Flow
How do we organize our papers? Let me count the ways. Since Dr. Rogers has admitted that he has spent years talking about this topic with colleagues and has yet to come to a satisfactory way of teaching organization to students I am not sure what I could say that would contribute to the conversation. When students come to me and ask me if it “flows” okay I walk through their paper looking for connecting sentences and connecting ideas. If for some reason something seems to be off a little bit I suggest some re-working, but I have not yet tried to actually teach the concept of organization.
With that being said, maybe we should all read a little Foucault to understand how we order things. We could just give our students that text and then they would understand the purpose and structure of organization. Maybe.
In order to understand how to organize something I decided to think about how I organize my papers. Usually I come up with an idea, think about it for awhile, read some criticism so see what others have said about the topic, and then I start thinking about what ideas go together. Before I became a graduate student I didn’t really think about organization, but when my papers started to get longer and I needed to work in a lot of outside criticism I began thinking about how to organize my papers to get the length I needed and to say what I thought was important. I got some great advice a bout how to organize my ideas. A professor told me that I should read an outside critic and then take note cards and write down what was important about that critic. I could include the reference, the quotes I wanted to use from the critic and the major points. When I had read everything that I wanted to read for the paper I would then look at all of my cards and organize them into the order I thought would be best for my paper. In a way this is kind of like the sticky note idea that Dr. Rogers brought up in class. It’s a visual representation of what a paper should look like for the student. Once I had my note cards organized I knew what I wanted to say. I could just sit down and write.
In our case the student usually has a paper and we just need to show them how to take their paragraphs and move them around to formulate something that actually makes sense. That’s what’s great about technology; the computer is an easy way to show how to revise and re-think ideas. You can use sticky notes to show the student a visual representation of his/her paper and then the student can use the computer to physically move the words around to make sense.
Maybe someday we can come up with a better way to talk about “flow.”
With that being said, maybe we should all read a little Foucault to understand how we order things. We could just give our students that text and then they would understand the purpose and structure of organization. Maybe.
In order to understand how to organize something I decided to think about how I organize my papers. Usually I come up with an idea, think about it for awhile, read some criticism so see what others have said about the topic, and then I start thinking about what ideas go together. Before I became a graduate student I didn’t really think about organization, but when my papers started to get longer and I needed to work in a lot of outside criticism I began thinking about how to organize my papers to get the length I needed and to say what I thought was important. I got some great advice a bout how to organize my ideas. A professor told me that I should read an outside critic and then take note cards and write down what was important about that critic. I could include the reference, the quotes I wanted to use from the critic and the major points. When I had read everything that I wanted to read for the paper I would then look at all of my cards and organize them into the order I thought would be best for my paper. In a way this is kind of like the sticky note idea that Dr. Rogers brought up in class. It’s a visual representation of what a paper should look like for the student. Once I had my note cards organized I knew what I wanted to say. I could just sit down and write.
In our case the student usually has a paper and we just need to show them how to take their paragraphs and move them around to formulate something that actually makes sense. That’s what’s great about technology; the computer is an easy way to show how to revise and re-think ideas. You can use sticky notes to show the student a visual representation of his/her paper and then the student can use the computer to physically move the words around to make sense.
Maybe someday we can come up with a better way to talk about “flow.”
posted by Tamar at 4:23 PM
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