The Ordinary Pebble

A day in the life of my involvement with technology looks something like the pen and paper below, which in itself is a bit ironic. However, I felt like documenting on my iPhone might be redundant, so I opted for something that sat next to me in the passenger seat of my car for most of the day.

Technology Highlight #1: A text from friends announcing their pregnancy.

After looking at the results of how I used technology on the Saturday I documented, I decided to cluster my usage based by device, then color-code the usage based on type. My first layer didn’t include the color-coding, and it lacked clarity to connectivity and network; what I was doing with the technology and how I was interacting with others through it was lost.

While this Saturday was different from a normal day of teaching and grad school work (computer usage is notably absent), for a weekend day, this documentation is otherwise ordinary. It was interesting to be conscious of each time I used technology, primarily my phone, and to consider the types of technology I used in a day. I’ve recently started getting weekly Screen Time reports through an iPhone setting, and it’s informative to see how much time I spend on my specific apps on my phone. Really, Screen Time does the work of this assignment for one device.

Technology Highlight #2: The New Activist podcast from the International Justice Mission (IJM) about craftivism, a method of activism and seeking change that has had me thinking since I listened.

“Sarah Corbett, Craftivist and Collective Founder.” The New Activist from IJM, 24 Jan. 2019, newactivist.is/episode/sarah-corbett-craftivist-collective-founder.

My color-coding addition classified my technology use in 5 main areas, (1) communication, (2) information, (3) navigation, (4) entertainment, and (5) convenience (number order is not significant). Most uses were fairly easy to place within these categories, with the exception of social media. While in theory, it’s more for communication, my usage tends to lean more toward seeing it a source of entertainment that I try to justify as communication or information. If it had been a grad-school Saturday of work, education would have made category 6 and would have taken place on my Surface. Similarly, on a school day, teaching would have made another category and may have included my desktop and laptop in my classroom as well as a projector, an Elmo, a DVD player, etc.

Technology Highlight #3: Andrew using his GPS watch to help us make it back to the car after taking a wrong turn in the dark toward the end of our hike. Our phone flashlights were also handy, though the reception level on our phones was not.

I opted not to include location as part of this map as I’m intentional about minimizing technology usage, especially on my phone, around people. Most of the use was either in my apartment in the morning or on the road/ferry-line/ferry on the way to the peninsula Andrew, my boyfriend, is stationed on. The two exceptions for phone usage were both a result of my phone being on silence and out of sight for extend periods of time. I listened to a voicemail for a call I missed while talking with Andrew’s roommates and responded to a few texts that I received while hiking with him for a few hours. I had my phone out for just a few minutes for both of these usage times.

It would be interesting to map my usage in a more structured way: a bar graph or pie chart comparing types of usage or location or time or device. Depending on the focus and type of graph, the varying emphases might be surprising. Texting seems like a quick thing, but really, the amount of time I spend sending texts in a day can be quite high, as the Screen Time app has revealed.

Sirc’s essay, “Box Logic,” fascinated me. As a teacher, I share his frustration as he considers how integrate writing in relevant, meaningful, and connected ways for students. He references Peter Elbow’s ideas: 

“It’s difficult to define students’ needs, of course. Elbow put the dilemma best, I think: life is long, college short; do we teach to life or college? I’m more and more persuaded to err on the side of life in my courses: both the public, cultural lives students life, as well as their own personal lives and expressions” (113). 

Enter Box-Logic. After spending last semester researching multi-genre and multi-modal work in The Teach of Writing and annotations in English Studies, this chapter was a combination of so many of the ideas I was inspired by through those assignments. I want what I teach students to matter, and I both know that much of what I’ve taught struggles to meet that goal for many of my students. Box-Logic provides a different approach: it’s a means of collection, composition, connection that is both personal and purposeful. Its a memoir of items, both found and researched, both for personal expression and for academic contemplation. 

In the Little Women film I grew up watching, Jo March finds herself in her childhood attic toward the end of the movie. She goes to a trunk that belonged to one of her sisters, Beth. In the trunk, she pulls out a beloved doll, youthful writings, craft projects. Each of these objects stirs a memory and inspires ideas in Jo that lead her to finally write her novel. The trunk was Beth’s Box-Logic, her collected treasures that together made a work of art that expressed a childhood and inspired a response. Sirc continues: 

“The box, then, is the historically preferred format to archived our most treasured baubles” (121). 

More than just a collection of stuff in a box, though, Sirc acknowledges that the items should be “well-chosen interesting little bits of the everyday” (122). And within those bits, meaning needs to be made. He teaches his students about “practicing search strategies and annotating material” (122).

Beth left Jo items that were a carefully organized collection of the most profound and captivating moments of their childhood. 

In this scene from Dead Poets Society, John Keating tells his students to learn from a curated collection of items and to find meaning in that collection: “I’d like you to step forward over here. Peruse some of the faces of the past. You’ve walked past them many times, but I don’t think you’ve really looked at them” (“Dead Poets Society (1- st lesson, Carpe diem)).”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5t3ZzZv8_U

Sirc considers the implications of this chapter for teachers of writing, asking questions to lead to to change,  

“What is essential to composition? What are the inescapable, minimal institutional constraints that must be considered?. . . What are the inessential but desirable, interesting features of composition? What are the outermost institutional limits?. . . What are the technologies and strategies both essential and desirable for students to perform and practice?” (126). 

I don’t have an immediate answer to Sirc’s questions. However, I’m asking them, and hopefully that’s a start that will help me to find what it is to be a curator and to teach my students to curate. And, even more, I hope these questions help me to be a better communicator and to help my students communicate in the forms that are most relevant and purposeful for their lives. 

Sources: 

“Dead Poets Society (1- st lesson, Carpe diem).” YouTube, uploaded by Ani Mbrica, 16 Jan. 2014, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5t3ZzZv8_U.

Little Women. Directed by Gillian Armstrong, Columbia Pictures Corporation, 1994.

Sirc, Geoffrey. “Box Logic.” Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition, edited by Ann Frances Wysocki, et al, Utah State University Press, 2004, pp. 111-146.

A Scholarly Introduction

Random Facts: I’ve spent most of my life in Western Washington and do believe that the West Coast is the Best Coast. When not doing scholarly things, I love to cook and bake, to spend time with friends and family, to hike or cycle, or to organize or rearrange something.

Graduate Concentration: At Gardner-Webb, I have an writing concentration in the English graduate program.

Academic History: For undergrad, I attended Dordt College (almost University!), majored in English/Language Arts and Secondary Education, and minored in the institution’s Kuyper Scholars Program.

Scholarly Interests: Currently, modern literary fiction and memoirs have been my go-to reading choices. I have long-loved literature but through both teaching, academics, and my own curiosity, am increasingly intrigued by forms of writing and other communication as means of telling stories that need to be told.

Persistent Questions: What’s my “type” when it comes to writing? What writings forms will I most use to communicate? What role will my master’s play outside of/after my teaching career? What do I have to say?

New Media Studies: I can’t wait. People often ask me if I aspire to write the next great American novel. I don’t. But I want to write something, and I’m excited to learn about other types of communication that I might use.

Enduring Passions: Other cultures and places and peoples have always fascinated me. I hope to live internationally in the future, ideally long-term. Teaching is a need everywhere, so that may be my “in.” I also value those that are sometimes considered “lesser” or are neglected by society and want to be a part of loving those people and telling their stories.

Current Profession: I’m Miss Riley, a high school English teacher for all the high school English classes at a small private school: English 9, English 10, American Literature 11, British Literature 12, and four rotating electives.

Recent Reads: On Audible, I’m loving The Woman Who Smashed Codes. My pleasure read that I’m making slow progress through before I go to bed at night is Reading Lolita in Tehran.I’d highly recommend both stories.