A Collage of Citations » Writing 516: Advanced Composition (Winter 2007)

prewriting and collaboration become easier online

Michael — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 20:56:55 +0000

Collin Brooke wrote about free online prewriting and brainstorming software that looked pretty cool, so I checked them out. Both of the two websites he sent readers to had to do with mapping, and I’m pretty pleased with both.

The first one, bubbl.us is great if all you want to do is make a map with text and have single authorship. It’s really intuitive, and I like it a lot for its ease and aesthetics. Here’s an image:

In this page, I’m working on ideas for my Writing 516: Advanced Composition paper, which is about secrets.

I also tried out Thinkature, where I started brainstorming and plotting ideas and questions for a paper that my friend Sarah B. and I are considering writing, on being queer and in grad school. Thinkature has more features, which makes it a bit less easy to get into, but I still found it fairly intuitive. I like that it’s easier on Thinkature to make new arrows and move boxes around than on bubbl.us, and Thinkature also allows for pictures to be imported, arrows to be created that can emphasize certain boxes for other collaborators, and you can use a pencil tool to draw directly on the surface…. oh, and you can have collaborators!!! Here’s a shot of my browser with Thinkature:

I’m pretty pleased with both of these sites, and I could see lots of potential for them. When I was in my educational technology course as an undergraduate, they had us use a similar program (the name of which escapes me), but it cost a lot of money. With these two sites up, a lot can be done in schools or just for your own self-sponsored writing that couldn’t be done on the computer before (unless you paid out your nose for it).

I’m a fan.

procrastination

Michael — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:39:39 +0000

In my advance composition course we are talking about things that get in the way of our writing, and of course, procrastination was one of the top talked about. Will Richardson today discusses a recent poll that showed those who identify as “procrastinators” is up to 26% of Americans, from 5% 20 years ago. What’s to blame? Technology! If you look at my previous post for my media journal, you might see why. Those of us who are online constantly are also constantly doing “communication” via facebook, livejournal, blogs, instant messenger, etc., while working (or even, forgetting working all together).

i write because…

Michael — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 02:43:14 +0000

In “Why I Write,” Terry Tempest Williams writes, “I write because I believe in words. I write because I do not believe in words. I write because it is a dance with paradox” (32). I’m reminded of the debate between Peter Elbow and David Bartholomae a few years ago at CCCC (and then in CCC) regarding the difference between teaching students to be a reader/critic (Bartholomae) and teaching them to be a writer (Elbow). While both Elbow and Bartholomae admit (if I remember correctly) that the read/write binary is a true binary and is a lot more complicated, I have been somewhat confused as to why we can’t do both. One of the central issues concerning this debate was that Elbow does not want to teach criticism/ways of reading because it teaches students to distrust language, and then how are they to express themselves? I think, as Williams writes, that it’s important to both trust language and distrust it.

Williams, Terry Tempest. “Why I Write.” On Writing: A Process Reader. Ed. Wendy Bishop. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2004. 31-32.