March 4

Today we talked about writing academic summaries and the difference between stating back a shortened form of all that was said (one kind of summary) and identifying characteristics or concepts that are shared by the different points or anecdotes in an essay. We discussed how re-telling the story of "Young Goodman Brown" - about how he goes into the woods and talks to a stranger and has strange visions and is led to an alter and hears voices and then wakes up in the woods the next morning and goes back to his home a changed man - is NOT what your literature teachers will be looking for as a summary of the text. They will want you to point out what the story is ABOUT. "Young Goodman Brown" is about questioning (and losing) one's faith.

Academic writing values "abstraction" => identifying the ideas + generalizations that run through and beneath the texts you read.

For the introductions to your literacy narratives - I wanted you to identify the concepts/ideas that were the center of your experience. I was looking for a focus that discussed those ideas/concepts - the "what it is about" or "what did it mean" of your story. I will be returning your essays with grades and comments as soon as I finish this post.

For the rest of class we discussed Dennis Baron's essay "From Pencils to Pixels" - and more importantly - we discussed what it means that this process takes place when new technologies displace old ones. We talked about the "why" and the "how"(about how individuals learn literacy practices at a certain age etc.) and thought about what it means that it happens again and again - in cycles - and what it means that we are in an age of particularly rapidly changing technology. This will have consequences for all of our futures as writers. We are going to need to be prepared to keep up - to embrace the new language and ideas that accompanies the new technologies - and at the same time to keep a perspective (we didn't get to that part of the discussion because we ran out of time).

We then talked about your process narrative (looked at the assignment sheet again) and discussed what kind of writing you are going to need to do in order to get started on this. I will be responding to your blogs Saturday AM - I will read what's posted at that time.

For Monday:
Read: Charney, "The Effect of Hypertext on Processes of Reading and Writing" (you might see some influences on your composing process in here).

Blog 13: Post a one sentence concept summary of Charney. Then write five or six short sentences to identify the main ideas she develops with respect to that concept.

Keep in mind that the draft for your process essay is due for Thursday, March 11.

Have a good weekend and see you Monday.