Describe your job as a writing instructor? Specifically, what skills do you feel your students should learn? Why? Does this mesh with Yancey's call? How or how not?
As a writing instructor at WSU, I have taught English 101, 402, and now 105. I work to help students understand the importance of audience, purpose, and context (s) for writing so that they may be able to survive any situation. I work on critical thinking, understanding genre, and documentation as well (just to name a few). I feel that my students should learn that writing is not something that happens in a vacuum, but that it is a type of communication that can appear in many forms.
I want students to learn the many different types of writing that is available to them; I also want them to think about how they would compose in these different environments. Yancey points out that most of what students know about online apparatuses is what they learn outside of the classroom. I seem to think that this is a good thing because when that medium is brought into the class, students are familiar and more eager to participate. Moreover, I think that using a medium like twitter could serve as an example of how writing in different venues can be empowering and just as important as any other form of communication. Yancey notes that technology has impacted how we see and understand literacy, "technology changes literacy: that's the kind of transformation we are seeing now with regard to writers." Yancey's idea speaks to a need for more classrooms to employ more mediums that students can readily identify. I think that this is where genre studies is most important. It may be helpful to analyze a music video, a restaurant menu, or even a business card to show students how writing can connect to many aspects of a career. I am not saying that teachers should completely redo their course calenders, but I do think that using "low technology" could provide new mediums for students to analyze.
My thoughts about being an instructor go along with Yancey's call, particularly when she states that, "writer's in the 21st century self-organize into what seem to be overlapping technologically driven circles, what we might call a series of newly imagined communities, communities that cross boarders of all kinds -- nation state, class, gender, ethnicity" (301). However, I do not think that this idea cannot happen overnight. We have to be realistic about what actually happens and what can transpire in the classroom.
I really like your engagement with Yancey here. You do a nice job summing up some of her key points and engaging with them. I also like that you quoted her (it helps serve as a nice reading journal for you come future projects).
ReplyDeleteI find myself thinking about this idea, "Yancey points out that most of what students know about online apparatuses is what they learn outside of the classroom. I seem to think that this is a good thing because when that medium is brought into the class, students are familiar and more eager to participate." What I'm wondering is whether or not I agree. I'm always torn with the "home discourses" argument (even when the "home" might be technological spaces such as Facebook and Twitter). Are they more eager to participate? Does making the class "cooler" and "more relevant" essentially trick them into learning? Or do we kill their private spaces by pulling them into the public space of the classroom? By doing so, do they and will they always create counter spaces within which they can continue to exist/compose w/out our watchful eye and careful criticism?
I don't know the answer to this...but, it intrigues me.
I guess maybe I'll leave you with this simple question: what are the reasons for bringing something like twitter into the classroom?
Thanks for your thoughts.
Thank you!
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about twitter in terms of how we have (and will) use it in this class. It can also be used to practice summary, conciseness, and even paraphrase. For some reason, I see twitter as more adaptable than Facebook in a classroom because there are so many different conversations that happen there that can be very separate from the personal. On Facebook, I think that most of the messages, updates, alerts all meld together, which does not create a nice distinction for students (and I would not like to see that on my Facebook page).
So, for me, twitter seems like a better choice for the classroom. Thinking about Yancey's piece, and even Wysocki's, I know that this idea of new media is a nice way of saying old method but new arena. But I'm thinking that twitter is a space that will allow for a degree of separation between school and personal life.