Reflecting on (digital) writing process

In class today you will get started on your last assignment for the course: a reflective analysis of how work for this course has influenced your writing practices. This will be a traditional print essay - to be turned in as a word processed document in your portfolio (on the CD) with your Web essay, the text for your wikipedia entry, and your reflection on your experience with wikipedia.

Description of assignment:
Write an essay in which you analyze and reflect on your growth as a digital writer.

Your essay should include:

1. A detailed description of your process for working on each of the major projects (the blog, the wikipedia project, and the web essay);

2. Evaluation of the effectiveness of your process (what worked, what didn't, how you plan to change and why)

3. Evaluation of the writing products you created for the course

4. Discussion of how (if) and why your practices for writing evolved or changed over the term; include reflections on how (if) changes in your writing process reflect the nature of the digital spaces and audiences you are writing for.

5. Discussion of what you learned about differences between writing in digital versus print spaces

6. Discussion of how (whether) your work for this course has contributed to your overall growth as a writer.

Although information to include in the essay is listed here as a series of points, you will need to organize your work into a smooth, interconnected discussion.

Criteria for grade:

-- focus, organization, effective use of analysis, movement between general statements & specific examples, creativity, style and correctness.

-- demonstration of original thinking

Baisic web pages and feedback on text

You did a great job setting up the basic frame for your web sites in class today. As far as I could tell - by the end of class - most of you had the overall structure of your site set up (a template + links). That is pretty impressive considering that for most of you this was your first experience using Front Page. As I pointed out in class, there are many ways to produce a web page - and the approach we took using tables was kind of "quick and dirty" in that it does not involve the kind of precision that other approaches have. At the same time it gave you a feel for how to use the program and that is worth something.



I will be reading the text for your essay over the weekend and will send you comments in your course account. Next week you will be giving presentations to your classmates on your sites. These presentations are going to be informal - and for the purpose of getting a feel for the visual impression of your site. Bring what you have so far on your jump drive, and you will put your work up on the LCD projector as you talk. You should come to class prepared to do the following.

1. Talk about why/how you chose your topic + state your research question.
2. Discuss your research process - where / how you got your information
3. Your writing process (how you put together your essay- for example - you might talk about whether/how you wrote your site in sections, how you used the wikipedia project, any places you got stuck, how useful the feedback from classmates was at various points in the process)
4. Give us a walk through of your site + sum up what you do at each link/section and how it connects to your research question. Make sure to offer a clear answer to your research question.
5. Describe any problems you encounterd
6. Discuss how creating this project was different from composing a "written" essay.

Your Draft for your project is due Wednesday, April 23 at the end of class (on a CD). I will return your drafts with comments by April 28.

You are doing a great job so far and I am looking forward to your presentations.

Monday April 14 - attention part 2

In class wednesday we did some reflecting on patterns for attention and opened up some of the generalizations Hayles put forward about differences between deep attention and hyperattention. From reading through your analyses of your patterns for working and "being" - it looks like most of us move from one pattern to another - depending on what we are doing.

On Monday we will go through a brief overview of what some of the more person/task specific patterns for attending are that were revealed in your surveys. You will also be reading the three research entries you have been working on for your blogs. At this point you should have most of your web essay mapped out and drafted. As you get your entries (Blogs 9, 10 & 11) ready for class on monday, make sure you give your readers an idea of where/how the section posted to your blog fits into your essay. Then - in class - you will be able to get some feedback for how to put your essay together.

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After reading through what you wrote in response to the questions about attending - I came up with the following generalizations. Because our class represents a small sample - these observations cannot really be extended to a broader population - still - they give us some things to think about.

Observations:
1. Everyone in the class moves between deep attention and hyperattention - though the reasons and activities that influence the choice of one style for attending rather than another vary from person to person.

2. More individuals preferred deep attention for school work - but not everyone.

3. More than one of uss use hyperattention as a reward for working at a task we do not want to undertake - as a way to get through work we really don't want to do. So "multitasking' or media can act as an incentive.

4. Generally, attending style seems to be "mood" and activity dependent.

5. Sometimes we may need an escape even from "relaxing" media.

6. Patterns of media use changed with age (not surprising - especially because the availability of media has changed so drastically).

Any observations that you think would be worth pursuing in more depth?

Analyzing your patterns for attention

Characterizing your style for attending

1. List the kinds of media you use/read/engage with on a daily basis. Is your pattern for interacting with media the same or different than it was when you were 5? 10? 15? Give short descriptions to explain.

2. Rank the relative amount of time you presently spend with each medium -- be as specific as you can

3. Describe any media associated with how you perform the following school related tasks:

do math or other calculation-based homework
read assignments
write a paper
study for an exam

4. Describe any media associated with how you do the following everyday tasks:

drive
eat a meal by yourself
eat with your family/friends
household chores (cooking, cleaning, household repairs, work on your car)

5. Describe what you do to relax or in your free time - and how you relax

(e.g. watching TV while looking at a magazine and texting a friend)

Analyzing your patterns for attention:

a. Patterns of attention for individual activities: look back over your list and rank the individual practices listed under 3 - 5 . Use a scale of 1 - 5 where 1 is deep attention (focused on one task - creating an environment with no distractions) and 5 is hyperattention (focused on multiple channels for input - creating an environment with many distracting features). These numbers reflect your preferences for attending for individual activities.

b. Patterns of attending within activity clusters: After you have ranked all the activities you listed, give yourself a score for school activities, living/household activities + relaxation activities by averaging the numbers in each category (for example if you have 3 for math assignments, 4 for reading assignments, 2 for writing papers, and 5 for studying for exams, then your school number would be: 3+4+2+5= 14/4 categories = 3.5 (a little more on the hyperattention side than the deep attention side)

c. Overall pattern for attention. Average all the rating numbers to get your overall pattern for attending.

6 Questions to think about.

a. In which category were you most likely to use hyperattention? in which category were you most likely to use deep attention? Or do you seem to have a consistent style (all hyper or deep attention)? How would you explain this?

b. In which category was there the largest range of numbers ( for example, some activities rated 1, some rated 5). Can you explain why the range might be large for this category?

c. In which category did you have the most consistent style? Why do you think this is so?

7. How would you characterize yourself in terms of patterns for attending? Do these numbers reflect how you would characterize yourself (in terms of attention)? What correlations or inconsistencies do you see between your feeling about how you think and these numbers? Can you explain them?

Attention

So now that you have figured out what we need to do to regulate bullying on the internet, it's time to turn our attention to how the internet is changing the way we read and pay attention (the N. Katherine Hayles piece posted here). As you read, think about how immediacy, remediation, the and how we use digital spaces connect to the patterns for attention described by Hayles.

Since Ryan was sick on Wednesday and the web site workshop did not turn out the way we planned, as suggested by Ricky, we will be having a second workshop on April 16, a week from this coming Wednesday. Keep working on the writing and images for your site so that after you build the structure for your site - you can paste in your work. If you would like to schedule a session with Ryan before the 16th I have included directions for signing up for a conference. He is available M-W, from 10:00 to 3:30.

Conferences will be held in the Center for Academic Success, on the first floor in the tutoring center. Go in through the door just to the right of the desk outside the tutoring center. Ryan will be working in the space at the very back, right corner.

To sign up for conferences on Tutortrac, go to:

http://www.kean.edu/~cas/tutortrac.html

Click the Tutortrac image to enter

Then enter your school id as the user name and your birthday as the password (they show the format right there for the pass)

Select Ryan as your tutor. If that doesn't work - let me know.

See you on Wednesday.

Cyberbullying - what do laws have to do with it?

No one argues that it was a tragedy that Megan Meier committed suicide. The argument is about who is responsible and what can be done to prevent or discourage similar instances in the future; specifically: what kind of laws, if any, should we make to protect individuals from cyberbullying and its consequences.

In a CNN report by Veronica De La Cruz, De La Cruz points out that currently there are not laws (at the federal level or in most states) that protect individuals from "cyber-stalking." The Missouri statute relevant to this case requires that online communications were intended to "frighten, disturb or harass" the individual. The Drews maintain that the purpose of "Josh's" myspace account was to see if Megan was saying negative things about their daughter, not to harass Megan. So the question is: will a stronger, more specific law improve protection for individuals who experience cyberbullying? Who would these new laws be designed to protect - and why? For example, if we believe the Drews statement abou the purpose of the site, it seems that the Drews, but not Megan, have been the subject of cyberbullying.

And then there are the problems of identity. Who is responsible and how can you tell whether the "name" of the responsible person corresponds to the "real" person? With respect to the Megan Meier case, how can we prove who posted comments that could be interpreted as harassment? Or - with respect to the Megan Had It Coming blog (filled with statements that could damage Drews' case) - it seems that it should be a simple matter to identify the blog's owner - but as it turns out - it is far from simple.

So our questions are: how should issues surrounding cyberbullying be resolved? And can an understanding of the nature of cyberspace help us in framing of laws designed to resolve these issues?