Tag Archives: essay

Symposiums

Symposium #10

Revisiting last week’s symposium I wanted to recap on some of the points discussed about the essay and the importance of feedback:

Essay

  • In relation to our assignment: To start to write differently, to even start exploring using different forms
  • A tip was to start with the traditional essay form than start breaking off into different mediums (video, audio etc.)
  • Academic writing is evidence based knowledge claims
  • Although they can still be subjective, be personal e.g. use I, relate it to yourself
  • We need to be critical not just reflective and engage with ideas to make an argument 
  • Refining the topic: The (opposite) cone shape – to start broad and explore and then slowly narrow down

Collaborating:

  • Is the basis of the media industry
  • Continuing making and re-making of projects – sharing and getting feedback from your peers – basis of how we improve
  • Not to just show things when you think it’s ‘perfect’
  • Blogs – “public making, public writing, public learning”

 

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Symposiums

Other Student’s blogs

Evan’s blog post called ‘Can you hear the revolution?’ showed that CDs are going down, Vinyls up and downloads being the steady stream. As he states vinyl sales have gone up by 40% in the first half of 2014! The figure is surprising although a lot of my friends have been buying more vinyls or record players lately. It follows the retro trend of making old things cool again.

I came across Ellen’s blog which led to –> Kenton’s and Kiralee’s blog posts also on our upcoming assignment. This assignment has been difficult to really focus on what we should be writing on and how we should be presenting it. Mainly because it’s completely different to a ‘traditional’ essay format which we are used to and I get it, that’s the point. Overall, Networked Media has just questioned, redefined, turned over my whole idea of learning in any traditional sense.

On a completely different note, Jane’s blog post about Wikipedia being a connector was a really short and sweet way to summarise it. She got from Hawaii to the Black Death – two things that seem completely unrelated but really there were only three stops between them.

 

 

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Readings

The Age of the Essay

The Web may well make this the golden age of the essay

This is a statement I would have disagreed with before reading through the reading for this week. Most of us probably think of essays as something we only write in school (every year) – usually about that book we studied in english. This reading argues that the ‘real essay’ is not the one are we typically used to. That it doesn’t take a position and then defend it. There is more freedom to a real essay where you are writing for yourself and exploring ideas however at the same time you do have an audience. It is interesting to what really constitutes towards an essay. The essay we write at schools has been inherited from old traditions and academic writing (like college professors).

Relating back to the statement, essays are not restricted to a medium they are about the content so really the web allows us to have more access to the Paul Graham’s idea of the real essay. On the internet there are no restrictions to what you can write about opposed to in a school there is structure and essay topic to always relate back to. Just having that freedom could make it the ‘golden age’ of the essay.

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