Rhetoric and Technology – ENC 6421

I just saw this looking through the site.  I did not know about the reading responses at that time since I wasn’t there for the first meeting.  I figured better late than never. I noticed narrative was the centerpiece for all the writers I got to.  This made the readings difficult because the author’s pieces mixed together when you though about them.  The authors tended to use first hand experiences in the narrative but usually did not claim to be an expert on the material.  Even with this claim, the narrative aspect gave more credit to the authors.  I tend to listen more to somebody who has had experiences with a subject than one who has heard about it.  They all went over different items of technological advancements with dates and what they thought the outcome would be.  This did make the pieces more interesting then if they just plug a bunch of statistics into a paper.  People can connect with an author more if the article seems to be written by a person instead of a computer. -Chris  

Prompt 1:

Write about your experiences as a writing teacher or student of writing. Do these readings speak to your experience teaching/learning writing with technology? Which issues are missing? Which issues are overemphasized?

Prompt 2:

Should writing teachers focus class time on communications technologies? Using the readings to back your position, explain why or why not.

mwz

Please respond to ONE prompt. Address at least two of the weekly readings. This response is due at 10:00p Sunday before class. Use the category labels to classify your response as a “Reading response” on our blog.

Prompt 1 (from Pat Sullivan):

How do these writers use narrative in their pieces? For example, is narrative the center of the piece, an expendable aside, the dramatic example that calls for the piece, component(s) of the evidence, explanatory of concepts the author thinks may be difficult, etc.? Why do they rely on narrative instead of some other technique (case study, ethnography, surveys, experiments, discourse analysis for example)?

Prompt 2:

How do these histories line up? Where are the convergences? Discrepancies? What do these histories say about the writer’s view of the field? What s/he thinks of his/her readers? What s/he thinks/hopes the field should/can be?

Thanks,

mwz