Resources for Faculty

Essid's Paper One: A Tech Journal & Crafting a Thesis

Topic: Choose a technology you use for communicating when you are not there to talk with someone. Examples include handwritten letters, telephone, cell phone, instant messenger, e-mail, photo-sharing Web sites, Web page you have created, or blog to which you contribute.

Your task is to explore the following assertion and make a claim:

"This technology influences how I communicate."

Audience: Me and your editing group.

Format: at least 900 words (approx. three pages typed, double spaced), plus:

A handwritten diary (yes, written out by hand) of how you are using the technology during a seven-day period. Turn this in with your paper, and keep it neat--buy a small notebook that is comfortable to use. Keep notes about how you use the technology, what problems or opportunities it creates, how it is different from other ways of communicating, how it influences other ways of communicating.
As you write this, isolate the biggest influence that the technology has and state why that's so. You'll have a working thesis for the paper (Use AN pp. 21 and 26-27 to help you).

In the formal typed paper:

Quickly state the thesis that comes out of your reflecting on what you write in your diary
Note how keeping an old-fashioned diary influenced how you think about the subject of this paper
Consider Baron's point that all literacy technologies experience stages of development and influence. At which point is the one you chose?
Include a title page with your name and the title of the essay. The title should be a descriptive one that sums up the idea of the paper's thesis
Make margins no larger than 1.25" and type size no larger than 12 points in Time or Times New Roman fonts. You do not need to provide a bibliography for this essay.