betajames

Of major focus the last two weeks has been what Fulkerson calls critical cultural studies (CCS), a particular pedagogy/theory that frames the composition classroom as a place for challenging and questioning students and the status quo. With talk of contact zones and accomodations, authority and critical thinking, discussions in class and on our blogs have tread familiar ground. When I asked if Fulkerson's CCS grouping was unfair (even though feminist theory hasn't been discussed/facilitated yet), the answer was close to a resounding no. Still, I think spending a single week on CCS would have been a monumental disservice to the theories as well as to students. It's difficult for me to even picture which 4-5 readings would be most essential for that fictitious week. 

Overall, though, we continue to model writing studies overall, engaging in many of the same debates that the field has had in the last 60-75 years (depending upon when you mark the beginning of the discipline). We talked about what we owe students, what they consider as a lie, how we need to move away from platitudes and toward praxis, that all this should be happening to help students become better writers (and/or critical thinkers). We shouldn't give students something to talk about, but instead provide them with opportunities for them to find what they want to talk about. We should be more like Yoda than Palpatine, but also call into question the malleability of students' minds. We need to realize our roles as gatekeepers, understand the difference between accomodations and allowances and be ware of where we can/need to be flexible. 

I do acknowledge, though, that some students are becoming more direct in asking for my input. I don't fault them for it and I was happy to provide something of a walkthrough of my most recent syllabus for ENG 112. That said, I suppose some clarification is in order. If I appear reluctant to share ideas/observations/thoughts related to the immediate discussion, the reasons concern indulgence and influence. I realize my opinion and perspective probably has some value, but I'm wary of appearing self-indulgent and/or exerting undue influence. As I see it, students are in #567crt to find/refine their own pedagogical paths. I am in #567crt to help facilitate and/or question that, not to seduce or strongarm. Then again, given the strong personalities in our class, I suppose I shouldn't be too concerned about any self-indulgence being called into question. 

Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University.” Teaching Composition. Edited by T.R. Johnson and Shirley Morahan. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002. 73-101.

In this piece on the overall aims of composition, Bartholomae argues that, above all, we must enable our students to participate in the discourses of the academy.  His chief interest lies in bringing students to share in the authority that the academic institution makes available; therefore, we must teach students to acquire those particular habits of mind that are the mark of that authority.

By the very title, Bartholomae means

The student has to learn to speak our language, to speak as we do, to try on the peculiar ways of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding, and arguing that define the discourse of our community. (74)

This necessarily involves an appropriation of a specialized discourse (74) and many students “try on” such discourse without the knowledge to make the discourse more than “a set of conventional rituals and gestures” (75).  Bartholomae also calls this “a necessary and enabling fiction” (75).  And, given the weight of such an act, there are times when student writers say “I don’t know,” it is not so much a case of having nothing to say as not being in a position to carry on a particular discussion (77).  On other occasions, writers enter the discourse without a successful approximation (77).

Also present in this piece is some discussion of Linda Flower’s notions of “writer-based” and “reader-based” prose, and Bartholomae has this to say further: “Teaching students to revise for readers, then, will better prepare them to write initially with a reader in mind” (77).  This pedagogy is still rather problematic, though, for students have to not only appropriate (or be appropriated by) a specialized discourse, but also appear comfortable with an imagined audience (78).  Having the ability to not only imagine but also manipulate an audience allows one to write from “a position of privilege” (78).  Bartholomae continues: “The problem of audience awareness, then, is a problem of power and finesse” (78-79).  

Regarding the product vs. process aspect of writing, he states:

If writing is a process, it is also a product; and it is the product, and not the plan for writing, that locates a writer on the page, that locates him in a text and a style and the codes or conventions that make both of them readable. (80-81)

Furthermore,

…all writers, in order to write, must imagine for themselves the privilege of being ‘insiders’—that is, the privilege both of being inside an established and powerful discourse and of being granted a special right to speak. (81)

This imaginative state, however, can cause learning to become “more a matter of imitation or parody than a matter of invention and discovery” (82).

Bartholomae also stresses his understanding of knowledge as “situated in the discourse that constitutes ‘knowledge’ in a particular discourse community, rather than as situated in mental ‘knowledge sites’ (83).  Necessarily, then, we might see two parts to teaching composition: learning to command certain codes unique to the discourse and learning to write/think as a writer (83).

Our beginning students need to learn…to extend themselves, by successive approximations, into the commonplaces, set phrases, rituals and gestures, habits of mind, tricks of persuasion, obligatory conclusions and necessary connections that determine the ‘what might be said’ and constitute knowledge within the various branches of our academic community. (84)

Furthermore, regarding basic writers, it would be better for us, as educators, to look at student writing “in the context of other student writing [so] we can better see the points of discord that arise when students try to write their way into the university” (85).  It is this ability to imagine privilege, writes Bartholomae, which enables writing (90), but there’s more to it than that

The movement toward a more specialized discourse begins (or, perhaps, best begins) both when a student can define a position of privilege, a position that sets him against a ‘common’ discourse, and when he or she can work self-consciously, critically, against not only the ‘common’ code but his or her own. (92-93)

From this, Bartholomae goes on to explain ways students might establish their authority as writers (94-95) and ultimately challenges researchers to turn attention to products for “a written text, too, can be a compelling model of the “composing process” once we conceive of a writer as at work within a text and simultaneously, then, within a society, a history, and a culture” (97).

Bizzell, Patricia. “Cognition, Convention, and Certainty.”  Cross-Talk in Comp Theory. Edited by Victor Villanueva. 365-389.

Bizzell begins by asking “What do we need to know about writing?” (365), observing that it is only recently have we needed to ask this question, and the very asking created composition studies, which in turn created views of the ‘writing problem.’  It is thus clear that “our teaching task is not only to convey information but also to transform students’ whole world view” (365), and many now see the aforementioned problem as “a thinking problem primarily because we used to take our students’ thinking for granted” (365).  Bizzell relates this to a teaching style based on model essays, which “has not prepared us to explain or repair these students’ deficiencies” (366), and stresses the need for a reconsideration of the relationship between thought and language.

Bizzell thus points to two theoretical camps, one seeing writing as inner-directed and the other seeing writing as outer-directed (366).  The former is interested in “the structure of language-learning and thinking processes in their earliest state, prior to social influence” (366), while the latter has greater interest in “the social processes whereby language-learning and thinking capacities are shaped and used in particular communities” (366).  Seeking to discover writing processes that are “so fundamental as to be universal” (367), writes Bizzell, inner-directed theorists have a particular model on the development of language and thought (see Figure 1, 367).  In explaining in greater detail the outer-directed theorists, Bizzell offers up a similar diagram (see Figure 2, 369).  In essence, while inner-directed theorists believe that universal, fundamental structures can be taught, outer-directed theorists do not, believing that “thinking and language use can never occur free of a social context that conditions them” (368).  Despite these differences, though, Bizzell stresses that “answers to what we need to know about writing will have to come from both the inner-directed and the outer-directed theoretical schools if we wish to have a complete picture of the composing process” (370), and she offers the perspective on the current debate as “the kind of fruitful exchange that enlarges knowledge” (370).  

Delving deeper into the inner-directed theory, Bizzell makes mention of Flower and Hayes, who “see composing as a kind of problem-solving activity” (371), and explains further the Flower-Hayes model, ultimately critiquing it though for its emphasis on the how of the writing process and its ignorance of the why.  Put another way, as Bizzell does, “if we are going to see students as problem-solvers, we must also see them as problem-solvers situated in discourse communities that guide problem definition and the range of alternative solutions” (373).  This is what inner-directed theorists fail to account for, but, never fear, for outer-directed theory can help, specifically with planning and translating, the latter of which Bizzell names as the “emptiest box” in the Flower-Hayes model and the former of which Bizzell names as the fullest (373).  In other words, “we can know nothing but what we have words for, if knowledge is what language makes of experience” (373).

Bizzell then moves briefly to Vygotsky and sociolinguistics, before ultimately offering a lengthy explanation of just what students who struggle to write Standard English need: “knowledge beyond the rules of grammar, spelling, and so on” (374).  Furthermore, composition specialists need to learn from sociolinguistics to avoid George Dillon’s ‘bottom-to-top’ fallacy: “the notion that a writer first finds meaning, then puts it into words, then organizes the words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, etc.” (375).  In short, then, writes Bizzell, “educational problems associated with language use should be understood as difficulties with joining an unfamiliar discourse community” (375).  Now, does this remind anyone of Bartholomae?

Moving on, Bizzell stresses that “finding words is not a separate process from setting goals.  It is setting goals, because finding words is always a matter of aligning oneself with a particular discourse community” (375-376).  Therefore, Bizzell prefers the term ‘interpretive community’ over discourse community (using Stanley Fish’s term), explaining that “because this interaction is always an historical process, changing over time, the community’s conventions change over time” (376).  And, “changes in conventions can only define themselves in terms of what is already acceptable (even if such definition means negation of the currently acceptable)” (376).  There are two other important passages on this same page:

An individual who abides by the community’s conventions, therefore, can still find areas for initiative—adherence is slavish adherence only for the least productive community members. (376)

Producing text within a discourse community, then, cannot take place unless the writer define her goals in terms of the community’s interpretive conventions.  Writing is always already writing for some purpose that can only be understood in its community context. (376)

Bizzell then returns to the Flower-Hayes model, noting how neglect of the role of knowledge in composing makes it “particularly insensitive to the problems of poor writers” (378), noting that what is underdeveloped in students is “their knowledge of the ways experience is constituted and interpreted in the academic discourse community and of the fact that all discourse communities constitute and interpret experience” (379).  And, in the very next paragraph, Bizzell makes some hypothetical observations which could relate quite well to the experiences Mike Rose details in his book (379), before explaining that, to help poor writers, “we need to explain that their writing takes place within a community, and to explain what the community’s conventions are” (380).  Two more chunks:

To “define” a problem is to interact with the material world according to the conventions of a particular discourse community; these conventions are the only source for categories of similar problems, operational definitions, and alternative solutions, and a conclusion can only be evaluated as “well supported” in terms of a particular community’s standards. (381)

Discourse communities are tied to historical and cultural circumstances, and hence can only be seen as unenlightening instances of the general theory the cognitive approach seeks: the one model is the universal one. (381)

Bizzell then centers on Collins and Gentner’s approach, critiquing it thusly: “it assumes that the rules we can formulate to describe behavior are the same rules that produce the behavior” (382).  Rhetorical situation anyone?  Later, Bizzell reiterates her main argument: “both the inner-directed and the outer-directed theoretical schools will have to contribute to a synthesis capable of providing a comprehensive new agenda for composition studies” (383).  She then makes mention of protocol analysis (383-384) before turning back to inner-directed theory and how no scientific research possess the authoritative certainty that inner-directed theorists seek (384).  Ultimately, though, Bizzell calls for inspection of ‘the hidden curriculum,’ “the project of initiating students into a particular world view that gives rise to the daily classroom tasks without being consciously examined by teachers or students” (385).  Furthermore,

If we call what we are teaching “universal” structures or processes, we bury the hidden curriculum even deeper by claiming that our choice of material owes nothing to historical circumstances.  To do this is to deny the school’s function as an agent of cultural hegemony, or the selective evaluation and transmission of world views. (385)

Bizzell thus thinks we must acknowledge cultural differences in the classroom, even though this will increase emotional strain for compositionists as “members of one group trying to mediate contacts among various others” (385).  And, it is discourse analysis, writes Bizzell, that would foster responsible inspection of the hidden curriculum, and it might offer students “an understanding of their school difficulties as the problems of a traveler to an unfamiliar country” (386).

In conclusion, then, writes Bizzell,

Composition studies should focus upon practice within interpretive communities—exactly how conventions work in the world and how they are transmitted.  If the work of these disciplines continues to converge, a new synthesis will emerge that revivifies rhetoric as the central discipline of human intellectual endeavor. (387)

M1:

Blogging
Posts are now due by 11:59PM Tuesday and Friday. That is, at least one blog post by Tuesday night and at least one more blog post by Friday night. All comments are due by 11:59PM Sunday.

Twitter
There is no longer a quota. Instead, focus on making positive contributions to #345tw via Twitter. See @jamiemac15, @gymgodess, @cawaites, @sadarhiphopblog, and @mstirban for examples. Tuesday and Sunday are 24-hour, optimal/optional "tweet-heavy" days. 

M2:

Blogging
Posts are now due by 11:59PM Wednesday and Sunday. That is, at least one blog post by Tuesday night and at least one more blog post by Sunday night. All comments are due by 11:59PM Sunday. 

Twitter
There is no longer a quota. Instead, focus on making positive contributions to #345tw via Twitter. See @jamiemac15, @gymgodess, @cawaites,@sadarhiphopblog, and @mstirban for examples. Sunday is a 24-hour, optimal/optional "tweet-heavy" day.

Consigny, Scott. “Rhetoric and Its Situations.” Philsophy and Rhetoric 7 (1974): 175-186.

After summarizing the arguments put forth by Bitzer and Vatz concerning the rhetorical situation, Consigny argues that while “Bitzer correctly construes the rhetorical situation as characterized by ‘particularities,’ but misconstrues the situation as being thereby determinate and determining…Vatz correctly treats the rhetor as creative, but that he fails to account for the real constraints on the rhetor’s activity” (176).  He thus proposes mediating on rhetoric as an art, “an art of ‘topics’ or commonplaces” (176).

In the first section, Consigny provides a more in-depth summary of Bitzer’s argument (“the rhetor does not differ from the expert or scientist who can solve specific problems by using well-formulated methods or procedures” (177)), before refuting it, stating that “the rhetorical situation is not one created solely through the imagination and discourse of the rhetor” (178) and what the rhetor must be able to do (178-179)

In the second section, Consigny stresses that

The real question for rhetorical theory will become not whether the rhetor or situation is dominant, but how, in each case, the rhetor can become engaged in the novel and indeterminate situation and yet have a means of making sense of it. (179)

Again, Consigny zeroes in on faults in Bitzer’s and Vatz’s arguments (180) before explaining how a rhetor must function to be effective, how the art of rhetoric is both heuristic and managerial (180) and then introducing the conditions of integrity and receptivity.  He illuminates the former as demanding that “rhetoric as an art provide the rhetor with a ‘universal’ capacity such that the rhetor can function in all kinds of indeterminate and particular situations as they arise” (180).  He illuminates the latter as “allowing the rhetor to become engaged in individual situations without simply inventing and thereby predetermining which problems he is going to find in them” (181).  Consigny concludes this section thusly:

…the rhetor must remain receptive to the particularities of the individual situation in a way that he can discover relevant issues. If the art of rhetoric does not allow for receptivity, the rhetorical act will be neither heuristic nor managerial. (181)

In the third section, Consigny states that “the art of rhetoric must not predetermine what the rhetor finds in the novel situation” (181) before explaining further the topic, “a device which allows the rhetor to discover, through selection and arrangement, that which is relevant and persuasive in particular situations” (181).  Furthermore, “the topic functions both as instrument and situation; the instrument with which the rhetor thinks and the realm in and about which he thinks” (182), and Consigny explains how Bitzer ignores the instrument and Vatz ignores the situation, before stressing that “the topic must maintain a dynamic interplay between instrument and realm, thereby mediating between and dissolving the apparent antimony of rhetor and situation” (182).  From this, Consigny follows Aristotle in explaining that “the formal and the material factors must exist in a dynamic interrelation if the rhetor is to be able to discover and manage the particular exigence of the situation” (183).

The rhetor possess a freedom of choice, of course, but “not any choice of terms will be functional in a given situation” (183), and Consigny also explains the option available to rhetors regarding various modes of opposition: contradictories and correlatives (183-184).  In the final two full paragraphs on the following page, Consigny explains how rhetoric as the art of topics meets the conditions of integrity and receptivity. And, in conclusion, Consigny reiterates his main argument before closing thusly:

The real question in rhetorical theory is not whether the situation or the rhetor is “dominant,” but the extent, in each case, to which the rhetor can discover and control indeterminate matter, using his art of topics to make sense of what would otherwise remain simply absurd. (185)

Vatz, Richard E. “The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 6.3 (1973): 41-71.

Vatz refutes Bitzer’s idea of the rhetorical situation by first stating: “No situation can have a nature independent of the perception of its interpreter or independent of the rhetoric with which he chooses to characterize it” (154).  Vatz also explains Bitzer’s point of view as thus: “There is an intrinsic nature in events from which rhetoric inexorably follows, or should follow” (155).  Vatz then sums up the rest of Bitzer’s argument before moving into his main argument, which involves a perspective on how the world is “a scene of inexhaustible events which all compete to impinge on what Kenneth Burke calls our ‘sliver of reality’” (156).  An essential part of this, of course, is context and choice, for “any rhetor is involved in this sifting and choosing” (156) and “the very choice of what facts or events are relevant is a matter of pure arbitration” (157).  Before moving into the next section of his argument, Vatz makes clear that “meaning is not discovered in situations, by created by rhetors” (157).

Vatz then turns to the implications for rhetoric and the rhetor, specifically the notion of responsibility.  According to Vatz, Bitzer’s perspective places very little responsibility upon the rhetor regarding salience; however, “if we view the communication of an event as a choice, interpretation, and translation, the rhetor’s responsibility is of supreme concern” (158).  Furthermore, “to view rhetoric as a creation of reality or salience rather than a reflector of reality clearly increases the rhetor’s moral responsibility…the rhetor is responsible for what he chooses to make salient” (158).

From this, Vatz asks the essential question: “What is the relationship between rhetoric and situations?” (158), stating that “situations are rhetorical…utterance strongly invites exigence…rhetoric controls the situational response…[and] situations obtain their character from the rhetoric which surrounds or creates them” (159).  Vatz then invokes Vietnam, explaining that “the meaning of the war (war?, civil war?) came from the rhetoric surrounding it” (159), before drawing on the example of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which “once the situation was made salient and depicted as a crisis, the situation took new form” (159-160), and then commenting on the assassination of JKF (160).

In conclusion, Vatz stresses “rhetoric is a cause not an effect of meaning” (159) for “after salience is created, the situation must be translated into meaning” (160).  Furthermore, “to say that the President is speaking out on a pressing issue is redundant” (161).  And lastly, “it is only when the meaning is seen as the result of a creative act and not a discovery, that rhetoric will be perceived as the supreme discipline it deserves to be” (161).  This last sentence carries the implication that Bitzer’s very argument cheapens, even demeans rhetoric.

Bitzer, Lloyd F. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy and Rhetoric (Winter 1968): 1-14.

  Bitzer begins this piece with a series of hypothetical situations in which “words suggest the presence of events, persons, or objects” (1), and this leads into his idea of a rhetorical situation, causing him to state further that “situations are not always accompanied by discourse…it is the situation which calls the discourse into existence” (2).  He thus proposes “a theory of situation” (3) and explains further by stating that “rhetoric is situational” (3) because it, meaning rhetoric, is “a mode of altering reality” (4) and that “rhetorical discourse comes into being in order to effect change” (4).
Bitzer therefore views rhetorical situation as “a natural context of persons, events, objects, relations, and an exigence which invites utterance” (5) and explains further:
So controlling is situation that we should consider it the very ground of rhetorical activity, whether that activity is primitive and productive of a simple utterance or artistic and productive of the Gettysburg Address. (5)

Furthermore, to say that rhetoric is situational means:
rhetorical discourse comes into existence as a response to situation…;(2) a speech is given rhetorical significance by the situation…; (3) a rhetorical situation must exist as a necessary condition of rhetorical discourse…; (4)…many rhetorical situations mature and decay without giving birth to rhetorical utterance; (5) a situation is rhetorical insofar as it needs and invites discourse capable of participating with situation and thereby altering its reality; (6) discourse is rhetorical insofar as it functions (or seeks to function) as a fitting response to a situation which needs and invites it…(7) the situation controls the rhetorical response in the same sense that the question controls the answer and the problem controls the solution.
Bitzer then offers a formal definition rhetorical situation as 
a complex of persons, events, objects, and relationships presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to bring about the significant modification of the exigence. (6)
Afterward, he outlines three constituents of any rhetorical situation: exigence, audience and constraints.  The first of these is “an imperfection marked by urgency” (6) which also functions as the organizing principle by specifying “the audience to be addressed and the change to be effected” (7).  The second of these, audience, which is something rhetoric always requires (7), consists “only of those persons who are capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change” (8).  The third of these, constraints, has two main classes, “those originated or managed by the rhetor and his method” (8) and “those other constraints, in the situation, which may be operative” (8).  Bitzer also notes that Aristotle called the former ‘artistic proofs’ and the latter ‘inartistic proofs’ before closing by stating that these three components “comprise everything in a rhetorical situation” (8).

Bitzer then offers some general characteristics or features of the conception of the rhetorical situation

Rhetorical discourse is called into existence by situation; the situation which the rhetor perceives to an invitation to create and present discourse. (8)

The rhetorical situation invites a fitting response, a response that fits the situation. (9)

To say that a rhetorical response fits a situation is to say that it meets the requirements established by the situation.  A situation which is strong and clear dictates purpose, theme, matter, and style of the response. (10)

The exigence and the complex of persons, objects, events and relations which generate rhetorical discourse are located in reality, are objective and publicly observable historic facts in the world we experience, and therefore available for scrutiny by an observer or critic who attends to them. (11)

Rhetorical situations exhibit structures which are simple or complex, and more or less organized. (11)

Rhetorical situations come into existence, then either mature or decay or mature and persist—conceivably some persist indefinitely. (12)

“In the best of all possible worlds,” Bitzer concludes, “there would be communication perhaps, but no rhetoric—since exigencies would nor arise” (13).  The rest of the conclusion concerns rhetoric’s philosophical justification.

Next Tuesday is a special session to discuss and evaluate Twitter. We'll also discuss revising deadlines for blog posts/comments.

In preparation for that discussion and ultimate decision on whether or not to keep Twitter as part of our class, below are pertinent passages from your evaluations:

M1 (11am class):

I now can see some relevance to the use of Twitter such as networking and communicating and keeping in touch with group members as well as  other classmates, and the professor. Although I feel that some of the other many social network sites may be more of a fit for use for the class as compared to Twitter I don’t feel that it is an absolutely ridiculous assignment. With twitter however, I liked how I could see what’s new while also being reminded of upcoming assignments that may be due thanks to my fellow classmates posts. I don’t necessarily think twitter should go, but I do feel that it has its pluses and negatives.

I do not think we should continue to use twitter, but if the class votes to keep it we should change the requirements.  I think that we should have to post class related posts.  If people want to post personal information, then they need to get a seperate account.  I also think we should reduce the number of tweets required.   Right now it seems like too much busy work.

I think it's nice to have there if we should need to contact someone with a question or group projects but having a required number to meet every week is a little extensive, overkill, and starting to become busy work. Many of us have never used such social communication tools before this. I've found, by communicating with my group for our project, that most of us preferred the use of e-mail to contact one another rather than twitter.

I have no problem keeping twitter if the personal posts about bathroom, eating and sleep breaks keep to a minmum. Also as long as linking your posterous.com counts as your "tweets" for the week. I do like the fact that Dr. Schirmer, is able to see all our posts because it lets him know the work we are doing and showing our participation. Also it is good to get team members information and moving on their part of the project. I don't have a problem with using twitter if these are the reason's we are using. 

Should we continue to use twitter? Yes and no.  I really like Twitter. I enjoy reading other peoples tweets or statuses and making comments here and there. However, there are two things I do not enjoy. I do not enjoy having to make the tweets refer to the class. Meaning, randomly having to find an article on technology and posting it or having to write something pertaining to the class. I would really enjoy using Twitter if the tweets could be about just anything.

[Twitter] didn’t just change the culture but absolutely created a community, again, whether we realized it or not. Everyone was in the dark, wondering how and why to use this new medium, not knowing much about it but what little we’ve heard, yet it created an open line of communication, even if awkward and limiting, in the late hours of the night, when just getting an “I’m so frustrated too!” made things seem not so dark.

To be honest, I don't feel I have done enough yet with Twitter. I would like to read more of the relevant class tweets, go to more links on class tweets, and look for organizations and people on Twitter that I might want to follow. I would like to ed links posts and engaged in more re-Tweeting and direct responses to Tweets. Thus, I am ambivalent as to whether we continue with Twitter or not.

via sooperphli.posterous.com

I think we should continue to use Twitter, however I do not think there should be a required number of tweets anymore.  This could be the "chatter" of the classroom, allowing us to freely discuss and comment on what is going on in class, rather than being pressured to think of something pertaining to the class. It is also just one more thing to check every day, and that has caused me to resent it a bit.

my inexperience with Twitter led me to have unrealistic expectations of its abilities in relation to our class's purposes. Maybe it's doing just fine and I should evaluate it more from a microblogging perspective, which is probably the correct frame of reference, anyway.

Nonetheless, there do seem to be a few disadvantages to our use of Twitter thus far. While I can balance my time enough to meet requirements, it's more than just the time required to use Twitter in our class - it's the value related to the time invested. I think the time would be of better value if our class maintained Twitter accounts specifically made for the purposes of our class, that way the members of the class would not have to weed through hundreds of tweets, some of which are a bit vulgar, to meet the demands of our Twitter use.

Although I really enjoy twitter for communication purposes and getting to know my classmates, I found that I had to read 65 totally unrelated posts compared to 25 related (or at least loosely related) to technical writing...I do enjoy twitter for getting to know my classmates and it is helpful to see when everyone has a new blog post up, makes it easier to do my commenting, but I am not sure overall it is worth the effort of sifting through the non sense stuff. I have kind of had a change of heart in the past couple weeks, I started out completely in favor of twitter because I really did not know what else we could do. After I read the email of ideas I felt better about that aspect, and I have noticed my group is actually better at communicating through email. I do not think twitter is doing what it was supposed to do for our class.

----

M2 (230pm class): 

I see others using [Twitter] for the same reasons that I have. I don’t want to sound like a complainer but there are also people out there that use it for EVERYTHING! I understand that this is a way for them to communicate and express themselves but some people seem to post 45 times a day. I feel like they should have separate accounts. I try to use my Twitter account strictly for class use. I feel like I miss some of the important information, and have to sift through the useless posts to have proper contact with my classmates.

My estimation of Twitter was that someone had finally figured out how to use technology to create, once and for all, a way for people to feel as though they were actually talking to other people without ever having to listen to them.  After having this initial reaction to Twitter, yet being compelled to endure in the face of being required to use it, what I slowly found out that was that there were some posts that I seemed dislike less than others.

Although some of my previous comments may contradict this, I think we should continue the use of twitter for this class.  I have gotten used to it and am not interested in learning a new form of social media at this time.  Twitter has its benefits and just has simply taken alot longer than expected for most to get used to, because of the class requirements.

I would say that, I don't see a negative reason to stop using twitter account to post anything. I personally like it, because I am learning from everybody. Twitter can enable osmotic communication in virtual teams and we can avoid social isolation...Lastly, messages can contain every type of information, give tip in someone's question, you can follow every twitter user you want. I can follow every bit of information that flows by... even when I finish the #345 course

I don't really see much of a reason to continue the use of Twitter other than students just not wanting the extra work that might be required otherwise. I personally think one extra Posterous blog per week or two or three additional comments per week would be extrememly beneficial. Since comments on blogs are already required, extra comments or an extra blog might encourage more student interaction.

We should continue to use twitter this semester because it helps us get easy and fast feedback from the instructor and classmates. It also sort of like a news port for technical writing. When I read other peoples tweets or see some of the information they have posted on their page, it gives me ideas on what I should blog about and opens my mind to the other possibilities there are in technical writing. That being said, I think the requirements for using twitter should be amended.

While I seem to be pretty anti-Twitter, if we choose to continue to use Twitter, you won’t hear much complaint from me. It isn’t hard to post five 140-character posts per week. Actually, from the list of alternative options, it is probably the easiest. However, to use a tool just to use it seems purposeless.

if we shouldn't continue to use twitter i think we should use something that people can get on and use right away and that they are familiar with. im not against twitter at all i am just getting the grasp of it and  i think that would have to be black board just because everyone has a account  with the class already and im sure everyone has already  used it for another college class this is already set up and has been used by many people then this way  we wouldn't have to fish and try and find people in our class im sure ive not added everyone yet on twitter. so if we switched then i think this would be the perfect thing to jump into.

I would hate to think that we would not continue to use Twitter, especially after reading some of the alternatives that would replace it.  I think adding an additional blog post requirement would be too much to do all in one week for the one’s striving to get an A in the class because that would make it 4 blogs we would have to submit per week.  Not only do I think that that would be too time consuming but after Gentle’s and McMurrey’s readings are completed it will be even more difficult to find relatable topics to write about.  I also don’t think it would be necessary to meet up more than we already do considering James has been very good about keeping in touch with us via email.  Any questions/concerns that I have had have been addressed in a timely and clear manner.  Meeting more would just be time consuming in my opinion and could be used for better purposes.

I think we should still have Twitter available to us to use like a discussion board, but we shouldn’t be required to post on it.  I like the idea of Twitter in theory, but when actually having to use it, I didn’t like it.  I think there are other things we could use that would make communication easier and more organized.

Due to 2 snow days last week, we had a jam-packed session Thursday night. We evaluated and decided to keep using Twitter. We wrote letters to elementary students based on ethos, pathos, and logos. We collaborated on collaboration. It was a very full and fulfilling session.

Class began with an evaluative discussion of Twitter, which we've been using for the last five weeks as outlined here. The actual assignment mentions a couple reasons for using Twitter, but there is an additional reason that I mentioned in class Thursday night. Given the wealth of important, positive connections and contributions I've made via Twitter, I felt I'd be doing students an incredible disservice if it wasn't part of our class. The ultimate decision to keep Twitter, if a bit begrudgingly by some, came with the condition that we designate Wednesday and Sunday nights as optional "tweet-heavy" times. In other words, usage requirements were simplified to "just do it." There is no more 5-per-week requirement. Just be present and accounted for and acknowledged in using Twitter. Since that decision, there's been something of a quick turnaround for a couple students who weren't interested in keeping Twitter part of #567crt. I have to admit to some excitement in seeing how Twitter will work for us the rest of the semester.

So far, discussion of theories that can/should inform how we teach writing have been very measured and reasonable. That is, we've weighed the good and not-so-good aspects of process, expressivist, rhetorical, and collaborative theory, seen how each might play a part in a first-year writing course. As Gia H. concluded on her blog, "there is a time and a place. That seems to be the motto this semester." To the best of my knowledge, there hasn't been a wholesale allegiance made by anyone to one particular theory. There hasn't been a declaration of "I'm an expressivist!" Perhaps there's some reluctance to do so, which is understandable. I'm just as ready to observe and question such declarations. However, I remain curious if any of the theories we've yet to discuss will resonate in its entirety with one/some/all students. Will critical and feminist factions develop after the break? Will #567crt evolve (or devolve) into a microcosm of the discipline of rhetoric and writing overall?

Also: A couple posts on rhetoric/al situations mention the snowstorm that caused the cancellation of last week's class. I'm curious if this recent "snowpocalypse" and the bevy of related descriptors generated to describe it could serve as an interesting example of the rhetorical situation. 

----

On collaboration: 

Collaboration is definitely another theory that should be used but it needs to be after some familarity has been established in the class.

Throwing it in a students face without explanation seems to be the common thing to do, and no wonder student's have anxiety, and hatred towards group work.

Even if it works for the student in the freshmen composition course, is collaborative writing the correct, most effective way to produce work?

when group work is running at its best, it encourages individual contributions. The point of group work is to get a section of individuals to pull together and to reason, think and do as a unit. This is both a method of doing but should also be looked at as an opportunity to learn.

Some students have experience that goes way beyond alcoholism and other collaborative writings.

What possibly can a classroom learn from this except shock and disbelief.

One weakness of this article was that the authors never really explained why the profession was so against collaboration. Maybe it's just my questioning nature, but I wanted to know the why of it. It would have been interesting for the authors to actually pose that question to various colleges and universities and document the differences/similarities of the responses given.

----

On rhetoric/al situation: 

The more I read the more I felt like the conversations were describing two sides of a coin.

I looked at these readings kind of like a boxing match, with the coach being the rhetor. 

If our culture is responsible for how we write or how we say something, why has haven't there been significant changes over the last 60 years?

I view a rhetor as a a newsreporter or author and it is their reality the audience is reading, and their interpretation of events. It is important to be very critical of any source of information because it is their views and reactions of the situation, I ask how does the rhetor benefit?

----

On Twitter:

when you surround yourself with the right audience, [Twitter] has positive effects.

[Twitter] is a good starting point for collaboration

How is Twitter better?  What can you say in so few characters? I just have this sinking feeling that I’m filling the void with detritus.

Twitter is useful for bouncing ideas around and it’s nice to get to “know” people in a different way.  But I guess I’m a little miffed that I feel like I need to be connected to the class on a daily basis, and I guess I don’t think it’s fair.

I think using Twitter is actually a pretty good idea because it allows us to stay in touch with one another outside of class. It has really been nice to not use Blackboard!

My growing interest in mommyblogs and digital rhetoric in general has only benefitted from the communities I have found on Twitter.

Twitter has basically kept a record of our class if you search for our hashtag.

I like twitter for a more recreational purpose.