The student found college writing to be easier than expected as professors give more freedom in writing style compared to high school. Journal entries and dialogic journals have been the most helpful activities as they allow time for reflection and feedback. The student chose to write about computer literacy as technology is increasingly important in society and people need basic skills to function. Drawings are similar to writing in requiring planning to convey meaning, and images can help explain concepts or communicate feelings in fewer words than text.

1. Dear Rebecca,
My expectations of college writing were that it was going to be harder than it was in high school.
So far it has been easier as we have been given more room and less this is how you do it. This has given
me more room to express myself in my writing as I don’t have to keep to exactly what it is the teacher
wants. This class differs from my expectations as we aren’t writing like a ten page papers on some
random topic we have to pick and research.
The most helpful activities for me have been the journal entries as it gives me time to write
down whatever is on my mind at the particular moment on the topic instead of trying to remember
what I was thinking later. Another helpful activity has been the dialogic journals as it lets me get
feedback on the information that I am taking away from a book and if it is relevant or not. An activity
that I think would be helpful in class would be every day we do a mini-blog that captures what we are
thinking during that period so that when it comes time for reflections on our final paper we can go back
and see what are thought were at the specific time and why we made the choices that we did.
The reason I chose computer literacy for my literacy topic is that we are becoming a more
technological society. This meaning that everyone should have some form of computer literacy as it is
almost required in our society today to accomplish a lot of common tasks. This was shown in my paper
when I talked about the digital community as it is a place where you interact with people you need to
know the rules of this community. However there is a completely different way you need to act online
as opposed to acting to someone face to face. I also stated near the end of my paper that computer
literacy would only continue to grow so it would be a good thing to learn some form of it.
Drawing a picture is very similar to writing as you have to plan out what it is you want that
picture to mean the same way you have to plan your words to get a meaning across. The difference is
that instead of putting it into words you have to draw the picture so that the meaning can be taken from
it. To figure out when to use an image I thought of when something may not have been clear to
someone who has never encountered it before. This would then be a good place to put an image as it
would introduce the person to what you are talking about and also give them a deeper understanding of
what you were talking about before. Today we use images to the communicate with someone how we
are feeling or what we are thinking at that time as there are a lot of commonly recognized images
instead of having to write out how we feel we use the image. A common thing that would represent this
would be emoticons.
Sincerely,
Logan Mayhew