![\"pooh_writing_sm\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540sept09\/files\/2009\/10\/pooh_writing_sm.jpg\" "\\"pooh_writing_sm\\"")
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First, the disclaimer: I don\u2019t feel reflective. \u00a0Reflexive, in one sense of the word, yes.\u00a0 Musing \u2013 or bemused. \u00a0But not reflective, which suggests calm, unhurried contemplation of a reasonably quiescent subject. \u00a0Fat bloody chance.<\/p>\n
In large part this is due to personal circumstances… the start of my grad studies adventure coinciding with a serious family illness and an (unrelated) major change to our household structure and dynamic. \u00a0In smaller part it is due the steep learning curve involved in taking a course in this (to me) new environment. \u00a0I\u2019ve been a student for a very long time, and I figured I knew the drill. \u00a0Appears someone changed the layout of the parade ground while I was in the loo.<\/p>\n
The effect, anyway, is rather like what I used to experience in the race car when something went seriously sideways \u2013 all of a sudden, tunnel vision: everything disappears except a few things right in front of me, obscured by a vision of my bank manager\u2019s ugly mug. \u00a0And way too much time spent searching frantically for things that suddenly aren\u2019t where they should be \u2013 like third gear, and my sense of confidence; and the two hours\u2019 worth of work I\u2019m dead certain I completed last night.<\/p>\n
The effect, anyway, is rather like what I used to experience in the race car when something went seriously sideways \u2013 suddenly, tunnel vision: everything disappears except a few things right in front of me, obscured by a vision of my bank manager\u2019s ugly mug. \u00a0And way too much time spent searching frantically for things that suddenly aren\u2019t where they should be \u2013 like third gear, and my sense of confidence; and the two hours\u2019 worth of work I\u2019m dead certain I completed last night.<\/p>\n
So in addition to reflecting on the content of this course I am spending a lot of time reflecting on the form.\u00a0 An example: I have been a moderator for a couple of online forums in the past; a very busy one on relationships and sexuality, which could get extremely heated at times (no pun…), and another of race drivers and officials, which was less busy but not much less heated.\u00a0 I was struck in both contexts by how the combination of medium and a topic brought out \u2013 and influenced \u2013 the \u2018writer\u2019 (often an otherwise very latent one) in their participants.\u00a0 And similarly I\u2019m noticing how this medium is influencing my own approach to ‘academic writing’, and the conventions and assumptions that have formed it for years. \u00a0Most noticeably, I feel freer from the constraints of traditional academic style (which I confess tends to give me a rash anyway).<\/p>\n
But the medium also leaves me feeling much less certain that I know exactly what I\u2019m supposed to be doing… I worry persistently that I\u2019ve missed finding something important, lodged in some \u2018corner\u2019 of the course site that I have overlooked. \u00a0And things are constantly changing \u2013 in appearance and in content.\u00a0 The \u2018course readings\u2019 keep proliferating… some days this seems very exciting, and other days it just seems damned unsporting. \u00a0My response to all this varies between a sense of liberation and perhaps even defiance \u2013 \u201cIf it were really important, it would be front and centre, and anyway, we\u2019re not bound by convention here – I can do this my way!\u201d, and a constant sense of being out of touch and scurrying around at an ever-growing distance behind the field.\u00a0 It\u2019s… disorienting.<\/p>\n
Which really gets to the point of this particular rumination, and how it relates to text and technology…\u00a0 it boils down to this: that for most of its history, text has stayed where it was put \u2013 and now, it doesn\u2019t any more. \u00a0In many ways, it has become as transitory and mutable as voice.\u00a0 I think this is important to be aware of when we think about comparing orality and literacy in an environment of computer technologies. \u00a0The written word has lost some of its fundamental difference from speech, and gained some significant similarity \u2013 in a small way, of course, but importantly nonetheless.<\/p>\n
(Image – copyright The Walt Disney Company 1986; found on a Hallmark postcard… posted on the bulletin board of a colleague who teaches English but only because we don’t have any real Oral Communication courses hereabouts.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
First, the disclaimer: I don\u2019t feel reflective. \u00a0Reflexive, in one sense of the word, yes.\u00a0 Musing \u2013 or bemused. \u00a0But not reflective, which suggests calm, unhurried contemplation of a reasonably quiescent subject. \u00a0Fat bloody chance. In large part this is due to personal circumstances… the start of my grad studies adventure coinciding with a serious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":926,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540sept09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540sept09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540sept09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540sept09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/926"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540sept09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=927"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540sept09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":932,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540sept09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927\/revisions\/932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540sept09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540sept09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540sept09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}