Course Reflection
Writing
To begin with let me start by discussing how my view of writing has changed due to this course. My one blog post says it so perfectly. I never really considered how technology affected my writing. For me writing, whether on my computer in a notebook, whatever was just writing. Admittedly writing on my computer was always easier than any other type of writing, but I never really considered how technology affected my writing. I had to use twitter this semester in order to complete my twitterive for this class. I HATED TWITTER! Still do. Thats because, for me at least I don't see the point. Its simply a way of letting everybody know what you're up to and I have my phone and facebook for that. However, I have realized something. Being forced to get my ideas down in a limited number of character got me to think more deeply about what I was writing. I had to struggle to find a way to get my main point across in a way that made sense, and since Im a bit of a longwinded person that was hard. Being forced to consider what I was writing on twitter got me considering what I was writing in papers, on my blog, on facebook, etc. It got me to begin to be a bit more concise in what I was saying. Its interesting how a technology as simple as twitter can have such a big impact on my writing.
As the semester has passed, i have experimented in a number of new sub genres of areas that I have written in before. Specifically, I have done some work in micro fiction, haiku, and found poems. As I worked on these pieces, I realized something about my own writing style...I am long winded. When I write, I love to hear myself "talk". Working on these pieces, I found it extremely difficult to complete the pieces within the guidelines of the sub genres. As I said part of it is that I like to hear myself talk, but part of it is that I love descriptive writing. I once wrote a piece in which I spend an entire page discussing a hut on an island that was the main location of a short story I was working on. However, there is one thing that I cannot turn down...a challenge. It really challenged me to do the haiku, found poem, and micro fiction. I wanted to make them all longer! 250 words to tell a story? Its not enough! But I love a challenge, so i powered through it. I tried to create a piece that was as good as it could be while still staying true to my own writing style.
I also have begun to look at things in a simpler way since I started these pieces. What I mean by that, is that I have tried to look deeper, in shorter pieces. Normally when I read shorter pieces I read them, get the main idea, and move on. However, having worked on these shorter pieces, I went back and tried to look beneath the surface. I still struggle with it. I like to read something, get the idea, and get on with my life. However, I am attempting to look deeper, and not just look at the length of the piece. I am trying to not just equate length with better writing, despite my own preferred style of writing.
To finish up this section of my reflective letter let me move on to discuss something that has bugged me since it was brought up. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SOLO WRITING! The only thing that comes close to solo writing is when you're writing in a room by yourself, but even then you have your experiences and interactions to draw upon. Thus how can your work be considered a solo piece? Everyone interacts with people in their day to day lives. Whether it's talking to somebody on facebook, listening to a professor's lecture, blasting music on the radio, talking to your friends, or watching tv. You have the experiences of your interactions with other people when you sit down to write, and those interactions help to mold how you write, why you write, where you write, and what you write about. It is impossible to escape these day to day interactions and thus it is impossible to truly write on your own! Sorry...had to get that off my chess it's been bugging me all semester.
Research
Before I took this course I always thought of research as looking things up in a book, finding facts and quotes, and then using them to write a paper. I never really considered research to be what goes on in my daily life, what's happening on facebook, or who's saying what on twitter. Now I realize that there is a great deal of opportunity out there for research. Take a look at a blog post that I made when working on my twitterive.
Im working on my twitterive and will be presenting it on my website within the next few days. However, as it is a work in progress I am trying to get different people's ideas on how to improve it.
1) What other genres do you think could be used to enhance my twitterive?
2) Do you have any suggestions to make my prologue flow more smoothly?
3) What to do think of the way that my pieces are arranged? Any suggestions for improving it?
4) Do you think that I should continue to include pictures of the people that I am focusing on in the pieces? Do the pictures add to the work, or distract from it?
5) Should I try and expand the poems that I have included?
6) Should I try and expand the piece where Im arriving home one night?
By writing these questions, pondering them myself, and asking my classmates, and professor for feedback was research. Before taking this class I wouldn't have considered this to be research. I would have simply thought of it as peer review. But by having others provide me with their opinions I was doing research on how to improve both my twitterive and myself as a writer. Also, If you look at my twitterive you will see that I asked for my friend's opinions in the piece. That is also research. I always thought of research as purely quantitative. Now I really what is truly meant by qualitative research. It is the ability to call upon everything that you see, hear, read, etc into your writing. There is no end to the limit of research possible.
Another thing that I have realized is that research is always evovling. Alright, so my group has been working on finding out how college students view their nutritional health. We've come up with surveys, we've taken interviews, we've examined the results, and...we've realized our topic apparently shifted somewhere. Somehow, not sure exactly how, we've wound up focusing on how Rowan students view their nutritional help and if Rowan helps students or hinders them. I guess it shouldn't really be too surprising that our research took that turn without us really realizing it. I mean after all me and my group members are Rowan students, and all the people we have interviewed, and given surveys to are Rowan students. Still its interesting that our research took this turn without us realizing it until we began to examine all of our results; but that's research for you. Its always evolving.
Technology
Alright, this is probably the section that I have gained the most in. I never really used much of the technology that this class focused on. Twitter, weebly, blogs, digital recorders, even youtube. I'm a guy who didn't even have a facebook until about a year ago. The biggest reason why I don't use much technology is I have to be shown what value it has to me and my goals, and ambitions. As the semester has progressed I have really gained an appreciation for certain new technologies. For example, I think weebly is a phenomenal thing. I intend to use it in the future as an official page for my career. I will give the students that I will be teaching as well as their parents the url for a weebly site that I am going to create and evolve as I teach. I intend to use it to provide the students and parents with information that will help them in my class, and provide them with some extra exercises, and tools to help them succeed. Weebly, I see the point of.
Blogging, again, I never really saw a point to. My opinion of blogging has also changed over the course of the semester. It is a great way to provide information, and to find information. You can easily interact with people via blogs because of the comments section and I could see using blogs in the future, again as a way to further help my future students and their parents. I see the point of blogging now.
Twitter...before this semester I hated it. Now that the semester is over...I still hate it. I don't see the point of it at all. To me it is so much easier to do the things that twitter provides on facebook or myspace. I do get that twitter is a way to keep up to date on news, sports, celebs, etc. However, facebook provides me with all the same things that twitter does. That i really can't stand some of what people tweet. Its too random. I really don't see a point to it at all. This isn't to say that it didn't help me with my projects this semester, but in all likelihood I'll be deleting my twitter account after the semester's over.
The technology that I have been using this semester has offered me possibilities. I am finding new ways to improve my future career options via these technologies. I look forward to using most of them in the future.
To begin with let me start by discussing how my view of writing has changed due to this course. My one blog post says it so perfectly. I never really considered how technology affected my writing. For me writing, whether on my computer in a notebook, whatever was just writing. Admittedly writing on my computer was always easier than any other type of writing, but I never really considered how technology affected my writing. I had to use twitter this semester in order to complete my twitterive for this class. I HATED TWITTER! Still do. Thats because, for me at least I don't see the point. Its simply a way of letting everybody know what you're up to and I have my phone and facebook for that. However, I have realized something. Being forced to get my ideas down in a limited number of character got me to think more deeply about what I was writing. I had to struggle to find a way to get my main point across in a way that made sense, and since Im a bit of a longwinded person that was hard. Being forced to consider what I was writing on twitter got me considering what I was writing in papers, on my blog, on facebook, etc. It got me to begin to be a bit more concise in what I was saying. Its interesting how a technology as simple as twitter can have such a big impact on my writing.
As the semester has passed, i have experimented in a number of new sub genres of areas that I have written in before. Specifically, I have done some work in micro fiction, haiku, and found poems. As I worked on these pieces, I realized something about my own writing style...I am long winded. When I write, I love to hear myself "talk". Working on these pieces, I found it extremely difficult to complete the pieces within the guidelines of the sub genres. As I said part of it is that I like to hear myself talk, but part of it is that I love descriptive writing. I once wrote a piece in which I spend an entire page discussing a hut on an island that was the main location of a short story I was working on. However, there is one thing that I cannot turn down...a challenge. It really challenged me to do the haiku, found poem, and micro fiction. I wanted to make them all longer! 250 words to tell a story? Its not enough! But I love a challenge, so i powered through it. I tried to create a piece that was as good as it could be while still staying true to my own writing style.
I also have begun to look at things in a simpler way since I started these pieces. What I mean by that, is that I have tried to look deeper, in shorter pieces. Normally when I read shorter pieces I read them, get the main idea, and move on. However, having worked on these shorter pieces, I went back and tried to look beneath the surface. I still struggle with it. I like to read something, get the idea, and get on with my life. However, I am attempting to look deeper, and not just look at the length of the piece. I am trying to not just equate length with better writing, despite my own preferred style of writing.
To finish up this section of my reflective letter let me move on to discuss something that has bugged me since it was brought up. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SOLO WRITING! The only thing that comes close to solo writing is when you're writing in a room by yourself, but even then you have your experiences and interactions to draw upon. Thus how can your work be considered a solo piece? Everyone interacts with people in their day to day lives. Whether it's talking to somebody on facebook, listening to a professor's lecture, blasting music on the radio, talking to your friends, or watching tv. You have the experiences of your interactions with other people when you sit down to write, and those interactions help to mold how you write, why you write, where you write, and what you write about. It is impossible to escape these day to day interactions and thus it is impossible to truly write on your own! Sorry...had to get that off my chess it's been bugging me all semester.
Research
Before I took this course I always thought of research as looking things up in a book, finding facts and quotes, and then using them to write a paper. I never really considered research to be what goes on in my daily life, what's happening on facebook, or who's saying what on twitter. Now I realize that there is a great deal of opportunity out there for research. Take a look at a blog post that I made when working on my twitterive.
Im working on my twitterive and will be presenting it on my website within the next few days. However, as it is a work in progress I am trying to get different people's ideas on how to improve it.
1) What other genres do you think could be used to enhance my twitterive?
2) Do you have any suggestions to make my prologue flow more smoothly?
3) What to do think of the way that my pieces are arranged? Any suggestions for improving it?
4) Do you think that I should continue to include pictures of the people that I am focusing on in the pieces? Do the pictures add to the work, or distract from it?
5) Should I try and expand the poems that I have included?
6) Should I try and expand the piece where Im arriving home one night?
By writing these questions, pondering them myself, and asking my classmates, and professor for feedback was research. Before taking this class I wouldn't have considered this to be research. I would have simply thought of it as peer review. But by having others provide me with their opinions I was doing research on how to improve both my twitterive and myself as a writer. Also, If you look at my twitterive you will see that I asked for my friend's opinions in the piece. That is also research. I always thought of research as purely quantitative. Now I really what is truly meant by qualitative research. It is the ability to call upon everything that you see, hear, read, etc into your writing. There is no end to the limit of research possible.
Another thing that I have realized is that research is always evovling. Alright, so my group has been working on finding out how college students view their nutritional health. We've come up with surveys, we've taken interviews, we've examined the results, and...we've realized our topic apparently shifted somewhere. Somehow, not sure exactly how, we've wound up focusing on how Rowan students view their nutritional help and if Rowan helps students or hinders them. I guess it shouldn't really be too surprising that our research took that turn without us really realizing it. I mean after all me and my group members are Rowan students, and all the people we have interviewed, and given surveys to are Rowan students. Still its interesting that our research took this turn without us realizing it until we began to examine all of our results; but that's research for you. Its always evolving.
Technology
Alright, this is probably the section that I have gained the most in. I never really used much of the technology that this class focused on. Twitter, weebly, blogs, digital recorders, even youtube. I'm a guy who didn't even have a facebook until about a year ago. The biggest reason why I don't use much technology is I have to be shown what value it has to me and my goals, and ambitions. As the semester has progressed I have really gained an appreciation for certain new technologies. For example, I think weebly is a phenomenal thing. I intend to use it in the future as an official page for my career. I will give the students that I will be teaching as well as their parents the url for a weebly site that I am going to create and evolve as I teach. I intend to use it to provide the students and parents with information that will help them in my class, and provide them with some extra exercises, and tools to help them succeed. Weebly, I see the point of.
Blogging, again, I never really saw a point to. My opinion of blogging has also changed over the course of the semester. It is a great way to provide information, and to find information. You can easily interact with people via blogs because of the comments section and I could see using blogs in the future, again as a way to further help my future students and their parents. I see the point of blogging now.
Twitter...before this semester I hated it. Now that the semester is over...I still hate it. I don't see the point of it at all. To me it is so much easier to do the things that twitter provides on facebook or myspace. I do get that twitter is a way to keep up to date on news, sports, celebs, etc. However, facebook provides me with all the same things that twitter does. That i really can't stand some of what people tweet. Its too random. I really don't see a point to it at all. This isn't to say that it didn't help me with my projects this semester, but in all likelihood I'll be deleting my twitter account after the semester's over.
The technology that I have been using this semester has offered me possibilities. I am finding new ways to improve my future career options via these technologies. I look forward to using most of them in the future.
