Podcasting- BLOG #6

This article was interesting. I have never made a podcast or listened to one before. The idea of pod casting sounds like something that I would definitely enjoy. I think it would be most enjoyable if it is on a subject of our choice. I know as a student that each person learns very differently. Some people can simply read something and understand it. I am jealous of those people- because I learn best through audio and writing and re-writing stuff. Others learn visually. Pod casting can really assist in the audio part of learning. Listening to highly complicated ideas has the potential to really help students. For those students who don't learn through audio there are plenty of other resources that they can use. Judging from the article it seems like a technology that can be accessed fairly easily and the information can be streamed onto MP3 players and Ipods. As a student a Fort Lewis College I would definitely use this technology for say- review for at test as I walk across campus to class. I feel like the structure of a podcast may be just a little different than a radio show. For one the likely hood of the podcast being interrupted by commercials would probably be very low. Depending on the nature of the podcast the need for different voices and actors would be lower than that of a radio show. In general I think podcasting is a great idea for access to information and has the potential to be very beneficial to students.

Mars is Heaven!! BLOG #5

This story was very different from what we have read in this class so far. Because it is fiction it must be approached as fiction. That is to say that rather than reading it to gain academic information we read it for pleasure, and perhaps to analyze it- but nothing more. If I was in charge of translating this into a radio show I would first make it completely clear that this story is ficction- and not something on the news. I know this sounds ridiculous, but some people would freak out if they were used to listening to music and when they turned their radio on they heard this. Then I would have different actors perform the parts of each person mainly so their would be an audible difference in their voices. I would also have a narrator though to read the parts that aren't dialogue. Some of the dialogue is describing a sound though. In a book this is finwe because we have to imagine the sounds themselves, and if there is no description of a specific sound we don't know it is there. But in radio we can actually produce the sounds. So, for instance when the text says "Hollow echoes sounded from under the boards as they walked across the porch"(327) I would actually make the hollow sound for a radio show. Different sounds are very important in radio because you don't have the visual aid, nor do you have written aid to assist in the depiction of the story.

Vie/ deWinter Article

This reading relates to our project on the history of copyright in many ways. For one, while researching our topic we immediately realized that since technology has become a staple in our society the laws abou copyright change constantly. The idea of a wiki really does make us question the values of authorship and the ways in which we see copyright. When there is more than one person constantly editing, commenting and changing work the concept of one author is impossible- which makes it complicated.
Vie and deWinter are right when they say students typically write knowing their audience is the professor, and because of that it seems like most of our writing is aimed at pleasing that particular professor. When writing on a wiki the public can read your ideas and comment upon them. I will admit that the only people to read my term papers are usually a few of my peers for editing, my professor, and if I choose to share, my parents. Wikis make that number of readers look ridiculous. While I don't like the idea of sharing my work with everyone, I do like the idea of getting multiple people's perspectives on things because it is so easy to forget other ways of thinking when you are engrossed in research.
I think the writers of this piece probably struggled with writing collaboratively because I imagine they had somewhat of the same problem we do when someone mentions writing something collaboratively. My first reaction was "What if my group steals my ideas, or worse, completely twists my idea to fit theirs? Where are the boundaries on change?"Everyone is different, and because of that everyone finds things they deem more important than others, so I wonder what their process of negotiation was and how that effected their writing.

Response to WIki Reading

Before reading this piece on wikis I was not familiar with them at all. In fact, today before class I noticed what we would be doing in class and actually had to Google "wiki". I now understand that it is a website in which anyone can edit, upload and change information on that webiste. What actually suprised me most about this piece is the fact that these teachers liked the way the wiki worked in a classroom setting and adopted it into their other classes. As a student I really feel like a wiki is a very insecure way to submit your work because everyone can see your ideas- edit your ideas and basically ruin your project if they really wanted to. On the other hand I can understand one of the points they make in this aticle that students can contribute to a project without having a very specific meeting time where everyone gathers around the computer and collaberates. I can appreciate that because I work 30 hours a week and it can be a real challlenge to find a time that works for everyone to meet. With a wiki we can all still contribute to our project but we can do it at all hours and seperately. One of the problems that Martin and Dusenbury mentioned was that students felt "pressured to protect their ideas from eachother to make sure they get appropriate grade-related credit". This is one of my main concerns too because credit should be given where credit is due and I would personally be extremely unhappy if someone took one of my ideas. This article did convince me that using a wiki is worth a try because of the convenience- but I am still rather skeptical about who has access to my ideas.

Copyright blog

I am in the how has copyright changed over the years and and the legal changes of copyright over the years. We haven't really split up what exactly each person is going to be focusing on specifically because we don't know much about copyright, so this is just our preliminary research. I am in a group with Avery and Lori. I would like to focus on the timeline of copyright, to show as evidence that copyright has changed over the years. Just in recent history The Family Entertainment and Copyright act of 2005 focused on more recent media, like "free" downloadable music online. Also the content industry was worried back in 1975 about massive copyright infringement from video recorders- that seemed to be the start of the issues dealing with copyright and what we consider modern technology. I also learned that amount of time copyright has be extended throughout the years. It started out as a mere 14 years, and now it is literally up to 75-95 years. Huge diffference! Why such a huge difference? I still have a lot of questions about copyright because I have never really researched it thoroughly which I also find interesting. We are told not to copy peoples work but I have never been taught how copyright works.... I used the following links:

http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard/papers/copyright99.html

http://permissionplease.today.com/2009/08/21/2009-coptright-form-changes/

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_fair_use_Overview/chapters0/0-g.html

Vision of Students today

My vision of students today is a combination of multiple technologies from outside the classroom suddenly being switched to something they do in classrooms- while the teachers are scrambling to find ways to appeal to 21st century students.

Response to Takayoshi/Selfe Piece

Takayoshi and Selfe seem to have a very direct message in their piece. They attempt to expalin why multimodal texts are absolutely neccesary to teach a composition course in the 21st century. While I agree with what Takayoshi and Selfe are trying to say, I also believe it is just as important to include some of the traditional ways of teaching- simply because everyone learns differently. I personally prefer writing papers after doing a variety of different research. By writing I work my way through the my ideas. On the other hand there are students who actually have to be making something- like a movie- to actually be engaged in it and therefore learn more. For instance- in my Radio Practicum class last semester we had to write our story down entirely and get it approved before we were actually allowed to record the story. The way that was balanced worked for me because I worked through my ideas by writing them down and then did an audio clip. In my opinion this sort of balance is absolutely vital because it teaches a combination of traditional writing and "multimodal". Daley's piece shared many of the ideas with this piece but added to Daley's piece by truly explaining the advantages of using multimodal learning in the classroom. In the Takayoshi/Selfe piece it says "such instruction is often refreshing and meaningful"(4). Multimodal instruction is refreshing and meaningful to us because (1) we usually don't get to do multimodal projects in ther classes and (2) we spend a lot of our free time using these technologies for fun- so the project for class is that much better. Our blogs in 308 are a way for us to articulate our ideas in a less formal way than writing a paper and maintaining a community forum by sharing our ideas without having to physically meet and take turns talking. Both of these are reasons for blogging- according to the Walker/ Nardi piece.

Response to "Expanding the Concept of Literacy"

Daley's main argument in this piece is very intriguing.Daley argues that literacy should now include the abiltiy to understand and analyze interactive media, and show not just be about understanding the written word. But she also argues that it is important that we are taught how to analyze interactive media- and not just assume we know how to truly analyze it. While I think the ability to read and write is extremely important, in today's world it is just as important to be able to understand and analyze interactive media- because it is, as Daley says "the most common methods of receiving information, communicating with one another and entertaining (our)selves"(34). For a class like English 308 it is obviously important that we not only have the ability to produce this media- but also learn how to analyze it.