Week 13

Collaboration is when two or more people’s ideas are used to create a final product. In most cases all parties involved in the collaboration are informed that their ideas are being used with the ideas of others to create something. There are however instances where people are not aware that their ideas are being used this is due to the ability to access documents and other forms of information online. This combination of information allows for the reinforcement of ideas or even the changing of ideas that an individual may have had before being introduced to the ideas of the collaborators.

            As far as everyday writing goes collaboration is involved in every form of everyday writing. Everything that is writing has some influence of others in the formation of that idea. The fact that everyday writing is an uncensored writing that is done by choice and can involve anything the writer desires it allows for others influence to be put into the ideas of the writer. The ideas that are contributed by others influence act as a form of collaboration amoung people in everyday writing. One example would be a letter that is written and the writer references what others have told them or what they have seen from others in their writing.

Week 13 Journal

Collaboration is the act of coming together whether it be people or programs working together.  When two people coming together to meet a common shared goal.  Collaboration is vital for any major project.  But to collaborate is to learn everyone's strengths and weaknesses until you have the best team possible. In most cases anything that anyone wants to do requires collaboration.  If you want to gain knowledge, you require collaboration between you and your professor.  If one of the collaborators does not hold up their end then the project will fail.  This is analogous with everything we do. Collaboration plays very little role in everyday writing because everyday writing is often makeshift projects that one person could easily create.  To create something that is fabricated or industrially made it often requires collaboration one way or another.  In other words most works of writing are made out of collaboration and not everyday writing.  Every published book goes through an incalculable amount of editors and critics that go in to the final product of the text.

Week 13 Journal

Collaboration is the process where two or more people work together towards a common goal.  Collaboration works best when all parties are both passionate about the task at hand, are open minded towards new and innovative ideas, are patient and engaged at all times. The more people, the more ideas can be shared and spread. However, with more people it becomes difficult to communicate ideas to the entire group as well as it is harder to convey your specific message to a larger audience. Mastering the art of collaboration is a life skill that everyone needs in order to be successful in college, careers, and in life. There is endless knowledge and ideas available in the world; it is impossible for one person obtain even a fraction of it without the help of others. Collaboration, specifically by utilizing the Internet, makes it possible to share ideas and to use each other to help improve your own personal writings. Not only can we learn from each other’s ideas, but writers can work together to create a piece, editing and discussing along the way. For example, in the article it discusses a “Daily Prophet” Harry Potter blog that is run by a middle schooler. Heather and the other students use the internet to collaborate and keep a blog up to date. The site eventually became a target of lawyers trying to protect Warner Bros. and the Harry Potter Series. However, they greatly underestimated the fandom of the Potter Series and the strength of collaboration. The Harry Potter fan community is massive and extremely passionate about the works of J.K. Rowling.  By using the internet to their advantage, fan communities around the world have shared their writings and worked together to create blogs and run websites and edit columns. Collaboration makes it possible to create writing that is on a larger scale and of better quality.

Week 13 Journal

To collaborate means to work together as a group. People use collaboration for multiple purposes, whether it is to justify a certain argument, to complete a rather complex project or assignment, to sustain and improve a potential community, or a combination of any of the three. In the required reading, we see collaboration in action, as a girl by the name of Heather Lawver creates a web-based school newspaper known as The Daily Prophet, which revolved around the fictional world of Harry Potter and attracted a bustling community of fans who both read and write about what currently goes on in the fictional wizard world. The staff who run the newspaper, which consists of Heather Lawver as the managing editor and around 102 children, work and discuss initial projects and topics together before publishing any official content for the public eye to see. The staff who run the site are always eager to go over each other's work, making sure that there aren't any minor mistakes or mix-ups. The fact that fans of the Harry Potter series visit the site to read the various articles also exemplifies collaboration. The staff choose to publish articles for The Daily Prophet to express their own imaginations, as well as to potentially fulfill the imaginations of other fans. The amount of visitors that the newspaper site attracts dictates just how well the staff of The Daily Prophet are carrying out their job.

In terms of what role collaboration plays on everyday writing, it is a unique action that provides a much stronger effect for the desired work that one (or many) are focused on. For example, designing pamphlets and deciding what should be written on the pamphlet and in what form is a common objective that members of certain organizations and clubs tackle in order to get other people to consider joining. Also, as gravestones exemplify everyday writing in terms of context, it is imperative to work with staff who are in charge of what kind of material the gravestone will be made out of, as well as being the ones who implement any sort of design to be put onto the stone as requested by relatives of the deceased. The epitaph is also a crucial piece of a typical gravestone that must be implemented by means of collaborating with funeral-related staff. As we can see from these two examples mentioned, collaboration plays a big role in some forms of everyday writing by putting together a final product which would have most likely had a disastrous outcome if not for the help of others. Collaboration is an action, which without question, helps polish the outcome of a subject of work.

Week 13- Collaboration

To collaborate in general is to work jointly on an activity. In a writing sense, collaboration is when two or more people work together to produce a written document. When I tried to incorporate collaboration in everyday writing, I immediately thought of a newspaper! A newspaper consists of many different articles spanning a variety of topics that eventually come together and form one document. Thus, the team of journalists compose their own writings which essentially are turned into a published document. Another example would be a magazine, etc. 

In the article, a different way of collaboration was mentioned. Here, in regards to J.K Rowling’s, Harry Potter series, Heather Lawver created an online “newspaper” where children were encouraged to read by being able to add in their own ideas and articles. The article states that The Daily Prophet currently has over 102 children in its publishing staff. This would be considered everyday writing because these children did not necessarily learn how to write fictional news articles in school. They base it off of their imagination as well as their personal lives. Although it is seen as “institutionalized” because it is an imaginary school, there is no adult supervision, no one to tell the children what they can and cannot write. Therefore, it is completely up to their own discretion. 

Collaboration helps people feel a sense of usefulness as well as a sense of unity. Textbooks are often written by numerous people because there is so much information. They could be considered everyday writing because school subjects are based around them and students use them for practical use every day. 

Week 12 Journal

Since the beginning of time, humans have used many different mediums to communicate information with the people around them. The mediums have evolved as a way to simplify the lives of those who use them, with each new method outdating the next. Paper replaced cave drawings and digital media was supposed to replace paper. The primary relationship between digital media and print is that they are both methods of relaying and storing information. There are some key differences between print and digital media. Digital media is limited because it is often stored on a large hard drive that is difficult to transport, while paper on the other hand, is flexible and can be transported easily. For example, in an office, if you have a document that you need to share with a coworker, it is much easier to print it out and walk it to him, rather than to unplug your desktop and carry the entire monitor and hard drive over to him.

Over time digital media may take over completely and render paper useless. The invention of smartphones and tablets have made it easier to transfer information. You can email, text, and instant message anyone with the tap of a few buttons. That little sticky note message that you needed to leave on your co-workers desk can now be sent in a text message and it is reliable because they has a greater chance of seeing it. Furthermore, computers take up less from than a filing cabinet. A computer can also store almost 500 times as much documents as a filing cabinet. As times change even more and our technology advances more, digital media can completely replace paper.

As technology advances, everyday writing will evolve. I do not believe that digital media can always be considered everyday. However, as the media evolves, it has already begun to change what everyday writing entails. 15 years ago, everyday writing was very limited to print, now, forms of digital media such as twitter and Facebook are considered everyday.

Week 12 Journal

What is the relationship between print and digital media? Will one medium replace the other medium? And what does this mean for everyday writing?

The relationship between print and digital media is they both are a medium for bringing up different information.  The difference however between print and digital media is the fact that digital media has to be completely electronic, whereas print media can be either digital, hand written, or physically printed out.  Digital media is more effective, faster and more user friendly.  Because of these few attributes print media will soon fade until it disappears.  Digital media also does not use any paper or resource so it almost as no cost.  The process has already began because hundreds of years ago because it was vital that every important saying or document had to be written down and stored away.  Today everything is digitally stowed away in the hard drives in the archives.  This fact could mean that the meaning of everyday writing will change because writings wont so temporary.  They will be around forever and could possibly be seen by anyone for the rest of time because the essence of locality will be gone.