Metablog on Metafiction

Process-Oriented, Collaborative and Shared

With new media, what matters most is the process, not the product. Unlike previous kinds of free-writing and generative assignments, discarded once the final product is turned in, new media gives each step of the writing process its own validity and its own separate existence. Text on a message board is not preserved, but serves its own purpose and exists in its own right, as do questions and responses to the class forums. Writers may use material, ideas, and insights later for more formal blog posts.

Teachers can demonstrate the interconnectedness of the writing process by encouraging students to use writing from the blog posts in their final papers as I have done with this essay. I would also encourage students to borrow from each others’ writing, again as I have done here, to encourage student-centered learning and support the democratization of knowledge.

Often, the posts on a blog might actually take precedence over the final paper, because it is the blog which is actually shared and read by the most people. This final paper, for instance, will be broken up into pieces and posted on my blog. As I do so, I will revise the paper once again, so the paper, once turned in, is no longer frozen in time, but becomes a work-in-progress. Other final papers written for other classes I have also been broken up, revised and posted. At first, I felt like I was cheating because I was altering the “final product.” When I recognized the silliness of this assumption, I felt a sense of relief that the weak points in my writing could be strengthened and the snags smoothed. Ideas I came up with after the deadline could be added and arguments expanded. In response to certain comments to the posts, I have also altered parts of the main text.

What begins to matter most is the collaborative process itself, an ongoing, ever-changing, ever developing conversation, or as Chris Gerben put it in “Putting 2.0 and Two Together,” making the material “a museum-in-progress” (Gerben 1). The real and immediate audience provided by new technology in turn co-author the text. Gerben discusses a concept known as “versioning, which takes into consideration that as new voices join a conversation, the direction and outcome of the conversation itself changes” (Gerben 15).

And Gerben effectively proved his point by responding to the annotated bibliography I posted on my blog which distilled some of the ideas I found most illuminating from his article, but ended with a small criticism that he was trying to stay so relevant that he offered little practical advice that teachers could immediately carry into the classroom. He responded, “I would love to talk about specific uses of FB/2.0 in the classroom. Let’s chat!” indicating a willingness to respond to my challenge and to continue and expand his article beyond its limits. Likewise, he added to and changed the tone and direction of my own post, and even this paper. In Gerben’s words, the conversations of process become the final text.

Perhaps the most significant benefit of new technologies is that new media can offer writers a real audience and authentic purpose. The objectives of this essay have shifted since I began writing it because I did not get a hoped for position as a Graduate Teaching Assistant for freshman composition. (Those doing a masters in literature were given priority over those like me who were only doing a certificate — at least I would like to think that was the reason.) For almost a week, I was unable to produce any substantial work on this paper, since my main motivation had left me.

Yet I realized that when I post this paper on my blog, it will actually be read by some people. My posts on changes in the revision process due to word processing and Google.docs have had multiple visitors, and one commenter asked, “Why wasn’t I taught this in writing classes?” In effect, I am teaching writing. (I won’t reproduce those ideas on revision here, since readers may find them in my posts “The Draft is Obsolete” and “Multiple, Simultaneous Drafts.”) I also recognized that the ideas I am synthesizing and developing in this paper should not apply only to freshman composition classes, but to the literature classes I would prefer to teach and even the English as a Second Language Classes that I am now teaching.

Mark D. Kelly writes in a class post, “The Big Shift 10,” responding to Richardson’s list of ten important shifts created by new media, “We all know the feeling of laboring over a particularly painful paper, frustrated by the effort it can take to produce work that will be handed in, graded, returned, and thrown away . . . most students dispose of schoolwork once a course is completed, relegating the fruits of their intellectual labor to the blue bin on the curb. They can find no place for their work on their bookshelves, let alone imagining a place for it out there, in the world. But modern network connectivity may offer student work a place in the world, a chance to contribute to scholarly pursuits and general knowledge, a chance to avoid the void of the blue bin. The internet has changed dramatically the way we find, store, and share information. Anyone can now publish work with a few clicks, and chances are there will be an audience for it.”

Writing has changed and teachers must adapt to the changes if they wish to make a real difference in the quality and depth of writing their students will produce in the outside world. Rather than resisting the evolution, educators should recognize that new technologies offer new tools to make collaborative, integrated reading and writing a reality. Writing becomes a truly interactive process in an ongoing conversation in which each part of the conversation matters.

Works Cited

Anderson, Daniel. “The Low Bridge to High Benefits: Entry-Level Multimedia, Literacies, and Motivation.” Computers and Composition 25 (2008) 40-60.

Buckingham, David. “Introducing Identity.” Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Ed. by David Buckingham. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008: 1-24.

Ching, Kory Lawson. “Why Composition (and Digital Media)?” Teaching Writing in a Digital Age. 19 Feb. 2010. Web. 3 May 2010.

Davies, Julia and Guy Merchant. “Looking from the Inside Out: Academic Blogging as New Literacy.” A New Literacies Sampler. Ed. Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel. New York, Peter Lang, 2007. 167-197.

Gerben, Chris. “Putting 2.0 and Two Together: What Web 2.0 Can Teach Composition About Collaborative Learning.” Computers and Composition 2009. Computers and Composition Online. Web. 8 Feb 2010.

Goen-Salter, Sugie. “Integrated Reading and Writing (IRW) Program at San Francisco State Univeristy.” blip.tv. 25 Feb. 2010. Web. 3 May 2010.

Kelly, Mark D. “The Big Shift 10.” Teaching Writing in a Digital Age. 26 April 2010. Web. 3 May 2010.

Lasmana, Viola. “Writing Self Being Written: Textual Beings in Online Worlds.” Teaching Writing in a Digital Age. 26 April 2010. Web. 3 May 2010.

Middlebrook, Geoffrey C. “Educational Blogging: A Forum for Developing Disciplinary and Professional Identity.” Computers and Composition Spring 2010. Computers and Composition Online. Web. 25 April 2010.

Osorio, Ruth. “Intention, Intention, Intention.” Teaching Writing in a Digital Age. 5 April 2010. Web. 3 May 2010.

Purdy, James P. “The Changing Space of Research: Web 2.0 and the Integration of Research and Writing Environments.” Computers and Composition 27 (2010): 48-58. Web. 16 April 2010.

Richardson, Will. Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press, 2009.

Scirocco, Michael. “Adjectives Used to Describe Tone in the Last 10 SATs.” St. Pius X Catholic High School. Web. 18 May 2010.

Tyron, Charles. “Writing and Citizenship: Using Blogs to Teach First-Year Composition.” Pedagogy 6: 1 (Winter 2006). 128-132.

Warnock, Scott. Teaching Writing Online: How & Why. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 2009.

Watkins, Lothlorien. “Confessions of a FanFic Writer, D&D Player.” Teaching Writing in a Digital Age. 8 Feb. 2010. Web. 3 May 2010.

Zawilinski, Lisa. “HOT Blogging: A Framework for Blogging to Promote Higher Order Thinking.” Reading Teacher (not yet published). University of Connecticut. New Literacies Team. Web. 7 March 2010.