- Read UC chpt 7 & Maus II chpts 3-4
- Write a long paragraph or so on your blog in which you reflect on the process of writing the collaborative essay in the Google doc in class today. What roles did you play in the process? How did you feel while you were working? What sorts of behaviors did you observe in your classmates or yourself that seem interesting?
- Start thinking about which pages you will choose to trace for your first project. I will bring tracing paper to class on Thursday.
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Reflection of the Collaborative Google Writing
I found that the beginning of the collaborative project was chaotic. After freaking out for about ten minutes, the class began settling down and organizing how we wanted to write the essay. We used the chat box to split the topics of the response to the prompt. It was difficult to organize certain people into certain groups as well as allowing others to edit and delete sentences, words, and thoughts. Luckily, we were all writing on this Googledoc in the same room; and, thus we could communicate efficiently. I fear that with a large group of writers not working in the same location I would feel overwhelmed and unorganized. I feel that the uncertainty of when and how others on the same Googledoc will edit my words. When I write an essay I need to reread the sentences in order to clarify and understand what I want to convey to my reader; but, when someone else deletes the sentence before I have completed my thought or clarification, I lose my argument entirely. I do believe that collaboratively working on an essay is a valid idea and will work as an advantage to improving my writing abilities, but I believe the non personal collaboration is not worth the energy and irritation I would feel in trying to convey what I want through the computer rather than face-to-face. I also argue that I approached this project with a negative bias; and, therefore did not open my mind to the advantages of working online with others, especially the sufficiency and speed that we would accomplish.