Again, one of my main struggles was to have something to write about! That part of the task was difficult, but once I decided and started writing it was easy. I like to write stories so I don’t mind writing at all. As for written by hand or typing I vary. I grew up writing by hand, but now am very comfortable on the computer. My family has a tech company so I did a lot of time working on the computer prior to education. I do a bit of both, but I do prefer paper for rough work, like planning out a unit, or jotting ideas down. Typing restricts my creativity and freedom on the page to easily make connections, add, draw lines and circles which cannot be done so easily and quickly on the computer (Chemin, 2014, December 16). If you forced me to brainstorm by typing, I would find it much harder, which lends to the idea that handwriting and typing involve different cognitive processes (Chemin, 2014, December 16). I also found it very interesting to read that writing notes by hand instead of typing involves a deeper cognitive-process (Mueller and Oppenheimer, 2014). That would make sense for me, as when I am brainstorming, trying to conceptualize, make something sensical, I would be writing by hand. When I am finalizing and double checking, it would be typing, which is not a deep cognitive task. This particular task was fine, but I would probably have typed it, as I like the computer checking my work. I struggle a lot with looking at my own words and finding mistakes. My brain reads it as correct even if it’s not. Because of that, anything formal I would prefer to type. I also do not like my writing and tend to blend printing and cursive together. I chose to write in my favourite colour as I got new markers and really like the feel of them. It expresses more of who I am, then typing. While one would say font and colour can be used and even created in type. However, typing is more formal in my mind, and not a space for colour or font creatively, and doing so, can make the text hard to read. I don’t love the feel of a pencil, and hate mechanical pencils. That being said, I realized after that pen would be more of a challenge to edit. I did some editing while I wrote, seeing a mistake and either scribbling it out or writing over it. I then went back and reread, and used ribbon white out to fix anything else. My confidence in there not being mistakes on my paper is very low, but would be higher if it was typed, as this is. The computer gives me assistive technology to ensure my work is edited. There is a permanency to paper that feels uncomfortable when it is formal work. So in closing, the method of writing will depend on the task.

References:

Chemin, A. (2014, December 16). Handwriting vs typing: is the pen still mightier than the keyboard?. The Guardian. Retrieved from Handwriting vs typing: is the pen still mightier than the keyboard? | Neuroscience | The Guardian

Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science, 25(6), 1159-1168. doi:10.1177/0956797614524581

I have never made potato stamps before, so one of my challenges was that I bought some pretty small potatoes. Having the video made it easy, and I had a small paring knife and blue sharpie that worked really well to write on the potato first. Repeatedly drying the potato on a paper towel also helped. I had thought of many words, throwing them out due to double letters, but came up with ‘witch’ as I was watching a series on netflix. The ‘w’ and ‘i’ were quite easy, but the ‘t’ had some inner corners that were hard to do. Finally, came the ‘c’ and the ‘h’ which were both harder to create. Imagine my disappointment when I did not take into account that I needed to create them flipped for it to work. I got lucky, because the ‘c’ would work anyways, but the ‘h’ had to be remade. With some spatial thinking I flipped the ‘h’ in my head and was off to the races. When cutting, I tended to cut deeper, which ended up making the paint and stamp part better. No extra paint dripped nor did the potato flex to make unintended parts touch the paper. It took me about 35 minutes to make the stamps, and the letters I reproduce look somewhat child like. Though the task was fun, it gives me appreciation of mechanized writing, and the time invested into it, and I am happy we have print technologies now that do not limit anyone to using the written word, sharing it, and publishing it easily (Bolter, 2001).

References:

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. doi:10.4324/9781410600110