Here is one of the four assignment due for this summer’s Academic Writing course: my very first PowToon – possibly my last with all the trouble this website has caused with updating my last YouTube upload. Hope you can enjoy watching it on my blog.
Lots of positioning ourselves with words as the three remaining classmates presented assignment two. Mine started with an exploration of stance in Shakespeare’s plays and a look at the corpus of co cording words used throughout his plays.
After an introductory activity of examining the unfamiliar words in Shakespeare’s plays, I started this presentation.
Giltrow (2005) “Modal” Conscience – Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires
Great discussion on the last class of this too short term, observed by another colleague in the department. Discussion of whether practitioners and researchers are from two different worlds or not led to many interesting connections between artistry and fiction of audiences, the figured world the hyphenated people enter, and even some quantum physics’ superposition to make the argument for go really far out there.
The push and pull between Hyland’s bird’s-eye-view of research in every field (with the possible exceptions of digital literacy and a/r/tography, the two topics most of the class are focusing upon) and Giltrow’s down-on-the-ground specificity gets examined today with the interactive features of text, the points where the author is signalling for the reader to do something. Some of these cues are subtle or even innocuous, as if the hand could pluck the readers back while shoving them on (how’s that for a Shakespearean gloss?). When it gets to the point of the not-so-shy “I” intruding on what should be neutral and objective flow of ideas, the learned peer becomes a bossy show-off, or at least that how I see it (Emphasis in the original).
Found another article related to my research proposal, Patrick Howard (2014)’s Affinity Spaces and Ecologies of Practice which not only quotes extensively from Dobson and Willinsky (2009) and James Paul Gee, but features a young pre-service teacher named Kyle who uses digital tools to make a pirate-themed video. Ah, the path not taken, as it seems like this was me in another lifetime. Seems as good a time as any to reflect on the truism Kedrick famously exclaimed yesterday: “F*ck you, Frost!”
It should have been where my search for digital literacy legitimacy started, with my advisor’s co-authored definition of the elusive form of literacy in the Cambridge Handbook on Literacy. Maybe I can ask for a signed copy? Of course, now that I have found the PDF of their entry on digital literacy (Dobson & Willinsky, 2009), I find myself on very familiar ground: I already read this article twice – yikes! So much for fully engaging with the reading. Belshaw (2011), on the other hand, was a poignant and punchy answer to the question raised in the title of his EdD dissertation, but due to its less research-like status, must be handled with kid-gloves. So much to learn about academic writing!
My my my my proposal!
Citation and Synthesis – part conversation, part party. Explain more very soon!
No way around it, I didn’t have enough time to figure out where I am going to get my information for digital literacy, luckily I will have the whole morning tomorrow to root around in the library. At least the pressure is off with regards to the up-coming AERA conference in Chicago (unless I can figure out which SIG will be discussing virtual worlds.
I was really looking forward to discussing the Hyland article on stance and engagement I just managed to finish reading today, and will have more to write on it soon.
Lots of positioning ourselves with words as the three remaining classmates presented assignment two. Mine started with an exploration of stance in Shakespeare’s plays and a look at the corpus of co cording words used throughout his plays.
Life in a Shakespeare play according to Cracked.com
The. I launched into my Haiku Deck presentation, and thank goodness for he iPad/SMARTBoard connection.
Down to three students, and just as we got confirmation that the course is not canceled, the remaining two students showed up, and we explored Charles Bazerman’s article.