Wysocki and Selfe

I liked Wysocki's essay and the way she described New Media. What she says seems to go with the idea that knowlege is socially constructed. She says that "writing, like all literate practices, only exists because it functions, circulates, shifts, and has varying value and weight within complexly articulated social, cultural, ...religious, ...ecological, political, artistic, ...and technological webs." (In the actual text she repeats "political" which i think is interesting, but beside the point.) This is something to think about when we see how the curriculum changes to integrate technology.

What really interested me, though, was Selfe's case study about David. His story is a really good illustration of the diversity of literacies, and how literacy is equated with intelligence. In our Education classes we have learned a bunch of stuff about the different kind of intelligences: mathematical, musical, linguistic, etc. But we haven't really discussed literacies as something that vary from person to person or even that there might be more than one kind to begin with. When instructing students who will all have different backgrounds and histories with writing, these multiple definitions of literacy are importnat to keep in mind. It can be easy to discourage someone who doesn't have a firm grasp on Standard English from pursuing writing. But, when we look at David's story, we can see that this could be a huge mistake.

I recently read an essay by Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club, in which she talks about how Asian-Americans are often encouraged to study mathematics and engineering, because they just don't seem to have as much of a grasp on the subtleties of the English langauge. Amy Tan herself was almost put into this category, stereotyped as good at math and bad at English. Fortunatley, she recognized her gift and kept on writing. Her writing style is simple, but there is depth in its simplicity. If she had listened to her professors and stopped writing, we would have missed out on the beautiful stories she tells.

Amy Tan's story doesn't quite have to do with technology, but it does show that literacy is something that changes from person to person. It seems that almost anyone can find their own way to play with language, if they are properly encouraged.

Williams and Geisler

Williams makes the statment that "literacy is in flux." He also refers to the "social construction of knowlege," saying that many people are unaware of or choose to ignore these facts. However, I think that any good teacher worth her salt should make it her business to realize just how much things have changed over time. Schools are not what they were two hundred years ago, when students were simply expected to regurgitate whatever information was handed to them. There are reasons for this and there are reasons why what it means to be literate is changing. With technology expanding and evolving so quickly, and being implemented in classrooms, "literacy" now means being able to navigate that technology. Literacy also refers to being able to read something other than print media. The technology usually includes all kinds of visuals that people are constantly bombarded with. Literacy means being able to find the meaning and the purpose behind those kinds of media too.

Geisler talks about the kind of writing that is done by students. She seems to place importance in the role of the teacher. It is the teacher who is usually the main audience of the student's writing. I thought some of the research discussed in this essay was interesting. It makes it seem like writing isn't as effective for learning as we might hope for it to be. Simply restating something we read is not enough.

Mutnick

The essay on basic writing was interesting in that it seemed to draw on all sorts of people. It seemed like a collection of opinions on basic writing pedagogy. I wasn't sure how to define "basic writing" based on the text. What they described sounded mainly like remedial writing. Basic things like grammar. It also seemed like, underlying the debate over whether or not to teach basic writing, there is a bigger social problem represented. The question arises of just who needs this "basic writing" course. Who are the "low achievers" who need this extra help, who don't understand the basic skills? Generally, it looks like it is the minorities who need help with Standard English. They are the ones who grew up speaking Spanish, AAVE, or some language other than the Standard English that they are expected to write in when they get to college. The way that they write can make it seem like they don't understand the material or that they cannot draw their own conclusions and then write about it. This is why they need to be taught the basic writing skills. I once knew someone whose first language was Indonesian. He had some good ideas in his papers, but he didn't quite get the proper English structure down. I sometimes think it's a shame that one kind of English is better than another. But, it probably is better to have some kind of standard that we all follow.

WAC

Writing across the curriculum.... Until I read this essay, I took it for granted that the way I was learning how to write was "the right way." In all my years of school, I never got any complaints from my English teachers (except about my handwriting, and my papers running short, and the occasional lack of direction, but i'm not counting those). Even in college, I found writing to still be pretty easy to do, and faced few roadblocks. And when I read this essay, I realized why. I'm an English major. All we do is write, and we all write a certain way. I've never had to write a lab report, or anything scienc-y. When I've had the option of choosing between APA and MLA citation format, I've gone with MLA almost every time, in spite of the fact that I hear APA is actually simpler. The one writing class I had a hard time with was English 324, a class in which we had to write reports on computers and media and internet stuff. I struggled to make my papers flow as well as they did in my fiction and literature classes. Even my argument class was easier, because I could put some passion into those papers. But the research papers were a huge obstacle for me. I struggled in that class, even though I'm usually good at "English."

Thinking about this essay in light of my experience helps me understand just how different one type of writing can be from another. McLeod pointed out the difference between writing for literature and writing for history. I'm not sure that it should be the first-year composition instructor's job to teach all of these forms. Maybe the thing to do is to have a writing unit in whatever subject area the student is studying. If there really are that many different kinds of writing, requiring different rhetorical strategies, then there is no way they can all be covered in one class. If the students are allowed to investigate writing in their own field, then it might be worth it. But then it would be up to the writing professor to grade all of those different writing styles, and if he doesn't know what the standards are, that makes it all the more difficult to give accurate feedback.

Feminist Pedagogy

The essay about feminist pedagogy reminded me of the essay we had to read that mentioned womens' versus men's writing processes. I think that the feminist perspective, like the cultural perspective, is something that the reader of any text needs to keep in mind. It is important to realize what the context of a piece of writing is. In terms of composition, it is interesting to see what forces influence our writing. For example, it took me a while to realize that my writing was extremly passive and unassertive and that I hardly ever took a firm stance on anything. This was partially because no one thought to point out to me that that was a problem. Not that "female writing" is necessarily problematic. Just for me, personally, I had to find a way to be more assertive in my writing. This eventually led to me learning how to come and say something outright instead of dancing around the subject-- and made my papers tend to run even shorter.

A lot of the time, I'm not sure what to think about feminism, and I'm not sure that drawing attention to the differences between males and females is necessarily all that, for lack of a better term, progressive. In fact, I thought it was interesting that Jarrat pointed out how having a male teacher teaching feminist literature sometimes makes it better, because the teacher cannot be accused of being biased. No matter what we do, I think the dichotomy between masculine and feminine is so engrained in us that we will continue to consciously as well as unconsciously label things that way. Just using the term "feminist pedagogy" implies that there is something "other" or opposite to be studied.

So, if feminist pedagogy is simply a call to include more women writers and influences in the curriculum, then I'm all for it. But if it's struggling to become its own branch of composition, or indicates a different attitude altogether, like the assertive writing style I was talking about earlier, then I don't know how I feel about that. Maybe I just don't like sterotyping "passive" as "feminine" and "asserive" as "masculine."

Ann George

Ann George's essay took me a while to get into and to make sense out of. It may have been the name-dropping. But once I did get into it, some things jumped out at me. I thought it was intersting how she talked about liberalism versus practicality. It's a nice idea, in theory, to let students have their own take on their assignments, or to make out of the curriculum what they will. But, in the end it should be up to the teacher to decide how they should do their assignments, because it is the teacher's job to prepare them for the real world. As much as college can seem like a bubble sometimes, it is in fact there to train students to go into jobs where they will be expected to follow certain rules. Because they still have the status of students, the want to rebel against the system. But they are slowly learning to be responsible adults, at the same time. Someone has to be in charge, and that person is the teacher. That's what she's there for. I thought it was interesting that she referred to this as a paradox. That having someone in control actually opens up the classroom to democracy.

collaborative pedagogy

When I hear "collaboration" I can't help think of group work. Two or more people physically occupying the same space and working together on a project. But, if some definitions of collaboration seem to imply plagarism, then my idea is probably a little off. After reading Howard's essay, I can't help but think of collaboration as a kind of collective of every person who has ever contributed to the field. In the end, as I've said in some of my other posts, I don't really believe that there's any such thing as a completley original idea. Historically, almost every person who came up with some brilliant breakthrough was helped along the way by others who completed the steps it took to get there. Isaac Newton discovered gravity as a force, but this wouldn't have made any practical sense for our universe until after we knew that the earth orbits the sun, and not the other way around. Knowlege is constantly building on itself, and although authorship and ownership is very important to us all right now, we can't deny that we've all had some help along the way.
Collaborative learning and collaborative discussion, in classrooms, seem like a good way to implement collaboration. I like the idea of working together to bounce ideas around and hearing what everyone else has to say on a subject. I have a problem with the collaborative writing, though. This may be because I immediately think of situations in which one student does all of the actual work, and everyone else takes the credit even though they didn't do anything. The way Howard described it, and the guidelines she had make it seem feasible, as long as the assignment is something that lends itself well to collaboration.