I'll try to keep this blog on digital literacy succinct. Here's why:
Last night, I was typing an email - the kind you feel like you need to word carefully, very carefully. I read it to my husband who said,"That email is way too long. It doesn't have to be all flowery. People don't read email that way. They read the first few sentences. Keep it short."
Eureka. He was right. And now that I think of it, the emails I write are frequently longer than the emails I receive. I can spend hours answering emails. It's something of a writer's dream - daily opportunities to write to an audience who will respond. But writing these kinds of emails takes a lot time. And for that matter so does writing my blogs. Blogs seem designed to accomodate for short bursts of writing, right? Well, that's a challenge for me, too.
Reading Thomas' (2004) Digital Literacies of the Cybergirl, I started to wonder more about gender differences in digital writing. As Thomas notes, a girl's talk in virtual reality is like speech written down, only more refined. The refining seemed to serve identity formation: "[cybertalk] serves to empower her to thoughtfully shape the identity she reveals through text" (368).
I read a snippet in Newsweek last fall from a female executive who recommended that other female executives keep their emails short and to the point - like men's emails often are. Huh. One the one hand, then, I could stick to the facts and keep it short and perhaps be more in line with the brief sorts of communication that is typical of email. One the other hand, I could stick with my version of emailing and blogging - perhaps like the girls in the palace. We're making meaning over here and, according to Thomas, shaping identity, working on empowerment, originality, exploration, and reinvention. This takes time and (for me) a lot of words.
You can see I've got a long way to go if I'm decide to adapt to a medium that loves the brief burst kind of writing. Do you think online writing environments more conducive to the way men stereotypically write and think? Do you mom's emails look different than your dad's?
Stopping here. Have I been succinct?! Maybe next time... or never?!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I always look forward to reading your posts, Audra, even though I feel twinges of jealousy afterward.
I think it's interesting what the female exec was quoted as saying in Newsweek, and it reminds me how much of our world, most of our "standards," are normed to the way men (stereotypically) go through the world. This was true even in our class discussion last week of the young Australian students. We were so worried that the girl positioned herself passively, but we never mentioned that the boy only did so once. Maybe he's too egocentric. But we never brought that up.
So I'm in favor of you being you. That's what makes (in this case) blogging interesting, that the reader gets a sense of the writer's voice, of who they are.
I, too, am one of many words! Last week, during the break, we were discussing our issues with wikis and how we both missed the blogging we did last semester. For some reason, I really felt the need to limit what I wrote in my wiki. I don't feel this limitation when I blog, even if blogging is meant for "short bursts". While blogging, I explore. Are on-line writing environments more conducive to the way men stereotypically write and think? This is a really interesting question? If used in the classroom, maybe this is a way "in" for men. I often find that the boys I work with are much more likely to participate in quick-writes than journaling. As a result, "short bursts" may be more appealing initially.
amy, i'm jealous of that you're a hot surfer girl and i'm a schluby simpson
Post a Comment