I used to hate the word "affordances"

Hi.

I just wrote a 12-page paper for Modernism. It wasn't that bad. But my brain--like all of yours--is also dying at a rapid pace. However, we will prevail.

As we always do.

I bring up Modernism because it allows me to view blogging for this class differently. (Although I do this hesitantly, because the last time I talked about Modernism only three people read the post.) We had to write responses in my Modernism class. If we wrote six two-page responses in 10 weeks, we received credit. It was just something that we had to do. Imagine how difficult it sometimes was to engage with material in our own field (sorry non-comp people for your struggles) and then imagine writing about stuff that will never have meaning in your research like The Waste Land. 

What I'm arguing is that we should [be forced to] engage with the material we read. Class discussion doesn't really cut it because this is what discussion is actually like:

Someone: blahblahblah what I think

Someone: *cuts them off* blahblah this is what I study and it's great

Someone: well I do this with my students and it's always been great

Someone: FOUCAULT

Someone: blahblah unrelated 12-minute ranting

Someone: name droppers be droppin'

Someone: I disagree *cries* 

Dr. Rouzie: let's talk about the article? thanks for coming. 

Obviously we all have fallen into any of those categories (including me, because I can do more than cry), and it does not always make for a productive class discussion. So I see the blog as a way for the students who cannot or choose not to speak in class to say something. And, unlike my Modernism responses that only the teacher [maybe] reads, it is a chance to hear response.

This is idyllic. At times I rolled my eyes before checking posts, dreading the engagement I'd have to muster in order to respond. BUT I also think I learned more from doing it. And to me, that's what suffering through school is about.

When I posted about Modernism meeting Theory and only Aaron responded, I thought I was an idiot. It was personal. And even though that post was not fascinating, I wanted you all to respond. Or to take the time to tell me I was an idiot so it wasn't simply paranoia. So when my last blog post received lots of attention (EGO BOOSTERRRRRRRRRRRR), it made the blogging experience a whole lot better.

I'm researching this need for approval as part of my final project. Henry Jenkins claims the participatory culture (which is all of us since we're practicing online socializing like blogging) needs to know contributions matter in the community. I argue (here, not in my final paper) that if we were able to truly engage and devote time to this blog, it wouldn't seem so terrible. We would feel like what we were saying mattered.

What you have said on this blog has mattered. Even if the responses were forced and your post didn't get read by all 15 people in the class, someone read your thoughts. What was the day earlier in the quarter when Dr. Rouzie mentioned that little bits of information stick with students and they are able to use them in new ways later on? That's how I view our contributions on this blog. Either we will remember or we can look back and remember. (Oh geez, I sound like a football coach giving an inspirational speech.)

I might not enjoy reading posts or commenting or writing my own, but it sure as hell was a lot better than writing something with a check mark and a plus sign that will never be thought about again.



P.S. I rarely saw classmates using video or images in their posts. Like this one, it is devoid of even links. (James, you were constant in video postage. Props to you.) It makes me wonder if the subject matter was different if we would use the affordances of a blog differently. I'm sure I could find a hilarious video of some punks acting out or reading The Waste Land. But Foucault? All I could find was a Ryan Gosling meme and an old debate on YouTube. What kinds of pictures are we supposed to include? Do you really want to see what I look like right now as I write this? Because I could include an emo-girl duck-lip picture. No? I rest my case.

P.S.S. I am SO GLAD none of us accidentally deleted each others' comments.

Some Final Thoughts

Well...it's about that time of the year. Synapses are sputtering. My world is mediated solely through Microsoft word and the 13.5" screen of my mac. My wife excuses the fact that I'm curled in fetal position in my dark office while visions of sugared Foucaults dance through my head. I should probably take a load of dirty coffee mugs down to the sink now...but I'll leave them around for a while, if only to remind me of all the good times we've had the last 76 consecutive hours.

In other words, I'm delirious and tired and ready to start reflecting. I believe (unless I heard this wrong) that this last period's post is supposed to be a reflection on the course blog generally, though I'm beginning to think I misinterpreted this since I only see a couple posts that would be classified this way (maybe they're still coming?). I'll stay the course regardless though.

As I started to say in my comment on Hillery's latest post, I'm torn with regard to the blog's potential in a course. As you can tell by my previous posts, what I like about the blog is the ability to bring in exterior electronic sources that you wouldn't normally be able to do during class discussion. It seems the most obvious advantage of having a blog component to a course. But Matthew's eloquent final post has me thinking about the potential of incorporating some running meta-commentaries alongside (or inside?) the blog discourse. I suppose that this is actually happening right now...as I'm bringing it up in the context of a "final reflective post"...but it would be interesting to have some function of technological self-reflexivity built into a course blog that is always turning back and referring to/analyzing itself as an instantiation of electronic discourse (a la Postman and Kubey). I think this might be most interesting in analyzing the social dynamics of the blog and how discourse is shaped (who is silenced, who is voiced, how is language impacted, etc.) via each contributor's unique notion of themselves as a writing subject within the space. This might also just be really annoying and get so self-conscious as to implode, but I think it would be an interesting experiment. It might also allow for a space in which classroom communication and discourse becomes the subject of discourse (and so wouldn't just mimic the structure and power dynamics established by personalities in the physical classroom). It could be a project that forces students to self-consciously play with dynamics that go largely unexplored in a classroom setting (electronic vs. embodied personalities, classroom power dynamics, silencing/censoring, etc.) What would such a blog look like? How would you make such a space completely "safe" (which I think it would have to be in order to succeed)?

Anyway...for the sake of consistency, my final blog video:

What All Of Your Students Are Really Thinking At The End Of The Quarter...

Sorry, came across this and couldn't not post. Real final post coming soon...

"This is the end, beautiful friend, the end"

For your listening enjoyment, whilst reading the following post:

As I think about reflecting on the course, and specifically on the blog, Jim Morrison’s voice continues to boom in my head. Why am I so happy to see this blog come to its close? Well, let me explain. First, I always felt so pressured to create original and interesting posts, which was somewhat difficult, since we discussed so much in class and there were so many of us posting and commenting. Once I’d figure it out, I’d spend hours composing the post (losing one along the way, which caused a mini-breakdown in the middle of an-already-too-stressful weekend) and then check daily, asking aloud to my girlfriend, Ginny, “I wonder if anyone commented on my blog post?!” Now it’s become a joke, something she says before she opens her laptop. (No lie: she just asked our cat, "Frosty, did anyone comment on your blog post?!"). The sad thing is I really was anxious to see who had commented and what feedback he/she had provided, but not many people did. There are still some posts with no comments! "What up with that?" I think there were so many posts, and we are all so busy reading a gazillion other things, that there wasn’t much time to fully and thoughtfully read and comment on many posts beyond the required amount. Second, in my opinion, blogs aren’t really that much of an advance in an attempt to be tech-savvy in a course. They are linear and somewhat rigid, and when they are driven by mandates, I find them less exciting. I know, I’m a horrible person/student for saying all of this, but honestly: I hate blogs and blogging.

I did, however, appreciate the pre-presentation blogs because they were helpful in grounding us not only in the reading for the day’s discussion, but the presenter’s approach to the discussion as well. Instead of the mandatory three blogging periods in which everyone posts, I think it would be beneficial to have two people responsible for posting each week (either two independent posts or one main post with one main response post), so everyone is engaged in the same conversation rather than scant comments here and there, spread thin across forty-some posts. I think that’s the main issue for me: I’d rather comment in order to become a part of a conversation that feels on-going and fluid, rather than posting on something that feels static and immobile. Does that make sense?

And what did I <<heart>> about the blogging experience? Well, for one, I realized how adept and intelligent my colleagues are. The level of quality, commitment, and critical thinking in each post was stellar, and I learned a lot about everyone’s individual academic interests from the outside source material each person brought to the table (or maybe screen is more appropriate). The videos, images, memes, and backgrounds were amusing and made this class blogging experience better than others in the past that merely used the boresville Blackboard version.

I’m curious. How many of you use blogs in your composition classrooms, and how well do they go over? If we ask students to blog without putting number/time restrictions on them, will they actually blog and respond? What if we had students create their own personal blog that was meant to converge the class and their life? How might that go over? I’m certainly not giving up on blogging - I think the genre could be more fruitful with some insight and creativity.

For Stupid Fun

And the Blog Post Oscars go to….

Best post: “Queering Pinterest: An Experiment in Disruption” by Matt Vetter

Best post soundtrack: “Reading ‘Hectic Zen’” by Jonathon Harris

Best quote: “Don’t be an iPad!” – Matt Vetter

Best title: “Anzaldua, Orgasms, and Pedagogy!” by Aaron Duncan

Best meme in a supporting role: “Hey Girl. I loved your blog post today” by Ashley Evans (featuring Ryan Gosling)

Best image in a supporting role: James Gee caricature by Matthew Nunes

Best video in a supporting role: Postman interview in “Post-Everything…” by James Miranda

Who do you vote for?

(Sorry there are no outside sources or super-erudite thoughts here. It's just me being researched-out.)

The Agent and the Frame: Paradigmatic Tensions, Authority, and the Blog of ENG 592A

Paradigmatic Tensions

Do you remember Byron Hawk's "Rhetoric and Network Culture"? He begins the work, drawing from Mark C. Taylor's The Moment of Complexity, by claiming that "the desire for simplicity has haunted rhetoric and composition for most of its history." He then positions two opposing paradigms in composition/pedagogy theory: expressivism which abandons systematized theories of writing and teaching altogether, and process (and postprocess)-oriented theories enacted by "rhetoricians of various stripes who have tried to produce simple systems that make writing teachable" (831). The unteachable/teachable binary Hawk draws here should help us perhaps more fully understand the tension between disconnected theory and pedagogical research, as it has been raised both by participants in our classroom discussions as well as in the literature we've been reading all term. The application of theory to pedagogy will always simplify, codify and reduce the complex act of writing. The desire for this application is practical, utilitarian and very desirable, but it can also limit our scholarship. 

Hawk's attention to this tension should also help us understand another major (and related) conflict which emerges in the study of rhetorical theories, and one that has come to light again and again in our readings, that between the autonomous writing agent and the frame, the actor and the activity system, the agent and the complex network or ecology. Process theories and pedagogies position writing as an autonomous act undertaken by an individual writer in  a series of progressive acts. If we come to know what these progressive acts are, we can teach writing? Write? The social-epistemic movement in composition theory, on the other hand, positions the writer and her writing as negotiating complex social interactions within a community. And while this social "turn" moves our theories away from the isolated writer, it also perpetuates  a model in which the writing subject is central. She is negotiating a complex social environment. Hawk's appropriation of Taylor's complexity theory, as well as scholarship we've read on ecology theories, moves us away from these subject-centric paradigms toward a view of writing which imagines the individual as one of many actors in a complex ecology. The tension that emerges between these two paradigms (subject-centric and what we might call system or network-centric) is here to stay because process is here to stay. Process is thoroughly entrenched in our teaching and our scholarship. It is a frame we cannot escape.

And perhaps we are forever married to process because is teachable. Does that assume that network-centric theories are "unteachable"? Can we build a pedagogical theory that contradicts itself and presents both paradigms and their tensions? I don't know. But I do know that we should not neglect the study of theoretical advances for the purpose of reconciling pedagogy and theory. Simply put, attending to the frame, attending to the complex system or ecology, yields deeper understandings of writing. 

Authority and the Blog

Focusing more on the ecology means focusing on the technologies and media in which we write. To this end, how does the blog, as a writing technology, as a genre, a medium, as an extension of the instantiation of the academic genre that is English 592a, function? What kinds of discourse does it allow and disallow? What kinds of identities (I'm talking about us) does it co-constitute with other agents in a complex ecology? I've been thinking all morning about Dr. Rouzie's request that, for our final post, we reflect on the social dynamics of the blog. How is the discourse produced in this "frame" different from that produced in our classroom discussions? Jonathon's recent recognition of his shifting positionalities in the classroom, in the seminar, etc, helps me to think about the blog as an active agent in the production of certain kinds of writing, and certain kinds of writers:

I find interesting the ways in which our conceptions of author/ity change when we’re in the classroom (as teachers) in the classroom (as students) and outside of the classroom (as writers). All of the writers on this blog probably have realized by now that I’m unbearably quiet in the seminar classroom but that I’m long-winded as a writer. Almost none of you know that I’m confident (if a little Ludacris) in the classroom (as a teacher).  ("I Don't Always")

In this course, and I'll refrain from generalizing beyond that, the blog has allowed a multi-vocal (heteroglossic) production of discourse which was disallowed to a certain extent in the classroom. (Part of this production is certainly influenced by the course requirements, but I'm not willing to give those requirements full agency here). As Jonathon admits above, he is a "long-winded" writer on the blog but more refrained in the classroom. My guess is that other participants in the class feel the same. My own realization is that I'm able to make more complex arguments and take more risks in this space than I would in the classroom. I can draft and compose my thoughts in more productive ways through this medium. 

In the classroom, I speak up too, but as I come to a richer understanding of how writing ecologies are central to the enactment of writing (and speaking), I become less convinced that I am enacting my discussion contributions and more convinced that I am merely inhabiting a classroom role (one with some authority) that is predetermined by the academic ecology of "seminar discussion." Here's an example that might help. Do you ever feel, when you attend the first meeting of a course, that you've just got to speak up and say something thoughtful or it will only become more difficult to be a person who speaks up and says something thoughtful in future class meetings? I often do and I think this is because I want to establish myself in a preexisting role or identity in the social dynamic early when those roles are somewhat more fluid than later in the course. 

The blog, as it exists in a space that is somewhat disconnected from these classroom dynamics, allows us to adopt more authoritative roles than we might in the classroom. This space acts as an intermediary between our academic and personal identities and, accordingly, also allows more self-disclosure. Both Dedy and Aaron used the term "confession" in moments of self-disclosure on the blog while others (including me) chose to write more openly about personal experiences. How is the technology of the blog acting on us to produce this kind of writing? Typical (historical) usages of this technology are somewhat personal. Furthermore, Barton writes about the blog as a technology capable of helping students develop and understand subjectivity. But perhaps most influential here is the blog's hypertextuality. It affords us authority and permission to self-disclose because we are able to make any amount of appropriations (links to other discourses). When Brianna wrote about her personal experience growing up in Pikeville, she used a photo form another town to help illustrate her writing. Just as we enact authority in the classroom by appropriating (and taking apart/discussing) texts that are assigned to us (and texts that are referred to in texts that are assigned to us), we enact authority in networked writing spaces through appropriation.  I think the important difference is that the network offers us such a wider array of possible (appropriate) appropriations in a wider array of modalities: memes, videos, sounds, hypertexts, et al. (In this post, I don't do anything hypertextual. What effect does that have?)

Ultimately, if we want to arrive at complex understandings of writing, we need to consider the technologies and mediums within writing ecologies as participating agents in the production of discourse. (The network is a writing agent. The blog is a writing agent.) My analysis above has been an attempt to make this consideration, and at the same time, an effort to think about how the blog is acting in this course. If we want to arrive at complex understandings of writing, we'll also have to be able to live with the contradictions between subject-centric and systems-centric theories of writing both in our pedagogy and research.   

Works Cited

• Hawk, Byron. "Rhetoric and Network Culture." JAC 24.4 (2004): 831-850. Print.
• Barton, Matthew D. "The Future of Rational-Critical Debate in Online Public Spheres." Computers & Composition 22.2 (2005): 177-190. Print. 

Now the Class Ends, Let's Begin the Journey

Now that Spring quarter 2012 has come to an end, I would like to use my last blog post required in this class as a means of reflecting on what I have learned from our class. If you ask me how much I have learned from this class, my simple answer is "not much". However, I also believe that the real answer is not that simple. There is a complexity in that simple answer. While I have to admit that there were a lot of things that I didn't understand from our discussions, I can also say that there are a lot a great lessons that I got from this class, and for that I have to thank my classmates and Dr. Al.

As a student of applied linguistics, my main interest is in L2 writing instruction with a connection in technology. Since my department does not have  many specialized courses in L2 writing, I decided that I should try to find some course that could support my academic goal. The first time I learned about Rhetorical Theory and Writing course, I thought "That, may be the course that I will need". When I received a copy of syllabus from Dr. Al, I kind of hesitated since there were so many things in the syllabus that I was not familiar with. But I does not hurt to try, eh?


The class proved to be difficult for me to keep up with. I encountered  a lot of new things that I had never thought about, things that I either had never heard/read about or had thought to be of no interest at all. So, this class really opened my eyes on many realities that  was not aware of. Also, I learned from the many perspectives that my classmates and professor offered, the perspectives that I had never used. It was so frustrating but at the same time enriching. The biggest lesson that I learned from this class was that I now realize that I was not really critical. There were a lot of things that I used to take for granted happened to be very interesting, important, as well as complex. So, I am really glad that being in this class has enabled me to think beyond the box, offered me with multiple perspectives on things. Perhaps, I have been too long  confined in my comfort zone that I forgot that there were multiple ways of seeing things.

OK, I think that's enough for my confession (I have to confess that I confessed too much). There are also several things that have caught my interests. One of them was from our last topic about multi-modality. Fraiberg's article has especially attracted me. His proposals of re-conceptualizing writers as knotworkers (107) and expanding definition of writing (118) were really enriching. As the 21st century is witnessing the development of technology, we are now being bombarded by the coming of innovations that change our life as well as how we view our life. Such a development always amazes me, seeing how our concept of literacy has changed drastically. While some applied linguists and language pedagogists still believe that  literacy are strongly associated with writing (for example Mickulecky (12), it is actually a far more complex concept. As for now, to be literate people are also required to be able to understand and use multimodal media, not only limited to written form, but also other stuff like picture, audio, video, etc. So, being a knotworker--i.e. 21st century writer--one should be able to combine these multiple forms to convey their meanings. So, I think this will imply the redefinition of writing classes, or should we call them knotworking class? Hmmm. Interesting. Indeed, with the coming of the newborn generation, those who are born surrounded with technology, widely known as digital natives, how will we teach  them writing? Or, do we even really need to teach them writing? Or should we instead learn from them about this multimodality in order to be able to enter into their discourse?

Indeed, this class and all of what we have discussed and what we haven't, give me more confusion than understanding. Oh, yes, before I forget. That Mark C. Taylor's "I am writing as much as I am being written" thing is also one of my recurring dreams as well, the thought that have been provoking my mind. I have to be thankful to what we did in our class. This confusion, I believe, will lead me to some understanding. So, just as the class ends, my journey begins.


Works Cited
Fraiberg, Steven. "Composition 2.0: Toward a Multilingual and Multimodal Framework." College Composition and Communication 62.1 (2010): 100-126. Print. 
 Mickulecky, Beatrice. Short Course in Teaching Reading.   2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, US: Pearson Education, 2011. Print.

Attempting Trenchant Thoughts

How do I even begin to try and pull together everything I have learned this quarter? I started this quarter as a composition theory noob, and I have come a long way in learning about the theories and bases that make up my field! Obviously, I still have a lot of work to do in understanding certain theories (ecology, complexity, disability, and queer theory, to name a few). I also have some great reading recommendations from others in the class (not that I’ll have time to read them anytime soon, but we can hope!).

First, I was so glad to dip into learning about Appalachia and its role in composition studies—it was a total epiphany moment, but also hard to put away my own biases. I’d love to take a class devoted to Appalachia and its scholars someday, since I could contribute to the community. If I hadn’t already decided on a direction for my Master’s essay, Appalachia had potential!

Speaking of my research interests, this class also helped narrow/define them. I think it would be awesome to keep working on my final project even after the class is done. I could be a “Twitter scholar”! More broadly, I’d like to continue researching Remix, Post-Everything, and how those theories contribute to my interests in pop culture, digital literacy, multimedia, and hypertext. I was surprised to learn about the journals KAIROS and Computers and Composition, since they are also very relevant. Someday I hope that my meta-knowledge of pop culture, music, movies, and television will come in handy. If I’m not mistaken, this is called Convergence Culture? For now, I’ll stick with researching social networking and the classroom. Only now, I have theory to back it up!

Other directions that I could expand on are the relation to music and composition (it clicked during our last discussion that “composition” is writing AND music, a “no duh” moment), teacher technology training, and the differences in preparedness from undergrads, to grad students, to instructors—that makes sense in my head, but it does not translate well to words.

In my undergraduate coursework, I took an “Introduction to Composition” course that, while valuable, only emphasized works up to the 80s. Reading research and theory that was published more currently made theory more relevant to me, which is wonderful because I struggle to comprehend some of this stuff (sorry for the non-academic term “stuff”). During our class discussions, I yearned to apply *everything* to pedagogy, which I understand wasn’t the entire aim of our class. I made a lot of notes about how to apply various aspects of our discussions to pedagogy—trust me, you don’t want to sift through those! I ended up having an internal dialogue with myself during class that focused on pedagogy, which is probably why I looked “spaced out” sometimes (to quote Office Space). A good way to sum up this course is to connect it to a movie like Inception; if I were to take this course again and again, I would probably learn something new every time.

*edit* I totally just edited this post three times to fix subject/verb agreement. This is how you know it's finals week.