Growing up, I was lucky to have lived in the same community, in the same house for my entire life. My community has always added to my values of the home because I am grateful that I live in such a tight knit neighborhood. I am lucky to call Burkeville, Richmond BC my home. It’s been my home for 22 years now and I know one day that will change, when I move on and start to create a new home for myself. When I think about the external characteristics that will make my new home as comfortable as the one I am in right now, I think about the love I feel when I step in and out of my door. Outside, the neighbours are always friendly and there are always people active within the community. Families are walking with their kids and dogs, kids are playing in the park across the street, and there are always people playing ball hockey at the courts across the road. When I walk inside my door, I walk into a house full of bright colours, lots of shoes laid out by the door, and a giant coat rack filled with coats for every person and every occasion. As Roderick J Lawrence mentions, “the house is a physical unit that defines and delimits space for the members of a household. It provides shelter and protection for domestic activities”(Lawrence 155). For most of us, we are lucky to have endless opportunity within our homes and feel our most comfortable.

However, what makes the place I call home is purely intrinsic. What really makes my house a home are the people I am lucky to call my family. I truly believe that we could live anywhere and still call it home because when we are all present, that is the true meaning of home to me. Growing up within a single parent home has made me appreciate my family the most. We never had fancy things or a ton of stuff, but we had each other and that’s what’s made my house a home all of these years. To us, and I’m sure a lot of others, it was never the stuff that mattered. It was my mom who contributed endless love and support to my brother and I, who lived in the house, making it a home.

As cliché as this may sound, for generations “they”, whoever they are, have said “home is where the heart is” and as a skeptic of clichés, I usually don’t use them within my writing, however this one somehow seems to make sense. Joseph Rykwert, in House and Home states, “home is where one starts from”(Rykwert 51). Home does not have to mean the building you grew up in, or the neighborhood you once lived, but it can. Home can mean multiple things to multiple people and the only one who really knows the true definition of home is each individual. Home has always been where my mom and brother are, the smell of spaghetti after soccer practice, the Friday games nights, and the constant love and support. What makes my house a home is the family, friends and love ones who’ve paved the way over my twenty-two years. This to me is home. Do you have any family members that make your house a home, no matter where you are?

Happy Wednesday!

-Jessica

Works Cited
Lawrence, Roderick J. What Makes A House A Home. Center for Human Ecology and Environmental Sciences at the University of Geneva. 1987. 28 January 2015. Web. http://eab.sagepub.com/content/19/2/154.full.pdf+html

Rykwert, Joseph. House and Home. Social Research. The New School. 1991. 28 January 2015. Web. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40970630?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Hi Everyone!

This is my first ever blog video that I had made for a class so I am quite nervous to post it! I teach a Sunday school class and I told this story last Sunday to my kiddos. I feel like it was an interesting way to get King’s message off to the 4 and 5 year olds. Throughout telling this story to the kids, as well as telling and creating within my own mind, I discovered a few things. I discovered that creativity can come in any shape, way or form, and that even when I am struggling to be creative a little idea can go a long way. More importantly, I discovered that not all stories need to be verbally expressed to be effective and to have longevity and fecundity. For example, in the story I am about to tell you, actions speak louder than words. Although the story is told orally, the actions posed by the two children determine how evil came about. To convey my message, I told the story orally but to create the story, I focused on the actions of the two boys. I discovered that not all important messages are told orally, some are represented by our actions. Here’s an awareness video and a little spoiler alert for my take on King’s story. Happy Sunday!

Also, here is a really interesting TED Talk about the way we tell stories and how they can influence us! Check it out if you have time, it is really worth it!

Jessica R

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Works Cited

“Chimamanda: The Danger of a Simple Story”. Youtube. 2010. Web. 11 Feb 2015.

Kids Health. Nut and Peanut Allergy. 2015. Web. 2 Feb 2015. http://kidshealth.org/teen/food_fitness/nutrition/nut_allergy.html

Youtube. Peanut Allergy Awareness. Web. 2 Feb 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjK7EJwLm80

Questions #7

At the beginning of this lesson I pointed to the idea that technological advances in communication tools have been part of the impetus to rethink the divisive and hierarchical categorizing of literature and orality, and suggested that this is happening for a number of reasons.  I’d like you to consider two aspects of digital literature: 1) social media tools that enable widespread publication, without publishers, and 2) Hypertext, which is the name for the text that lies beyond the text you are reading, until you click. How do you think these capabilities might be impacting literature and story?

On a communication level the www has excelled and increased communication all over the world. However, on the level of literature, can we say the same? Based on “the widespread publication, without publishers”(Paterson) can we say that we believe the www has been a great source for digital literature? Yes, based on the worldwide access to literature from any sort of electronic device. However, I would have to disagree based on the wide access to publication on the Internet. Since there are very few limitations to what people can publish, and what they cannot, literature has lost a sense of ownership. Facebook, Wikipedia, and twitter allow us to post our opinions, quotes, and anything we see fit without asking if that was something we made up ourselves, or if we would like to cite our source. Automatically, when we post to social media we take ownership of what we’ve written, regardless of whether it is ours or not. With the www, digital literature expands greatly, but with the expansion literature may not always be provided by its original source. A lot of the time, we are able to type what we need into our search bar, click send, and a piece of literature may appear and we will use it but may not even know where it came from. Since we lose this the source of publication, some portion of the literature is lost because it was replicated and not actually given by the author who wrote it. As for hypertexts, how many times can we say we’ve actually clicked on all the links provided in an article we are reading? It’s almost like we think “to click or not to click” when we see a hypertext. Hypertexts leave a lot to the imagination, if we do not take the extra step to click on the link. Without clicking on the link and researching what we are reading further, to find the actual publisher or to clear any uncertainty, we leave the link to our imagination. Leaving a hypertext to our imagination may turn the digital literature into stories we’ve created in our minds.
In spite my opinion of the www having a negative impact on digital literature, do to the loss of ownership, I believe its impact on stories is a positive one. Anyone can publish anything on social media. A lot of social media posts, Facebook statuses or tweets are posted due to a disagreement or an agreement with something someone saw or heard on the news or another social media site. This process gives personal opinion to stories in the making. As Chamberlin says, stories “give meaning and value to the places we call home”(1). Therefore, our opinions about newscasts, pieces of literature, or current events give meaning to events happening around the place we call home and make them personal to us. By stating our opinions we feel closer to the story, as Chamberlin mentioned about the world: “words make us feel closer to the world we live in” (1). By reiterating stories over social media, we are expanding what we have to say to others. Since social media statuses do not need any copy write authorization, opinionated statuses, essentially stories, are shared extremely easily and passed on without the author of the post evening knowing. Hypertexts allow our imaginations to run wild if we do not click on the hyperlink, we may assume we know what’s behind the text. In Brian Dixon’s article, Social media for school leaders a comprehensive guide to getting the most out of Facebook, Twitter, and other essential web tools, he guides teaching professionals how to use
SOCIAL MEDIA(CWL Login) to their advantage because it’s all over the world. Social media and hypertexts have allowed stories to be told everywhere worldwide. Stories are passed on from generation to generation, now not only orally, like our historic ancestors, but now digitally thanks to the www. On a positive note, social media and hypertext use both speech and writing to express literature and stories. As Chamberlin mentioned, both forms “result [from] studying oral and written traditions”(1), however can we classify literature as oral, if we took it from a social media website or a hypertext link? Identifying it as a story in my opinion, is easier than calling it literature. With the www literature and stories have both expanded, however can we classify the expansion as purely positive? I’ll let you decide.

I also thought this would be cool for my readers to check out, it’s called THE SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERIMENT.

Works Cited

Chamberlin, J. Edward. “A New History of Reading: Hunting, Tracking, and Reading.” For the Geography of a Soul: Emerging Perspectives on Kamau Braithwaite. Ed. Timothy J. Reiss., 145-164. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2001. 145-164.

Dixon, Brian. “Social media for school leaders a comprehensive guide to getting the most out of Facebook, Twitter, and other essential web tools”.2012. San Francisco. Web.

The Oxford English Dictionary Online. The Oxford University Press. 2015. 6 Jan 2015.

“The Social Media Experiment”. Youtube. 13 Jan 2015. Web.

Hello Everyone! My name is Jessica and I am excited to get this course started! I’ll start with a little about me to ease my way into this web-world. First of all, I have no blogging experience. I’ve never blogged before and I am quite nervous to get started because I don’t exactly know what I am doing, however I am going to try my best! If anyone is an expert blogger and would love to throw some advice my way I would accept it with open arms. I am in my fifth-year here at UBC and I am graduating in May with an English Language Degree. I am quite excited to be graduating because I am applying to the UBC Education Program for September 2015 to meet my end goal of becoming a teacher. I am interested in teaching Middle School and I am excited to start the process! I lived in Fort St John this summer and I worked closely children from all over the world and I feel very privileged to have done so.

The description of the course intrigued me because I am interested in story-telling as well as what stories we choose to listen to and the ones we don’t pay much attention to, like Dr. Paterson mentioned in her introductory vlog. This course discusses Canadian content in literature with a focus on scholarly studies of Canadian literature. We will examine the power of story-telling and how we choose to interpret or defuse certain stories. We will engage with each other in an online community way and read each other’s blogs and get to know each other by forming small research groups for a large assignment. We will also read different Canadian works and respond to them on our blogs.
My expectations for this course involve a lot of guidance from our instructor, especially because I am new to the online world as well as the blogging world. I hope to keep up to date with the latest assignments and announcements in order to complete this course successfully and be provided with tips if I am not following something online correctly. I hope to open my eyes to the bigger picture within Canadian literature and walk out of this course with a fresh perspective. To start off I thought I would research the definitions of Canadian and home to see if we agree with the definitions or not. Personally, I believe these terms have many definitions, which will be unique to each and every individual and their families.

I look forward to learning with all of you!

-Jessica

Works Cited

The Oxford English Dictionary Online. The Oxford University Press. 2015. 6 Jan 2015.