I’m glad we were given the chance this week to comment on each others’ work. Granted, the only thing stopping us from doing this before was the lack of time due to all the other components of our lives and this course. Through this assignment I was able to see how my colleagues are assimilating the information we’ve been going through. For the most part, I concentrated on posts regarding Brooke’s work, as I felt I needed to hear other people’s views on this very dense, scholarly writing. I posted blog responses to Eric, Mathieu, Susanne, and Jennifer. I also made a couple of comments on other readings as well to the blogs of Amanda and Smitha.
One comment Eric had made in his post on Brooke’s chapter on Perspective (style) somehow was a great reminder. Eric connected all that Brooke was doing in the later chapters back to his originally-stated comment on page 15:Â “A rhetoric of new media, rather than examples of the choices that have already been made by writers, should prepare us as writers to make our own choices” (emphasis Brooke’s). As I said on Eric’s page, “We don’t have to be merely examining theory OR merely examining texts (although that’s very helpful for people like me), but rather Brooke is looking at the spaces in between theory and application, where the decisions are made.”
Jennifer did a great encapsulation of the final chapters of Brooke’s book. Her synthesis of his chapter on Persistence (Memory) reminded me of Pierre Bayard’s book, How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read. In it Bayard makes the case that it is humanly impossible to read and memorize all printed/published/produced content that is available today. So what is more important in this era is the ability to contextualize the content rather than memorize it. As Bayard sees it, when a reader discusses a book, the content of the book is used as a springboard of conversation about some particular topic; the conversation is generally not a detailed line-by-line reviewing of the entire work.
Amanda and Smitha made me consider the wisdom of using the new Facebook timeline as a chronicle or a sort of way to journal my life. Granted, it may be an easy way to not only follow the events and posts in one’s life, but with all the additional media possible, a journal created in Facebook makes a journal a multimedia experience. In the end though, I have chosen to keep to the old-fashioned way of journaling with a pen and a book simply because I prefer to maintain control of my content and I don’t like the idea that Facebook owns the content I or my friends provide them.
Tutorial Reflections
As a 766 student, I will not be required to create a webinar for class. However, I have been thinking it would be useful to create an acronym generator for my place of work. I would have preferred to use Ruby, but Ruby doesn’t work in older browsers and unfortunately, that’s all we’ve got at my job (which shall remain nameless). Therefore, I guess I’ll have to try it in Javascript.
It sounds like a simple application, but I am not familiar with Javascript, and since this project could be a useful, applied tool around my job, I think it will be worth it. One concern is that I can figure out how the application is uploaded to my job’s website, given there could be some firewall issues with the application. I’m also hoping that because of the sheer volume of acronyms around my place of employment, that there won’t be any type of limit on the amount of listings allowed in the code (I suspect not). I also have a project at work coming up that involves using the Javascript Editor in Adobe Acrobat X, so Javascript is probably the way to go. I like applying what I learn as soon as I learn it.
P.S.
Later in the week, I was able to figure out the solution to the second project that did not require using the Adobe Acrobat X Javascript editor. What I was supposed to do was figure out the best way to create a document that allows readers to select an option next to a bullet point and keep a tally of their selections. I figured out the dropdown menu box and was able to assign numbers to the options without needing Javascript. So even if it ended up not requiring Javascript, it was a week well-spent. Back to the acronym generator…
Brooke, C.G. (2009). Lingua Fracta: Towards a Rhetoric of New Media. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc.