The start of reading aloud practices?

Reading Gitelman’s book caused me to do a few random things – such as watch ‘My Fair Lady.’ I felt the inking to watch sound machines in use, and then spent time analyzing the place of the technology in Eliza’s life. Eliza is able to move up the cultural ladder from a flower girl to high society by having her voice recorded, listening to her voice, and then matching pitches so to change her dialect. I am assuming we all know the plot of the movie, so I am not going to go into much detail about what happens. I was surprised to read about the phonograph and other “talking technologies” in court rooms and business settings, and no by linguistics, such as Mr. Higgins. Wouldn’t this be around the same time the International Phonetic Alphabet is being developed? To me, it would just make sense for the linguists to want this piece of technology. I know it isn’t exactly what Gitelman was getting at in her text, but I thought it was an interesting connection between the book and the use of the technology in a popular film.

What I have really been thinking about was mentioned on page 145, “For the first time reading aloud was explicitly severed from the human subject.” I was thinking about how writers’ read their papers aloud to catch their own errors. We can ‘hear’ if something is wrong with our writing. Our voice becomes severed from us in a way that we don’t hear our voice per se, but we hear our words and are able to catch ourselves. It is almost as though our voice becomes some sort of an object, we are listening to a recording of our voice, when really it is in real time. I was wondering if maybe this practice, or the idea for this practice, came from these new technologies. That practitioners realized the benefits of these voice recording machines, and extended the concepts to just reading their own work aloud? I know that in the Writing Center the reading aloud practice is used in pretty much every session, yet little if any research has been done on reading aloud. It just seems to be a practice that we accept. We know it works, so we do it. But why does it work? How does hearing our work help us catch mistakes that we wouldn’t catch if we silently read to ourselves? Could the shift to the phonographs/gramophones as “talking machines” be the framework (or maybe just the start of the practice) of the reading aloud practice? If someone was to trace the practice of reading papers aloud, is this where that person would find the beginning? Does it make sense that this could be the beginning? It is necessarily the main shift from literate to oral, but it a shift as though literate and oral are becoming more like one. With these new technologies, you are now able to speak and have that spoken language recorded down, and played back – which from reading the text changed the way things worked. Just some ideas I was playing with.

Fair(y) Use

http://www.useit.com/papers/internetworld2008.html

The above article is a quick read, and beyond its humorous quality, is also generative of questions regarding the assumptions we make about technology (and what a certain technology might accomplish or require in the future).

Jakob Nielsen is an Internet usability expert, and while much of what he has written is not directly linked to rhetoric and composition, his work is relevant, especially to the things we are discussing with regards to writing technologies. In this specific article, Nielsen creates two possible seminar topics in which he thinks he could possibly discuss at the Internet World 2008 conference. This piece was written in 1998.

While it is amusing that Nielsen assumes the death of print media will occur by 2008 (see his first presentation topic), I do think that these assumptions point to some critical ideas concerning the social construction of technology, and the technical construction of society. Bijker discusses “implicit assumption[s] of linear development. Such assumptions were often found in earlier technology studies, sometimes at the level of the singular invention and sometimes in the genealogy of related innovations…Too easily, linear models result in reading an implicit teleology into the material, suggesting that ‘the whole history of technological development had followed an orderly or rational path, as though today’s world was the precise goal toward all decisions, made since the beginning of history, were consciously directed’ (Ferguson, 1974: 19)” (pp. 6-7). In addition, Bijker discusses the asymmetrical analysis of technology: “The focus on successful innovations suggests an underlying assumption that it is precisely the success of an artifact that offers some explanatory ground for the dynamics of its development” (p. 7).

In 1998, Nielsen, and I’m sure many others, assumed that the death of print news (and other texts) was imminent; it was simply a question of when. I’m sure I’ve thought about this possibility, and I still wonder if and when it might happen. In addition, it is interesting to think about why we might assume these technologies will “die”: is it because we think other technologies are superior, or is it because of the historical “death” of now obsolete technologies? For example, papyrus and clay tokens are no longer used as the dominant writing technologies/surfaces/graphic spaces in our society. We have replaced them with other, often quite similar, technologies. Paper, for instance. It is versatile, cheap, portable, and, sadly, often too easily wasted. The only thing that I can imagine might replace paper is some form of electronic medium such as a paper-like electronic tablet.

But it seems that our writing practices have to change before we make the technology change. Why would we make electronic “paper” unless we have no use for traditional paper? Or that traditional paper no longer fulfills our expanding needs? These questions point to the working and non-working technology Bijker discusses. When paper is no longer a working technology, it might be due to a technology that has become dominant, and essentially, has become the working technology. But does it become the working technology because we’ve created a technology that usurps the former (paper)? Or is it because we have changed our writing/communication practices, and out of necessity, we begin to use a different technology to fulfill our needs?

I’m not trying to explain the possible death of paper; I just want to ask questions about the relationship between our assumptions and the actualities that occur with the social construction of technology/technical construction of society. Any thoughts?

I cant believe my student's inability to achieve even basic computer assignments. One thing that really threw me for a loop was the fact that they didnt even know what "rich text format" was. I explained that since i had a Mac and if they needed to send me projects or papers they would have to put the file in RTF...the amount of blank stares looking at me was laughable. Thus, i had to show the class what this format was and how to use it. I mean, i am totally not computer/technology savvy but i figured that the students would at least know the basic things that i know about computers, downloading, etc. apparently i was incorrect. It followed that i wanted them to email me an assignment on Vista and i ended up spending about 20mins with each group showing them how to use it. It does make me wonder though if perhaps the students are just being obstinate in their own way. i mean, i think they knew that i would help them and decided not to try and figure out the process themselves. i really do t hink that sometimes they are just not going to help us out any with the computer literacy because they expect to write with pencils and have papers collected in such a manner so this is their way of responding to the changing times (changing and also times that make it necessary to complete work because of the professors ability to view their work and when it was done). So, i agree with the overall problem of computer literacy in classes, and although i am not yet comfortable with adding blogs or facebook accounts in my class i know that i would run into many, many problems with my students as well if i did attempt such a thing.

Adventures in Technology

To make it very, very clear, this is my "personal narrative" post for the week. I will post my analysis of text post later today before class.

So, this last week I had the brilliant idea of doing a very small "multi-modal" project with students involving FaceBook and the "Pieces of Flair" application. Assuming that they all had Facebook accounts, and had synced and activated their Kent State email accounts (I had been emailing them assignments, updates, etc. since the second day of class three weeks ago), I walked into 213 Sattefield Hall Friday thinking I was in for one of the easiest classes of the semester. Uff. So, not only did 6 of my students not have Facebook accounts, 2 students had somehow not even heard of Facebook, and one was stressing out about starting an account because she was worried that someone would assume her identity (I eventually convinced her that it was ok to put false information into the profile, so long as I knew it was her account). To complicate matters, at least 7 students had not synced and activated their Flashline account, so they couldn't log into the classroom computers at all. With one of my students trying her best to help multiple people sync up their accounts, but having little luck, in the end I logged in these 7 students as me into the laptop at their table, and then rushed a 10 minute demo on how to use the Microsoft "Paint" function to make image files so that they could make flair (for anyone here that doesn't know what flair is...basically you take an image--be it an image of text or a picture--and you make electronic buttons to post on your "flair board" on your Facebook profile. You can also trade these buttons and collect others that people have made...). I asked several times...did anyone have any questions? Any problems? Nope, they are good. Easy as pie.

Well, it is now four and a half hours before class...and 15 of 25 students have completed the assignment.

Technology...it's my friend! *sighs*

Elliot