| Introduction to Writing Studies | |||
|
Tuesday, February 04, 2003 ( 11:01 PM ) Kylee This book and I have issues. Seriously. It's pretty bad when my pen is poised to underlined useful phrases and unknown words and all it can write is 'duh.' As I forced myself to read about the usefulness of a library - A LIBRARY - I couldn't help but think it's common sense. Maybe I'm just not looking at it in the right light... The only thing that caught my eye in Chapter 5 was this sentence "If your library is doing its job, it will probably contain some, perhaps many, materials that offend you." Now that's my kind of library. On a side note, librarians are wonderful people - some of the best conversations I've had come from these people. They see what your checking out and say some of the weirdest things to start a conversation. It's great. All right, on to Chapter 11 - again, common sense, right? It all boils down to what you're researching I guess. I've always found research papers to be the worst because in some way I feel as though they inhibit my 'artistic freedom.' It goes along with Erik's "i'm too creative for research papers philosophy." I have no problem finding the facts. In fact I enjoy surrounding myself in other peoples ideas. I could spend hours on the Internet looking up information, devouring every snipet of truth that comes my way. But how can you make facts interesting without distorting them? Anyway, the problem comes when the truth is only true to one person. Like the Holocaust was a hoax. Sometimes it's the blind leading the blind and to research all we have to do is think/reflect/imagine/visualize/contemplate -then get a second opinion. I liked how the internet and books were compared. Librarians are books gatekeepers...and the web is, well, a web. # ( 9:36 PM ) Erik I guess the main thing that i thought about after i read these two articles was "uh oh, a research paper this way comes" but besides that i found myself actually thinking about research papers a bit differently than i had before. until now research papers had been one of those "Hoops" my mom keeps telling me i have to jump through to get my degree. kinda like paying rent... anyways, one line out of these two articles got me (and is responsible for my not retaining the rest of what i read) and that is the idea of creating new knowledge. I guess information floats around and doesn't change so much, for instance, the information that the sky is blue i would not consider knowledge, nor the information that water particles reflect light, but put those two pieces of information together to realize that it is because of the water particles reflecting the light of the sun that the sky is blue and that seems to me to be knowledge...just like taking a bunch of information from sources seperated by space and time and putting that information together can create knowledge...So i guess i'm going to have to rethink my "i'm too creative for research papers" philosophy...who would've guessed, maybe next i'll start to enjoy paying rent??!?!?!? bye the waye... that line i was talking about was Linda Millers on page 64..."in a very real sense, she created knowledge.." (hows that for retention!) # ( 9:15 PM ) Sarah Well after reading the selected pieces the thought that mostly stuck out in my mind was the integration of the internet in libraries. I worked at a public library for about two and a half years and it is unreal how technology is really a huge part of research. The amount of independence a person has on the internet rather than having to look things up in these old, huge reference books and have even bigger books brought up for them just to find some small piece of information is amazing. I was always fascinated at the fact that the old huge card catalogs were collecting dust in the library basement. It broke the librarians hearts to see the cards untouched after so many years worshiping Melville Dewey (the founder of the Dewey decimal system). And at this library they were constantly adding on and expanding the computer systems. The librarians would all explain their theories about how in the future no books will be in libraries and everything will just be in the computers, I guess we're not that far from it now. # ( 8:53 PM ) Heather I totally agree with Chris on the use of the thesaurus...There was a lot of information in the readings, most of it was what I have heard before, but there is just something about reading it that makes it easier to process. I think that is the termanology that I want to use... Anyway, I really liked the writing styles of both Miller and Lowe, they were easy to follow, and even though their topic wasn't of great interest to me, I really enjoyed the reading. I also wanted to add, incase you don't know, that on the NDSU library web page their is a search engine called electric library (e-library). It is my personal favorite, for doing research papers and other related assignments...check it out if you haven't already! # ( 8:50 PM ) Kris Although I think most of the information in the chapters proved useful, it seemed a bit tedious to read about this. We've all taken English 110/120 and have talked about the ethos of sites on the www. So, these chapters seemed more like a review to me than anything else. It is nice to have some of this information repeated because what isn't implemented on a regular basis is as good as lost. However, there were places where I came upon information that was new to me. For instance, the bit on Noam Chomsky (page 67) was interesting. I had no idea that a person could misrepresent another person by using dated material. It never crossed my mind that this could weaken a piece of research. But, I mostly found the reading to be a good review. # ( 8:04 PM ) Chris BREAK OUT THE THESAURUS! This is the tip that was imprinted into my brain. I guess I already knew how important it is to vary your word choice to narrow my search, but the tips concerning evaluating websites have really hit me. I like Lowe's idea about how we have to critique and be aware of the content, dates of publication, links, references, style (writing, graphics), corporate influences, etc. He also suggets that there is a need for pre-searching. We need to brainstorm search strategies. Like I said BREAK OUT THE THESAURUS.... It's Crazy, no wait it's wacky, or it's unhinged, or maybe it's gone haywire, or OK I'll stop! ( 12:58 PM ) Kevin Ooooppps...I have got to get the updated schedule posted. Sorry Kris and others. Please read chapter 5 and chapter 11 from _The Subject is Reserach_. Please share your observations about those chapters on this blog. By "share observations" I just mean: what ideas/advice struck you as particularly good (or silly). If you want to bounce off of one of these readings and tell us a story about a research project that went well (or went awry), that would be good too. Here is one observation on those chapters--repeating what I said in class. I think Wendy Bishop (chapter 11) identifies an important problem/issue: most of us probably have too much information and not enough time or organizational skills to keep it straight. I have become a little bit obsessed with "knowledge management," which is why I am a little bit obsessed with weblogs. Weblogs seem to have the potential to "capture" a lot of time that gets lost when I surf the web. I now try to post a filter of relevant sites to one of my 4 or 5 weblogs. But you can immediately see the problem this management system creates: now I have too many weblogs! I have some ideas for keeping blogging under control, but I won't bore you with the details here. I am especially excited about the ways in which weblogs can help people share information. My first year students last semester turned up a lot of really valueable websites (valueable to me, anyway). People in this class have already shared some great links. In English, we tend to privilege the individual paper--whether literary criticism or creative writing--but I see collaboration (informal as well as formal) as a very important engine for pushing my knowledge train along. Yes, collaborative weblogs can lead to info overload, but I'm working on solving that problem! Long answer to your short questions, Kris. # Monday, February 03, 2003 ( 10:11 PM ) Kris Heather, good luck with the project. Sounds ambitious. And, could someone tell me what the assigned reading for class on Wednesday is? I didn't write anything down in class, and I honestly don't remember what the assignment is. It says something about reading UNIT1 on the website, but I thought the assignment was just two articles or something like that. Or, perhaps I'm just inventing things. If anyone could clarify this for me, I would be much appreciative. Thanks. # ( 7:52 PM ) Heather Hey everyone, I FINALLY figured this out! There really isn't a whole lot to say or explain about my Phaedrus project, I was originally going to draw a picture. However, during the peer reviews it was decided that a flip book would be pretty cool. It is a pretty tedious project, but I think that it is coming a long very well. # |
|
||
