As a means of applying your reading in Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, download and complete at least 3 of the mechanics exercises in this file folder (link). Create a Google Drive folder with your completed materials and post a sharable link to that folder in Blog 2, along with a written response to the following: these mechanics exercises are nearly 15 years old and they’re not great examples of document design. What aspects would you revise or redesign to better fit today’s audience and make a more user-friendly and effective instructional document? Aim for about 75 words.
-Assignment from syllabus
Response:
My Drive:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10Hh90fZLMDS9eJxhQJEBR67tYsEdR9JW
There are a few elements of the documents which make them ineffective for today’s audience. One of the first, is that some of the rules have changed, particularly those about the use of they/them in the singular case. It used to be a major grammatical no-no to use they/them in place of another singular pronoun. However, this has changed due both agender pronouns becoming far more common, and accepted; and the overall common parlance has loosened on this rule in general.
However, a major element of the document which I would want to improve in some way is their ability to correct and mentor the learner. If, for example, the exercises were made on NearPod, QuizIzz, or some other interactive learning tool, a modern learner would be able to more fully utilize the affordances of digital media.
That inability was why (beyond a general preference for a physical artifact) I printed out the documents. I decided it was better to not fuss with trying to type everything out, deleting the blanks to write in an answer, and to avoid the potential confusions, and inevitable frustrations of trying to work these documents in a format that they’re not perfect for.
I think moving the documents into a different format would allow us to utilize the digital space more effectively and develop a pedagogical approach which actively corrects learners and offers feedback in real time—another affordance of the digital world which these documents lack.