I'm loving those logos! Great way to visually represent personality and style.
For next week: In addition to reading Chapters 4 and 19 in the Handa collection, read "The Age of the Essay" by Paul Graham. (Disregard some poor editing in his piece--e.g., sown rather than sewn.) Particularly relevant is his section "Trying" and the paragraphs/sections that follow. Essay = "to try" in understanding your subject.
Generate topics for your multimodal essay and bring to class (via a jump drive) images, video, scraps that you may use to begin building that essay. We'll play with iMovie next Monday night, so you'll need access to those files in class.
Continue to keep in mind that we'll be reviewing and revising our literacy narratives around midterm, just 2-3 weeks from now. They, like us, are works in progress.
Finally, an interesting Frontline feature on "digital natives"--a term that came up this week. We'll watch and discuss next week.
Graham writes:
ReplyDeleteAnd yet this principle is built into the very structure of the things they teach you to write in high school. The topic sentence is your thesis, chosen in advance, the supporting paragraphs the blows you strike in the conflict, and the conclusion-- uh, what is the conclusion? I was never sure about that in high school. It seemed as if we were just supposed to restate what we said in the first paragraph, but in different enough words that no one could tell.
This is exactly what I think of when asked to write an essay, however, since being introduced to Graham's explanation of what an essay "should" be, I struggle to find my essay voice. Dr. Ingraham introduced us to Graham many years ago which is where my brain is located when asked to remember what makes up a real essay. Even Graham admits writing an essay is a process. We must begin with a question and figure it out as we go. This is certainly a 180 degree turn from what we were taught in high school and even undergrad. How do we break the chains of a strict and rigid writing structure to allow our minds to "meander"? Hmmm...just might be the start of an essay.
Maybe so? That cold be the start of an essay.
DeleteFinding an essay voice? Now that's interesting! I wonder if that essay voice is characterized by an inquisitive tone? Curious disposition? Dialogic and inviting/open to possibility? If so, it's very different from, say, argumentative or persuasive writing which can seem so pushy: "I have the answers/knowledge. You need to listen." Some of my colleagues on other campuses have compared this sort of rhetoric/discourse to violence because it involves moving the will of others. That type of rhetoric--viz. argumentative discourse--tends to turn me away. That is, I can't help but be skeptical of such persuasive discourse, even when I agree with or generally like the author.
I can't get past the "comb-over" because I always wonder the same thing. According to Graham, the comb-over was not an overnight phenomenon, but a gradual change. We see it drastically in real life but to the comb-over, he has changed his own paradigm of what looks good, perhaps over a 20 year period, just as our own ideas of what writing is and isn't.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I struggle with as a writer is retaining my own voice. In each class, our professors want us to write in a certain way, and they show us samples of "good writing" according to them, and critique our writing, trying to mold us to write in their style. But I like the way I write. I like to meander for a while, or ramble on topic, only to return to my original idea. You can see it's all related if you just give it a chance to return to the main stream of thought. How can I fully explore a topic if I'm not given ample space and time to ramble through all the minor tributaries of that main stream?
Hmm! Voice! Does writing for the web make you think differently about voice? Is it different than, say, writing those papers for your professors?
DeleteYes. Writing for the Web generally takes on an informal tone and voice more akin to conversation while academic writing is more serious and professional. After all, the audience reading a text on the Web won't want a stuffy, erudite explanation on why we need to use open source applications. That audience wants to imagine that we are having an online conversation--much like we're doing on this blog.
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