Questions on Papers

I think that having both the comments in the margins and the comments at the bottom of a paper is the best way to receive feed back. You can see that throughout the paper in the margins the professor is able to add helpful hints to specific areas of the paper. They can question a specific decision that you made in your paper. This is helpful because you would not know what they were referring to specifically if they had waited until the end of the paper to say that. In addition to the comments in the margins I feel that having the little wrap up or summary of the professor's overall opinion of your paper is also important. Seeing just comments on the side could be intimidating and possibly make you think that what you wrote is not good when in reality the professor was simply giving you some suggestions or helpful hints. It's encouraging to know exactly what the professor thinks of your paper especially when it is on a rough draft because then you can tell if you are heading in the right direction.

Survey Blog

Student Learning Outcome #1: students will produce essays through a series of drafts that include exploratory writing or talk, as well as revisions that include addition, deletion, substitution and rearrangement.
#1: I typically revise my writing multiple times (gives students the freedom of starting all over again if needed)
#5: When I revise my first draft, I spend most of my time on issues related to purpose, audience, content, and/or organization (mentions the importance of drafting and addition/deletion and substitution)
#7: I use writing as part of my thinking and analytic processes (free writing, always necessary when drafting)
#12: When I revise my first draft, I spend most of my time on grammatical issues (addition/deletion and substitution)
#14: When I revise my writing, my revisions typically include additions, deletion, substitution, and rearrangement
#15: I typically brainstorm or do other planning activities (ex. freewriting, listing, clustering as part of the writing)
#16: Overall as a writer, I would rank myself (writing skills based on those components from SL #1)
#17: Overall as a critical reader, I would rank myself
Student Learning Outcome #2: students will identify central ideas/themes of a text through class discussion and writing.
#6: I am able to use discourse analysis to explore research questions (discourse is widely used mostly in class)
#8: I feel comfortable talking about the main ideas of a text in class discussions (participation required to engage in main idea talks and comfort)

#11: I am able to interpret the main ideas of a text (it offers students the opportunity to take apart the text and be able to further understand its content)

Student Learning Outcome #3: students will use two or more methodologies from English Studies to develop original research or creative products.
#2: I am confident in my ability to conduct primary research (research, research and more research)

#4: I able to use textual analysis to explore research questions (comparisons and first hand research)

Student Learning Outcome #4: students will demonstrate ability to give a compelling oral presentation.
#10: I am comfortable giving presentations

#13: I have given a presentations where the audience used writing to respond to my ideas

#18: Overall as a speaker, I would rank myself






I think that overall the survey was alright ...I feel that it could have met he student learning outcomes and still have been less jargony. I think that you should have also been able to add comments if you wanted to, or just to elaborate on an answer.

iPad Articles

There is not too much information on composing writing on an iPad basically because the iPad is a relatively new technology. Together with Dr. Chandler we found the one source from the College Teaching book volume 61 by Rebecca M. Sullivan. As of right now this is all that I have for the research for my topic. I intend to further research the resources that she had used for her research.
Much more research is needed to be done on my part in order to have an adequate amount of information on the iPad topic. It might even be interesting to see if apple had any kind of information on what they might have intended the functionality of composing on the iPad would be.

Composing Writing on an IPad

Originally I was interested in doing research between texting and academic writing.  After my conference with Dr. Chandler I have a more solid idea of a new topic.  She asked me if I use text messaging, and I do, she then asked me what other things I do with my phone.  I ventured to talking about how I do all of my school work on my IPad.  We discussed about how my writing is different from writing it on an IPad versus writing on a laptop or computer.  I am thinking about doing an autoethnographic study about how composing  writing on on IPad would effect how I write versus how I would write on a laptop.
I think that another question could be how does composing writing on an IPad effect the way people write.  And I think that I like this one better.

I plan on using Rebecca Sullivan's article ''The Tablet Inscribed: Inclusive Writing Instruction
With the iPad''.  From this short article I will also see what resources she used for her article and see if there are any topics that would be supportive of my question.


Does the environment effect your writing?
Ways you type? Keyboard, On screen keys, (watching how people type) thumbs versus full hand
define was writing is
methods of writing, - computer journal IPad
context of writing
spelling- autocorrect
text to speech - helps to hear the words versus reading them
iCloud - sharing with phone
short hand blends into writing

Is our class a Discourse community?

We, as a class, are a Discourse community. We have our own type of language that is used in class. I think that this language may overlap with other English classes that we take but it does not make it an English Discourse community. The ways in which we use the language are different and then how we interact is different from the ways we would interact as an English department because of how the interactions would take place as a much larger group. I think that the student Discourse plays a role in the Discourse of our classroom because of the role that we play, sitting down while the professor stands up front for example. The student Discourse helps to keep the class feel as thought there is some semblance of order. It may even be our student Discourse that leads us to have the Discourse in the class by what we talk about and how we feel comfortable enough to actually talk to each other.

What happened in class?

Wen we first started the entire class was a little unsure of how or when to really begin. I felt a bit of tension int he room. As Dr. Chandler began asking questions the class opened up, it was hard to answer a question and still right down the actions in the room. Joanna volunteered and spoke up about her project idea on elementary classroom settings and towards the end she added her personal experiences. When Dr. Chandler spoke, the entire class laughed, with the exception of my row, it seemed to be a nervous laugh. Arlette and I did not understand why everyone else was laughing. Jillian gave her example for her project and because of her in depth idea Dr. Chandler made a joke about a dissertation and everyone thought that she was being serious, she wasn't. I noticed that the class giggles at random times. Krista gave her idea on bullying in college and in the middle of it Jenna left and everyone int he class seemed to notice. Dr. Chandler asked more questions and then she called on Stephanie and Karl even though they hadn't raised their hand. I think that I noticed this because it was just a freer vibe for a classroom. Afterwards the class even sat and chatted amongst themselves, talking in the class makes it feel more relaxed.

Ethnographic Field-notes

After reading the article on field notes I feel like it is helpful to almost become a part of the life of the person or people that you are interviewing. In a way this is such a helpful thing because it allows for you to see the daily, even hourly, life of the interviewee but I feel there may be flaw in that because they could be altering what they do because of your presence.

I know that I will be interviewing people, especially young people, in my research study and it is interesting to know how to interact with them. Because I am interested in researching text messaging language versus the language used in academic papers I will be working very closely with people. In a way I feel like I will be intruding into the personal business of my interviewees but it is my responsibility to reassure the interviewee that my presence is purely there for the sake of the research and not to be nosing into their personal lives. The participants will have to be willing to cooperate with me and be understanding of my position inn the research.