Final, the final attempt to turn it in!

Alright, Doug! Here's my final attempt to turn in my final! I sent you another file and added a google doc of it, and now I'm blogging it just to be safe!

          1.        

            Oh god. I feel like you’re asking so much here Doug! But I’m going to give it my best shot!

I think multimodal composing has changed a lot of the way I think about writing and my writing process. I find that since doing this class and these assignments, in my other classes I am so much more inclined to look toward other modalities to help me make whatever point I am arguing. This has been really hard, actually. Sometimes I just think that my project would be so much better done in another modality, yet most of my professors ask for printed papers as my form of writing. And even if I submitted a paper with photos in it, I still don’t think they would appreciate it. There have been quite a few times where I’ve felt like the one thing I was really trying to say could be so much better said if I just had a picture supplementing the point. Or, there’s this paper I was just writing for a lit class, and all I wanted to do was reference Hannibal Lector, and I couldn’t because that would require the use of video evidence to back up my point and the paper was strictly a paper. LAME. So I would say that this class has really had a huge impact on how I think of my prompts and how I want to approach them.

Working across different modalities has also made me approach my writing process in a new and different way. I usually just get a prompt, come up with what I want to say and then regurgitate that. Or, if I am given some really open, “do whatever you want” kind of prompt then I figure out what the heck I am going to write about, and then write it. I generally don’t go into thinking about the design of it, or the song that’s going to be attached and how those things are going to manipulate the way the audience perceives the text. After this class, though, and particularly after producing the A/V short—and how significantly the music attached to the beginning of the piece changed the way the audience saw it—I’ve really come to think of those things as a part of my composition process.

I think that most prevalently, I notice that I’ve even started thinking about the music I listen to as I compose, now. I am so much more aware of the way that the music I am listening to can actually affect the way that I think about and write about a topic, and therefore can and will change the way it comes off to a reader. (Right now I’m listen to love songs—6’2 by Marie Miller, to be exact—in case you were wondering where this one is coming from). (Also, I felt like I had to use at least one other modality, so that’s why I’ve so generously provided you with this music video. Which isn’t the most thrilling of all videos I’ve seen in the music video world, but also is multimodal in some really interesting ways so that makes it pretty damn cool.) Anyways, I’ve become more aware of the way that the time of day and the mood I am in affect the way that I write or compose a piece. Most of the time, I wish that there was music to go with writing, and I wish that books or pieces could come with a soundtrack that you play at the exact moment of a certain scene or paragraph just so that the reader can understand the exact feeling that I want to convey.

                I think what was most different about the way I approached these projects than the way I approach the rest of my projects was that I knew I could use more than just alphabetic text in my composition of them. I knew that I could use music in my projects, and videos, and hyperlinks, and photos, and all sorts of other fun things. There was so much potential to them. Having that mass amount of potential really gave me the opportunity to take these projects to the level that I wish I could take most of my other writing. Like I said, there are tons of times where I want to use music to set the mood of a scene I am writing, and since it is a paper and pen sort of project, I know that that isn’t really an option. With this, I could use music if I wanted to! And having that option really opened some doors for me. Research wise, I think the biggest difference was looking outside of the usual places—JSTOR, the Library website, Google Scholar. I got to go on Youtube and find a video, I got to Facebook stalk all of my friends, I got to use all sorts of things that would not be considered valid sources in other classes. And I genuinely enjoyed researching for these projects so much more than what I have to do for my other classes.

            2. 

            Well, I think you and I both know how influence Johnson-Eilola was for me, so I’m obviously going to start off with that text. Eilola really got me thinking about the current pedagogy surrounding writing and how that has shaped the way that people currently view writing. Eilola also got me thinking about how we ask for original, creative works from students and then tell them that they must use other resources to support their original thoughts. This was really interesting for me because it made me question if there are original works left. This ties back to Grant-Davie and intertextuality. I think that these two pieces are intertexts (is that even a word? Well I’m using it anyways!) of each other. You see, part of Eilola’s point is that we don’t have much left in the way of original texts because they all pull from other texts to make a new (maybe original) point. Which brought me around to a messy predicament, because part of the way in which we define writing is that it is the creation of an original work, but if no work is separate from all other works, then are they actually original? It’s really all a mess. But these texts were both huge for me because they both helped me to sort out how I was going to approach and actually make my CPE. I think that if my proposal gets accepted for the NCUR, these two texts and the things I have learned from them are going to play a large part in how I make my presentation on my research. I would have to say that brings me to the Bernhardt piece. This piece impacted the way I think about writing because it made me wonder which constrictions in writing are absolutely necessary, and which ones we need to break in order to further our knowledge and understanding of the English language. Again, this could be tied back to attempting to define writing. We have to understand the parameters in which we have place ourselves before we can step beyond those and take our work, our writing, to the next level. This piece also encouraged students to play with design, photograph, the actual aesthetic nature of the work in order to alter the way that it is viewed and read. A large part, for me, of what makes the reading experience enjoyable can have at least something to do with the way it is laid out and the way the information is physically presented. This piece really challenged me to think about stepping out of the box, which is a lot of what this class has taught me. I think that these texts will also help me in other classes with you, Doug! Because, let’s face it, I am sure questions on this stuff are going to come up again, and that means I’ll have cool things to say when they do! I think that being able to argue that writing doesn’t always have to be textual, that writers are not alone and that everything we write is influenced by all the other writing we have experienced, and that stepping outside of the writing norm is going to be really helpful for me. These things, additionally, will help me as a writer because being aware of these things will only help me to develop my writing further and think more about the things I am writing before I actually put them in print. I think, overall these readings have helped to know and recognize the rules of writing, and also ways to break them—the doing of that is what is left up to us.

3.    

Thanks for not making me rewrite my entire CPE here! I think the only thing I will say to this one, and maybe the only thing you’ll want to read again after reading my substantially long blog post about it is that my definition of writing is always changing, but right now is as follows: The intentional creation of a text in which a story is being told, and the actual text that has been produces from such a composition. (Also, note that it changed from my original final definition!)

4.         

      Hmmmm. This one is hard, you’re making me go deep into the past where my brain was fresh and I’d been getting a sufficient amount of sleep each night. Not nice, Doug! Alright, let’s give this a shot. Well, if rhetoric is the art or study of using language effectively and persuasively, then writing is very definitely a rhetorical activity. A part of writing involves manipulating words (language) in some way to produce something. I think the biggest key here is that if something must be persuasive or effective to be rhetoric, then how do we define the kind of writing that does not do those things? For example, a child learning how to write the word “cat” does not persuade anyone of anything, nor is it a necessarily effective use of the language—yet it must be writing because the child placed a pen or pencil to paper and scratched those letters and that is one of the most traditional definitions of writing. I digress. I think that no matter the modality, writing can most definitely be considered the art of using some understood language effectively, thereby making it rhetorical.

In digital writing, especially, the distinction between author and audience is both blurred and made clearer. In digital writing the audience seems to much more heightened, by this I mean that there is a specific audience that is being targeted, and the piece of work that is produced is done so to really target that group of people. The audience isn’t always quite so specific with other forms or writing. Although, I could also say that the audience is much broader in digital writing because it has so much more potential to reach so many more people than simply the intended audience. I don’t know I’m just going with it. Yet the audience seems to also have a greater participation in the writing when it is digital. Most digital writing, to me, is posted in blog, vlog, status, tweet, and video form (just to name a few although there are probably way more than I am listing here). In all of these forms, the audience has the opportunity to comment back and create a discourse community. The creation of that community, and the ability to take part in the writing and vocalize thoughts and feelings about it I think really blurs the line between author and audience—especially if the writer was originally a member of the audience who decided to start writing to things on a larger scale (I’m thinking fandoms and fanfiction here). Additionally, the author has the capability of responding to the comments made to them, which further complicates the distinction between the author and the audience, because as soon as the two entities are mingling, things just get messy! So I don’t know if I’ve come up with some sort of legitimized response, but it definitely has my cogs turning. Which is probably exactly why you asked that question, so I guess it served its purpose (which is a statement you’ll notice I’ve used like 6 times in this paper so I guess you could say it’s my phrase of the day!)

5. 

Damn it, this one is going to be like opening a can of worms. See, I feel like originally question #3 was going to be that way, except then you said I didn’t have to go into it since my entire CPE was my answer to that question, so then I was like sweet! Now I’m thinking this is going to be the question that I go a little wild on in the way that I thought #3 was going to be. Okay, so it’s not my first time encountering the idea of intertextuality, but I would have to say that unequivocally that that has been the most earth-shattering thing I have encountered. I like to refer to myself as a hopeless romantic, so I not only love the idea of love, but I also love romanticizing things—writing has not escaped that love for me. Although I now do not entirely reject the entire idea of intertextuality as I once did, I still feel some resistance to it. You see, I like to think of my thoughts as unique to me, and since my writing comes from my thoughts it is uniquely my own. My writing is something that comes from my brain and myself, and no one else. This is something that I still hold firm to. The idea of intertextuality, at least for me, is not that my writing is not unique, creative, or my own, rather that in order to write exactly what I am writing the moment I am writing I inevitably pull from everything I have ever seen, read, heard, or written before. I cannot write absent the things that I have experienced—they always have an influence and a place in whatever I am writing. Here is where I accept intertextuality yet also resist it, at least a little. You see, when I originally read about intertextuality, I was insulted. I thought, “How can this stupid paper tell me that my writing isn’t my own? How can they tell me that this isn’t unique or creative? How can it tell me that my writing is no different from anyone else’s?!” I honestly threw a little bit of a fit. Then the more I learned about it I began to realize that that’s not at all what the idea of intertextuality is implying. Now, I am able to recognize that my writing is influenced by everything else in my life but also that it can be uniquely mine because no one else has had every single same experience as I have and no one has read or heard or seen or said or written all of the same things as me. So I think that accepting intertextuality and embracing what I feel it really means has been super influential.

I would have to say that the other most influential idea that I encountered that has really rocked my world is the idea of gender influenced writing. I think it is really interesting to label writing as decisively feminine or masculine. As I stated in my blog post about this, I thought it was really interesting that Jamieson’s piece discussed the gender of language. The reason this intrigued me so much was because, yes every voice is different, but I didn’t think that there was one specific way to categorize either the male or female voice or writing style. So I think, more than anything, this shocked me. I think this is because I see the true artist as one who can navigate between the male and female voice without issue—as one who can be amorphous. So I can’t say that this was entirely wild, more so than intriguing. I don’t think of any writing as strictly male or female, nor so simply pondering this idea was a little mind-boggling for me. It also got me to thinking how I would change my voice to fit serve my purposes, and if it was even something that I had the capability of doing. I can’t say I know if I can, I guess that we will find out someday when I get around to attempting to write from the male perspective (which as a creative writer, I am sure will happen eventually.)

Tell me, what is writing?

What is it that comes to mind when a person reads or hears the word “writing?" Is it a poem? Is it a novel? Is it a song? Is it a video? Is it a speech? Is it an oral story? Is it a photograph? Is it the action of putting pen to paper? How is it that the word writing is defined?

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If you were to look in the dictionary, you would find the definitions of writing as follows:

According to Merriam-Webster, writing is defined as:

• "the act or process of one who writes: as the act of forming visible letters or characters; the act or process of literary or musical composition"
• "something written: as letters or characters that serve as visible signs of ideas, words, or symbols; a letter, note, or notice used to communicate or record; a written composition"

According to Oxford English Dictionary, writing is defined as:

• "the activity or skill of marking coherent words on paper and composing text"
• "written work, especially with regard to its style or quality"
• "a sequence of letters, words, or symbols marked on paper or some other surface"

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Before I began my journey in the writing program at MSU, I would have given you the most traditional and basic answer. If asked the question, "What is writing?" I probably would have laughed (because isn't the answer obvious?) and I would have told you that writing is the act of putting words on paper. I would have said it was the actual physical act of taking words and inscribing them upon paper or typing them onto a computer screen. I would have probably rattled off a definition that sounds a whole lot like I pulled it straight from Merriam-Webster or Oxford. I think we have commonly come to some "general understanding" that writing means one thing, yet only with further discovery do we learn that this "common knowledge" may not be so.

After beginning a more in-depth exploration of the subject of writing, I've come to learn that it can't be that simple. The word writing has so many more meanings and definitions than what we are regularly presented with. So, I asked a question. I asked, "What is considered writing in a world that largely relies on multimodality, and how does that change the way that people view writing?" That's where I began really learning what this whole writing thing is all about.

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In our formal education, we are taught the most traditional ways of defining writing, "we tend, despite all of our sophisticated theorizing, to teach writing much as we have long taught it: the creative production or original works in learner streams that some reader receives and understands" (Johnson-Eilola, 200). We are rarely, if ever, asked to expand our definition beyond the way that the dictionary would define the word. So I took to my peers the question I have been asking myself. I really wanted to see if my peers had learned to look at such a "simple" subject, such a "simple" question, and think of it in a new and different way, or if they still thought of writing in the way that has been drilled into their heads since they were children. I wanted to see if the exploratory approach that most people take to sciences is applied when my peers take a look at writing too.

In order to do this, I created a survey in which my peers were asked to ponder the word writing and define it, and then identify different things as writing.

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The photograph directly above is a sample of the survey my peers were asked to complete. Across the survey there are questions that relate directly to the traditional definition of what writing is, but there are also a few examples of more contemporary definitions of writing. I also decided to include a few options that I may not see as writing, but that someone might consider writing.

My theory was that my peers would look at the survey and automatically circle the traditional definitions. I also thought that there was an unlikely chance that after seeing some of the other options, alongside the traditional option, maybe my peers would start to question their own definition of what writing is.

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As can be seen from the above charts, twenty of my fellow MSU students were surveyed on what they thought "writing" was. These students came from many different academic focuses, ranging from the social sciences to the hard sciences to agriculture to the arts. Therefore I was given a wide range of different types of people surveyed. Of the pool of people surveyed there were five seniors, four juniors, eight sophomores, and three freshmen. In addition to simply being asked to identify what "writing" was from a list of things that could be considered "writing," my peers were asked to define "writing" in their own words. This is probably where I saw the most variation, given that the subjects were allowed to say whatever they thought here.While I will never know how my peers thought about the survey, and if the contemporary examples got them to question their definition of the word, I did get results that were unsurprising. With the exception of fellow writing majors, my peers largely viewed writing through the same lens that I saw it before I began studying writing.

The results of this survey largely fell in lines with the traditional definition of what writing is. Most of my peers viewed writing in the traditional sense. They looked at writing as either the physical inscription of words onto paper or screen, or as some variation of an alphabetic text. As you can see from the above charts, almost all of those surveyed identified a poem or a novel/book as writing. Additionally, a large population of those surveyed identified writing as a speech or a script. A majority of the people also identified writing as the act of putting words on paper. There were very few people who identified writing as something that was a bit more contemporary, as in a song without lyrics or a photograph.

I think my favorite part of the survey was the individual definitions that I got from the free response section. I got a lot of definitions that were different variations of "putting words/symbols on a page (verb), and a piece of text (noun)" these were most representative of the popular consensus. A variety of other people responded with something similar to, "writing is a way for people to put into words their feelings, thoughts, and observations." Again these fall in line with what my peers have conventionally been taught throughout their careers as students. There were two responses that just made me laugh. One stated: "Something we have had to do all through school :(" and the other stated: "Writing is a form of nonverbal communication."

The surprising responses came from just a few people, and oddly enough their academic focuses greatly varied. I found these few written responses to be quite enlightened beyond the traditional way of thinking of writing. A senior film major stated that they thought "Writing is both a verb and a creative process. In other words, writing is a visual means of communicating through a common language, and also can refer to someone's means of communicating a creative and original idea to tell a story." A sophomore psychology major reported that they believed writing to be "the process of communicating thoughts, images, or language by using a native vernacular to express said ideas." Finally, a sophomore pre-veterinary medicine major said that "writing is comprising letters and words to create a story, article, letter, or another form of writing." These definitions stood out to me because they were the most contemporary of all of the definitions my peers offered me.

What is interesting about this is that it didn't seem to matter which class standing a student had achieved, or the major that they were in for most of them to agree on the traditional definitions and examples of writing. This isn't terribly surprising considering most, if not all, of those surveyed likely received this sort of education on writing in their pre-collegiate studies. And throughout their college years, it is not likely that many of my peers have received an education that would have introduced them to the many different ways a person can view writing.

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After taking a deeper look at the professional, academic writing that has been done on the subject of writing I have really developed a deeper, and potentially more confusing, definition for what writing is. After doing my own mini-research, and standing on the shoulders of the giants who have explored this topic before me, I have come to the conclusion that writing can be just about anything, if you want it to be. I learned that writing is not just a piece of work that has been written by someone such as . . .

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A novel . . .

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A poem . . .

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Or song lyrics . . .

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I learned that writing is not simply the act of putting words on paper to form phrases that mean something, such as . . .

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Scribbling words in your notebook . . .

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Or typing things out on your computer screen . . .

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Writing doesn't have to be tied down to black words on a white background. Meg Callahan, author of the essay Intertextual Composition: The Power of the Digital Pen, agrees, "Text . . . can be print sources such as stories, textbooks, novels, poems, and essay. Text can also be non-print sources such as music, drama, video, art, and gesture" (48). Writing can be composing a song and then playing that song. Writing can be memorizing a speech and then reading it aloud for a room full of people. Writing can be a video that took hours of editing to get just right. Writing can be so many different things if we just open ourselves to the possibility of it.

In order to come up with my working definition of writing, I've had to do some re-defining of things that I thought I understood. I had to begin with redefining what I thought I knew to be "literature." At first I thought of works by Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, and the likes. I considered literature to be very rigidly defined--I thought of novels, poems, and plays. After a while, though, I changed that definition. I began understanding literature as "anything composed across modalities that told a story." I started approaching literature as if a movie, a play, a book, a short story, a comic book, a graphic novel, a tv show, or a song could be literature because each of them told some story--any story.

After broadening my definition of literature, I could open up my definition of a "text." Obviously, if all of these things could be literature, then they could also be texts, so a text became something in which a story is told (because even if it is a research paper or an academic article it is still telling the story of how the research was conducted and what results were found). Once I had decided that texts were the places where stories are told, and anything that told a story (no matter the modality and no matter what kind of story) I had to define writing.

This is where the going gets tough. Defining writing is never a simple task for anyone, particularly when you are looking to broaden the current working definition to include the new work spaces in which texts are created. But here's how I've come up with the definition I am working with now.

In order to develop a working definition of writing (which I am sure will only serve its purpose until I learn something new and develop a new definition) I studied up on a multitude of different professional writings on writing. I pulled part of my definition from Jay David Bolter who stated, in his novel Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print, "All the ancient arts and crafts had this is common: that the craftsman must develop a skill, a technical state of mind in using tools and materials. Ancient and modern writing are technologies in the sense that they are methods of arranging verbal ideas in a visual space" (15). While I can't wholly agree that writing always revolves around verbal writing, part of the way I define writing comes from the idea that there must be a craftsman, a skill, and tools to develop some craft involved in this thing called "writing."

My faithful friend Johndan Johnson-Eilola also really helped shape my current working definition of writing. Johnson-Eilola's essay, The Database and the Essay: Understanding Composition as Articulation calls into question the difference between "truth" and "creativity." This article calls into question what the difference is between writing and composition. This text made me question what creativity is, and if writing is creativity, and if writing is the act of composing a unique text.

All of this questioning, all of the reading I've done on this topic brings me to my current definition of writing. Remembering that a text is something that has been composed in any modality in which a story is intentionally told, I've come to a tentative understanding that writing is composing a text, and also the text that has been composed. The craftsman has intentionally created something that tells a story, and by virtue of that intention they have created a text which I consider to be writing.

There will be resistance to this, of that I am sure, but just look at these things and tell me that they do not tell a story. Tell me that they have not been composed to tell us something.

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Does this not share with the world the story of a life? There are no words (orally speaking)--none at all--yet this video is a text that tells a story. This has been put together meticulously to do so. The creation of this piece took craftsmanship and the ability to work with a specific set of tools to create the text. Not only that but this seems to be done on a computer, which will come back around later, but for now let's just focus on the fact that this has been written, and is a piece of writing, by my definition.

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Let's take a look at this video. This one uses words, both written and vocalized, with drawings to give us some chunk of information. It's rather informative, and doesn't necessarily have a plot, and yet it tells a story. This tells the story of motivation. Is this not a text? Because I would call this a text, and if it is a text then it is a piece of writing.

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Look at these photographs. Ignore the words on the page, and just look at the pictures themselves. Don't they each tell a story? Looking at the first photograph, one could tell a whole tale about this girl with a fiery yet fearful look in her eye. What about the second photo, it is easy to formulate a story on how these extinct creatures might be brought to life from advances in science. These pictures show us something, they tell us something. And if these photographs do tell a story (a picture says more than a thousand words, does it not?) then they are texts, and given that they are texts, then they are writing.

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I think you see my point. My point here is that yes, absolutely, words are writing, and the act of putting them together is writing, but there are so many other things that are also writing--depending on the way that you look at them. I am sure you could poke holes in my argument, in my definition, in the conclusion that I have come to from this research, but then maybe that means you, too, are expanding your definition of writing.

A major contributor to this would be the world wide web, in fact, according to Jay David Bolter, "the web has provided the most convincing evidence of the computer's potential to refashion the practice of writing" (xi). Our constant access and use of the internet has really opened up many different avenues of what writing can be. The many different modalities that have come out of our access to the internet also make a difference here, "technology . . . provides a new mode of writing and expression, one that allows students to capture the multimodality of texts in their everyday world" (Callahan, 64). If we consider more modalities than simply alphabetic text, we can come to a more broad definition of what writing may be. To this, of course, there is always resistance. We want to have a box into which we can place the word "writing" and to file it away in an orderly fashion, but alas it is not that simple after all.

So, I asked a question. I asked, "What is considered writing in a world that largely relies on multimodality, and how does that change the way that people view writing?" I think I've come to some sort of a conclusion here. I've come to the conclusion that writing is the intentional creation of a text in which a story is being told, and the actual text that is produced from such a composition. I think that just about anything can be considered writing, just so long as it tells a story. I think that working across modalities 100% influences the way that writing can be viewed and understood. Do I think that everyone will see writing in this way? No. Do I think that the many modalities definitively change the way people view writing? No.

But this just goes to show that maybe we need to expand our horizons. We need to have an understanding of the traditional definition of what writing is, but if we take the initiative to introduce the contemporary examples of writing to students at a younger age, we might just be able to more definitively say that multimodality does, in fact, change the way that people view and understand writing. I know it did for me.

Technology and you

The game layer. Interesting. I hear the words "game layer" and I imagine something along the lines of World of Warcraft and the Sims taking over the world. But really, it is something I never could have imagined. I don't hear the words "the game layer" and think of creating new ways to use technology to influence behaviors. This whole idea is that game dynamics, things that make games work, have a way of completely influencing the way that things actually work in the real world. Basically, the concept is that everything is a game in life. Every single person has a way of being motivated int he real world in the same way that they can be motivated to continue playing a game until they've succeeded to their desired level. This is such an intriguing concept, and one that I have never really thought of before. Yet I see how true it can be. It's easy for us to continue doing things if we reap some benefit from doing it. In fact, we often won't do something if we don't see some benefit, some reward, to be gained by doing so. We don't do our homework for fun, you know, we do it because it gives us the grade that we want in order to mark on along the path toward graduation. We don't get a degree for fun, we get it because we know that it will help us attain a good job. Attaining a good job will help us buy a good house, and live a comfortable life. Etc. It seems that nothing that we do is done without the consideration of the reward. Quite the concept.

Before even addressing "Gaming can make a better world" can we please just acknowledge how great it is that her name is Jane McGonigal? Like how cool is it that she gets to have the same lat name as one of the greatest witches in the entire Harry Potter series!? Jealous much. Now this Miss McGonigal, she encourages us to play more games. Wait, what? Did she just encourage the entire world to do exactly what we've been discouraged to do for the past . . . I don't know, ten years? Gaming, can apparently save the world. Gaming is really all about problem solving. And well, problem solving is what's going to allow us to save our world. We need to tackle to obstacles of the next century and the only way that we can do that is to problem solve. For gamers, they seem to feel most empowered and brilliant playing games, they have their biggest AHA moments when they play games. This sort of thing is exactly what needs to be brought into the real world. We need to feel the urgency of our epic mission, find the inspiration to attempt it, and feel empowered to follow the mission all the way until we succeed. This may take more work than we ever expected, and it may push us to our very limits, but whatever we set our minds to can be done. Now that's freaking cool. I've never really realized that games had this sort of power. In all honesty the only time I play games is when I am bored and have free time (which as a college student is awfully rare). And when I play games I don't feel like I am achieving anything other than alleviating my boredom and relieving the mounds of stress that sit on my shoulders each and every day. But if I really, really think about it, I guess it's pretty damn true that I am still solving some sort of problem.

Out of all this, we can look at games as tools to conquering the problems of the world that we live in. If we capitalize on the potential of the game layer, and the influence that games can have on people, the suggestion is that we can come up with solutions for all of the obstacles we currently face, and the ones that we are bound to face going forward. It's a little mind blowing to think of the potential power that these supposedly "mind-numbing" things called games have.

Who's Smarter?

Am I smarter now than I was before I read this text? Am I smarter than I was before technology started inundating and consuming my everyday life? I don't know. I'd sure like to think that I am not less smart because of it! I think it is not that I am smarter or dumber due to my use of technology and its function in my life, but rather that I think differently because of it.

I remember the days when we had to unplug the telephone line and plug in the computer line in order to dial up the internet that worked slower than molasses. I remember when I had to write down or memorize everyone's phone number to that I could reach them, and hope that they were at home when I called. I distinctly remember playing games on the boxy home computer that were nothing more than Sonic the Hedgehog, Math Blasters, Math Rescue, and Clue Finder's Adventures--all of which I had to battle my siblings for time to play. I remember when playing was synonymous with the outdoors and Barbies and dolls, and not with computers, phones, and game consuls. I remember looking things up in the encyclopedia and dictionary when I needed an answer that my father could not readily provide for me. While I remember all of these things, and probably glorify them as the "good old days," I don't know if I was smarter because of it. I am not one who hates technology, or resents it, or feels like it should be limited. In fact, I enjoy and use technology just as much as the next person. I recognize that it takes a whole different level of consciousness, and that finding information on my own and not relying on technology to tell me an answer requires a different amount of mental expenditure. But I am just not sure that having little to no access to technology made me smarter back in the 1990's and early 2000's than I am today.


Technology has the power and capacity to hold mass amounts of information--far more than my brain can hold that's for damn sure. In less than a second, I can access almost any piece of information that my heart desires. At the push of a button, at the swipe of a finger, I can discover just about anything. With all of this potential just a few moments away, I'd like to think that we are not entirely at a loss in the digital age. I think of all of the things that I have learned and read thanks to the internet, and I can't help but thing that it is thanks to technology that I have expanded my knowledge of many things to where it stands today. I think that technology has allowed me to gain a lot of knowledge and access a lot of information, but this doesn't inherently make me any smarter than I was in the past. Nor does it make me dumber. No, it doesn't take as much work to find the answers I am looking for. And no, I don't spend as much of my time playing outside. And no I don't play simple, educational games on my computer any more (most of my screen time is dedicated to homework and Netflix). But I don't necessarily think this makes me any less smart.

So who's smarter, me or technology? Well I just don't know.

What is writing?

I loved this reading because it completely and utterly addressed the research question that I intend to work with for my Critical Photo Essay! I was excited to see that I'm not the only person questioning what on earth writing is, and how are we redefining and re-evaluating it as time goes on. I think we like to think of writing in the most traditional sense, where we see ourselves scratching letters on paper with pencil or a pen. Or typing black words onto a blank document. We see writing as the act of physically stringing words together to create sentences which in turn create statements and arguments. The beauty of this reading, particularly Johnson-Eiola, is that it questions this notion. This article calls into question what the difference is between writing and composition, and how to situate the role of writing within today's culture.

There was once again the separation between what is "truth" and what is "creativity." I found this to be interesting too. I know we've talked about this before, but I find it impossible that something factual cannot be creative and something creative cannot be factual. I simply find that notion too simple and ignorant. But the biggest part of this was that creativity was defined as producing something that had previously not existed in the world. That was intriguing to me because it brought me back to the question, then what is writing? Is writing creativity? Is writing the act of creating a unique text? And on that same note, the article brings up intertextuality again, and calls into question if there are any original texts left to be created? Can there be original texts anymore if all we do is break down texts "in order to reconnect them, over and over again" (208)? And if, in fact, there are no more original texts, and writing is the act of creating an original text, is there really writing? Which brings us right back to what the hell is writing anyways?! This all seems like such a hot mess.

I think that Johnson-Eilola brings up a really interesting quote, along the same lines of creation and writing and originality and shtuff, that got my brain turning in circles, a bit. "And despite the realization that our culture increasingly values texts that are broken down, rearranged, recombined, we rarely teach forms of writing that support such production. We unwittingly (of sometimes consciously) still think of writing as a way to help the self become present to itself, as a method for personal growth and discovery" (209). I find this quote awfully intriguing. You see, I think of writing as a way to express myself-- a way to grow as a thinker, as a writer, as a person. I think of writing as one of the many ways that I can take a piece of who I truly am and present it to the world in writing. Yet I also see where this quote is going when it says we increasingly value texts that have been cut, copied, and reassembled. We are most often asked to write pieces using "textual evidence." We need that copied quote from someone else in order to validate the point of our own writing. And when we are asked to simply give our thoughts and opinions, without the support of someone else's thoughts and opinions, we just don't know what to do. We don't really know how to handle writing for our own understanding and personal growth, yet we still like to think that writing is to help us better understand and discover and grow as a person. It's quite a conundrum.

I don't actually know what my point is, but those were my thoughts, particularly on Johnson-Eilola. I feel like I probably talked myself in circles a little bit, but that's kind of where my train of thoughts went over the course of reading these texts. And I realize that I've rambled on and one about one article and basically neglected the other, but it happens.

Infographic

Simply because I have a deep love for football, and specifically a deep love for the Seahawks, my infographic is all about my Hawks! Enjoy and Go Seahawks! #12thman

Boa Constrictor

What I liked most about these texts is they talked about the constraints that we place upon writing, and what kinds of effects that those constraints have on the quality of the writing. I look at some of these things as if they were a boa constrictor for our writing. We place ourselves within some set of rules depending on what we are writing for, or who we are writing for, or how we think something is supposed to be written. From there, those very rules that are supposed to give us a structure and guide to follow for our writing actually begins to choke us out and constrict our ability to fully delve into the writing. If we strictly define the way that writing is supposed to be done, we cut ourselves off from deepening and improving our writing.

Take structure for example. From a young age we are told that paragraphs are a minimum of so many sentences long, and that those sentences must include (at the very least) an introduction/thesis, a statement or point to be made backing up the thesis, some proof of that statement, and then a conclusion sentence. Boa constrictor. From that very moment, we have taken our writing and shrunk it down to a specific structure that we are expected to adhere to, and creativity is therefore cut off. We have a hard time taking our writing further, and making it better, because we tell ourselves that the structure that we want to write with does not follow the structure we are supposed to be using. Additionally, if we do not explore with different structures, we cut off an entire audience or level of understanding that someone could come to. If we do not entirely adhere to all of the rules of structure, we might just be able to reach a different audience or allow our current audience to come to a new understanding of the text. That seems to be exactly Bernhardt's point-- "If we were to encourage students to experiment with visible features of written texts, we would increase their ability to understand and use hierarchical and classificatory arrangements. Because of the opportunities it offers for visual inspection, writing heightens awareness of categories and divisions, changing the ways people conceive classificatory relations" (Bernhardt, 66).

Now let's look at media and genre. When we define genre, we say that certain types of writing are done within that genre, and those types of writing are done a certain way, and that that certain way of writing is used to talk about these certain types of topics. Boa constrictor. From the moment we define a genre, or a piece of media, we cut off anything that falls outside of that definition and we discount its worth within the genre. And another problem we create here is that we say that only certain types of literature fit within the terms "writing" and "literature." Something I've been exploring in LIT438 is that literature is not just works of written words that have been compiled into pages upon pages of written words to tell some sort of story or give some sort of information, but rather, it can be anything that tells a story--including movies, music, and comics. It seems that Kress is also making this point. We tend to restrain what can and cannot be a certain genre, or what applies to a certain media--when in reality, so many more things than what fit within our "definitions" can actually go within that genre or media if we'd only open our minds to it.

Grammar is another thing that is rigid in rules.
"Don't say, 'Me and Amanda.' It's improper. Say, 'Amanda and I.'"
"Ain't isn't a word."
Girl on internet
-- "Your so cute!"
Grammar Nazi
-- "*you're"
(A side note on Grammar Nazis, you should just go to Google images for a grammar giggle!)

What they told me in my younger years
--"In a list there should be a comma between every word."
What they tell me now
-- "Actually, the Oxford comma isn't necessary."
Me
-- "WELL SHIT!"
I could go on and on. There are so many grammar and punctuation rules. I get it, I am actually one of those people who thinks you're pretty idiotic if you can't get simple grammar and punctuation correct. I know that it's important and I am a stickler on it. But I repeat. BOA CONSTRICTOR. Punctuation has the power to absolutely transform a sentence, and the proper use of it can literally change the meaning of a sentence
-- Let's eat Grandma.
-- Let's eat, Grandma.
Those two sentences have very different meanings, and the proper use of a comma clears up the true meaning of the sentence (and save's Grandma from getting eaten). But like all of the other things in this post, when we put a constraint on how something is supposed to be used we cut ourselves off from a vast possibility of different things to say and ways to say them.

Now, I'm not saying that all rules should be thrown out the window, and that we should just have a free for all and write however we damn well please. I am simply saying that sometimes, if we push the boundaries that we have set for ourselves, or even break the molds that have been set before us, we have the potential to really expand our writing in new and amazing ways.