As Russ mentioned, this fascinating discussion has taken off just
when most of us teacher-types are buried with end of term
responsibilities--so I've been paying attention but waiting for a
moment to gather my wits in order to contribute my 2 cents. I love
hearing about the new locations of inkshedding (as in Natasha and
Michael and Charlotte's recent postings).
One quick thought for Charlotte-- I find that my Asian students like
inkshedding precisely *because* it does give them time to collect
their thoughts and get those thoughts sketched out on the page (that
is, they can join the discussion without having to compete orally
with other quick-talking students). There is lots of discussion
going on in my classes that is not spoken because students regularly
bring inksheds to class based on what we've read or what we're
working on and then exchange and comment on them (often one person in
a group will take all the inksheds home, comment on them, and bring
them back to the next class). I've always found compelling Russ's
point (in "What is Inkshedding") that inkshedding is one way to allow
every single person in the room to participate in a discussion--and
they can all do so at once (they couldn't all talk at once--well,
they could, but it wouldn't foster much communication). Often the
students you never hear from in oral discussions reveal themsevles in
written discussions to be more thoughtful and attentive and creative
than their chattier companions. It's one reason I could never go back
to teaching without inkshedding--when I think of all the smart and
insightful and surprising things I would never have heard from my
students if I hadn't asked them to inkshed, I get the shudders!
So, one big Inkshed community for me consists of all my past students
(well, since 1989), with whom I share a history of intense
inkshedding and reading each other's writing. A big part of the
value of inkshedding for me is the way that it allows blocked and
unhappy student writers to find their voices in the academic
community through a fairly risk-free, low-stakes form of public
writing practice (the "public" part of that equation is so important
for their growing confidence as writers). I think that, like
meditation or daily exercise, inkshedding is discipline that one does
even when one doesn't particularly feel like it, in the faith that
the cumulative impact will do one nothing but good. So I guess, on
those grounds, I would disagree with Russ's elimination of some of
Doug's practices from the category of inkshedding--Russ felt that
ungraded assignments and peer-reviewed writing weren't really
inkshedding because the reader was expected "to evaluate and help
rather than to engage." Not only would I argue that those things
aren't mutually exclusive, I'd argue that one can *only* truly be of
any help if one *engages* seriously with a piece of writing first,
with what it says. When my students are inkshedding, they're aware
that it's an ungraded assignment, but they're not reading each
other's inksheds in order to help improve the writing as writing--as
Russ describes what he thinks qualifies as an inkshed-- "it's read
for what it says and is written with the knowledge that that's going
to happen." They read and comment on each other's inksheds to engage
with the content (maybe I'm wrong to call this peer review, but it
seems the most important form of peer review to me).
As Russ puts it, "the crucial thing about inkshedding is its social
embeddedness -- that is, that the writing carries immediate, felt
rhetorical force"--so I share his view that completely private
freewriting is something quite different. The challenge for me is
working hard to create situations in which the assigned inkshedding
is felt to have that "immediate rhetorical force," where the
community of learners in the classroom feel that the work we're doing
together is important and that the inkshedding is contributing to
that work. But I'm committed enough to the practice of inkshedding
and certain enough of its value that I do require it (so it's
definitely an ungraded assignment).
I guess I'd define the inkshed community as being pretty huge--it
would include for me everyone who had ever attended an Inkshed
conference or paid dues to receive the newsletter, everyone who had
ever been on the listserv, and then every student of anyone in those
preceding categories who had incorporated inkshedding into their
teaching practices. And we should probably include as well people
who don't use the term "inkshed" but who practice public, focused
freewriting as a form of writing-to-learn or exploratory writing in
their teaching (because even if Elbow defines pure freewriting as
private, lots of people have students share rough freewritten bits of
writing-to-learn in their classrooms, as long as the students know
ahead of time that the writing isn't going to be private). Once you
include that last group, you probably have to include almost everyone
who has gone through the National Writing Project in the states and
all of their students. . .
So I'm not worried about the future of inkshedding at all, whatever
someone may call it, in any of its myriad forms. How dues-paying
members of Inkshed (I'm probably late with my dues, I'm suddenly
realizing, writing that!) and the practice of inkshedding
inter-relate at this point (more than 2 decades after the first
Inkshed conference) is something I'm hoping Miriam's thesis will
shed light on. Meanwhile, even in spite of the huge community I've
described aove, I just want to say how lonely and isolated I would
feel in my work without this particular Inkshed community--as an
online presence especially. Betsy
At 12:39 PM 12/16/2006, you wrote:
>I used inkshedding this fall with my Management students, having them
>freewite to a quote and then pass their texts on for others to inkshed on.
>They loved it! They begged me to let them do it again...
>
>Something I have been thinking about as concerns inkshedding and freewriting
>is how they look from other cultural perspectives. Recently, one of my
>mainland Chinese students did an oral on communication in China. Britton's
>"shaping at the point of utterance" was not what he was talking about.
>Instead, he said that often we think Asians are too quiet in the classroom.
>This, he said, was because in Canada we rush into communication and talk at
>a fast clip. In China, apparently, the rhythm is much slower in that
>somebody will say a couple of sentences followed by a pause to think. Then
>somebody else will say a couple of sentence followed by another pause to
>think.
>
>Interestingly he said that in Canada silence is embarrassing, but in China
>it is polite and shows that some one is taking your communication seriously.
>
>Our freewriting seems to approximate how we communicate verbally in the
>West, thinking on the fly. We are used to our fast repartee, and it does
>seem to work, at least most of the time, provided the foot doesn't land in
>the mouth too often. But what about the Chinese-are-thinking approach? And
>where does inkshedding fit in to all of this? Bye, Charlotte
>
>
>On 12/14/06 10:03 AM, "Russ Hunt" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > One further thing from me, about "editing" . . .
> >
> >> I'm intrigued that you felt the need to edit before sending.
> >
> > I _always_ edit. I even edit pen-and-paper inksheds, on the
> > fly. I'm amazed that anybody can separate composing from editing
> > (I believe I edit as I speak, and I think in fact everybody
> > does: that that's what Jimmy Britton meant by "shaping at the
> > point of utterance"). I certainly always edit email as it gets
> > composed.
> >
> >
>
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>For the list archives and information about the organization,
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> http://www.stu.ca/inkshed/
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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To leave the list, send a SIGNOFF CASLL command to
[log in to unmask] or, if you experience difficulties,
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For the list archives and information about the organization,
its newsletter, and the annual conference, go to
http://www.stu.ca/inkshed/
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