degree (something I'm a little too proud of in life) and that they couldn't keep me there. And I wailed all day in the dessicated gifted office, scraping plaster from the walls underneath my nails. | Can you say that you really love something if your understanding of it is essentially retarded? I guess the primary question of my essay is this: does the quality of your love for something have any relationship to the quality your understanding of it? | | | I resolve to have a less destructive relationship with my writing. | | | I seem to have forgotten what sixteen-year-olds look like; when I was sixteen, the other sixteen-year-olds seemed much, much older and much cooler than me. These kids are kids. They are skinny and short and have creaky voices; they wear strange combinatons of clothing, use neon Sharpie markers to highlight their hair, and make wallets out of duct tape. They play hot hands and frisbee and goof around during breaks. Breathe: they're not intimidating. Knock on wood, so far they're cooperative, extremely articulate, and generally well-focused. I have barely had to correct them at all; during last night's study hall they were as quiet as the dead. I feel less exhausted than I did with the 12 and 13 year olds because I haven't had to shush and yell at them nearly as much. I feel that I might enjoy this summer more than previous ones for this reason alone. | I got rejected from Poetry today, after all that hoopla about me being considered, after sending more work via email, and all that waiting.
On the bright side, I did get a very, very nice personal note from Christian Wiman today, praising my work, which he indicated made it to the final round of cuts. He also asked me to send again in a few months.
I was rather childishly puffing my chest out on this for a while. They really had me going.
Time to go back to nobody-land. | | I was going through my old blogs and noticed that I had set a goal for myself: to have five poems published by the time I'm thirty. I guess I need a new goal now.
Often times when I try to make myself fail, the universe seems to make it so I can't. It's like someone poking me furiously in the back, daring me try to fuck myself over again. Well, I will keep doing it. Sorry. | | | | | The kids are just amazing--their exercises are some of the best I've seen from CTY students. I ran a couple of activities with them this week that seemed to go over well enough. My biggest concern, always, is with my ability to lead discussion well, and interpret the material just enough to lead them to their own conclusions.
| | | Tonight's tasks: Acquire godlike knowledge of the kids' assigned readings. Prepare innovative, challenging and fun lessons for tomorrow. Come up with 5 paper prompts on a central theme. Start grading the last round of essays. | | Oh the wheel is turning spinning round and round
And the house is crubling but the stairways stand
With no guilt and no shame, no sorrow or blame
Whatever it is, we are all the same
Making it up in our secret world
--Peter Gabriel | The question is what, in fact, am I made of? Limp pasta? Brittle leaves that powder when the least pressure is applied? Or am I made, even in the smallest capacity, out of metal? | | |  | I was sitting in traffic the other day, looking at some sparrows on the roadside grass as they foraged happily for food. Doesn't what I do break down to the same thing? Then why I am so miserable, hateful and jealous? Why do I care about trying to be better than everyone else when there's no way to win the race?
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| Week Six: Chewing the Scenery |
[October 08, 2006 @ 11:08pm] |
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Personal note: I keep getting later and later on these blog entries. I guess that I'm in a state of paralyzed panic, because I just realized that the conference I thought I was presenting at in two weeks is actually this coming weekend. If I can get these blog entries caught up, I might feel almost normal...until tomorrow.
You Are Where You Teach?
Trying to find some inspiration for this entry, I went back and checked out the dialogue on the discussion board. It seems that, when setting up an ideal computer classroom, each instructor prefers something different. However, there are some common trends: de-centering the instructor's authority, improving the physical atmosphere of the learning space, allowing for movement and flexibility on the part of the instructor and the students. There's a bit of a continuum here, though--some teachers still preferred the a modified version of the traditional proscenium setup, while others wanted a completely free-form classroom with laptops on carts and such. My own ideal was for something on the moderate side: a large perimeter classroom with a computer-free discussion space in the middle. As I mentioned in my last post, I believe that technology tends to make visible that which is hidden or unresolved. So, I have to wonder, what does my choice of computer classroom setup reveal about me as a teacher? I don't mean just the obvious things. I wonder what my choice says about my internal conflicts both in pedagogy and in the use of technology generally.
On the Couch with the Pedagogy Psychologist
My ideal classroom is characterized by the rigidly-defined computer and no-computer spaces. Who am I that I would choose such a setup? Am I really so inflexible that I wouldn't allow students to use computers wherever they are comfortable? Would I allow them to bring laptops? I don't know. What I do know is that I am a person who responds extremely well to structured environments, and I always have been. Because of this characteristic, I often felt like an outcast among my fellow teaching assistants, who constantly complained about the lack of "freedom" any given curriculum allowed them. It's not in vogue to say that you prefer to play by someone else's rules, even if you are just starting out in your endeavor. It's not the American way to be a follower, as those TD Waterhouse commercials keep telling me. Does this speak to my timidity, my lack of confidence, my lack of a solid, internally-defined self? My tendency to relinquish control of my classroom to unruly students and undercut my own authority, often to the detriment of the class? Does this speak of a gross lack of ambition or ingenuity? Okay, maybe I'm going too far with this. But it seems that choosing a free-form classroom means the instructor can effortlessly mediate and calibrate the space between herself and her students (I've noticed this with Erin's teaching style). It's not that easy for me, so I rely on structured spaces to help me.
And what about defining a space where computers are not allowed? I certainly extend a general embrace computers and have had lots of "lab days" in the various classes I've taught over the years. But I realize now that, even though the opportunity was presented to me more than once, I've never deliberately chosen to integrate computers fully into my course, that is, I've never asked for my class to be scheduled exclusively in a computer classroom. What does this say? One thing I know: I get distracted by computers. It takes me forever to get my work done when I have internet access. I've even gone so far as to ask my boyfriend to hide my wireless adaptor so that I won't be tempted to surf. I don't want my students to fall victim to the same kind of distraction--the internet is a kind of soft addiction that I'm trying to manage. But, of course, I'm assuming that my students will automatically become distracted by the computer the way that I do. Am I imposing a kind of "computer methadone" by restricting my students' access in this way? Do I assume they can't control themselves at all, or do I assume that another heavily structured space--the face-to-face discussion table--is the answer to the scariness of a computer-dominated space that I can't control?
Well, everything I've said up to this point has been negative. What are the positive things about my teaching that this choice represents? I do like to decenter myself as an instructor and return the classroom to a student-centered space when I can. I love full-circle discussions, as do my students, and I want to have a space where full attention to discussion is possible, without computer screens flashing in our eyes. I enjoy having my students work independently, and I like being a one-on-one kind of teacher. I think that conferencing is one of my strengths, and having a space where I could sit with a student who is focused on her writing--in the perimeter setup of a computer lab--would help enhance that strength.
Now back to worrying about my conference paper...
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| Week Five: Blog, Blog Me Do... |
[September 22, 2006 @ 9:34pm] |
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...you know I blog you.
How many more inane subheadings can I come up with?
I guess that's a relevant question considering this week's readings, particularly the Colby et al online text. I was very much drawn in to Justin Felix's podcast, and his question "what does all this say about ethos?" His three talking points were very thought provoking, and I want to respond to each with some musings of my own...
"Ethos becomes all the more important in less defined writing spaces such as blogs."
At one time, I had multiple blogs, each with an identical purpose--to be a personal diary to record thoughts and feelings. However, I saw my ethos changing for each blog as I began to define what I wanted each space to represent. This had a lot to do with me becoming more aware of the different audiences I was likely to reach with each blog. My ethos changed over time depending on how I wanted to show myself and what discoveries I had made (some were surprising) about who was reading. So I suppose my ethos for each blog was almost a collaborative project. I think tracking people with multiple blogs is an interesting place to witness the formation of different identities online, and demonstrating the theory of a fragmented self in online spaces. I think it would be a good model for students who are otherwise resistant to such an idea (it definitely happened in my 112 class!). When I reflect on this "scholarly" blog and compare it to my other blogs, past and present (two personal journals on Blogger, a blog on MySpace, and my current personal LiveJournal blog), I find that this blog is the only one with those "inane subheadings" that I mentioned above. Why? Because I'm still trying to work out the particularities of the ethos I'm building here. Who do I want to be in this space? What kind of ethos am I responsible for? Who are my audiences? It's difficult to say. I invited my 728 classmates and Dr. Blair to my blog, but I have a personal friend who decided to subscribe. I also have my Podshow audience, since I use this blog as the podcast's homepage. Gulp! I forgot about them. I guess I want to portray myself as a smart, hip scholary with a penchant for irony. I want to be professional, but still fun, approachable, and creative. I think, in this blog, I'm trying to show an idealized version of myself as a graduate student. Does anyone else feel this way? Anyway, to Felix's first assertion, my fragmented ethos intones "I agree sincerely," "Yep," and "Hells yeah, holmes!"
"Blogs are spaces of play only if framed as such."
This idea of the serio-ludic or the "serious play" is interesting to me, and I suspect that graduate students would try to keep their "frames" (once they are defined as such) as sturdy as possible because, duh, we need to do what our teachers tell us or we won't do well in our classes and we won't get jobs. But what about taking a blog into an undergraduate classroom? Are the "frames" comparable? Even if I, as an instructor, set out a blogging assignment with a "serious" framework, I would bet that I would get some "play" responses, if only for the reason that undergrads don't always follow directions (grad students too, to be fair [we're just better at covering our tails]). And who am I to say how sturdy or permeable a frame is allowed to be? What would be my pedagogical motivations for making it as such? I wouldn't want a student to feel limited if he or she works best in a looser, less-structured environment. But what about those students (and there are many, myself among them!) who respond well to structure?
(Am I making any sense? This is making my head spin and it's 11:45 on a Friday night, and I've made 4 trips to the Detroit airport in the last 36 hours.)
"As public intellectuals, now that we are writing in a public space, don't we have a responsibility to portray education as a serious endeavor?"
That's a darn good question, Justin. Does the public space of the blog transform us bloggers into de facto employees of the Ivory Tower PR department? I think this question forces us to confront a larger, and somewhat more uncomfortable subject--how do we define "proper academic conduct"? What might the parameters be? Don't go on dates with students? Don't steal other people's work? Don't shave your head and dye the stubble bright blue hours before you have to make a plea for funding to a bunch of registered-Republican administrators? And who defines these things anyway? What roles to graduate students have in shaping the narrative of "academic conduct"? My motivations for my own conduct are multi-faceted: I am happy with my program and I want to potray it in a positive way for potential students and other interested parties. I also want to show myself as a level-headed, thoughtful, motivated individual, and someone who can mediate conflict and recognize and respect an established heirarchy--in other words, someone is suited for a career in the academy. And yet, I also want to be percieved as an agent of change, a revolutionary, a likeable smart-ass. How much of any of this is reality is anybody's guess.
My #1 Insight
Technology, in composition and rhetoric, neither wholly solves problems nor wholly exacerbates them. I think that a major characteristic of technology is its tendency to highlight the unresolved or hidden issues in every context it's applied to.
Yes.
And that's the smartest thing I'm going to say tonight.
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| Week Four (a day late): Historia Technologica |
[September 14, 2006 @ 2:50pm] |
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Break on Through
A general comment on the Hawisher et al text: while it appears the authors have taken great pains to be inclusive with the structure of the book, i.e. including interviews and adding sidebars along each page to bring in other voices, I find there’s a very important voice being silenced—mine! With all the text crowding in the margins, the physical layout of the book makes it very difficult for me to add my own reading notes. As a result, I don’t feel encouraged to write much of my own commentary. As I read, I also found myself skipping a lot of the “margin narratives,” because it was just too much for me to take those and the “central” narrative in at once. Nice try gals and guys, but it was a bit of a mess for this reader.
OurStory/TheirStory
After reading the Hawisher and Inman texts, I was struck by how much I learned about the history of composition in general, and not just of computers and composition. Of course, this feeling is probably unique to me because I keep identifying myself as “not (yet) a rhet/comp person.” For example, I didn’t realize that the paradigm shift from current-traditional, product-emphasis pedagogy to process emphasis pedagogy was so late—1979 to 1982 is what Hawisher records in the book. I guess I was under the impression that this emphasis began in the late 60’s, early 70’s, to follow the civil rights movement and the general progressive trends of the 60’s (process seems to equate to progress, for me). Because the process paradigm is still so well-established today, and because it seems to have been in place since I began writing, I can’t imagine a world without it. I guess I am a “process native,” similar to those “technology natives” that Dr. Blair mentioned in a reply to my last post.
Anyway, when I consider the cultural narratives surrounding technology use, the first thing that comes to mind is the relationship between class and access. If you couldn’t afford to purchase the growing technology, you simply were shut out from using it, and completely out of the dialogue surrounding the development and use of technology, from education to work to play. Similarly, if your community was not privileged enough to have access to technology—say, you didn’t have up-to-date or even working computers at your local library or in your school—you were shut out. One personal class/access narrative: I recall the “Soup Labels for Computers” campaign that was pushed on all the students at my (mostly white) Catholic elementary school. Though we were a private school, our student body was composed of children from middle to low-middle class families, and we couldn’t afford to allocate much money to “luxuries” such as computers seemed to be back then. I remember my mother saving every soup label from every can of Campbell’s soup we purchased between the years of 1985-2000 (and scolding me when I forgot to save the labels) so that all the parents working together could buy a few Apple computers for our school.
Perhaps for some of us the “class gap” has narrowed in recent years, as technologies become less expensive and computers in the classroom are recognized as necessities, not luxuries, and thus more public funding goes to bringing up-to-date technology to more schools. However, that doesn’t mean that the gap has narrowed for everyone. As narratives of race are often connected to narratives of class, I suspect that people of color have experienced little change in their public educational access to technology, simply because resources in their districts remain scarce compared to white districts (whose constituents have more income, better access to talented grant writers, more influence in federal, state and local governments, etc.).
I hope to read more about class and race narratives in technology.
Hey, Julie, Where’s Your Podcast?
Yeah, that. Good podcasting takes a lot of time and effort. My computer is not the newest, I’m running a PC (a Mac might be more helpful), I don’t have a stellar microphone, I’m still learning this stuff, and I’m in grad school—that means I’m poor and busy. So maybe the Study Hall will be a monthly podcast. Don’t worry, fans (all 3 of you)—just like the Highlander, there will be another.
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| Reading Response #2 - Cyborgs Anonymous |
[September 05, 2006 @ 10:47pm] |
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Hi. My name is Julie, and I am a cyborg.
What a strange realization. I thought that I would have to have to look like that Seven of Nine character from "Star Trek" to qualify as a cyborg. I think I've been a cyborg for quite a while, too. Much longer than I've had the faculty for realization. I probably became a cyborg when I first learned to use a computer when I was in third grade, playing “Oregon Trail” on Wednesday afternoons. Or maybe not—would I characterize that experience as the first instance of a “dynamic synergy of individuals, technologies, and the contexts they share” (Inman 14)? Maybe I became a true cyborg when I first started using AOL Instant Messenger as a 16-year-old. It was at that point that I feel I was more dynamically extending my "personhood" into technology. Wait—have I been a cyborg from birth? Was I a cyborg in utero, being worked over by the transducers of an ultrasound? I didn’t really have agency then, or (abortion debates aside) much of an identity. I’m not being cheeky; I just want to know if cyborg-hood has a well-defined initiation point, or if it stops and starts. Does it end? I get the sense it’s not static. Is it like a tide, with ebbs and flows? I guess I’ll have to check some of those scholars that Inman mentions, but I need to say that I was fascinated with Inman's example, of Stone's observing Steven Hawking. I find this definition of "cyborg" very real and very enigmatic.
It happens when you’re not looking
According to Inman, a cyborg era is has three simultaneously-occurring urgencies: to recognize and bring to the foreground the individuals working with technology; to treat the technology equitably and conceive of it accurately—as a fluid and flexible entity; and to consider context as imperative and vital, as a integral component and not simply as a backdrop. But, as the other readings for the week clearly show, all of these necessary requirements are being short-changed, not being met at all in schools, workplaces, and other communities across the United States and abroad. Technologies are labeled as “good” and “bad” all the time—I distinctly remember professors telling me that WordPerfect is the “wrong” kind of application (okay, so maybe this is a bit of a stretch). I think that, in Inman’s vision, a cyborg era is a very positive, even ideal time. Can some of us live happily in the cyborg era while some of us simultaneously exist outside its boundaries? As Inman says, “a cyborg era requires agency and activism.” However, some instructors seem to avoid critical pedagogy and the pedagogy of activism. How often do instructors consider, let alone implement, strategies to empower others via technology? I don’t think that Inman is wrong; certainly some of us dwell in the cyborg era (I like to think that many of us in the English department at BGSU do). I also agree that the multitude of un-interrogated labels applied to this “era” make me uneasy. But we don’t all dwell in the cyborg era; with parameters like the ones Inman mentions, we can’t simply assume its existence. It seems that we have to create the cyborg era consciously and bring it to others (was that his point all along? I feel dense).
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| Podcast is updated! |
[August 31, 2006 @ 9:42pm] |
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Study Hall with Plattitude has finally been updated!
Episode 2 features personal reflection on computer courses that focus on functional literacy only, a critique of a recent GeekBrief TV episode, and pondering over how the music industry is perceived.
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| Week One, Part Deux |
[August 30, 2006 @ 6:58pm] |
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My undergraduate institution, at the time I was a student there, was technology-bound. Right before I entered my freshman year, the school built a shiny new "tech" building with state-of-the-art computers, photo-manipulating software, programming software, etc. All the classrooms were "smart" classrooms with internet connections for students at each seat, digital projectors, and a "smart board" where anything written on a white board with a marker would appear in another window as text.
Even with all of this access, I still found that most teachers and students did not utilize it as fully as the school had envisioned. I never saw a student take their laptop to class and connect it to the port. Teachers used the projectors, but only for one sparse, rigid Power Point presentation after another. Students weren't allowed to even enter the digital photo workshop unless they had proof of an assignment and were accompanied by a faculty member or a member of the tech staff. So no students or staff used that room at all, and it ended up becoming a "playpen" for the tech staff (yes, that is an apt metaphor).
The effect of all of this was that I had to discover a lot of technology on my own, and outside of educational contexts. I made my first personal webpage when I started college, and started learning digital photo manipulation and html. But, this was only because I wanted to entertain myself and put out an online presence to others that was completely personal and outside the realm of school and education. If the school wanted to provide me with technology--which they did in the form of internet access and a laptop buying program--I was more likely to use it for recreation rather than education.
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| Reading Response #1: Autobiography of a Techie |
[August 30, 2006 @ 1:55am] |
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Idyllic Music Podcast |
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Caveat
I admit I feel a little apprehensive about this first post, and that has mainly to do with my status as a person who's not part of the rhet/comp department. I've read precious little scholarly discourse about rhet/comp. Furthermore, I'm not sure what degree of initiation into the rhet/comp discipline is assumed. I guess I'll do my best. :)
It’s Just a Megabyte
I was particularly interested in Selber's and Kitalong et al’s essays. I acutely sensed the need for the development of a critical technological literacy when teaching English 112 last semester. I chose the "Cyberspace and Identity" and unit to supplement multiple-source essay one. When teaching the essays in the unit, I found that my students were very resistant (or apathetic) when I asked them to think critically about technology and how it affects their lives. They were especially vocal in denouncing Sherry Turkle's argument that, when multi-tasking in particular cyberscapes, the self exists as a group of overlapping but separate fragments that can be cycled through. According to Turkle, "each of these activities takes place in a 'window,' and your identity on the computer is the sum of your distributed presence" (WARAC 277). My students were adamant that Turkle was “going way too far” and “reading way too much into” technology. This reaction, of course, revealed the “instrumental view” of technology that Selber mentions, where users of technology either accept or reject technology because “it is simply a neutral tool employed to understand experience and solve problems” (11).
Domo Arigato, Techno-Auto-Bio
One way I tried to approach this issue was by focusing, when facilitating full-group discussion, on the students’ personal experience with technology. I found that many of them used social-networking programs like Facebook and MySpace, and that a few of them even used blogs (the bloggers were slightly more reflective and critically-minded when discussing technology, most likely because of the reflective nature of blogging itself). This helped somewhat, but I was still met with considerable resistance and a disturbing degree of apathy. I suspect that assigning the technology autobiography before any of the reading in the chapter would have increased the effectiveness of the students’ discussions. Particular questions on Kitalong’s list, such as “whom do you identify as being most technologically ‘literate’ in your life?” and “do you think there are social consequences or potential impacts on your lifestyle that depend on your technological capabilities?” would perhaps get students moving toward a critical literacy as defined by Selber. If I were to assign the TA, I might add a few more specific questions about the technologies many of our students tend to use frequently (such as Facebook). As evidenced in Kitalong, technology is inextricably intertwined with economics. Since I also taught the “What’s Happening at the Mall?” unit in 112, I might ask students to write a combination technology autobiography/consumer autobiography (TACA!) to get them thinking about the socioeconomic consequences of consuming technology, and about being a consumer in general.
(I wrote way more than I was supposed to! I’m sorry.)
This Week’s Study Hall Podcast (COMING VERY SOON)
I do a little more personal reflection on computer courses that focus on functional literacy only, critique GeekBrief TV’s recent “How to be a podcaster” episode, and muse over critical perspectives on electronic music and the music industry. And I’ll play some music.
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| Baby's first podcast |
[August 25, 2006 @ 12:33pm] |
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Dave's Lounge - http://daveslounge.com |
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I thought I might post my very first podcast, made in late July, just for fun. I host my podcasts for free through Podshow.com, which explains the commercials at the beginning and end of each (sorry!).
The Sound
Sound quality is pretty crappy since I was using Pod Producer and Castblaster at the time. You'll notice that the gain on the spoken and music parts of the podcast is a wreck; again, my apologies. Also, this was recorded before I made a windscreen (from some foam insulation from my air conditioner) and pop filter (pantyhose and a wire hanger!) for my mini-mic.
Content
The content is mostly idle chatter and a loose breakdown of why I'm doing the podcast. I also talk about my love of downtempo, trip-hop and chillout music. I play a few songs that I like. Unfortunately, only one is podsafe. "Podsafe" means that the work is licensed specifically for use in podcasting, even though it may not be legally available for use in other media. I'll be switching to all-podsafe music from now on.
Miscellany
I've chosen "Plattitude" as my online handle and have used it since 2004 in most online venues. However, I won't demand that you call me "Plattitude" in real life. Unless you want to. :) My podcast is labeled as "explicit" just in case; I might play music that contains some cursing, or I might slip up myself.
How to Listen
As I mentioned above, my podcast is hosted at http://studyhall.podshow.com. You can got to the page, find the module that says "Lastest Episode" and click on "Episode 1." You'll see a number of icons that represent various audio players common on Macs and PCs; I prefer iTunes, but Windows Media Player, Winamp, and RealPlayer are available as well. The XML icon is meant to work with other varieties of podcatching software. You can also listen to the podcast through your browser by clicking "Play it" under the "Episode 1" module.
Thanks for listening. My first reading response will happen next week, accompanied by a podcast. The podcast will most likely contain additional musings on the week's readings, more music, and other (hopefully) intelligent commentary.
Playlist
1. Thievery Corporation, "Le Monde." The Mirror Conspiracy. - http://www.thieverycorporation.com/
2. Juana Molina, "Micael." Son. - http://www.juanamolina.com/
3. Lovespirals, "Love Survives." Free & Easy. - http://www.lovespirals.com/
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| Pop! |
[August 23, 2006 @ 8:36pm] |
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The first post! Look for more soon.
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