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Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Bibliographic Style

Bibliographic Style - What is it? Quite honestly, I don't know! Up until now, I really haven't completed a bibliography - ever. I have done reference pages in APA. I have completed works cited pages on MLA. But I haven't created an official "bibliography." I know there are differences such as that a works cited page contains only those works cited within the text. A bibliography can be more inclusive, but what is meant by the style? I am assuming that Dr. Mara is referring to the style manuals such as APA, MLA, Chicago, etc. Assuming those are the choices, I guess that I will be using MLA.

It is also probably important to substantiate why I have chosen MLA so here goes. My primary reasons for using MLA are:
  • It is a good fit for examining blogs since I will be examining the content of the writing in attempting to determine genre
  • I am looking at language and hello, MLA stands for Modern Language Association
  • It has been six years since I used APA
  • I am most familiar with it through teaching it in English 111 and 112
  • I am most familiar with it, and
  • I am most familiar with it
At any rate, those are my top six (four?) reasons for choosing MLA. We are supposed to have 250+ words for this entry, but I just don't know what else to say. I am out of words, which is actually strange for me. I usually have no trouble filling up my blog. Oh well - Have a great weekend!

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Cumulative Knowledge

What have I learned this semester? Lots of good things. One of the most important is about blogging. While it was not a requirement to use a blog for this course, I chose to complete my journal via this blog. The experience has been extremely positive. In fact, I am doing my thesis work, as well as my research project for this class, on blogging. I am even considering continuing with blogging when I work on my Ph.D., but from the standpoint of using blogging in distance education. What I like about blogging is the dynamic environment within which it operates. The chance for responses from others makes it even more interesting. As a result, I have started my own blog separate from the ones I am maintaining for my classes. PLEASE stop by at Bring Out Your Blog and take a look. There isn't much yet, but it will slowly and steadily increase.

Also, I have appreciated learning about the different research methods. Even though I have had a masters level research class before, that class focused on what would be considered "traditional" research. I haven't been exposed to ethnographic, historical, and feminist as much as I have other types, so that was helpful. I think it also has helped lessen my "fear" of research to a certain extent although I am not completely comfortable yet.

In addition, I have appreciated the exposure to research proposals, which is what are individual projects are about. I am still learning about proposals, but what we have been doing is certainly helpful. Having worked for a proprietary school, we did not do normal academic research. The research we conducted was primarily geared toward solving an immediate problem. For example, if I had a network problem that I wasn't familiar with, I would conduct research in order to fix the problem. Nothing like what we have been, and I will be, doing.Furthermore, I have learned that I need to be more proactive. It isn't that I haven't been proactive in the past, but my self-confidence has not been at the same level as it used to be. You might say that I'm out of my comfort zone. I am starting to feel like I belong here and that is making the process easier, but I still have a long way to go.Lastly, I have learned that I still am not completely sure what telos and mechanism are about, and John Monberg was way above my head in chapter 11 of our text. A lot of the difficulty I am having is with the level of discourse so I guess what I still need to learn is how to converse in this community. I am hoping that my continuing education next year in Comm Studies is going to help make me more comfortable. However, I do have a problem with the academia writing in such an inaccessible way. See my blog for a longer commentary on that subject. Well, that's it. I believe that this is my last entry. It's been a ride, much like a roller coaster, only this coaster isn't stopping just yet!

Technical Communication Confusion

I just got finished reading chapter 11 from our Research in Technical Communication textbook in preparation for tomorrow's class. The chapter is written by John Monberg, who is a comm studies professor at the University of Kansas. I have to be honest; I have no idea what he is talking about. The problem is that it is written in academic, ivory tower, incomprehensible gibberish. It scares me a little, because I am supposedly going to enter this discourse community (comm studies) in a few years, and in general, I cannot follow the discourse! What bothers me most is that I see too much of this in technical communication literature. This isn't always the case. Other authors in this text are quite easy to read and comprehend. In particular, Susan Katz, Teresa Kynell, Bruce Seely, Daniel Murphy, Laura Gurak, and Christine Silker among others seem easy to follow, and I do think the comprehensible outweighs the incomprehensible in this text. However, I have not read a lot of each of these authors, so all of their writing may not be so straightforward, but the limited exposure I have had has impressed me.

In my first tech comm class with Dr. Edminster, she often spoke of "tearing down the walls of text." I love that line because it speaks to my feelings about how the academia often distances itself from the "commoners" through language. If technical communication is truly about clarity, focus, simplicity, comprehensibility, etc., then why is there this insistence on writing in such a seemingly unclear, unfocused, complex, and incomprehensible manner? I realize that part of the reasoning involves making technical communication acceptable to the rest of the academia, and I also realize that the discourse isn't incomprehensible to everyone. But are we, as educators and researchers, being true to our chosen field if we continue to write in such a cryptic manner? Why not be the front runners and lead the rest of the academia in simplifying the language to make it more accessible? I would love to hear responses to this from both sides.

Addendum:
I was rereading this post and wanted to make clear that it wasn't Monberg's entire chapter that was confusing. It was really about the first 2/3 that I struggled with. The latter part of the chapter that deals with the case studies was understandable. There was a clear point of transition in his writing style. As he moved from theory to reporting the results of the case studies, his writing changed. This is a good thing! I can't help but wonder though, how much more would I have gotten out of this chapter if the theory portion had been written in a more accessible style.

Monday, April 18, 2005

Movin Forward

The last question (I think it is the last!) asks us how we are going to take this class experience forward. I have actually been thinking about this for a while. This semester has taken me on a quite a journey and it has ended up helping me make some decisions. I am enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Communication Studies next fall and a couple of areas have interested me. One is blogging. At first I thought that I would be looking at blogging as participatory media, but somehow that just didn't excite me too much. I also like what I have been studying in the Visual Rhetoric class. Specifically I have been looking at images in marketing for MMORPG computer games. Finally, I have the opportunity to complete my internship through BG working with Dr. Sue Carter with her two distance education courses.The distance education internship is what cinched it for me. I already have a good background in computers, but I need more experience in web design. We have touched on some basics with the software in this class, so I purchased the Studio MX suite and began teaching myself. In addition, I enrolled in three course this summer that cover Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and Publisher. I hope to combine these skills and use them with the internship. My long-term goal is to study communication processes in distance education courses. I would love the opportunity to work in blogging as part of that process. I have not figured out how to work in the visual part and it may not be part of the equation in the long-run.

An additional interest of mine is gender studies. In fact, my Visual Rhetoric research has looked at gender (female) images on the game covers as part of the marketing plan for the computer game companies. To cross over into the distance education world, I might look at the differences in blogging between the genders in a distance education setting. So there it is. Research Course + Online Docs + Visual Rhetoric + Internship = Gender Differences in Blogging in Distance Education. That is the path I see myself going on over the next three years. Not bad for a semester or two's worth of work. Of course this is all subject to change and probably will within the next week, but I think that is what a good researcher does. You must constantly examine where you are and reevaluate your position. So that's it. Have a good night and a pleasant tomorrow.

Sunday, April 17, 2005

PostSecret Ponderings

The second part of our assignment is to post an entry on the experience of commenting on the blog of our choice (see PostSecret below). I'll have to admit that the experience was enlightening. I haven't really spent much time looking at blogs revealing personal information. It is part of my research; I just haven't delved into the analysis part yet. In addition, I recently had a man at our church come up and ask my wife if she knew anything about blogs. She immediately turned to me and said that I was the person to talk to as my research is in this area. He asked what blogs were and as I tried to explain, I found that there really isn't any easy explanation or definition. Blogs can be so many things: professional, personal, news, humor, confession, information, visual, textual, auditory, etc.... That's part of the reason I am interested in genre analysis, but I am starting to wonder of categorizing blogs by genre is even feasible. Don't get me wrong, I still want to analyze blogs from genre lens, I just think that many of my assumptions may be called into question as I get deeper into this. The primary assumption that I am concerned about is that blogs can be classified by genre to begin with. Another is that there is a need for classification to begin with. However, I believe that this is what part of the research process is about. You go into the project with certain assumptions, and through the research, you either confirm or refute those assumptions. The point is that something is learned through the process, not only by you, but also your audience. I think that the process of blogging has been the most interesting aspect of this class and I hope to continue on my own in an effort to keep this process going.

PostSecret

This assignment asks us to write an extended critique on a non-classmate, non-friend's blog. So I went out searching for a blog that possibly tied in with some of my research interests including blogging and visual rhetoric. As I linked from site to site, I ended up at Samantha Blackmon's blog. As I searched through her postings I ran across a link that piqued my interest. The heading for the entry was simply "This is phenomenal and disturbing!" Below the heading was a link: PostSecret. Okay, she had my attention and what else could I do but click the link? What I discovered was both phenomenal and disturbing, and also very engrossing.

Part of the way down the page is this excerpt:

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project. People from around the world share their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. If you would like to mail in your secret(s) too, scroll down to the bottom of this page for directions.-Frank

At he bottom of the page you find:

You are invited to anonymously contribute your secrets to PostSecret. Each secret can be a regret, hope, ,experience, unseen kindness, belief, fear, betrayal, desire, feeling, confession, or childhood humiliation. Reveal anything - as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before.

Essentially, individuals create these postcards, which include some sort of secret, mail them to "Frank," and he creates the post. I would encourage you to look over the blog. It is at once funny, heartbreaking, human, and cathartic. I do question how many of these "secrets" are really true. For all we know, many are simply made up by individuals trying to see if there postcard makes it onto the site. On the other hand, if even only a fraction are true, and the confessions help these people make it through another day, week, month, year...well, that's a pretty good thing isn't it? So far, I have been approaching blogging academically, and this helped me see another side of the equation. The side that involves personal expression and creativity.

Some of these posts are funny and questionably ethical at the same time. For instance, one post from 4/17, shows a traffic ticket. The text on the postcard explains that the person found a ticket on his/her windshield. The car in the next space also had a ticket, so this person switched the tickets. That ticket was paid, but the other one wasn't as it was used to send in for the post. I'll have to admit that I laughed in spite of myself and at the same time wondered where the responsibility and accountability had gone. Other posts were more disturbing as the one about the person who only sleeps well when he/she dreams of being shot. There are many others and I will leave them for the curious to browse on their own.

This site is an amazing commentary on our culture. The web has often been held up as a place for all to freely share their sins. With anonymity, the outpouring is continual and neverending. This blog also says a lot about our society and how we accept, or reject, others based on superficial information. Where else do these people go for confession? Recent events in the Catholic church have made many uneasy about the clergy and psychotherapists charge an arm and a leg for counseling. To top it off, many insurance plans only minimally cover the counseling visits. So here we sit, with our monthly connection charge, pleading our case to the world, never worrying about judgment from those who would critique us. Cyberconfession, if you will....

Saturday, April 16, 2005

Welcome

This blog is my new home and contains links to my other blogs maintained for my Resources and Research in Technical Communication and Online Documentation courses at BGSU. My hope is to actually begin blogging on a regular basis once this term is complete and I have more time. The title, "Bring Out Your Blog" is a reference to a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "Bring Out Your Dead." Hopefully this blog does not die before it truly gets started. Oh and by the way, British humor rules! Stay tuned for further musings...

Friday, April 15, 2005

Methods to Madness

Today's entry - What research method am I proposing? I have to admit that I am puzzling over this a little. We have covered so many types of research over the past few weeks that it is difficult to figure out just where my project fits in. This blog entry will probably be less about the method I am proposing as much as it is a process I must go through to determine what the method will be. At its most basic level, the research I am proposing involves looking at several blogs and performing a genre analysis.

So let's start by trying to eliminate some of the obvious suspects. My first inclination is that this is definitely not ethnographic research. I am not immersing myself in any culture or organization to learn about how technical communication works inside that culture/organization. On the other hand, when I look to some of the uses of ethnographic research, I find that it includes identifying patterns of behavior "...that are important within a particular group" (Katz). Since I am performing a genre analysis, am I not looking for writing patterns within a particular group? There is no physical space to inhabit, so it would be different from an organization, and yet it is still a group or culture - cyberculture if you will. Therefore, ethnography is a possibility, but I am not sure if it is the primary suspect.

Second on the list is historical methods. This appears to be one of the front runners, since historical methods include using a variety of sources to gather information about something that has happened in the past. Haven't all of the blogs that I will be examining been written in the past? My job will be to examine those blogs and try to make sense of them through analysis. I kind of like this one. Surveys and questionnaires are third an the list and this is an obvious no. I will not be doing any type of surveys, questionnaires, interviews, etc. So let's scratch that one off of the list! In addition, I would have to say that this will most likely be a quasi-experimental design. It will be truly difficult to secure a completely random sample of blogs. Moreover, I will not be approaching the research from a feminist, cultural, or scientific perspective.

In the end, what I end up with is a quasi-experimental, possibly ethnographic, historical method of analyzing blog genres. What a mouthful!

Sunday, April 3, 2005

Open Mic Night at the Blogstopper

So we get to blog on any topic related to research! What shall we talk about? Me thinks of speaking on the relevance of Monty Python humor on the United States and the infidels who do not get it, but me thinks that is also a little off topic. Oh well.

The topic then shall be on some other research I am doing that I have found very interesting. For my research project in the Visual Rhetoric class, I am examining idealized female images on video game covers. Surprisingly, little research has been done into the marketing of video games concerning the images used. A lot of research has been conducted on the images within the games, but not on the marketing. So far, virtually all of the game covers using a female image, use an idealized image. What does it mean? Does it even matter? I contend that yes, it does matter.

First of all there is the ethical issues related to using any idealized form - male or female. On the other hand, game manufacturers may be inadvertently offending a potential part of their market by using such images. Female gamers have been slowly taking up a larger part of the market. In addition, the average age is on the increase. Whereas a few years ago, the typical gamer was a teenager, now the average age is creeping into the upper twenties and even thirties. It seems to me that an older, smarter, savvier game buyer, will need to be marketed to in a different way.

On the other hand, maybe I am full of bologna, and no one really cares. Perhaps the average game buyer doesn't really worry about the images used on box covers, advertisements, and in the games themselves. My research involves looking at the past literature and conducting a semiotic analysis of the images. I would propose conducting additional research into whether or not these images do influence the potential market. My guess is they do.