With every english class I take as a college student, I make an effort to connect myself to the content and find a way in which the material might contribute to my abilities as both a writer and a future educator. This class has challenged me in a lot of ways I’ve never experienced in a classoom before, and has adapted me with a new mindset and set of skills that I was hesistant to embrace at first. I’ve always viewed myself as someone who thrives with writing and reading on paper. I grew up fully immersed in books, using words on a page to express my happiness, sadness, and confusion as a young girl. I found myself invested in the characters and storylines I read about, and used literature as a way to find new perspectives, and ways to view the world around me. This made a class about books and computers completely foreign to me.
How could I take the concepts I was so familiar with on pen and paper and translate them virtually! My first few weeks learning about the terminal window and Visual Studio code was a tough transition, and faced me with an expected challenge. I had to work harder to understand the virtual aspect of literature and I truly believe the effort I put into understanding the code made a real difference in my connection to the course.
Learning skills like transcription and TEI taught me the importance and care that goes into decoding older works and the significance that technology can hold when gaining acess to an authors message/purpose. This question of technologys purpose in a world of literature resonated with me most deeply when taking this course. What qualities make something a book? How does online literature and creations like AI alter the world of literature?
Class discussions surrounding these questions led me to determine that the every changing nature of our world and the prevalence of technology within it give computers and the metaverse a well deserved spot within the realm of reading and writing. This is something I thought I’d never say!I feel that these reflective questions that guided class also allowed me to expand my ability to respectfully disagree with others, and have a productive conversation!
While I still connect and feel the ability to interact best with physical copies of text, I feel that this class has allowed me to establish a new relationship to my computer. This newfounded computer literacy has made it easier for me to read and annotate text online, and showed me how important it is to examine the history that exists online in the world of literature.
Following this idea of progressing communication skills, the comments we left on Walden showed me a new form of online annotation and classmate colloboration that I enjoyed! The world of online forums and their international ability to discuss varying works is such a priviledge! I feel lucky to have learned more about that through ENGL 340.
Overall this class has taught me a lot about communication, and the relationship between technology and literature that I am excited to dive deeper into.