Golden Treasures of English 315

The Tumblr page you and the reader will access is a collection of gems that guides one to the journey on the concept of writing. Each piece is a  stepping to stone from traditional writing to digital writing.  Together we will discover some shocking truth and talk about what traditional educators  believed  was controversial. Controversial topics were not always as it seemed and was more impactful in a positive way and soon it would be recognized. 

This collection is a mixture of digital writing in the most common form like blogs and there is also a non traditional form like audio or film. The light is shined on the idea of digital writing and we did deep to uncover the efficiency digital writing has over traditional writing. Digital writing is writing on an online platform, which means it can be in forms we probably do not recognize. Mediums such as social media, film or audio. There is a blog post where I discuss aurality and how that is incorporated in writing. I cover the journey, the issues and what has been accepted in writing. Learning about aurality has opened my mind about new ways to learn and communicate, hence this blog page I have created to share my knowledge with you, the reader. What I learned that was new and shocking was about film, audio and social media being part of digital writing. I did not understand how it was until I read articles about digital writing and began creating this digital content. I have included a film review with just audio and a script I wrote and this assignment was included because it taught me to write, organize and learn in an engaging  way. It is a new way to learn and it can be challenging as I mentioned in My Journey with Technology. In that video I introduce myself as a graphic designer who always has to use technology in a creative form to communicate ideas using text, composition or color. I explain how my world of technology was when I was growing up and how it is now by describing the challenges and accomplishments I have made over time. 

Even though we all struggled with technology at one point we all learn and progress with technology. As society changes with technology, so are the methods we use. For example, a class using a blog platform like wikipedia to collaborate  and engage with one another. This collection also included a blog on technology becoming our new reality. With everything happening with COVID and us being so dependent  on technology, one can say we are living in a virtual world. From communicating to learning to socializing through technology due to this pandemic. Will we slowly forget about traditional writing like how we used to write with pen and paper? Will we be expected to go  beyond just writing and include creative aspects like design and composition every time we want to share our thought out into the world? Only time can tell how far technology will advance.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Avenue_(Los_Angeles)

An open source would be a platform where one could write and edit on, such as wiki, google docs, tumblr, you name it. It is a form to voice one’s thought and opinions, it is also a form in one can collaborate in. Collaborating on a platform that gives free range comes with its structure and guidelines. The basic structure of any open source would usually begin with it’s text and body paragraphs voicing the topic. With many open source platforms people can edit and comment on the topic. For example, Wikipedia is an open source that one can edit by adding or deleting information, however, there are guidelines in doing this. Usually Wiki has editors per review the edits before finalizing it. Google docs has also become a popular digital tool in the class room settings by having students collaborate effectively online. Student on the document can comment, edit, share, revise or even make suggestions if one is not allowed to directly edit. There a lot of digital writing tools that have the same basic functions, just different guidelines and the possibilities of what could be done.

Digital Collaboration In an Educational Setting

Digital Writing and Collaboration have been present for the longest time, but as we progress and our environments change, learning has changed too. According to the article Co-Constructing Knowledge Through Collaborative Writing, classrooms are using multiple forms of open source such as blogging, google docs, or wiki. Teachers have used these platforms as a way to make students better writers, thinkers, readers and collaborators. It has helped with student participation because in a blog it is pretty informal and students are able to comment back and forth with their peers. It helps give confidence with in the students because they are able to voice their thoughts in a comfortable setting and it keeps them engaged.

Teachers have also realized that writing and reading blogs have helped them experiment with their style in writing. Technology has become a substitute in traditional writing, some see it as form of destruction in education, however, that is not the case. Digital writing in these platforms have obviously supported students through its diverse ways in writing. For example, in the article Co-Constructing Knowledge Through Collaborative Writing, students learn about audio/video, multi post, or fictional blogging.  Students learn how to composite layouts of text, video or audio to spread information with in the classroom or outside the classroom setting. Blogging has given them new tools with out them noticing because they are interested and engaged. This type of open source is successful among students because it is like social media, which means it is clear, easy to access, informal, and engaging, just like any open source.

The Imperfections of An Open Source

To any software there will always be some downfalls in its structure, protection or among user collaboration. Co-Constructing Knowledge Through Collaborative Writing, discusses issues with collaboration. Some collaboration issues would be disagreement or lack of interest on a topic, not sharing ideas or collaborating, lack knowledge to contribute, don’t like the hierarchy structure where there is a leader with followers, or lack communication as a group.

To create a successful setting, one needs to define their own role and have a topic that one can connect with where one can see themselves as. Protection for students is needed since it is public, which will require guidelines such as not revealing personal information, watching the language used or blocking out certain topics.

Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia page created by Jimmy Wales. It is a an editable page that anyone can add or delete information from. Wouldn’t this be a major issue if people all of a sudden decided to edit a page? According to Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica by Daniel Terdiman discusses how the Encyclopedia Britannica is more accurate than Wikipedia because it contains less errors. The errors mentioned are not minor errors like grammatical or spelling errors, it was major issues involving the concept and facts. There was a misunderstanding in content and the information could not be tracked. This is one reason why educators say to use scholarly websites like JSTOR to cite research papers or essays. 

All websites have their set of issues, Britannica even had a huge number of issues, but Wikipedia had a bit more. The difference is that Wikipedia is more diverse and up to date with its information. Wikipedia doesn’t just contain educational material, but all kinds of concepts from information about movies to who a celebrity is. This is a platform created by a knowledgeable community who want to share information one has discovered. So is Wiki still better than Britannica?

The Structure of Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a popular and successful platform that continues to be successful thanks to its structure and its standards it enforces. The set up is the following: anyone can create an article, can request an editor or edit them self, and for ask questions or for help. It is credible to an extent because of its policies and guidelines, however these rules are not firm. Other ways that makes Wiki credible is by having an editor check the written piece before making it public and the editor or writer of the content always includes citations to the piece. As Jimmy Wales mentioned in the YouTube Video, The Story of Wikipedia, he states that he believes on the fact based idea, meaning one should show as much evidence as possible.

The principles Wiki stands by is by the 5 Pillars known as:

1.Combining the encyclopedia, almanacs and gazetteers. It is not a dictionary, newspaper or collection of docs.

2.Written in a neutral view point and writes toward characterized information that isn’t more than a debate.

3.It is free to use, edit and distribute.

4.Great volunteer community that plan, organize and is respectable.

5.No firm rules set in stone, but does have guidelines and policies

These pillars is what makes Wiki up and running, it also keeps up with the new changes society is making.

Does Everyone use Wikipedia, Should We Rely On It?

Technology has taken over our nation physically and emotionally, which has affected how we perform in our daily lives.

Starting at an Early Age

It has become a necessity because we are advancing, meaning our society has to start teaching children at a young age. As mentioned in Digital Nation, students in Seoul are expected to start learning on how to use the computer in the second grade. Students are engaged when learning through games and new software, however, it is not all good. Students after educational hours have become addicted to over using these software like gaming. Digital Nation talks about how gaming reduces how we think and how Seoul has a big gaming problem, since it is a big thing in Korea. There are gaming places where students are spending countless hours playing video games instead of using their time to study. The Korean government even set up wellness centers to help students in this addiction. At least they recognize the problem, but what about the United States?

Multitasking and Our Focus

Our generations today have a hard time focusing, which is leading to changes in our educational systems. Instead of creating curriculum for students to follow, the educational system needs to build a system inspired by students. This means creating curriculum solemnly based on technology usage, which circles back to our COVID situation in our education. Since we have come to the point where we have short attention spans, people are multitasking in their everyday lives. Digital Nation gave us a perspective on how students are multitasking. Many multitaskers say they are good at it and are able to obtain and perform well, a test says another thing. The test says our thoughts are not clear and cohesive and that makes sense because studies show that our minds can not multitask, so how do we do it?

If the tests have proven our minds to not be great multitaskers, then why do educators believe that it will be needed as we advance more? 

The Virtual World Coming Soon

Creators involved with technology are turning up the dial and changing our everyday experiences. Today we are living in a pandemic, which is creating a virtual world for us. In Digital Nation a few examples would be creating and using software to have meetings with members from around the world without flying out. People are using this software containing avatars that look just like the users to collaborate and have meetings with. Another example would be using video games to have a virtual experience on what joining the military would be like. With time we will come up with a system that feels real, it will perhaps become an issue when it comes to distinguishing what reality is.

Overall Thoughts

Looking at the statistics, experiences and outcome, I believe that technology is a complicated thing to decide if it is good or bad and if we should get rid of it overall. Technology has not only affected our education and work settings, but also how we are entertained and how we create. For example, in the Youtube video Everything is Remixed Remastered, it touches upon the topic about how nothing is original and how we take concepts or content to create something new, by copying, transforming and combining.

 So you see, this issue goes way back, we are just creating more quicker and efficient ways to do this. 

https://soundcloud.com/andrea_vazquez2020/inception

Why was audio/sound looked down upon and not wanted in our education? What could be the reasons on making audio/sound feel taboo? All the answers to these questions lead back to the ideology of writing being the dominant way of learning. In our earlier post we had discussed the same misconception on moving from traditional writing to digital writing. Our world is advancing and so are our writing techniques, so instead of just using what we have traditionally learned about writing we need to mesh these new techniques (audio and digital writing) to succeed. 

Schools don’t want to mesh aurality into the traditional ways of writing because they feel it is the way to go, however, this might not be true to our needs in the real world. In the article The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing by Cynthia l. Selfe, she mentions, “Is there a place in College English classes for exercises in reading, or talking, or both? The question has been raised now and then in the past, almost always to receive a negative answer, particularly from English departments” (8). This question reveals the roaming thought on the issues that students will later face and how this issue could be prevented if aurality is embellished in their teaching curriculums. Of course educators have their reasons on being against aurality, which is that aurality is part of a popular culture, some student hear differently or that we don’t need aurality to voice our opinions because we voice with our thoughts on paper. These are valid points, but educators are sticking to traditional ways, which connects back to the 19th century of race/gender.

How does Race/ Gender in the 19th century Play a Role in having Aurality in Writing?

Back in the 17th century to the 19th century printing was the primary way of “recording, storing and retrieving information discovered” (8). Since the scientific world of scholars was using writing and printing as the main way looked at in our education, it became something only white males had access too. For example, women, Blacks, Hispanics/Latinos and American Indians were denied access to read and write in higher authorities of education (9). These minority groups learned through using aurality in their education by preserving cultural ways through storytelling, vocal performances, music, public speaking or through ceremonial contexts (10-11). Using aurality throughout history led to topics taught in our education today.

How has Aurality incorporated in Writing?

Besides following traditions going back to the 17th century, educators were having a hard time incorporating aurality into writing because it was part of popular culture such as mass media, however, studies have shown that aurality could enhance writing. In the 20th century aurality was finally accepted. For example, teachers were now practicing ways in using aurality in writing practices such as recording audios giving students feedback on their essays (18).  As time goes by aurality and digital writing play a great role in traditional ways.

Do people even write outside of school? The answer is yes! Shocking to say that you are probably enhancing the tool of writing right now, but how? Digital writing has taken over society through social media, texting, blogging or anything with writing a description on an online platform. Today digital writing has a complicated perception of what it is and how it is used, such as being considered as an online platform for writing. For example, in a 2008 Pew Internet Research study (Lenhart, Arafeh, Smith, and Macgill, 2008) there was research taken of adults and teens on the idea of using digital writing. Teens didn’t think they were applying the skill of writing beyond their school hours and parents had a negative perspective on it. Parents believed that students were cutting corners in learning the skill of writing by not seeing spelling errors or having the computer do all the work, however not all parents agreed. Parents believed this would be a great tool to perfect their writing, present ideas clearly, design creative thoughts and share their writing (Lenhart, Arafeh, Smith, and Macgill, 2008). 

Besides a parent’s concern, there are also the teacher’s concerns on teaching and training us on the skill of writing. The educational system is stuck with the idea of the traditional ways of writing. For example, in the article of Because Digital Writing Matters, it states, “when we thought of writing, we often imagined a solitary author sitting at a desk,perhaps holding a pencil or pen, scribbling on paper.When we thought of classrooms, we might have imagined a room filled with desks organized into rows all facing a teacher’s desk at the front of the space, students sitting,heads bent, writing on notebook paper with pencils (2-3). Even though this technique is being used in schools, today this won’t cut it because of our advancement in technology and areas of study or work. 

So how does digital writing come into play and why does it matter?

Modern tools can still be applied to traditional techniques of writing. Digital writing won’t diminish educators who teach writing, but instead strengthen them to educate new generations of students. Digital writing will help communicate, share and archive writing online. For instance, in Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (2006, 4), they note,”These skills build on the foundation of traditional literacy, research skills, technical skills, and critical analysis skills taught in the classroom.” Students will attain visualization, networking, negotiation, and much more skills.  For instance, a classroom class can work collaboratively in a shared document, or create visualizations on researched materials through filming,editing,and compositional designs .

Like I mentioned before, digital writing is also used through the entertainment media. For instance, in the article Top Six Digital Transformation Trends In Media And Entertainment by Daniel Newan, it discusses how the media has changed. People now have a shorter attention span and are multitasking on sharing their thoughts on social media. For example, as mentioned,”Used effectively, these types of analytics can create instant “audiences” for new shows and products” (Newman 3). Today thanks to digital writing the media is using marketing and money to get data on what society likes in order to be successful.

Digital writing impacts digital media through the tools that help create and advertise ideas. In the Ted Talk Everything you Hear is a Lie, it touches upon how technological tools create engaging content that mimics what one interacts with.