Literary Inquiry (gone digital)

I gotta say, I appreciate Dr. Burton's efforts to focus us towards literary research of late. At the beginning of the class, we were focusing so much on where literacy is headed and what digital literacy meant that, to be honest, I was a little leery about the whole approach. After all, literary criticism is a huge field full of writers, professors, and critics and to ignore that when the title of the course is Writing Literary Criticism seemed incredibly bizarre to me. Yes, the topics we began with in this class have value, but it's not entirely the purpose of a course like this, is it? (No, Ms. Granger. It isn't. Why don't you step outside with me so I can hex you and hide you in a closet so as to benefit the rest of us who are enjoying class the way it is?)

Lately, I think we've been focusing more on doing research on literature in the critical age which feels a bit more comfortable to me. Anyways, I looked up the course description on BYU's site: "How to address an academic audience, support arguments, and engage effectively in critical conversations about literature." I think we're getting closer to this goal with the class focusing more in general on doing research. I know the library instruction will be largely focused on this.

Unplugged

This semester I am more unplugged than ever before.

I am Personal Computerless. It's a new experience for me at BYU. I've always had that link to the greater world at large via instant internet access that I could plop down and use anywhere I was. Two semesters ago, my personal laptop broke, last semester the one I was borrowing from my husband broke, and now we share a laptop that stays at home so as to preserve its life. In past semesters, in addition to these personal computers, I've always carried around two work computers as well. Probably between 70-90% of my days at school were spent "plugged in". Far from being over-worried about the "evils" of technology, I enjoy using it to my purposes and I feel I have a relatively high degree of digital literacy.

However, lately I have found I rather enjoy the lack of instant access. Albeit I recognize having a cell phone (though I have what is deemed a 'dumb phone', not even comparable to my husband's iPhone with its dataplan) still allows me quite a bit of plugged-in-ness, I find that I really like having to walk to a computer, sit down, do my work, and get up to do the next thing. It's nice having to share one computer at home, because we try to get whatever we need done on it quickly so the other can use it and then we can both be done and do something together.

How Form Affects Function

In class today we discussed how the format of a particular piece of writing affects its function. I didn't pipe up in class but I could think of several examples, specifically when our discussion turned towards the scriptures. So... stories ....

My mom was teaching a sunday school class of 8 year-olds and was attempting to introduce them to the footnote systems that the LDS scriptures use. She asked them, "How would you find out more information about King Solomon?" They answered as any digital native might, "Google it." Duh. And I reminded her that in all actuality, they would probably all be reading their scriptures on their iPhones by the time they're in seminary and thus really would google things they were unfamiliar with or at least be able to hit the links to the footnotes which makes much more sense to them than a footnote. The experience made us chuckle.

Also, my husband has experimented with reading his scriptures conventionally and also online. I think we've both found we prefer to read them in physical format, though mainly this is because of all the distractions available when you read scriptures online. But someone in class said you cannot highlight and such, and if you go to LDS.org and log in using your membership account information, they have created a pretty functional highlighting and commenting system that I really like. One of the interesting aspects of studying scriptures online that I've noticed is that I tend to share what I learn more often when I already have access to networks as I'm studying. For example, this morning I did a gospel study online and because my husband was already at work but I wanted to share my learning with him, I was able to just quickly email him my written thoughts from what I'd learned.

I'm going to read a book on this topic next week: The Case for Books, but I'm curious to know, what differences have you noticed about the differing functions of reading in different formats?