computers and composition seminar blog

Matthew Vetter
Eng 792e
Project Proposal

Composing for Online Audiences in the Writing Classroom:
Experiments and Innovations with Wikipedia

Objectives / Product(s):
To complete the assignment I designed for a Junior-level course, I’ll produce:

A Wikipedia entry: I’m interested in using the alternative option of my assignment “a substantial edit to an existing Wikipedia article” to revise/edit/add to the entry on “aporia” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aporia)

Photographs: The assignment calls for photographs to add to the Wikipedia entry to increase notability. I’m still thinking about this as I’m not sure I could come up with anything that could be applicable to this entry’s topic.

A Reflection Essay: As a final element of the assignment, I’ll write a reflection piece to answer the following prompt (3-4 pp.): Examine one or more rhetorical concepts of notability, authority, audience, and purpose. How much has your attention to one or more of these concepts influenced your composition process and product? Furthermore, how are open content platforms such as Wikipedia changing the way information is shared and disseminated?

Article: As I complete the separate elements of the assignment, I’ll take process notes (reflective writing about the process of navigating the Wikipedia entry, writing the article, etc) to reflect on the assignment itself and describe the best methods / processes. I’ll also attempt to more clearly define the “areas of growth” or objectives of the assignment by reflection on what I learned and accomplished. I want to compile a list of “things to avoid” or “don’t do this” items as well.

I’ll juxtapose my own findings with outside research to learn what I can specifically add to the current conversation, (and what the current conversation covers). My initial feeling is that there is not a lot of specific assignment examples out there. So I hope to be able to remedy that. I see this article as doing the following:

1. Reviewing current scholarship on using Wikipedia/wikis in writing classes.
2. Reflecting on what I’ve learned from composing and completing a specific assignment. Revisions I’ve made to the assignment.
3. sharing new and relevant findings based on this reflection and discussing how it reinforces or changes current thinking/current conversation.
4. Showcasing / sharing the actual assignment as an appendix.

Preliminary Bibliography:

Baker, Nicholson. “The Charms of Wikipedia.” Rev of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, by John Broughton. The New York Review of Books 20 March 2008. 20 March 2008
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21131.

Barton, Matthew and Robert E. Cummings (eds.). Wiki Writing: Collaborative Learning in the College Classroom. Ann Arbor, MI: Digital Culture Books, 2008.

Cummings, Robert E. Lazy Virtues: Teaching Writing in the Age of Wikipedia. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008.

Garza, Susan Loudermilk and Tommy Hern. “Using Wikis as Collaborative Writing Tools: Something Wiki This Way Comes – Or Not!” 6 Jan. 2006. Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. 20 March 2008. http://critical.tamucc.edu/wiki/WikiArticle/Home.

Hood, Carra Leah. "Editing Out Obscenity: Wikipedia and Writing Pedagogy." CC Online.
http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/wiki_hood/index.html

Liu, Alan. "Student Wikipedia Use Policy." 15 April 2007. 11 August 2008
http://www.english.ucsb.edu/faculty/ayliu/courses/wikipedia-policy.html.

Miller, Nora. “Wikipedia and the Disappearing ‘Author.’” ETC (Jan. 2005): 37-40.

Evans Final Conference Proposal

2011-02-24T13:24:00.000-08:00

Imaginative Development: Multimodal Compositions From Process to Product

The shift in composition classrooms from alphabetic text and essays to new media and multimodal composition (MMC) also risks shifting the focus from the process of composing to final product form. Although multimodal projects sometimes neglect the legacy of the expressivist movement—free writing and writing as a form of discovery—they present a chance to utilize (or hinder) the process of composing. In Multimodal Composition: Resources for Teachers, Kara Poe Alexander says that “for every 1 minute of a finished audio or video essay, an author puts in 200 minutes of authoring and production time” (118). Although Alexander suggests means to overcome this problem, revision still has the potential to challenge the realistic boundaries of available class time.

MMC can become outward composing—creation shaped by modes—verses the inward creation of the mind. Thus the process of MMC cannot help students clarify their thinking unless the assignment is framed in a way that allows for a variety of different approaches; too specific of an assignment could limit the bounds of students’ imaginations.

My presentation will explore how process theory, with an emphasis on learning through composing, can be incorporated into new media classrooms so projects can be imagined and developed, rather than simply planned and outlined. I will also approach peer review/revision as an opportunity for a project to evolve in new directions rather than simply constituting a “redo.” In doing so, I will respond to selected assignments in Multimodal Composition and Ball and Moeller’s 2007 website.

Revised Conference Proposal

2011-02-24T11:17:00.000-08:00

Reviving Oral Rhetoric in Composition Classes Through New Media

In her 2009 CCC article, Cynthia Selfe points out that when printed alphabetic texts are the only accepted means of composition, we “ignore the history of rhetoric and its intellectual inheritance” (618). In particular, Selfe argues that sound “is often undervalued as a compositional mode” (617). Today, students are frequently exposed to multiple modes of communication such as audio, video, webpages, etc, and so they should have the ability to compose in multiple modes. Therefore, Selfe says, some focus on aurality and other modes of communication should have their place in composition classes in addition to writing (625-26). Building on Selfe, I will argue that because modern students should have the ability to compose effectively in multiple modes, oral rhetoric has a place in composition classes. Further, new media composition’s use of audio might be viewed as an effective way to revive oral rhetoric in our classes. When students compose multimodal projects with audio, using their own voice, they must carefully consider their tone, emphasis, speed, pronunciation, clarity, etc., which are all concerns of oral rhetoric. Further, music and sound effects can play an important role, affecting how the voices are heard. While new media composition is new in that it largely depends on computers and technology, the oral element of an audio essay is an important part of traditional rhetoric. From ancient times until the nineteenth century, orality was of central importance to rhetoric. With the increased need of writing by the end of the nineteenth century, however, less emphasis was placed on oral rhetoric, and so today it is given little attention in composition classes. With new modes of communication, however, oral rhetoric does have a place in our classrooms, and new media might be a way to give it a place.

John's Project proposal

2011-02-24T09:57:00.000-08:00

My current plan for the final project is to create a video presentation of what I proposed for the conference:

For fifteen years many scholars (see Lanham, Selfe, Sirc) have advocated incorporating new media literacies into composition. But, alphabetic literacy still hasn’t gone the way of the the floppy disk, nor is there yet indication that students’ ability to succeed in life might depend on their video editing skills. However, even the most stalwart defender of the alphabetic tradition has begun to feel pressure to address new media literacies. New media literacy has come to mean any number of things from the use of technologies like blogs and wikis as to the ability to produce and edit digital videos. While it is becoming clearer that composition will need to address digital literacy, it is far from clear which literacies are becoming truly vital for composition and which remain the domains of specialists. Technology changes at a rapid pace; the emergence of vital literacies moves much more slowly. Rather than devote limited and valuable time with students teaching them the next new technology for producing a video, perhaps we should start by acknowledging how principles of new media and digital literacy are already part of any composition (See Wysocki). Nearly all texts are produced as digital texts so all texts can be tools for demonstrating properties of digital literacies and new media. This presentation will discuss how instructors can begin to teach visual design and rhetoric, Lev Monovich’s concepts of modularity and variability (30–45), and other principles or affordances of new media using the assignments they already teach and minimal instruction about ubiquitous software programs like Microsoft Office. By teaching students to design texts rather than just write them, instructors can teach important principles relevant to whatever digital literacies students may have to develop without having to devote the majority of a semester or quarter to teaching software and technology.

I will use video (taking using the cameras in my laptop and at home in my IMac) as well as still image frames, text frames, voice over, and other audio to present the ideas and to show the dramatic redesign of documents from standard MLA format to several visually effective designs. I will make use of (at least) IMovie, Photoshop, Microsoft Word, Adobe InDesign, and possibly Adobe Illustrator.

Revised Proposal

2011-02-24T06:13:00.001-08:00

Proposal for 2011 College English Association of Ohio Spring Conference — Siyang Zhou

Title: More Than a Platform for Sharing: Exploring What Teaching Writing with Blogs Demands from Instructors

Session Description:

While it is evident that blogging can shape students’ writing experiences greatly, we, as writing instructors, should not assume that it would be natural occurrence in classes. Based on some recent studies on blogging in college writing courses, my presentation will explore ways in which instructors can substantially apply blogs, avoiding possible cursory use as public forums. Echoing Tougaw’s articulation of how blogging is able to bridge the expressivist-constructivist divide, I take such role of blogs as the pedagogical goal and will therefore look into specific demands at the instructors’ end that are essential in building a productive writing space with them.

First, the central subjects and the complementary materials of the course should be able to generate both expressivist writing and genuine lines of inquires that students can pursue while preventing them from exercising general sense carefully in negotiation with the academic discourse. Tougaw demonstrates this point well with his employment of dream as the course theme in his article. Second, it is part of the instructors’ job to provide detailed guidelines that ask students to explore the affordance of blogging by using multimedia components. Third, based on several students’ evaluation of blogging in English classes, it appears to be important that the instructor employs a blog space which facilitates maximum capacity of operation. Fourth, although blogs enable frequent revision and updating, instructors need to incorporate stages of revision into the course and allow reservations of traces of revision as well as following-up peer assessment in various forms. In this sense, instructors ought to implant measures with which students will carry out peer commenting and reflection more in the form of a public dialogue of comparison and learning instead of a procedure that is countable for credits. Finally, using blogs in writing classes requires a high investment of time and response from instructors.

As a convergent medium, blogs are undoubtedly great vehicles for new media composing. I thus hope to present some framework of course preparation for writing instructors, especially those who are inexperienced with it, in moving towards this digitized space.

Revised proposal

2011-02-22T21:56:00.000-08:00

Click here
The full text is also available on my blog.

Siyang's drafty proposal

2011-02-22T13:47:00.000-08:00

Click here

2011-02-22T11:02:00.000-08:00

Link to equipment checkout forms

2011-02-21T09:36:00.000-08:00

Have Albert Rouzie sign this form before checking equipment out from McCracken to avoid paying the rental fees.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pdFvM_01h8i5umILcSRNFCA

Revised Assignment

2011-02-17T18:07:00.001-08:00

The revised assignment...

Multimedia Assignment-Revised

2011-02-17T15:41:00.000-08:00

Click here

Final Multimodal Assignment and Introduction

2011-02-17T13:52:00.000-08:00

Introduction here

Assignment here.

Brief introduction to the (intended) course

2011-02-15T15:52:00.000-08:00

Multimodal Composition Assignment

Feb. 15, 2011

Brief Introduction To the Course

The course I planned is situated in a 151-ish freshman college composition setting. The course environment will be one that incorporates multimedia sources, including pictures, comic strips, video clips, and films, into the teaching and discussion of basic rhetorical concepts such as angels of vision or rhetorical effects (which is close to the idea of how message persuades stated in the Allyn and Bacon Guide to Write). Via a process of close reading of texts, images, and even videos and films, students will be given recursive practice of interpreting messages of the source materials based on a kind of rhetorical awareness. They will also be asked to represent certain rhetorical effects in a series of composing assignment. The multimodal assignment I designed will be planted in the later stage of the course when students would have been seasoned more or less with basic rhetorical concepts and effects.

By the time students would be asked to make that presentation, the class should have gone through the “close-reading” of pictures, comic strips, films and so forth, having reached certain understanding of the function of various details in multimedia sources including the use of prelude in both writing and filming, symbolism, montage, and close-up lens etc.

Several Examples of Sources:

Films: Awaking Life, Waltz with Bashir, Dr. Strangelove

Play: Salome by Oscar Wilde

Video clips: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1976, 2009)

Comic Strips: The Walking Dead

Text: The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lady Audley’s Secret

The multimodal assignment will be a follow-up exercise for the studying of Oscar Wilde’s theatrical writing in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Via the assignment, I hope to encourage students to explore his aestheticism as well as expressive writing. It will be carried out in the form of presentation for about 5 to 10 minutes long, and it requires only the basic use of PowerPoint and audio and video recorder. Learning this novel by Wilde will be one of the sequences of the class. Towards the end of the Sequence, students will be asked first to identify with certain scenes in the novel. The moment does not need to be long, and it could be as instantaneous as a glance at “the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-colored blossoms of laburnum” as portrayed in the opening of the novel. They will need to explain or analysis the rhetorical as well as the scenic work of the chosen scene early in their presentations, looking at diction, angels of vision, the scenic aura, and the implied messages etc. In the second stage of the presentation, they will need to explain their visualization of the scene, the picture “seen” through their mind via certain lens (such as extreme close-up lens on a still image). Based on the depiction of the scene in their imagination, they will be asked to make a vision remix in which they strive to employ the same type of lens in viewing certain object, and in a way, remake the scene in real life. Presenters should build their own context for the remade scene, and consequently, their vision remix will have to have certain prelude consisted of images and/or voice-over. The entire class will be asked to participate in the peer review of the presentation, in which they will evaluate the effectiveness of the use of the specific lens and the remade scene.

Multimodal Assignment-Interpreting focusing lens

2011-02-15T14:40:00.001-08:00

ENG 151 Siyang Zhou 2010-2011 Drafty Draft

Multimodal Assignment

Artificial Sensation: Vision Remix of Moments in The Picture of Dorian Gray

Directions:

Compose a short video as a remade scene selected from The Picture of Dorian Gray. The moment does not need to be long, and it cab be as instantaneous as a glance at “the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-colored blossoms of laburnum” as portrayed in the opening scene of the novel. Your goal is to re-present the aura of the depicted/perceived scene with corresponding lens of vision, using materials in your daily life. Present your vision remix in about 5 to 10 minutes with the help of PowerPoint.

To start the presentation, you will need to explain or analyze the rhetorical as well as the scenic work of the chosen moment. You can look at diction, angels of vision, the scenic aura, and the implied messages etc. to explain the work of the message. In the second stage of the presentation, you will need to unfold your own visualization of the scene, the picture “seen” through your mind to the class. Illustrate to the class the visual feature of the moment (via writing, speaking, or other similar sample video clips) and how it works to deliver certain message or intention of the author. For example, the opening scene cited above may be characterized and represented by an extreme close-up lens on the flower. Based on the depiction of the scene in your imagination, make a vision remix in which you are able to employ the same lens of vision in viewing certain object, and in a way, remake the scene in real life. The remade scene will be more meaningful if you build the context for the representation. In other words, your vision remix should have certain prelude consisted of images, video, music, written words, and/or voice-over (narration) that can help to clarify your motive and goal. After the presentation, there will be a peer review section in which the rest of the class will evaluate the effectiveness of the use of the specific lens and the remade scene.

Tools Required:

PowerPoint,

Audio and/or video recorder

Other Basic information:

- The presentation needs to be at least 5 minutes long, including your exposition of the video.

- Your project is due on *****. This will give you at least two weeks to make the PowerPoint and the video.

- The project counts for 20% of your final grade for this course.

Your presentation should have the following components:

- A title for your vision remix

- The quotation from the selected scene

- Analysis of the lens of vision assisted by your speech or a piece of written analysis or a record of your oral interpretation

- Analysis of the implied message of the selected scene and/or its significance.

- Explanations of the intended visual effects (which is similar to that of the selected scene from the novel) and the implied messaged of your vision remix.

- A brief illustration of the process of your vision remix

- Any type of focusing lens in the video, some narration/voice-over, some digitized images.

- Any other information that you would like the class know for the peer review.

- A Credit page that include correct citations for any video clips, images, music, or texts that you use.

The project should play out the affordances of PowerPoint and video recorder for effective rhetorical re-embodiment. It should be carefully designed and is able to convey certain content/message/meaning.

If you don’t have access to PowerPoint or audio and video recorder, you can borrow one from the Alden library. Feel free to come and talk with me about any of your problems and difficulties in getting the equipments as well.

Place to Start with:

As photographers uses focusing lens exclusively in strengthening certain scenes or images for various purposes, it will be helpful to decide which type of focusing lens you want to use to re-present the chosen scene from the novel. The following several types may offer you some categories of focusing lenses. Explore the visual and the rhetorical effects of each kind, and choose one for your remix.

1) Close-up lens with a still background but moving images or objects

2) Close-up lens with a moving background but still objects

3) Moving/shaking close-up lens with a still background and image

4) Focusing lens

5) Long focusing lens

6) Close-up lens with moving images

7) Basic zoom-in or zoom-out on certain image

Faustus's assignment

2011-02-15T12:25:00.000-08:00

Revised Satirical Radio Advertisement

This is an assignment I would use in a 308J course on the rhetoric of satire. We would be focusing primarily on modern American satire, examining and comparing the techniques and strategies of various satirists. We would also be discussing the social complexities of satire: how it is a genre that necessarily separates an us from a them, but how it can also provide a "safe" means for marginalized people to express social or political criticism. At this point in the quarter, students would have already analyzed examples of satire exhibiting the techniques and strategies I want them to employ, and they would have already written at least one alphabetic imitation of a satirist.

John Whicker's Assignment Assignment

2011-02-15T12:02:00.000-08:00

Presentation Final Project

Audio Argument Assignment

2011-02-15T10:54:00.000-08:00

I've replaced the first draft with a revised draft:
Audio Argument Assignment

The Magazine Advertisement

2011-02-15T07:31:00.001-08:00

This is my final assignment. Click HERE to view.

2011-02-15T07:28:00.000-08:00

Multimodal Assignment: Acknowledging and Engaging Difference (Revised)

(click here)

OU/Athens/Southeastern Ohio Place Blogging Assignment

2011-02-15T07:12:00.000-08:00

Attached via Scribd:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/48883837/Assignment

Composing a Rhetoric for Social Change English 151 Rhetoric and Composition. Bryan Lutz, Instructor

2011-02-14T22:16:00.000-08:00

Click here.

Scribd will not decompress my example:

This image is a good example of what I would like to see from my students. This is from the “Visual Remix” project at OSU http://dmp.osu.edu/visual_remix/nike%20global.html

Multimodal Assignment: Writing a Wikipedia Article

2011-02-14T10:48:00.000-08:00

ENG 792E
Matthew Vetter
2/14/11

Introduction to Assignment

In the early stages of composing this assignment, I first thought it might be applicable to English 151. However, as I began exploring the process of writing a new article on Wikipedia, I quickly realized that such a project might be too advanced for freshman students. The assignment requires a personal commitment and interest in digital writing, I think, and will involve a lot of trial and error, and frustration. For these reasons, I think this kind of assignment is best suited to a course which is advertised as a “Writing in Digital Culture” or “Online Literacy” which might fit best in either 382: Rhetorical Approaches to Writing or 284: Writing about Culture and Society

The assignment itself will need to be connected to another project earlier in the quarter in which students explore the editing capabilities and limitations of Wikipedia and familiarize themselves with the platform’s policies and procedures. As I make reference to in the assignment, this earlier project would consists of an edit of an existing article most likely paired with a reflection essay.

The justification of the assignment is perhaps expressed best in the pedagogical benefits acknowleged by editors at the online encyclopedia itself:

In contrast to traditional writing assignments, working with Wikipedia may offer several advantages for students:

students are held accountable to a global audience for what they are doing, and thus may feel more devoted to the assignment as a whole;
students' work will likely continue to be used and to be improved upon by others after the assignment has ended;
students learn the difference between fact-based and analytical writing styles;
students strengthen their ability to think critically and evaluate sources;
students learn how to work in a collaborative environment
students gain insights in the creation process of texts on Wikipedia. This enables them to draw conclusions about the purposes for which Wikipedia is best used;
students gain insights in the creation process of texts on Wikis in general, an increasingly essential skill in a modern IT workplace (that can be put on one's CV); and
students understand that they not only consume information, they help to create it. (“Wikipedia: School and University Projects”)

The most exciting (and problematic) aspect of this assignment is that the students produce a very concrete, “real” product that will be subject to extra-academic review. There are real issues involved, however. I’m especially worried about topic generation. A local-interest topic ensures (somewhat) that Wikipedia won’t already have the entry, but it also is risky in terms of notability. If the topic isn’t deemed significant enough, it’s subject to deletion. Any ideas on overcoming this issue?

Project 3: Writing a Wikipedia Article
Matthew Vetter- ENG 382 Rhetorical Approaches to Writing

Introduction

Despite its ever-growing popularity and frequent use by students and professionals alike, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia has been victim to a significant amount of scorn in academic circles. Most students see the encyclopedia as a forbidden research database, having been steered away from using it by countless teachers and instructor in secondary and college English classes. For certain purposes and topics, however, Wikipedia might be the perfect source. For obscure subjects, it might be one of the few places where information is available. Erroneous entries can tell us about public misconceptions and ignorance. That Wikipedia has been vilified in academia is ultimately significant of a tremendous loss, as the database affords an exciting opportunity to produce public writing for a specific audience and venue.

Assignment Goal

With Project 1, we practiced editing existing articles. These editing skills are essential to a successful project 3, so please review the tutorial on editing before beginning this project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial. For this project, your goal is to create a Wikipedia entry on a topic not yet written about. We’ll be generating appropriate topics in class but here are some ideas to get you thinking about the possibilities:

· An Ohio University student organization you belong to or are interested in joining. E.g. People Acting for Gender Equality

· A Local Musical Group / Artist. E.g. Poet Hollis Summers

· A Local Event or Festival. E.g. Ohio Paw Paw Festival

· A Local Place of Interest or History

Refer to the “Things to Avoid” section of the Wikipedia: Your First Article for further guidance. We’ll also be discussing the concept of notability as it is presented in “Wikipedia:Notability” as a way of identifying what topics are desserving of an entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:N

Alternative: A substantial edit to an existing Wikipedia article, one that takes the formal requirements and guidelines of this assignment into consideration, may also be an option. Bring possible ideas to class for discussion.

Assignment Elements and Expectations

A. Compilation and Evaluation of Sources

Generating a suitable entry topic which hasn’t been already written about is just the beginning, of course. You’ll also be expected to compile a list of (8-12) sources from which to draw information. Because your entry will ultimately be subject to editorial review and (worst case scenario) deletion, it is extremely important to evaluate sources carefully before deciding to include them in your entry.

B. Article Entry

The written elements of this project will vary in terms of length, depending on subject, but most entries should range between 800-1200 words. It’s important to remember that the encyclopedic entry, as a genre, necessitates a specific format and style. Most notably, encyclopedia entries are meant to be as objective as possible and should not include analytical or opionion-based writing. We’ll be examining a number of successful and unsuccessful entries in order to learn to recognize and imitate this style.

C. Photographic Element

In addition to the written requirement, you are also asked to add a photographic element to the entry and incorporate at least two photographs into the entry. It’s important that these photographs pertain to your topic. They have the power to increase the notability of local-interest entries, as suggested in “Wikipedia: Your First Article”: “There is no consensus about such articles [local interest], but some will challenge them if they include nothing that shows how the place is special and different from tens of thousands of similar places. Photographs add interest. Try to give local-interest articles local colour.”

D. Reflection Essay

The final element to this assignment consists of a reflection essay in which you examine one or more rhetorical concepts of notability, authority, audience, and purpose. How much has your attention to one or more of these concepts influenced your composition process and product? Furthermore, how are open content platforms such as Wikipedia changing the way information is shared and disseminated? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_content. A final elements of your essay should address the function and efficacy of your photographs. How do these images increase the article’s notability? What do they add to the composition that cannot be accomplished in alphabetic text?

Composing Processes

1. 1. Review the Wikipedia Editing Tutorial at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial. The “Becoming a Wikipedia Editor: An Overview” video tutorial found on this page is also very helpful. Remember you can always experiment / play in the Sandbox as we did leading up to the first project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sandbox.

2. 2. Visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Starting_an_article to learn more about the process of starting a new entry.

3. 3. Begin generating a possible article topics by searching the encyclopedia. Be sure to use different search terms, both broad and specific, to ensure that a topic hasn’t already been written about. We’ll read the entry on notability (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:N) and discuss the concept in class to get a better idea of what topics will be most appropriate. The Article Wizard can also help you figure out if your topic is sufficiently notable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_wizard.

4. 4. Begin compiling sources. Be sure to review the section on “Gathering References” at “Wikipedia: Your First Article,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Your_first_article.

5. 5. We’ll read and discuss a number of example directly from Wikipedia, then you’ll begin drafting your own article. Review the guidelines under “Content” at the Article Wizard. Your article should adhere to the following:

Your article submission must not violate copyright.
Your article should also establish notability.
Your article must be neutral in its tone.
Your article should not engage in puffery.

Using a digital camera (can be checked out at 215 McCracken Hall), you’ll also want to take some photographs at this point to add to your entry. Have numerous options (pictures) for your peer reviewer to examine. Together, you can decide which are most appropriate at the peer review.

6. We’ll hold an in-class peer review to workshop these drafts in groups of three. Reviewers will evaluate how well you meet the above criteria, your inclusion of at least two photographic images, the selection of sources, and how well those sources are incorporated and documented with the ultimate goal of providing constructive feedback for the writer.

A Note on Delivery: While you might be drafting on your “user space” in Wikipedia, for the peer review-paste your article into a Word document and print out for your reviewer. Images can be uploaded on to a laptop which can be brought to class, brought on a flash drive and put on the classroom projector, or displayed on the digital camera itself.

7. After additional revision, you’ll submit your article for review at Article for Creation (AfC) using the Article Wizard.

8. With feedback and approval of your AfC reviewer, Go Live! Using the Article Wizard.You should also save the final version of your entry in your user space, as it may be edited by other Wikipedia members very quickly.

Schedule

Week 8-Discussion of Assignment; students locate example articles.

Week 9-Draft and Photographs Due for Peer Review

Week 10-Submit article to (AfC) for Wikipedia Review

Final-Submit final version to Wikipedia / Reflection Essay Due

Example Articles

As an introduction to the assignment, you’re each asked to e-mail me one existing Wikipedia article. Pay close attention to the format, style and content of these articles as we’ll be discussing further the characteristics of the genre. We’ll review these Week 8.

A Note on Copyright and Citation

Incorrect citations are among the most common reasons for an article deletion on Wikipedia. The success of your project depends on your careful adherence to quotation and documentation standards. The photographs you end up using should be copyrighted in the photographer’s name (you).

Evaluation

This assignment is worth 35% of your total course grade and is broken down in the following elements: Final Article: 20%; Reflection Essay: 10%; Process (Example Article, Rough Draft and Photographs): 5%

The final draft of the article will be assessed for content, neutral style, documentation, source selection. The photographs will be assessed in terms of notability. That is, how does the photograph’s content increase the article’s notability. This is not a class in photography and your efforts will not be graded on an aesthetic scale. Your reflection essay will be assessed in terms rhetorical organization, level of engagement with the process / understanding of the key concepts, and clarity of analysis. The peer review will be modeled after the guidelines laid down by Wikipedia regarding copyright, notability, neutrality, puffery.

Audio-Visual Analysis

2011-02-13T11:54:00.000-08:00

My revised multimodal assignment.

"Among the Audience" Handout

2011-02-11T03:14:00.000-08:00

This handout includes their new conception of the rhetorical triangle.

Handout for "Wunderkammer"

2011-02-10T22:18:00.000-08:00

Wunderkammer, Cornell, and the Visual Canon of Arrangement

Susan H. Delagrange

http ://www.technorhetoric.org/13.2/topoi/delagrange/index.htm

Designing constructive digital media—a process of mapping and remapping our physical and conceptual worlds in order to determine their meaning.

Techné	Wunderkammer
Any form of productive arts that occupies a middle ground between theory and practice.	A form of learning—an intermediate, highly particular state akin to a sort of suspension of the mind between ignorance and enlightenment that marks the end of unknowing and the beginning of knowing.
“Critical wonder”	Wunderkammern
a process through which digital media designers can thoughtfully and imaginatively arrange evidence and articulate links in a critical practice of embodied discovery	A practice of building cabinets of wonders

Other key terms of the visual canon of arrangement：

Scale
Taxonomies
Manipulation (measure, cut, weigh, balance etc.)
Multiply lenses
Visual synecdoches
Multilinearity
Associative, analogical thinking
Combinational practices of emotion and reason
Visual analogy

Visual tropes (metaphor/metonymy/synecdoche, hyperbole, antistasis, catachresis, homologies)

Critiques:

1) Images are inherently manipulative;

2) The particularity of bodies of evidence may lead to affective and emotional argument

3) Logocentrism

Questions for 2/10

2011-02-10T13:41:00.000-08:00

On page 172, Dickie Selfe recommends that instructors take detailed notes while they are attempting their own multimodal compositions, and he suggests that students will find these notes very helpful. Could this practice be adapted for the classroom somehow, asking students to write their own sets of instructions for pieces of hardware or software?

Cooper talks about the importance of giving students time to play with a technology, and one of her interviewees stresses the importance to have time in a lab but with a teacher present to help. Due to the recent budget cuts, does anyone know if we still even have such a place anywhere on campus? Are there labs available for students to use with knowledgable monitors to assist them? Is there someplace we can send them for such assistance, or do we need to become the experts ourselves and set aside extra class time in order to accomplish this?

Questions for 2/10

2011-02-10T12:40:00.000-08:00

Cooper suggests that we "pay attention to [the] digital literacies" of our students. Through awareness of students' backgrounds and past involvement in digital literacy, we should be able to design better methods, activities, etc in the classroom. If such a practice is recommended for a writing class, (I'm not sure Cooper identifies the immediate context), what do we ignore or neflect by focusing so much attention on our students' histories with technology? Are we able to focus on their alphabetic literacy histories as well?

2011-02-10T11:54:00.000-08:00

On page 172, D. Selfe outlines the minimal computer hardware and software specifications for multimodal composition. With technology constantly progressing, how useful is this table?

On page 162, D. Selfe states that "Students are rarely afforded an opportunity to lead, help teach, and engage in projects that are ongoing and sustantial. As a result, good students are often hungry for such experiences, and teachers of multimodal composition have the opportunity each term to offer them exceptionaly rich leadership opportunities." As composition instructors, do we see the utility in this? Should we recognize also, in the tradition of deconstruction, that leader and follower are two dependent relationship, and that there is fluidity between them? Should we not also recognize this for ourselves? And if so, what are the representations of this relationship? Finally if we value this paradigm, how can multimodal composition help us achieve this?

:::And the award for the loaded question goes to:::

Questions for 2/10

2011-02-10T11:33:00.001-08:00

On p. 174, Dickie Selfe states, “The best way for teachers to learn what they need to know about composing an audio or video composition is to create a practice composition themselves.” At the same time, however, the book seems to be aimed at teachers who might know little about some of the technology involved in such projects. In putting this into practice, then, would it be better for beginners at teaching multimodal composition to start out with something simple, such as just an audio essay, having had time to play with the technology? Would it be too much to handle to give students too much freedom on their choice of multimodal composition types when the teacher has not had enough time to practice with the different technologies?

Journet says that although “other disciplines or departments may be better suited to take on this task,…no other academic unit appears (at least at my institution) eater or willing to do so” (190). In these closing chapters it seems apparent that in order to effectively teach multimodal composition we need to learn it ourselves by doing it. So, essentially, because other departments seem unwilling to do it, we must do it, and in order for us to do it, we need to learn multimodal composition ourselves. While the need for us to learn how to do multimodal composition was touched on earlier in the book, why wait until the end to really nail the point that we need to learn it too in order to teach it? While this seems somewhat obvious, it also seems essential, so why was it not emphasized more before? (Or was I really missing something?)

[NOTE: I had to smile when I saw that Bronwyn Williams wrote the Foreword and Debra Journet wrote the Afterword. Both are professors at the University of Louisville, my alma mater, although I never actually took a class with either of them].

Questions for 2/10

2011-02-10T06:49:00.000-08:00

Cooper seems to see it as a sign of growth that one student removed his blog after considering his reading audience, because he felt that blog writing became too much of "writing for someone else" and not "writing to learn" (186). Does this trouble our sense of blogs as potential learning tools? Is it possible that the public nature of blog writing is stifling student learning, rather than promoting it?

Journet feels that, despite the sense that "other disciplines or departments may be better suited" to teach multimodal literacy, "no other academic unit appears...eager or willing to do so" (190). Does this seem to be the case at Ohio University? Does it follow that, even if other departments are unwilling to teach multimodal literacy, the English department is automatically the best qualified to do so?

Questions for 2/10

2011-02-10T04:26:00.000-08:00

Do the members of the communities of practice that Dickie Selfe talks about need to share more than their “interest in multimodal composition” for their collaboration to be successful? How is the concept of communities of practice different from discourse communities?

Beside technological problems, what problems/conflicts/misunderstandings/power structure struggles might arise as the result of the dynamics of the communities of practice?

Questions for 2/10

2011-02-09T16:25:00.000-08:00

· On page 173 Richard Selfe lists the different kinds of multimodal assignment instructors should assign depending on the accessibility of equipment. It goes without saying that equipment availability affects the overall outcome of the assignment and attitudes toward the assignment; however, does this availability affect the overall message/theme/lesson to be acquired from the assignment? Rhetorical aims?

· Stakeholder question: Jon, you may be the authority on this: what is the likelihood of support staff having the time to assist those students assigned multimodal projects? This is different than the simple assist (i.e. random meeting) and the classroom presentation. Ignore skills labs, ignore graphic labs…how could Ohio University implement something like this (also, ignore funding, how boring :) )?

Questions for 2/10

2011-02-09T14:02:00.000-08:00

Richard Selfe tells us to start with small compositions, "5 minutes or less in length." Now, five minutes allows you to read about 3 pages of text, so the most information such a composition could be expected to convey would be the equivalent of a three page paper. Is that academically rigorous?

Do such assignments, given the amount of class time they are likely to consume, drastically reduce the rigor of a class?

Is there really as much critical thinking and analysis involved in a five minute video as a 5–7 page paper?

The Selfes seem to focus almost entirely on audio and video. Why? Does this rule out designing visual texts that mix type and image either in print or online?

Marilyn Cooper's chapter once again raises the idea that students need digital literacies, which seems to be equated in MC with doing multimodal compositions, but when she begins to relate how much of these students' lives require digital literacies, she lists things like email, facebook, blogging, etc. The only activity, which only 1/3 of the students had had to do that involves significant multimodal composing is constructing web-sites (those assignments came up often for the students inability to master the software). Digital literacy seems to conflate the knowledge to use software, employ online communication—most of which are alphabetic text heavy (blogging sites like blogger do not allow for rhetorically sophisticated multimodal composing, dropping pictures or videos into a blog is much like dropping an image into Word, it's always awkward and not conducive to successful visual design), and multimodal composing (which is itself a conflation of videos, graphically designed print texts, scrap book pages, etc., etc. It seems that it is with very broad claims that advocates argue that composition must teach vital digital literacies as if the ability to create and maintain a blog, wiki, or facebook account and the ability to create five minute videos are equally vital literacies for everyone to have. Is this a problem?

If new media advocates are to be taken seriously don't they need to be a little more specific about what literacies are vital and which are superfluous for most students?

Is there evidence to back up the assertion that these are vital literacies?

Journet describes how the students in Cindy Selfe's seminar "became more and more expert," but she does not day at what. Later, she praises the projects for demonstrating "a technological competence"Do these assignments really teach students much more than how to use the technology?

Journet does, of course, discuss what the graduate students made their compositions about, and how the class workshopped to identify problems, and the emphasis on rhetoric (which Rhet. Comp. graduate students would know much better than undergrads), but did the students end up learning to compose good audio/visual texts?

How would they compare to the work of undergrads working in other disciplines?

Do students in composition classes that teach multimodal design end up in other classes, thinking they know what their doing, only to have bad experiences learning how little they really learned?

I've had the experience of learning similar things in an undergrad technical writing class and a graphic design class, and it was an eye-opening experience as far as the quality of the work. Both classes taught the integration of text and visual, but the writing class provided quality information about the text and mediocre information about the visual while the graphic design class provided excellent information about the visual while helping me to see type as a visual element (they didn't really try to teach composition). Of course, this works out well. The tech-writing class was supposed to teach writers the basics of the software technical writers sometimes have to use while emphasizing the writing while the graphic design class was meant to teach visual rhetoric including the rhetoric of type working with image in more ways than just illustrative, which involved a deeper knowledge of the same software.

What is the goal of including multimodal compositions?

Is it to teach things that are better taught elsewhere?

Is it to show how alphabetic texts and other modes are integrated while still focusing primarily on the alphabetic?

Is it to teach students to compose "good" or "effective" multimodal compositions?

If the last, are we deluding ourselves into thinking we're qualified to teach this stuff?

Rhetorical Velocity Handout

2011-02-05T07:39:00.000-08:00

Here is my Rhetorical Velocity handout from my presentation.

Questions for 2/3

2011-02-03T16:14:00.000-08:00

1. What are other advantages to the progress-assessment journal within our own English 151 courses?

2. In what ways not mentioned in the book can multimodal assignments be an "inherently social act"? (79)

Questions for 1/3

2011-02-03T16:09:00.000-08:00

1. How are teachers supposed to react to students who have NO background with technology and take a class with multimodal assignments? Is it fair for the student if the teacher allows them to take it? What about expectations--should these remain the same for every student.

2. Think about big multimodal projects. Is there time for global revision on these?

2011-02-03T16:05:00.000-08:00

If I understood John's question correctly and if I am not reducing it too simply, the question is: Why focus on multi-modalities and what does it do for composition pedagogy?

I will try my best to make an impassioned plea for what is possible.

On Page 92 of MC: "By working with new technologies in advance of students, teachers not only gain a bit of first-hand experience with new composing modalities, vocabulary, software and hardware, and infrastructural challenges, but--if they open their minds to learning--they can also acquire some empathy with students and, importantly, a sense of humility that will allow them to approach students as fellow-learners, much a Paulo Freire suggests."

By situating ourselves in an environment for which we are unfamiliar, we are breaking down that sense of appellation that plagues our education system--banking--the idea that the teacher has all the answers and that the student is a passive recipient of knowledge. This dynamic is unlikely given the environment that technology situates us within. We are not familiar with this--we have our knowledge of rhetoric and composition to bring to the table--but we must rely more on our students for technology expertise, and we work together to combine the two. They touched on this also on page 36. And if you DO know the technology (talking to Holmes :-), pretend that your don't (97)---your students will respond better if they feel that you must rely on them. Paulo Feire did not call this relationship student/teacher, instead he called it educator/educand to work against a hyperbolic sense of this difference. I will use these labels for the value I feel they represent.

The key, I would argue, is in the environment that technology forces us to build.

Part of this process is in the knowledge pool we build with our students (41). Since the technology is new to (nearly) everyone, the environment forces us to engage our students to establish who is most proficient with technology. So instead of entering the classroom from day one and telling our students what they should know, we are instead going to the students first because we will need them for the answers--like we are supposed to if we value either Problem-posing methods of education or Writing ecology. We are deflating an exaggerated sense of our own importance by reminding ourselves that we play a part, a strong part, but that without the collective working together to share and develop knowledge, we will certainly not succeed as well as we could. This collaboration also speaks to literacy studies, as our students are both sharing the knowledge they bring into the classroom as well as creating a new language, in partnership with the educator, to understand this new digital world of composing and rhetoric and possibility. Furthermore, since technology is prone to complications it also forces us to be positive with our attitudes, which will absolutely be reflected on our students, it is Susan Mcleod's Pygmalian affect forced by the circumstance that technology forces us to deal with.

It is the environment that is created that is the most valuable. And we are social beings, and "writing is an inherently social act" (79). Just imagine, in working with technology in our classroom, we must work together if we are to accomplish anything. Just like in the real world.

And we aren’t really changing our practices that much. There is also a flavor of Cognitivist here, that this pedagogy encourages “written reflection” (33) and that there are clearly confined goals. There is a flavor of expressivist here, to "avoid adding to many constraints" to an assignment (29). There is a flavor of the recursive process of writing here, as the "classroom's primary goal [is] theory revised and realized (30). There is a flavor of the organization elements of writing, from the organization of files either hierarchically or sequentially (69) the rhetorical production itself (52-53).

And I am sure all of you could think of dozens of more examples. The point is that all of these practices came from studying, using and testing our ability to teach alphabetic composition. This new multimodal game, to me, sounds very similar, maybe we are just changing to a more productive location? And who knows what it could become?

And how do we know that this does what we think it does? I feel that the concept affordances are married to the heuristic, and to the evaluative processes they suggest in MC. The educands are allowed to experiment with modality in order to generate meaning (83-98) and they and the educator are involved with the evaluation process every step of the way (99-111). There is no separation between the educator and educand during the process beyond the final grade for the product, which even then, no doubt, will be influenced by the responses our educands offered each other. I am rather fond of that idea...an arena of persuasion every step of the way.

To return to John's question, do we have to be multi-modal to accomplish this? I think the better question is whether we have ways to create this kind of environment without it. I know that personally I have failed at this many times, but luckily just shy of how many times I have succeeded. I continue to try. Maybe multi-modal composition will help my success rate.

Please keep in mind that I have my reservations about this as well. But since the conversation in class is so often critical, I felt positioned to be the voice of encouragement. Please also understand that if I did not, then I would loose my position as the devil's most outspoken advocate. I simply can't have that. I like that position. My favorite part about this position is that it needs the arguments and perspectives of others in order to take form in the first place.

Feb. 3 Questions

2011-02-03T13:56:00.000-08:00

Are there ways in which we could incorporate lessons on copyright and fair use into the discussions we already have with students about plagiarism and citations?

The chapters in MC have reinforced the notion that its good to find help among colleagues and IT professionals for the purposes of teaching new media. How can we encourage further cooperation among instructors? How might we be able to tap the resources of other disciplines?

Questions for 2/3

2011-02-03T13:54:00.000-08:00

What do we lose by using formative assessment (assessment that is rhetorically based) to teach the composition of multimodal texts? How does using a rubric, for example, limit the notion of flexibility that Branscum and Toscano discuss in their chapter? Here, I'm thinking of Suzuki's saying: "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few" (97).

In a world of media convergence, what uses of copy-righted materials fall under educational fair use and what uses might be considered “unfair”/“unethical?” How does the ease with which these materials can be published in different places by different users prioritize the ethical aspect of composing/researching/writing multimodal texts?

Questions

2011-02-03T13:29:00.000-08:00

Branscum and Toscano advise us to "deal early with compatibility issues-both human and technological" by "undertaking a small miniproject of the same kind that is to be assigned to students. Such a practice, they argue, is "essential when teachers have minimal experience composing with unfamiliar modalities, with digital tools, or in digital environments" (86).

Their advice is not uncommon by any means among this type of scholarship. It makes sense that we'll need to "brush up" on the technology aspects of these assignments. But what I keep returning to when I read these kinds of statements are the issues of experience and training. As educators, we teach what we were trained in or educated in. In most fields there's an expectation that we will continue to learn and improve our methods, and to stay current with contemporary research / theory. However, TR rich comp pedagogy asks us to invest a great deal of time and energy into a few arguably separate fields (graphic design, audio/video communication, etc). My question, I guess, is this: Where do we draw the line between staying up to date in our fields and becoming trained in other areas that this type of technological composing makes necessary?

Questions for Feb 3rd.

2011-02-03T13:27:00.000-08:00

Borton and Huot state that multimodal projects should be designed under specific rhetorical purposes. Are they also suggesting in a way that projects should be assigned with different multimodal objects to practice with and thus divide a multimodal writing class into different sequences? If so, will it be manageable in one term of classes? If not, how would Borton and Huot categorize rhetorical purposes with multimodal writing?

In addition, I think what most students concern about are the time they invest in accomplishing assignments and the final grade. After all the readings, I’m still wondering what makes a B level work, and what makes a C or D level video or website? Would it be largely about the aesthetics of the project after all? How can we evaluate this?

Questions for 2/3

2011-02-03T12:30:00.000-08:00

The chapters for today talked for no end about making sure students know how to save and organize their files, teaching them the differences between different file types, copyright, citing sources, learning to use equipment and other time consuming and often obvious issues. If so much class time needs to be taken to teach students what many of them already know, and to give them time to get used to the programs, can doing such multimodal projects really work realistically as an assignment in a composition class without taking up half the term? Wouldn’t the class have to have only multimodal projects as the focus?

Borton and Huot see assessing multimodal projects in terms of their rhetorical effectiveness as important. While this might work well for traditional essays, isn’t this a lot more difficult to really do with multimodal compositions? If such a composition might never be really complete (p. 110), then won’t those who have had more experience with the technology often end up having the more rhetorically effective project because those who were not tech experts spent half their time trying to figure out how to use the programs and so really needed twice as much time?

Questions 2/3/2011: Creativity, Specialists, Transfer, and Aesthetics

2011-02-03T12:19:00.000-08:00

Branscum and Toscano focus on making multimodal assignments "creative," but isn't creativity easily and often at odds with rhetorical effectiveness? How much knowledge about visual/multimodal/sonic design do we need to know before we can teach students to be effectively creative? How much do we need to teach students? Is there enough time in a quarter or semester?

Many of the texts that we have read use the facts that many industries, in the words of Branscum and Toscano (Chapter 7, page 83), "have begun to use and generate multimodal texts: not only the more convetional memoranda and reports, but also Web sites, video tutorials, public service announcements, pod-casts, and visual data displays," but this production is not typically done by just anyone, and definitely not everyone—businesses aren't just going to ask someone they already employ if they know how to do this stuff—but by specialists hired for this specific job. How does this fact translate into the implication that the ability to produce multimodal texts is becoming a necessary skill for everyone? Aren't advocates of multimodal composition comparing special literacies needed for certain occupations to alphabetic literacy that everyone needs to function successfully in culture and society?

A couple times in the texts we've read, I've noticed authors noting as Branscum and Toscano do that "What most teachers add to the process of composing multimodal assignments is a strong background in rhetoric" (85), but this glosses the fact that teachers obtained that background in rhetoric through reading and composing alphabetic texts, which implies that such rhetorical experience with alphabetic texts is transferable/applicable to multimodal texts, so why not just focus on the rhetoric of alphabetic texts to ground students in rhetoric that they can then apply to other modes as they need to?

In Chapter 8 "Responding and Assessing" by Borton and Huot, I noticed that the majority of the assessment criteria they list are transferred directly from the criteria for alphabetic documents. In the chart on pg. 101, only the last two criteria seem to assess things specific to multimodal composing, and these only address the differences in modes by referencing effectiveness and appropriateness without discussing how those things are to be measured. As I read this chapter, I started to think that none of the texts we've read have really addressed what makes texts aesthetically effective/appropriate. What, after all, is the difference between the various modes and their affordances? Isn't it essentially the modes of delivery? The interface? Doesn't delivery have everything to do with aesthetics? Doesn't an ugly, clunky, amateurish document (no matter that its purpose/audience/tone/organization/transitions/synthesis/formating are technically correct) destroy its own ethos? Is there any point of having students produce multimodal texts if we can't teach them the aesthetic principles that make all the difference between a quality composition and a composition that despite its apparent possibilities just didn't deliver?

Discussion questions

2011-01-27T13:19:00.000-08:00

Selfe uses the example of David, who is technologically literate but fails his college composition classes because "he couldn't produce a traditional essay organized according to the print-based literacy standards of linear propositional logic, Standard English, argumentative development, and standard spelling (49). How does this complicate our considerations of the arguments against teaching the traditional essay?

Are theorists such as Selfe and Sirc placing too much emphasis on the art of composition as a primarily visual art? Can composition have an artistic influence without a specifically visual emphasis?

Questions Stem from Sonic Literacy

2011-01-27T13:12:00.003-08:00

As much as I enjoy Comstock and Hocks’ study that focuses on sonic literacy, I have problem with the very beginning of their discussion, and this is a problem correlated with many of the concerns we expressed in our last blog posts in response to Sirc’s argument. Comstock and Hocks foreground their discussion by stating that “Even with the renewed emphasis on visual and digital rhetoric, however, we as writing teachers are still very text-centered in our classrooms.” I wonder how would they define teachers being text-centered, since most of the teaching methods or methodology we read so far are still text/word/expression-based no matter how many new media elements are being incorporated. How are the assignments they introduced in the article making writing teachers less text-centered if the process of composing (drafting, revising etc.) and the effectiveness of the voic-narrative (expression, speaking techniques, critical thinking etc.) remain what teachers value in evaluating the assignments? As the projects they describe serve well for the teaching of listening rhetoric, Aristotelian rhetoric (in which social relations and civic roles of writers/speakers are emphasized,) and sonic composition, how do they differentiate the teaching of writing and that of rhetoric, if there is any to them? Furthermore, how does this distinction help us in broadening while also specifying the definition of Writing and Rhetoric—the freshmen comp course we are teaching?

2011-01-27T12:29:00.000-08:00

I want to assume for the moment that we all agree with Selfe's assertion that visual literacy should be utilized in composition classrooms as a possible stepping stone for approaching new media.

1.) Is their fluidity within her definitional binaries of composer/designer, design/compose, reader/viewer, and reading/viewing?

2.) How do we assess visual impact (76) on the audience? Do we use postmodern binaries and ask if it excites/subdues, pleases/offends, or entertains/informs? Or are we applying traditional rhetorical schemes such as Aristotle's rhetorical appeals, or audience and purpose? And if we use these interpretive frameworks, should we be using the same schemes to analyze visual texts that we use to analyze alphabetic texts?
AND
What is the difference between visual coherence and visual organization? Is it the like the difference between using transition sentences and overall coherence in alphabetic texts?

writing, graphic design, computer programs and now speech and audio editing?

2011-01-27T12:27:00.000-08:00

The Comstock and Hock article asks us to emphasize sonic as well as visual and alphabetic literacy in composition classrooms, which also requires some instruction in new audio editing technologies if our students are going to compose sonically. At what point does it become beyond ridiculous for us to view composition as the Super Walmart of literacy instruction? If we teach visual and sonic literacy along with the technologies that students need to compose, even incompetently, in them in FYC, when would we have time to teach anything else? Are we just to abandon the "outdated" "outmoded" mode of alphabetic literacy?

Cynthia Selfe like many of the other new media scholars we have read, seems very confident that alphabetic literacy is or will be increasingly irrelevant (okay so maybe that's hyperbolic, but so are the assertions). Why? What evidence is there that alphabetic literacy has lost any let alone all of its dominance?

Selfe repeatedly refers to digital and alphabetic literacy as "competing literacies." What does this mean? Why should we see them as competing? Competing for what?

Questions

2011-01-27T11:53:00.000-08:00

Selfe asserts that composition teachers are wary of teaching new media because "they have already invested so heavily in writing, writing instruction, and writing programs--and because we have achieved some status as practitioners of writing" and that learning new media "may also force us to acknowledge the gap in our own literacy sets" (71-72). I have to wonder if this is something people actually feel? I myself am interested in learning new literacies but am critical of a paradigm which asks us to be fluent in multiple disciplines / literacies.

On a similar note, what makes the pedagogy of Comstock and Hock's "Sonic Literacy" that much different from a Speech class offered by a Communications dept.? Where do we draw the line between these two disciplines/departments, English/Comp and Communications/Speech?

Selfe-examination! Questions for 1/27

2011-01-27T11:50:00.000-08:00

1. On page 75, Selfe proposes the use of the visual essay to expand student literacy outside of the alphabetic text or form essay. How can a university like OU integrate this into the curriculum with value? In other words, would it be wise to include a visual essay in the 30ish page requirement for English 151? Why or why not? And how?

2. Selfe states that students bring in their own literacies to the classroom, "literacies practiced in the home, the community , the church and online; literacies dependent on oral, visual, and aural performance; literacies based in multiple languages, cultures, and contexts" (57). What literacies should be included in the classroom? Is there a way to include all of them? Would that be beneficial?

Also, an informal one from Comstock and Hocks: "The combination of the music, the familiar schoolroom form of handwritten text on whiteboards, the smiles and the waving of hands all bring together this moment of closure into one gestalt of meaning where the modalities cannot be separated or you lose the irony of contrasts, the humor."--Did anyone else not get this from "Bertha?"

Questions for 1/27

2011-01-27T10:33:00.000-08:00

1. Selfe sees focusing on visual literacy as a first step toward integrating new media in our composition classes (68). However, many popular composition textbooks (e.g. Writing Arguments, and Everything’s an Argument) already have chapters addressing visual arguments. In fact, when I taught at the University of Louisville, the first assignment I have my students was a rhetorical analysis of a visual argument (such as an ad, which also had some textual elements). My students did not actually create the visual argument, though. In making steps toward including new media in our classes, would it be better to ask our students to analyze the rhetoric of new media before we ask them to compose it?

2. Comstock and Hocks advocate the development of sonic literacies (which I kind of like, as I learn well from listening). In some way, is this a return to oral rhetoric, in which delivery and elocution hold a prominent place? How is it unlike oral rhetoric?

Questions for 1/27

2011-01-27T07:29:00.000-08:00

What are the limitations and the strengths of using audio texts as a mode of expression and as a means of reflection?

Can voice be reduced to accent? What does voice gain/lose by this reduction?

Questions for 1/27

2011-01-27T06:43:00.000-08:00

Regarding Digital Mirrors:

1. How does revision function in audio or visual reflections? If reflecting is a daily process, doesn't each reflection become a one-stop project?

2. What happens to the learning process when too many things are going on in a video? If someone is speaking and something is typed on a screen, how does the viewer decide which to give focus to? What rhetorical choices must be made in this instance?

3. Can you teach anything like this if you don't have the proper materials? If you said yes, can you tell me how?

Distance Learning and the Gaze hand-out

2011-01-26T17:22:00.001-08:00

In color!

Handout from originality presentation

2011-01-26T08:08:00.000-08:00

"Good artists borrow; great artists steal." - Pablo Piscasso

Place-Blogging Handout

2011-01-24T15:24:00.000-08:00

Here's my presentation handout, a la Scribd.

Loudermilk-Garza & Hern_Handout

2011-01-23T07:59:00.000-08:00

Here is the handout from my presentation.

Questions from the dying

2011-01-20T13:33:00.000-08:00

I'm not there, and yet I am...

I don't have a great deal to say about the Vielstimmig article except to ask:

Does their embodiment of their ideas support or undermine their argument? What can I make of the fact that I found the article annoying, too self-satisfied with its own conceit (and I do want to imply both meanings of that word)?

Do we need to start defining more clearly what we mean by collaboration? Is collaboration a good in itself?

With the Kress article, I had some moments of disjunction in the beginning when it seemed to me that he was setting up a false controversy around the use and meaning of genre. Being pretty steeped in genre theory from Anis Bawarshi and others, I found the idea that scholars still maintain a more limited sense of genre as formal types of linguistic texts hard to believe. In the end, I agreed with his conclusions, mostly, but didn't understand the exigence for making the argument. Anyway, I'm prompted to ask:

Where do genres come from? Are writers empowered as much as Kress seems to imply to be creative in how they mix genres?

One of my key points of resistance to genre theory (at least those branches of it that posit genre as the sole key component of writing—if that reading isn't just my hyperbolic interpretation) is that I cannot see how genre itself provides for its own dynamism. Kress doesn't seem to be articulating an understanding of Genre in this vein, which is evident when he says he explains an understanding of design as "an understanding of what the social and cultural environment is into which my text is to fit" which seems to posit genre choice or mixtures as being within some larger understanding of the writing/cultural environment. So my question:

Is genre, as Bawarshi and others view it both habit and habitat, or is genre operating within a larger ecology? If genre is more codetermining and cosubstantiating with performance (the Bawarshi view) how does that affect a writer's level of "Choice" of genres? If genre is less determining, what are the larger structures that mitigate genre choice?

Hope you have a good discussion.

John W.

Questions for discussion

2011-01-20T13:25:00.000-08:00

1. Is anyone else having extreme difficulties reading / navigating the Vielstimmig article?

and 2. Vielstimmig suggests that we imagine what text's might be capabale of when we allow poetic and rhetoric language to mix. How would such a mixture change how we currently assess student texts?

Questions for discussion

2011-01-20T13:22:00.000-08:00

How do we gage the author's level of "control" in the new essay, and should we?

Does the blending of authors in collaborative new media texts overlook the individual's materiality in a potentially negative way?

2011-01-20T13:17:00.001-08:00

1. “[T]he category of genre is essential in all attempts to understand text, whatever its modal constitution” (Kress 39). (How) should our view of genre change with new media texts?

2. Vielstimmig’s text complicates the concept of Author. Does authorship matter as much for new media texts? (Or, as Barthes would contend, is the author already dead anyway?)

Questions for Vielstimmig and Cornish

2011-01-20T13:14:00.000-08:00

1) It took me a while to get used to the constantly switching fonts and indention in Vielstimmig’s essay. I kept having the reflex that each paragraph has its independent persona and content and that the meaning wasn’t even coherent as I first start reading. Although the three authorship get clearer after reading one to two pages of the article, I wonder if I’m the only one who is experiencing this choppiness caused by varied fonts and indention. Before being able to identify the three personae, do fonts appear to lose their meaning of being different or their function as attention-grabbers or information-builders under such massive and frequent change? Is the text and its meaning entitled to larger flexibility under such design?

2) I agree with what is being mentioned in Vielstimmig that “hypertexual reading isn’t all that new” (106). Than is this piece of semi-wiki composition new enough in terms of the fundamental changes it brings to the coherency, textual flexibility, multiple authorship, navigation, and many other attributes of writing?

3) Cornish’s poem definitely gives numbers a fun representation. With similar playful sense, what elements of this poem contain pedagogical values to a freshman collage composition course?

Questions for 1/20

2011-01-20T13:08:00.000-08:00

How much help/guidance should the author/multiple authors provide for her/their readers to navigate/read/browse a multivocal text?

“Writing for the screen is a new rhetorical act” (105).
“It involves multiple kinds of literacy” (105).
“It’s surprisingly collaborative; when authors compose together, new identities can be formed; new readership is assumed” (106).

How are we preparing our students to produce and read this new essay that includes multiple kinds of literacy?

Aesthetics and Assessment

2011-01-20T13:07:00.000-08:00

The Vielstimmig and Kress articles both highlight the inherently creative and aesthetic aspects of new media. Kress concludes by talking about the need for a "new evalutation and description of the resources for representation and communication" (54), which gets back to a question that Matthew asked in response to one of my blog posts: How do we assess students' new media compositions? More specifically, I wonder: How do we evaluate the aesthetic components?

Also, Kress's discussion of the plurality of our society leads me to wonder if evaluating aesthetics wouldn't necessarily require the imposition of hegemonic and/or teacher-centered values? How can we avoid grading student work based on our own artistic tastes?

Questions for 1/20

2011-01-20T12:22:00.001-08:00

1. Is "Petals on a Wet Black Bough" considered "new media"? In what ways is it a mix of media? Is the "new essay" just a variety of fonts and blocked text posing as innovated?

2. How will retention of rhetorical skills change if collaborative "new essays" are assigned in the composition classroom? That is, will rhetorical strategies change and if so, how will they transfer to other disciplines or discourses?

2011-01-20T12:09:00.000-08:00

"The concept of group solidarity is much stranger in Western cultures than it is elsewhere, and I imagine that our unfamiliarity with it--our cultural reverence is for the individual--accounts for how difficult is out relationship to collaboration" & "We assign collaboration: we assess individuation" (95, 110)

If learning is collaboration, than isn't this hyperbolic sense of the individual a learning disability? Can technology change the way we grade so that we can assess and reward based on collaboration?

"Resistance to collaboration seems linked to invention." (97)

HUH?

Questions about/for Vielstimmig's "Petals on a Wet Black Bough"

2011-01-20T11:23:00.000-08:00

1. Can a singular author create an essay of multiple authorship imparting a particular message?

2. What impacts do style changes have on the reader of a "new essay?" Can "new essays" impart new/never before discussed information that traditional essays cannot?

3. How does Vielstimmig's concept of collaboration mesh with the utility of Wikis in the classroom we discussed on Tuesday?

Google' word cloud'

2011-01-20T09:38:00.000-08:00

Google word cloud

Wysocki_Jasken_handout

2011-01-18T09:51:00.000-08:00

Here is the handout from my presentation. I designed the document in Adobe InDesign, exported it to .pdf and hosted it on the free document hosting site Scribd.

Kinetic Interface Design

2011-01-13T15:13:00.001-08:00

Link to the video in my presentation.

Questions on What Is New Media (ch.1)

2011-01-13T15:05:00.000-08:00

1. How can we define the materialities of new media texts or writing with the new media based on Manovich's elaboration on what constitutes the media and its renewal?

2. A lot of Manovich's explanation of the work of the new media is worth referencing for the teaching of writing. For example, with the understanding of modularity, the collection of discrete samples for a larger project, we can teach how writing can be assembled and re-arranged in various ways for different purposes or genres. How can we utilize the idea of hypertext and managing (access to) information in teaching writing so that our students can be opened to more agency as writers?Is teaching the idea of hypertext even suitable for a freshman college composition?

Questions on Manovich

2011-01-13T14:03:00.000-08:00

Manovich claims that cultural transcoding is a process in which "cultural categories and concepts are substituted, on a the level of meaning and/or language, by new ones that derive from the computer's ontology, epistemology and pragmatics" (47). What might be the consequences for individuals with little or no access?

How might the overabundance of information available through the internet complicate the production of new media?

Does a post-industrial society value individuality, or is that what they want you to think?

2011-01-13T14:01:00.000-08:00

Technology failed me and lost my post, so you get the shorter, revised versions without all the quotes:

Manovich asserts that variability exemplifies how media correlates to social change and then suggests that unlike industrial societies that valued mass production and a homogenous mass culture new media correlates to a postindustrial society that values individuality. Does our society value individuality?

Does the variability of new media actually create more variety, or does it rather make the use of templates more prevalent?

Is the homogeneity of texts a matter of available resources or larger social structures?

In light of this assertion about individuality, what do we make of Manovich's analysis of the myth of interactivity?

2011-01-13T13:48:00.001-08:00

1.) Both Lanham and Manovich invoke the idea of the printing press to highlight how technology enables literacy to grow. What are the potential benefits of viewing the writing process through the lens of what new technology enables?

2.) Could the hyperlink replace the citation?

Questions for 1/13

2011-01-13T12:45:00.000-08:00

1. Manovich states that “All existing media are translated into numerical data accessible for the computer. The result: graphics, moving images, sounds, shapes, spaces, and texts become computable, that is, simply sets of computer data. In short, media become new media” (25). If all new media has numerical representations, then do anything that might be considered “old media” become “new media” merely because it becomes computable?

2. Manovich and Wysocki approach new media from two different disciplines and have different ideas of what “new media” is. Exactly what are the differences between Manovich’s and Wysocki’s definitions of “new media”?

2011-01-13T12:11:00.000-08:00

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the flexible/easily changed structure of "new media?"

Manovich references the problem of storage space and searching capabilities for "new media" several times. Can there ever be too much material?

Manovich's "New Media"

2011-01-13T11:09:00.000-08:00

How does Manovich's position as an academic within the discipline of Visual Arts influence his writing about and defining of new media? Who has more to gain from publishing work concerned with new media, Manovich or Wysocki?

Questions for 1/13

2011-01-13T08:41:00.000-08:00

New media "values individuality over conformity" (41). But in what ways does automation hinder creativity and the process of creation?

The idea that interactivity allows the user to become the author boggles my mind. I have less of a question about that and more of a request to simply discuss what this means...or what it could mean.

Questions

2011-01-13T07:12:00.001-08:00

1. Who is the audience for Lev Manovich’s book?

2. What’s the future of new media? How will it develop? Will it create new cultural forms that correspond with a new social logic or redefine old cultural forms?

3. How do Manovich’s definitions and explanations of “new media” technologies change our perceptions as writing teachers of time, space, public, private, and interactivity? How do these elements affect the production and the reception of new media in the writing classroom?

Questions from the Reading

2011-01-13T06:53:00.000-08:00

Manovich seems to find it very important that we have clear-cut definitions separating "old media" from "new media." Why is this so important? Or maybe, what are the stakes involved in the ways we define "new media"?

He refers to new media's influence on culture (in the sense that transcoding results in a "computerization of culture" [47]). What might he mean by culture, in this context? DOes this only affect cultures with widespread computer access, or is it a global "culture" that is changing?

Purdue OWL got game

2011-01-10T09:12:00.000-08:00

Purdue Writing Lab receives $1.5 million to create new interactive writing tool for high school students

http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/outreach/2011/110110BergmannOWL.html

Welcome

2011-01-04T11:19:00.000-08:00

Hello intrepid explorers of the outer limits of compositional boundaries,
Welcome to the multi-everything universe, a no-place of boundless freedom and constraint
Where we leave monomodal, monophonic discourse in its paper dust and set out for the realms
of polyphony, multimodality, hypertextual, re-mediated and playful multiliteracies.

Just kidding!