4/21/2014 Response - Effective Writing

While reading Brian’s assignment, I couldn’t help but think of the literacy biographies that we did for Dr. Cauthen. I say this because we used a narrative to articulate some form of our literary evolution, and as Brian argued, when doing the assignment, I felt like I was being more “self-conscious of my education”. As I mentioned to Dr. Cauthen during his office hours, while planning for this assignment, I looked at several of my old writings to see if I could find something that resonated with me, and that I could use as the basis for my paper. Needless to say, I found a lot of options. –I’ve kept a lot of creative writing, and essay on an external hard drive, so I had a lot to choose from. More importantly than finding a jumping off point for my paper for Dr. Cuathen, I notice that with each paper that I wrote (from one year to the next), I noticed an evolution in my style of writing, in the jargon I use, and the methods of argument I employed. I found it extremely interesting that I grew/changed from year to year, but that change was unconscious, and that it wasn’t until I started looking back, that my growth became apparent. How does this relate to my prospectus? I think I’ve been pretty vocal about how I feel that the implementation of social media in the classroom has/will have a negative impact on the students. One thing that Brian/Cauthen’s assignment unearthed for me, was a before a before discovered sense of self-consciousness. In my case, I was lucky that I had some of my old papers to make me aware of the growth I’ve experienced…. Now that I think of it, if students tapped into their social media sites, and looked at their growth through their “social media streams”, and if think of it as representation of their unfettered subconscious, I think there is a wealth of information that can be drawn from it. Just think about it, often times when writing, we build characters and stories based on faded memories. What if there was a record of those memories? Would the writer be able to tell a more vivid account? Or say the student wanted to capture a sentiment, couldn’t the sentiment be expressed more honestly if you they had something that can bring them back to that moment? –I’m thinking Viet Nam. If political protestors had facebook in those days, can you image if today, they looked back at their facebook stream, how vivid and raw their feelings would be, and well they would be able to write about those moments?