Manuscripts, Printed Text, and eBooks,
A few ideas stood out for me in relation to this topic.
Ong reports “printed texts are far easier to read than manuscript texts…Such reading in turn makes for a different relationship between the reader and the authorial voice in the text” (1982, p. 122). Reflecting back at the writing that my students submitted to me this past year, their raw version with their own style of penmanship kept me in the present moment compared to reading printed out good copies that had gone through the editing process of their peers. Even though it took me longer to read some them, as parts would have to be reread due to their poor penmanship or choice of sentence structure, it felt more authentic as their own style was incorporated.
Many of the research projects my students carried used the Internet as their sole research source. It became apparent that with this readily available resource plagiarism was easier to accomplish by simply copying and pasting parts of texts into any presentation platform they were using. I think this generation of students are less likely to use hardcover books exclusively for research and therefore don’t take into account the concept that “print created a new sense of the private ownership of words” (Ong, 1982, p. 131). My grade 6-7 students share their images freely on social media and when they text to their friends. For them it’s commonplace practice to share one’s own work with others without credit and so I saw them continue this practice in their use of text from the Internet in their schoolwork. (It’s like the image depiction above, students are fed the audio information of books and then left to use it for their own uses. If the headpieces are headphones then audio literature is the prediction of Villemard.)
Through the school year, different writing samples from my students were compiled into books. Ong states, “print encourages a sense of closure, a sense that what is found in a text has been finalized, has reached a state of completion” (1982, p.132). Once the books were completed, my students enjoyed going back through and rereading their own submissions and looking at others. A colleague of mine, who teaches primary compiles the same number of completed books as she has students in her class so each student is able to select a completed book at the end of the year.
Digital textbooks or eBooks are starting to become more prevalent. Our school tried out using iBooks where both teachers and students could act as the publisher and produce their own content and images/drawings. The books that we used were mainly as means for presentation or compilation of a student’s work or research. I think eBooks can be seen as a form of a “manuscript’ as Ong phrases it as they allow students to alternate between differnet texts and other work to create more literacy connections such links to 3D images and diagrams, interactive content (Ni, 2013) and with certain platforms, the ability to make notes along the margins similar to traditional books and can then share this content with their peers providing a more collaborative experience.
Image
Villemard (1910) – En L’An 2000 – At School.
B, T. (2011). Retro-Futurism 9: looking Back at the Past, with the Past looking Forward at Us. Retrieved from http://historiesofthingstocome.blogspot.ca/2011/03/retro-futurism-9-looking-back-at-past.html
Ong, Walter. (1982.) Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. New York: Routledge.
Ni, K. (2013). The Epoch Times. Managing the Transition to Digital Textbooks. Retrieved February 6, from http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/united-states/managing-the-transition-to-digital-textbooks-344930.html
Hello Rebecca,
Thanks for the post. I was struck by what you said around how you look at your students writing as being more authentic as it is created using their own penmanship and style. The statement drew my interest as it reminded me of the practice of medieval illumination. In Illumination the first letter in a page was often enlarged and embellished. (“Illuminated manuscript,” 2015) It is here in these illuminations that we can pick out the individuality of the monks working in these scriptoriums. If you look at some illuminations you can see a snapshot of life in medieval England. There are pastoral scenes of people working the fields. Chivalric images of knights and ladies, additionally there are some decidedly unreligious scenes of cavorting and miller’s wives. In the restricted world of the scriptorium it was how the monks could be original and unique. I had never thought of students’ hand writing as being a more personal expression than word processing.
Another statement you made that got me thinking was around your students’ sense of ownership. I too have noticed in this age of remixing, that my students have a different sense of ownership than I do. Ong (1982) states that print has created a new sense of ownership of words. This is different from the previous oral generation’s understanding that everyone is drawing from a common bank of knowledge (pg. 128). I wonder if it is too much of a stretch to state that as more and more content is becoming “common” through the internet, our students are starting to move back towards a more traditional oral understanding of ownership of ideas.
Thanks,
Ben
Works cited
Illuminated manuscript. 2015. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/topic/illluminated-manuscript
Ong, Walter. (1982.) Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. New York: Routledge.
Hello Rebecca!
Thanks for your post and sharing your teaching experience with us! Technology makes online social interaction and communication spontaneous and open, which makes the sharing practice you mentioned very common nowadays. The same picture or sentence can be posted (blogged) and reposted (reblogged) on social networking sites numerous times. For example, Instagram is famous for its features that enable users to add different filters and change the effects of the pictures/videos so that the they have some kind of “personalized” elements before they are being shared. Although a “#” or “hashtag” can be added on the caption section to make finding the picture with a specific theme or content easier for other users or to label or give the original “photographer” (“author”) some credit or acknowledgment. But most of the time, the original source can be lost after a few shares. Sometimes, even the new work itself vaguely resembles the original piece after a few “transformations,” which blurs the line between original and secondary “creators.” The notions of copyright and reader/writer distinction were acknowledged by Bolter, “The reader of one message can with a few keystrokes send off a reply. Readers may even incorporate part of the original message in the reply, blurring the distinction between their own text and the text to which they are responding…The notion of copyright seems faintly absurd, since their messages are copied and relayed automatically hundreds of times in a matter of hours.” (29) Even though the Internet brings us to convergence across different fields including copyright and law, and most of the countries adopted the copyright treaty, the Berne Convention, there are grey areas. So, it’s very important to start educating young people the importance of getting into the habit of sharing responsibly.
Cheers,
Christy
References:
Bolter, J (2001). Writing Spaces: Computers, hypertext and the remediation of print. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, London
Photo credit: funnypictureoftheday.net
Hi Rebecca,
Hearing an author’s original voice through reading authentic manuscripts can transport a reader back in time. Original documents such as a handwritten journal, a heart-felt penned letter, or a historical paper such as a peace treaty, or constitutional script connects us to the past in a way that no electronically published document can.
However, more and more, I am witnessing students that seem to be unable to connect their thoughts through writing with a pen on a page. A couple of years ago, many students in one class where I assisted produced numerous PowerPoint projects throughout the year. It was commonplace to cut and paste all of the information that they found, with little or no thought to citing references.
I am beginning to lean towards the idea that today’s students, with their many devices at hand, are beginning to think in new ways that we must begin to incorporate into teaching. I was thrilled to read that your school is experimenting with e-Book authorship. Allowing students to work through this type of creating and producing levels the playing field for student authors. Everyone can produce a work worthy of display. Even the students whose spelling or handwriting isn’t top in their class.
Like many things affected by rapid technological change, I think that we need to tread carefully in discarding the old, and instead ensure that our students have exposure to learning to handwrite and to play with ideas on a true paper manuscript. The physical element of producing words and formulating letters by hand activates the brain differently than simply hitting hits on a keyboard.
One of our fellow ETEC students recently posted a link to an article “Digitizing literacy: reflections on the haptics of writing” by Anne Mangen and Jean-Luc Velay (2010) (sorry I’ve forgotten to write down who posted it!), but I found the article to be very pertinent and I have been reflecting a great deal on the sensorimotor skills (haptics) of writing.
“Current brain imaging techniques show how neural pathways can be differentially activated from handling different writing systems: logographic writing systems seem to activate very distinctive parts of the frontal and temporal areas of the brain, particularly regions involved in what is called motor perception.” (Mangen and Velay, 2010, p. 389)
Until we fully understand the impact of producing electronic written works, I believe we need to continue to expose students to the art of handwriting, letter formation and composition. As well, students will be able to actually read documents produced during any time period with such knowledge. It’s all about finding a balance, cherishing the old while embracing the new.
Mangen, A., & Velay, J. L. (2010). Digitizing literacy: reflections on the haptics of writing.
Thank you for your thought provoking post!
~Sandra
Having students author their own Ebooks is a process that can really highlight all the steps necessary in publishing a book. I wonder what kind of reflection could be had if students also had the opportunity to author their own physical books to share with other students. It would be an interesting study to do a comparison between the two. Have students author blank books, providing the written story, and illustrations and sharing them. Then doing the same thing but with ebooks, writting, and digital illustrations. I wonder which method would be preferred type of book between the students, how the interactions took place when they shared their work with one another. I think this would be a really interesting experiment being where we are between physical books and ebooks.