In From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy
Technologies, Baron argues that all new
technology has a purpose and changes the way society looks at literacy. All
forms of writing are some form of technology, even if we don’t realize it. Even
though we often lose sight of the technological process of writing, we are
reminded of it when “a new technology like the computer comes along and we are
thrown into excitement and confusion as we try it…and adapt it to our lives”
(424).
Before pencils were invented, there really was no simple way
of recording messages. While pencils were invented for woodworkers, they became
mainstream once their uses were realized. While they aren’t as complicated of
an invention as computers, they were very advanced for their time (426). I believe
this is the main point of Baron’s article: all forms of technology create and enhance
literacy, but all will eventually become outdate. However, this is no reason
not to learn and understand the forms. If we don’t use new forms of writing
technology, we will not be able to advance our literacy at the same pace as
society.
At my high school we were required to take two years of computer
skills. However, I’m pretty sure I didn’t learn a single thing in the class
because it was taught for students who had never used Microsoft Word or
Powerpoint before. While it was great that these students were able to learn
these programs that are staples in the average student’s life, it was
unfortunate that the class couldn’t have been of more use to the 90% of the
student body who had been using Word since middle school when we were first
required to begin typing papers. During my junior year, I became involved with the
yearbook and newspaper staffs. We used different design softwares throughout my
two years involved with both to produce these publications and I became
familiar with a variety of skills although I never came close to perfecting any
of them.
Now I consider myself a fairly average computer user.
Advertising requires you to learn Adobe Suite, so I have a refined skill set
when it comes to using design software. But it seems like as soon as I start to
feel like I’m ahead of the game, I end up working next to a Visual
Communications student and suddenly realize I actually know maybe 5% of what you
can do with Adobe. Also, one of my early journalism classes required that we
learn to use Final Cut Pro and produce a news segment with it. Until this
point, I had no idea how difficult video editing software was to understand and
what a refined skill video editing is. While the program itself was easy to
understand, the skill itself was so different from anything else I’ve done that
it was an extremely straining process. I wish that my high school would have had
some sort of broadcast group where I could have learned these skills earlier
because I believe they would be very valuable to my future, I just don’t have
the time to master them now.
My in-school and out of school visual and technical
literacies have blurred together in recent years. Any type of technology I would
use for fun is integrated into my major somehow, such as social media. I think
this has helped me because I get twice as much experience because I am no
longer just using my personal facebook page, but I am also monitoring an
organization’s facebook as well as my job’s page.
All writing includes plagiarism. Whether
it was purposeful plagarism or not, no idea is truly your own. Wikipedia can
help uss understand that plagarism, when cited correctly and used in the proper
manner, isn’t always a bad thing.
In
his article “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community,” James Porter
addresses the concept that all writing contains traces of intertextuality, that
is “the idea that all texts contain “traces” of other texts and that there can
be no text that does not draw on some ideas from some other texts” (86). This
means that all writing contains some form of plagiarism. Whether it is the use
of the same descriptive words, complete phrases, or just the same thought
written in a different way, all ideas are conceived based on something that
came before. Even the phrase “Once upon a time…” that is often used in fairy
tales could be considered plagiarism because it is an unoriginall thought that “signals
to the youngest reader the opening of a fictional narrative” (89). Porter even
goes as far as to say that “texts not only refer to but in fact contain other texts” (89). By saying
this he is implying that plagiarism exists whether we realize it or not.
Plagarism is evident through
Wikipedia writing. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia comprised of over 3
million articles that is edited by the general public. Because it is an
encyclopedia that requires all material be cited, all writing could potentially
be considered plagiarized. By citing a reference source, you are saying that
what is in this article is not your own thoughts, by merely a compilation of
others thoughts placed in an orderly manner.
Wikipedia
writing, as well as all other encyclopedia writing, requires the writer to
remain objective. In order to remain objective, the writer must include opinions
from all viewpoints on the matter. For example, the abortion page on Wikipedia
includes opinions from all sides in the “society and culture” section. Since
abortion is such a controversial topic, it would be nearly impossible for a
single writer to support both sides in his or her writing. Outside sources must
be used in this case to support one or both sides, thus resulting in plagiarism
of some kind. In order to remain objective, the writer must consult outside
sources so as not to lean a certain way in writing.
My experience with Wikipedia writing
includes some forms of plagiarism. Prior to writing my article on the Bolognese
dog breed I had never even heard of the breed. Because of this lack of
experience, all of the information in the article is based on someone else’s
thoughts, or the thoughts of a discourse community. A discourse community is “a
group of individuals bound by a common inerest who communication through
approved channels” (91). The discourse community I consulted were owners and
breeders of Bolognese dogs. I
plagiarized the majority of my information from this community. While I rarely
wrote something wrote something word for word, and when I did I cited it
correctly with quotes, all of my facts are their information. The sentence
structure is the only thing on the article that I can credit as my own thoughts
and even then I learned how to form sentences from someone else during
elementary school so even those aren’t technically my own. Even though I used
subjective sources I found it easy to stay objective in my writing. Journalism
requires that you stay as objective as possible when writing, even though
sometimes that is nearly impossible. Because this is how I’ve been writing for the
past three years, I was able to balance the article with pros and cons about
the breed as well as I could based on the information I received from the
discourse community. The only thing I found difficult about this project was that
I am used to writing press releases where the style of writing is short, sweet
and to the point. You write short sentences that address your point and sell
your organization in a way the general public could understand. Wikipedia
writing, as well as the majority of writing in this class, requires you to
include intricate details and to basically bullshit most of your writing you do
by just restating the same thing in different forms. I rarely write anything
over one page in PR so writing with minor details has been very difficult for
me to remember how to do.
In
my opinion, Wikipedia is an excellent source for gaining information on a
certain topic, especially if the topic is something that is not mainstream.
However, it is important to remember that most of the information on the
website is plagiarized in some form. One of the best uses of Wikipedia is the
reference section at the bottom of each topic. This tells where the author initially
derived his or her information from, thus giving you .org and .edu websites
that are typically considered “better” reference sources. It is also important
to remember that no matter what sources you are using to gain information,
chances are the information they present has been plagiarized many time before.
According to Brandt, sponsors “enter a reciprocal
relationship with those they underwrite” (3). They do this by lending their
resources and credibility to those they sponsor and by doing this gain benefits
from the sponsored’s success. This can be through direct payment or indirectly
through credit or association. This sponsorship doesn’t necessarily have to
occur between a teacher and student; it can occur through coworkers, friends,
advertising, etc. Brandt spends the majority of her article arguing about the relationships
between sponsors, literacy and socioeconomic status.
I have had many experiences with sponsors during my life but
the main example that comes to mind is internships, specifically unpaid
internships. For example, my internship at O’Bleness this past summer was
unpaid. I only worked 24 hours a week but with three interns there was never
enough work to go around. But because they weren’t paying any of us, we all got
to stay later than necessary so we could fulfill a 200-hour internship requirement.
In payment for O’Bleness signing off on our internship, they got a large public
relations staff that they didn’t have to pay a salary. Both sides benefited:
the intern in the form of a fulfilled requirement and O’Bleness in the form of
free work.
Another example of sponsorship is networking in general. In today’s
society, who you know is typically more important than what you know. If you sponsor
someone now, you never know what kind of favor they can repay you with in 10
years.
Exigence is an imperfection, defect or obstacle. In
rhetorical terms, this is a problem that can be solved through rhetorical
discourse. For example, in crisis communication, once a crisis occurs the first
step is to hold a meeting with the head of PR and all major leaders of an
organization. This is done before any announcement is made to the public. The
purpose of this meeting is to make the statement that will be released to the
public clear to anyone who could potentially be speaking out about the crisis
so that everyone is on the same page and mixed messages are not released.
There are many types of audiences: primary, secondary,
collaborative, individual, little known, non-existent, etc. Writers are often
unaware of who their audiences will be because they often face “composite”
audiences consisting of multiple types of audiences. For example, in PR you
always create a “target audience,” or demographic, to which you attempt to
target your message. Some messages have multiple audiences so you have to create
multiple ads that each focus on a separate audience.
Constraints are “persons, events, objects and relations
which are parts of the situation because they have the power to constrain
decision and action needed to modify the exigence.” For example, in PR you
often fall into constraints because you have so many people you answer to.
While you might offer an organization the best possible advice on how to
deliver information to the public, if they don’t like it you still have to do
what they say because they’re the ones paying you.
Annie Lamott’s central argument is that the best way to
write a great piece of writing is to first create a shitty draft. You must
first write down any and everything that comes to your mind in a stream of
consciousness. It can be however long you like, even twice the length of the
final paper. After you finish this, let your thoughts sit for a day and then go
back and review them. You can edit them down however much you like and
hopefully somewhere you will have written an insightful quote or a particularly
catchy lede. Most of the time, it is this process that creates the arc and plot
in your story (or in Lamott’s case, the quirky comments and concise
descriptions about food). You don’t know all of the details that you’re going
to write until you actually start writing them.The more you initially think about your writing the harder
it will be to start. The majority of successful writers at least semi-follow
this method. It is almost impossible to create a perfect first draft.
I believe that Lamott’s article supports the Wikipedia
writing process. Most complete Wikipedia articles have an extensive history
page full of edits and corrections. Any article with information on the history
page is no longer in its first shitty draft.The main difference between Lamott’s writing process and
Wikipedia is that Wikipedia allows any number of people to edit your work as
opposed to a handful of editors. Also, there are no writing qualifications to
be met before becoming a Wikipedia writer so more edits probably have to be
made to make up for some writers poor writing and grammar skills.
I believe Murray is asking
you to reconsider whether the nonfiction you read is all true and whether the
fiction you read is all false. He believes that writers always put a little of
themselves into their writing, but sometimes it isn’t the whole truth. They
change the facts to fit the piece and embellish where necessary to make their
writing more interesting or to make the flow of the piece easier to follow. He
even states that he “still is not sure about the source of most of my
autobiography” (72). All of his pieces are drawn from experiences, but the
experiences often blur together. This is shown when Murray states, “My war
stories are constructed of what I experience, what I heard later, what the
history books say, what I needed to believe to survive and recover – two
radically different processes” (72).
According
to Porter, intertextuality means that all writing and speech arise from a
single network. Thus, all writing shares some aspect of others. He believes
that we should shift our attention away from the writer as an individual and
focus on the sources that writer draws from. Sometimes this is done through the
use of citations, but more often that not it is done through plagiarism in the
form of borrowing ideas from a discourse community.
The problem with this arises
because most individuals and young writers don’t understand this concept. They aren’t
aware of the discourse communities all great writers draw from and thus set
unrealistic expectations for themselves. This problem can be solved by
educating the public about the process of developing a discourse community and
learn to use it in a productive manner.
Another
problem with discourse communities is that the belief of the community might
sway inexperienced writers to conform their beliefs and writing style to that
of the community in an effort to feel accepted.
