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Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Pedagogy Article Slideshow
Below is the link to my slideshow. I tried to condense as much as I could, but, you know. . . . My thinking on this is still a little rough, so I would appreciate any feedback.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Pedagogical Tool Review: VoiceThread
(First, the link to my VoiceThread.)
VoiceThread, an online interactive slideshow program, offers instructors a new way to conduct discussions that allows for video and audio posts, unlike typical discussion forums that rely almost exclusively on text. And this is a rather simple tool to use. After creating an account, users click the “Create” tab to upload files from a local drive, include files from a media source (VoiceThread gives direct links to other VoiceThreads, Flickr, Facebook, and over 700,000 images from the New York Public Library), insert URLs, and/or create videos using a webcam. Users can also edit how viewers see the slideshow and can edit the publishing options, adding a fair amount of security to the VoiceThread.
Once creators share the VoiceThread, viewers who have VoiceThread accounts can comment on that (or about any) VoiceThread. A viewer simply clicks the “Comment” button and chooses the mode of comment he or she prefers; the principle options include text, audio, or video—the latter two having ten minute limits. Another feature available to viewers commenting via audio or video is Doodle. When recording an audio or video comment, a viewer can draw directly on the slide using the mouse. These doodles will then be visible to anyone who views the VoiceThread’s comments. Finally, once posted, the comments appear as boxes bearing images chosen by the commenters around the sides of the original VoiceThread. As the slides progress, the comments follow in the order they were posted (but the slideshow’s creator can modify this order).
Though VoiceThread has broad educational and non-educational uses, it does offer a number of key affordances for instructors in English studies. As English studies becomes increasingly multimodal, instructors seek out new tools and methods to teach students about critiquing and producing multimodal texts. This presents two key challenges. The first challenge is to align the technologies and multimodal texts with particular goals of English studies (Selber 8; Journet 110-11). The second challenge is to debunk the idea that technology use is simply a skill. Indeed, as Jennifer Sheppard argues, producers of effective multimodal texts must make careful rhetorical considerations of audience, context, purpose, and media (122). This provides instructors with the opportunity to emphasize both critique and production of multimodal texts, challenging theory/practice divides (Sheppard 123; Journet 114; Selber 7; Hocks 644-45).
Several scholars and teachers have introduced pedagogical practices to meet these challenges. Especially germane to VoiceThread, at least for my purposes, is Stuart Selber’s three literacies regarding computers: functional literacy (use), critical literacy (analysis), and rhetorical literacy (production) (24-25). An instructor could put into practice, quite easily, Selber’s various literacies using a tool such as VoiceThread. In a course emphasizing visual rhetoric or multimodal composition, an instructor could upload any text (a video, an image, etc.) into a VoiceThread. Students would then have to engage in functional literacy practices by viewing and commenting on that text. Students would rely on critical literacy to comment on the rhetoric, content, and design features of the text. And students must also consider their own rhetorical practices (albeit in a somewhat limited capacity) in their comments, thereby engaging in rhetorical literacy. One can see, too, how an instructor might incorporate elements of the New London Group’s mulitiliteracies pedagogy in a VoiceThread project (see Cope and Kalantzis 30-36).
VoiceThread’s affordances are not only specific to visual rhetoric or multimodal composition courses. A literature course instructor, for instance, could easily upload a poem (so long as the font size makes for easy viewing), or one of the many thousands of images from the New York Public Library (images of the growth of New York City if one was doing a unit on literature of the metropolis) for the class to analyze. More generally, VoiceThread offers a somewhat tangential but important benefit, especially for asynchronous distance classes. As these classes typically rely on considerable amounts of text, VoiceThread gives its users the opportunities to see and hear those in the class, creating an added sense of connection in courses that might isolate students (see Owens, Hardcastle, and Richardson).
VoiceThread is not without some drawbacks, most of which deal with the limitations of the free version and the cost of the paid versions. The free version limits uploads to 25MB and allows a user only three VoiceThreads on his or her account at a time. If use of VoiceThread were to be more than infrequent, the instructor would need to delete VoiceThreads and all the comments associated with them to create new VoiceThreads. VoiceThread does offer a Pro version with unlimited VoiceThreads and unlimited audio and video commenting, file uploads of up to 100MB, among other features, for $59.95 per year. VoiceThread also offers educational versions for K-12 and higher education. In the higher education category, an instructor can purchase a single instructor/manager account for $99 per year that includes one Pro account and 50 basic accounts. Departmental licenses are $699 for ten Pro accounts and 250 basic accounts, though the site doesn’t specify if this fee is one-time yearly. The limits of the free account and the costs of the other products may be significantly prohibitive depending on planned uses and/or available funding resources. Finally, aside from account concerns, another problem (though a small one) is that users cannot link or embed YouTube videos in a VoiceThread, but a free download of a YouTube downloader remedies this. Otherwise, VoiceThread accepts the majority of common file types.
Ultimately, VoiceThread is an easily accessible tool that, because of its ease of use and flexibility, can contribute to a variety of courses that emphasize and/or encourage a number of modalities in presenting and producing information. However, unless users are willing to pay for greater access, they may be forced to incorporate this minimally, costing time and effort for students and instructors for limited use. A clearly articulated and longer project, though, could counterbalance these limitations; furthermore, if an instructor plans to use this in a number of ways, the $5 monthly expense of a Pro account may be nominal for the affordances of this tool.
Works Cited
Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis. “Introduction: Multiliteracies: The Beginning of an Idea.” Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. Ed. Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis. London: Routledge, 2000. 3-37. Print.
Hocks, Mary E. “Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments.” CCC 54.4 (2003): 629-56. Print.
Journet, Debra. “Inventing Myself in Multimodality: Encouraging Senior Faculty to Use Digital Media.” Computers and Composition 24 (2007): 107-20. Print.
Owens, Janet, Lesley Ann Hardcastle, and Ben Richardson. “Learning from a Distance: The Experience of Remote Students.” Journal of Distance Education 23.3 (2009): 53-74. Print.
Selber, Stuart A. Multiliteracies for a Digital Age. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2004. Print.
Sheppard, Jennifer. “The Rhetorical Work of Multimedia Production Practices: It’s More Than Just Technical Skill.” Computers and Composition (2009): 122-31. Print.
VoiceThread, an online interactive slideshow program, offers instructors a new way to conduct discussions that allows for video and audio posts, unlike typical discussion forums that rely almost exclusively on text. And this is a rather simple tool to use. After creating an account, users click the “Create” tab to upload files from a local drive, include files from a media source (VoiceThread gives direct links to other VoiceThreads, Flickr, Facebook, and over 700,000 images from the New York Public Library), insert URLs, and/or create videos using a webcam. Users can also edit how viewers see the slideshow and can edit the publishing options, adding a fair amount of security to the VoiceThread.
Once creators share the VoiceThread, viewers who have VoiceThread accounts can comment on that (or about any) VoiceThread. A viewer simply clicks the “Comment” button and chooses the mode of comment he or she prefers; the principle options include text, audio, or video—the latter two having ten minute limits. Another feature available to viewers commenting via audio or video is Doodle. When recording an audio or video comment, a viewer can draw directly on the slide using the mouse. These doodles will then be visible to anyone who views the VoiceThread’s comments. Finally, once posted, the comments appear as boxes bearing images chosen by the commenters around the sides of the original VoiceThread. As the slides progress, the comments follow in the order they were posted (but the slideshow’s creator can modify this order).
Though VoiceThread has broad educational and non-educational uses, it does offer a number of key affordances for instructors in English studies. As English studies becomes increasingly multimodal, instructors seek out new tools and methods to teach students about critiquing and producing multimodal texts. This presents two key challenges. The first challenge is to align the technologies and multimodal texts with particular goals of English studies (Selber 8; Journet 110-11). The second challenge is to debunk the idea that technology use is simply a skill. Indeed, as Jennifer Sheppard argues, producers of effective multimodal texts must make careful rhetorical considerations of audience, context, purpose, and media (122). This provides instructors with the opportunity to emphasize both critique and production of multimodal texts, challenging theory/practice divides (Sheppard 123; Journet 114; Selber 7; Hocks 644-45).
Several scholars and teachers have introduced pedagogical practices to meet these challenges. Especially germane to VoiceThread, at least for my purposes, is Stuart Selber’s three literacies regarding computers: functional literacy (use), critical literacy (analysis), and rhetorical literacy (production) (24-25). An instructor could put into practice, quite easily, Selber’s various literacies using a tool such as VoiceThread. In a course emphasizing visual rhetoric or multimodal composition, an instructor could upload any text (a video, an image, etc.) into a VoiceThread. Students would then have to engage in functional literacy practices by viewing and commenting on that text. Students would rely on critical literacy to comment on the rhetoric, content, and design features of the text. And students must also consider their own rhetorical practices (albeit in a somewhat limited capacity) in their comments, thereby engaging in rhetorical literacy. One can see, too, how an instructor might incorporate elements of the New London Group’s mulitiliteracies pedagogy in a VoiceThread project (see Cope and Kalantzis 30-36).
VoiceThread’s affordances are not only specific to visual rhetoric or multimodal composition courses. A literature course instructor, for instance, could easily upload a poem (so long as the font size makes for easy viewing), or one of the many thousands of images from the New York Public Library (images of the growth of New York City if one was doing a unit on literature of the metropolis) for the class to analyze. More generally, VoiceThread offers a somewhat tangential but important benefit, especially for asynchronous distance classes. As these classes typically rely on considerable amounts of text, VoiceThread gives its users the opportunities to see and hear those in the class, creating an added sense of connection in courses that might isolate students (see Owens, Hardcastle, and Richardson).
VoiceThread is not without some drawbacks, most of which deal with the limitations of the free version and the cost of the paid versions. The free version limits uploads to 25MB and allows a user only three VoiceThreads on his or her account at a time. If use of VoiceThread were to be more than infrequent, the instructor would need to delete VoiceThreads and all the comments associated with them to create new VoiceThreads. VoiceThread does offer a Pro version with unlimited VoiceThreads and unlimited audio and video commenting, file uploads of up to 100MB, among other features, for $59.95 per year. VoiceThread also offers educational versions for K-12 and higher education. In the higher education category, an instructor can purchase a single instructor/manager account for $99 per year that includes one Pro account and 50 basic accounts. Departmental licenses are $699 for ten Pro accounts and 250 basic accounts, though the site doesn’t specify if this fee is one-time yearly. The limits of the free account and the costs of the other products may be significantly prohibitive depending on planned uses and/or available funding resources. Finally, aside from account concerns, another problem (though a small one) is that users cannot link or embed YouTube videos in a VoiceThread, but a free download of a YouTube downloader remedies this. Otherwise, VoiceThread accepts the majority of common file types.
Ultimately, VoiceThread is an easily accessible tool that, because of its ease of use and flexibility, can contribute to a variety of courses that emphasize and/or encourage a number of modalities in presenting and producing information. However, unless users are willing to pay for greater access, they may be forced to incorporate this minimally, costing time and effort for students and instructors for limited use. A clearly articulated and longer project, though, could counterbalance these limitations; furthermore, if an instructor plans to use this in a number of ways, the $5 monthly expense of a Pro account may be nominal for the affordances of this tool.
Works Cited
Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis. “Introduction: Multiliteracies: The Beginning of an Idea.” Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. Ed. Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis. London: Routledge, 2000. 3-37. Print.
Hocks, Mary E. “Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments.” CCC 54.4 (2003): 629-56. Print.
Journet, Debra. “Inventing Myself in Multimodality: Encouraging Senior Faculty to Use Digital Media.” Computers and Composition 24 (2007): 107-20. Print.
Owens, Janet, Lesley Ann Hardcastle, and Ben Richardson. “Learning from a Distance: The Experience of Remote Students.” Journal of Distance Education 23.3 (2009): 53-74. Print.
Selber, Stuart A. Multiliteracies for a Digital Age. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2004. Print.
Sheppard, Jennifer. “The Rhetorical Work of Multimedia Production Practices: It’s More Than Just Technical Skill.” Computers and Composition (2009): 122-31. Print.
Wicked Design
Marback, Richard. “Embracing Wicked Problems: The Turn to Design in Composition Studies.” CCC 61.2 (2009): W397-W419. Print.
In this sometimes dense piece, Richard Marback traces the recent turns to design in composition studies brought about by the increasing emphasis on digital technologies and multimodal text production, and he strongly supports this shift. He notes that since the 1990s, critique has hindered students’ ability to have agency in the texts they produce. His call, then, is for composition to move beyond critique and to adopt design as a way to give greater agency to our students in the production of their texts.
But his goals for design are precise: As the title suggests, he wants design to “embrac[e] wicked problems.” These “wicked problems” convey the notion that producing any artifact is a constant tension between previous iterations of that artifact, the designer’s goals, the audience’s potential responses to it, the interrelations of its constituent parts, and the designer’s negotiations of these tensions. Wicked problems, then, are provisional, ambiguous, and not ultimately solvable; designers can only meet the challenges of a particular situation through “an embrace of ambiguities in our responses to each other with and through our artifacts” (W418).
He also traces recent scholarship on the use of design in composition studies, examining the works of Gunther Kress, the New London Group, Richard Buchanan, Diana George, and Mary Hocks (among others). He sees in them some valiant efforts to promote the types of design considerations he advocates, but notes that these efforts tend to fall short of actively and thoroughly espousing the realities of wicked problems in design. They fail, by his accounts, by reducing design and analysis to textual terms, by not fully acknowledging the complexity of design, or by relying too much on the language of critique. He calls on instructors to view design as “a problem of ambiguity and indeterminacy in audience and purpose, a problem of struggling with our abilities to respond to artifacts, with the capacity in our artifacts to respond to us, as well as the problem of our responsibility we have as designers for the abilities of our artifacts to respond and elicit responses from others” (W415). He next provides us with a sample assignment, illustrating how students might consider and engage wicked problems.
Often, maybe too often, recent arguments about the need to incorporate design into composition studies seem to reduce practices to sets of principles that suggest relatively easy solutions or place multimodality in textual terms, neglecting their breadth and depth of appeals and designs. In other circumstances, design or rhetorical terms are invoked as a solution (even an easy solution) to the complexities of multimodal text production. Marback, despite engaging in something he faults others for (suggesting “wicked problems” as a sort of panacea), reminds us of the true complexity of producing effective texts and pushes against the tendency toward simplifying what design entails.
In this sometimes dense piece, Richard Marback traces the recent turns to design in composition studies brought about by the increasing emphasis on digital technologies and multimodal text production, and he strongly supports this shift. He notes that since the 1990s, critique has hindered students’ ability to have agency in the texts they produce. His call, then, is for composition to move beyond critique and to adopt design as a way to give greater agency to our students in the production of their texts.
But his goals for design are precise: As the title suggests, he wants design to “embrac[e] wicked problems.” These “wicked problems” convey the notion that producing any artifact is a constant tension between previous iterations of that artifact, the designer’s goals, the audience’s potential responses to it, the interrelations of its constituent parts, and the designer’s negotiations of these tensions. Wicked problems, then, are provisional, ambiguous, and not ultimately solvable; designers can only meet the challenges of a particular situation through “an embrace of ambiguities in our responses to each other with and through our artifacts” (W418).
He also traces recent scholarship on the use of design in composition studies, examining the works of Gunther Kress, the New London Group, Richard Buchanan, Diana George, and Mary Hocks (among others). He sees in them some valiant efforts to promote the types of design considerations he advocates, but notes that these efforts tend to fall short of actively and thoroughly espousing the realities of wicked problems in design. They fail, by his accounts, by reducing design and analysis to textual terms, by not fully acknowledging the complexity of design, or by relying too much on the language of critique. He calls on instructors to view design as “a problem of ambiguity and indeterminacy in audience and purpose, a problem of struggling with our abilities to respond to artifacts, with the capacity in our artifacts to respond to us, as well as the problem of our responsibility we have as designers for the abilities of our artifacts to respond and elicit responses from others” (W415). He next provides us with a sample assignment, illustrating how students might consider and engage wicked problems.
Often, maybe too often, recent arguments about the need to incorporate design into composition studies seem to reduce practices to sets of principles that suggest relatively easy solutions or place multimodality in textual terms, neglecting their breadth and depth of appeals and designs. In other circumstances, design or rhetorical terms are invoked as a solution (even an easy solution) to the complexities of multimodal text production. Marback, despite engaging in something he faults others for (suggesting “wicked problems” as a sort of panacea), reminds us of the true complexity of producing effective texts and pushes against the tendency toward simplifying what design entails.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
The New Gatekeeper?
Goode, Joanna. “The Digital Identity Divide: How Technology Knowledge Impacts College Students.” New Media and Society 12.3 (2010): 497-513. Print.
The digital divide is a common concept when discussing the role of technology in education. Joanna Goode’s article attempts to dig deeper into the significance of this divide than has previous scholarship. Her concern is that the prevailing discussions about the digital divide center on “deterministic” matters like access and use. In this article, she claims that to more fully understand the digital divide, we must consider sociocultural elements that contribute to the creation of this divide and how the divide affects students and their quest for academic success. She explores how students construct their own “technology identities” through narratives about their relationship with technology. The theoretical framework she applies to her study couches the student narratives in four key beliefs: “beliefs about one’s own technology abilities; beliefs about the importance of technology; beliefs about participation opportunities and constraints that exist; and one’s sense of motivation to learn more about technology” (502). She then highlights three student responses to the study as representative of different technological identities.
Not surprisingly, the student at the lowest end was from an economically disadvantaged area. Her high school lacked good facilities and qualified educators in general, not to mention its lack of technological opportunities. The two students who fell in the middle (fluent but indifferent) and upper (“highly fluent [. . .] and infatuated” [508-09, emphasis in original]) categories came from middle-class families and had ready access to technology at home and in school. Goode then focuses on the consequences for these students. The more adept students used technology efficiently: registering for courses, using various software applications for different classes, even saving money and time by using various online services. For the student at the lower end, the university’s reliance on technology and minimal support proved significant obstacles, limiting her ability to effectively perform activities such as research and registration. She also had limited knowledge of programs such as free home internet access for off-campus students.
Though Goode tries to distance herself from “deterministic” concerns about access and use, she does not fully elaborate on how her notions of technology identity significantly differ from previous work on the digital divide aside from her comments about the direct effects on students’ perceptions of their relationship with technology. However, the reminder her article creates for us as educators is particularly germane, especially for English studies pedagogies relying on new technologies. As educators, we cannot assume our students’ level of technological abilities. At the college level, we may tend to trust that students have the basic competencies needed to function effectively. Goode’s article reminds us of the pitfalls of such an assumption. We need to familiarize ourselves with our students’ technology skills (as we would with their writing abilities). This reiterates the importance of the New London Group’s calls for Overt Instruction and Situated Practice (Cope and Kalantzis 33-34). Students need particular competencies so they can effectively engage in critique and production—and so they can have better chances for academic success.
Work Cited
Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis. “Introduction: Multiliteracies: The Beginning of an Idea.” Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. Ed. Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis. London: Routledge, 2000. 3-37. Print.
The digital divide is a common concept when discussing the role of technology in education. Joanna Goode’s article attempts to dig deeper into the significance of this divide than has previous scholarship. Her concern is that the prevailing discussions about the digital divide center on “deterministic” matters like access and use. In this article, she claims that to more fully understand the digital divide, we must consider sociocultural elements that contribute to the creation of this divide and how the divide affects students and their quest for academic success. She explores how students construct their own “technology identities” through narratives about their relationship with technology. The theoretical framework she applies to her study couches the student narratives in four key beliefs: “beliefs about one’s own technology abilities; beliefs about the importance of technology; beliefs about participation opportunities and constraints that exist; and one’s sense of motivation to learn more about technology” (502). She then highlights three student responses to the study as representative of different technological identities.
Not surprisingly, the student at the lowest end was from an economically disadvantaged area. Her high school lacked good facilities and qualified educators in general, not to mention its lack of technological opportunities. The two students who fell in the middle (fluent but indifferent) and upper (“highly fluent [. . .] and infatuated” [508-09, emphasis in original]) categories came from middle-class families and had ready access to technology at home and in school. Goode then focuses on the consequences for these students. The more adept students used technology efficiently: registering for courses, using various software applications for different classes, even saving money and time by using various online services. For the student at the lower end, the university’s reliance on technology and minimal support proved significant obstacles, limiting her ability to effectively perform activities such as research and registration. She also had limited knowledge of programs such as free home internet access for off-campus students.
Though Goode tries to distance herself from “deterministic” concerns about access and use, she does not fully elaborate on how her notions of technology identity significantly differ from previous work on the digital divide aside from her comments about the direct effects on students’ perceptions of their relationship with technology. However, the reminder her article creates for us as educators is particularly germane, especially for English studies pedagogies relying on new technologies. As educators, we cannot assume our students’ level of technological abilities. At the college level, we may tend to trust that students have the basic competencies needed to function effectively. Goode’s article reminds us of the pitfalls of such an assumption. We need to familiarize ourselves with our students’ technology skills (as we would with their writing abilities). This reiterates the importance of the New London Group’s calls for Overt Instruction and Situated Practice (Cope and Kalantzis 33-34). Students need particular competencies so they can effectively engage in critique and production—and so they can have better chances for academic success.
Work Cited
Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis. “Introduction: Multiliteracies: The Beginning of an Idea.” Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. Ed. Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis. London: Routledge, 2000. 3-37. Print.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Written by Me, Designed by Someone Else
Arola, Kristin L. “The Design of Web 2.0: The Rise of the Template, the Fall of Design.” Computers and Composition 27 (2010): 4-14. Print.
Calls for developing student competencies in multimodality to make students more successful as students and professionals are not new. Nor are calls for critical awareness of potential consequences of the use of these different modalities. So in some ways, Kristin L. Arola’s article is a bit old hat. However, her emphasis on the rhetoric of templates in Web 2.0 technologies (specifically in social networking sites) seems a useful addition to issues instructors should consider in their multimodal writing course. By analyzing the predominance of templates in Web 2.0 technologies, she argues that templates have not only reduced users’ ability to determine how others view them but also have strengthened the notion that form and content are separate and insignificant for one another.
She notes this divide is especially troublesome now as rhetoric and composition becomes more focused on instructing students in composing with various technological applications. An irony exists here: on the one hand, we attempt to encourage students to think about how and why they design a text as they do (in addition to content considerations), but on the other hand “Net Generation students, as well as ourselves, are discouraged in Web 2.0 from creating designs” (6). And as we lose this control, we lose certain amounts of individuality on the Internet and opportunities to more fully and rhetorically consider the role of design. She notes this is especially true on social networking sites. Her examples include Facebook and MySpace. She argues through these examples that page layouts and the control (or lack thereof) of what information appears and where it appears suggests an identity dictated by the platform. For example, when people view our Facebook page, they see our image most prominently; but when we view our own pages, we see our News Feed most prominently, suggesting this is perhaps how Facebook designers feel we should view ourselves. She does praise MySpace because it allows users to vary what content appears on the page, but these can only appear in predetermined locations, again establishing patterns of identity not controlled by the user.
However, as Arola claims, this represents an opportunity for instructors in composition and rhetoric. By calling attention to these limiting features, we can teach students about the roles and rhetoric of design: we can rely on a space familiar to our students and encourage them to think in new, critical ways about it. And under Arola’s discussions simmers the idea of empowerment (and, indeed, she uses the term on occasion), yet she does not take this opportunity to explore how this greater awareness of the rhetoric of design can bring us into discussions of power, hierarchy, and personal identity with our students. This may be by design, of course, with the intention of leaving such discussions open to individual instructors, but if we are not to separate form and content, leaving out the discussions of the consequences of form beyond their rhetorical effects seems to do just that.
Calls for developing student competencies in multimodality to make students more successful as students and professionals are not new. Nor are calls for critical awareness of potential consequences of the use of these different modalities. So in some ways, Kristin L. Arola’s article is a bit old hat. However, her emphasis on the rhetoric of templates in Web 2.0 technologies (specifically in social networking sites) seems a useful addition to issues instructors should consider in their multimodal writing course. By analyzing the predominance of templates in Web 2.0 technologies, she argues that templates have not only reduced users’ ability to determine how others view them but also have strengthened the notion that form and content are separate and insignificant for one another.
She notes this divide is especially troublesome now as rhetoric and composition becomes more focused on instructing students in composing with various technological applications. An irony exists here: on the one hand, we attempt to encourage students to think about how and why they design a text as they do (in addition to content considerations), but on the other hand “Net Generation students, as well as ourselves, are discouraged in Web 2.0 from creating designs” (6). And as we lose this control, we lose certain amounts of individuality on the Internet and opportunities to more fully and rhetorically consider the role of design. She notes this is especially true on social networking sites. Her examples include Facebook and MySpace. She argues through these examples that page layouts and the control (or lack thereof) of what information appears and where it appears suggests an identity dictated by the platform. For example, when people view our Facebook page, they see our image most prominently; but when we view our own pages, we see our News Feed most prominently, suggesting this is perhaps how Facebook designers feel we should view ourselves. She does praise MySpace because it allows users to vary what content appears on the page, but these can only appear in predetermined locations, again establishing patterns of identity not controlled by the user.
However, as Arola claims, this represents an opportunity for instructors in composition and rhetoric. By calling attention to these limiting features, we can teach students about the roles and rhetoric of design: we can rely on a space familiar to our students and encourage them to think in new, critical ways about it. And under Arola’s discussions simmers the idea of empowerment (and, indeed, she uses the term on occasion), yet she does not take this opportunity to explore how this greater awareness of the rhetoric of design can bring us into discussions of power, hierarchy, and personal identity with our students. This may be by design, of course, with the intention of leaving such discussions open to individual instructors, but if we are not to separate form and content, leaving out the discussions of the consequences of form beyond their rhetorical effects seems to do just that.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Infovis and Composing in Web 2.0
Sorapure, Madeleine. “Information Visualization, Web 2.0, and the Teaching of Writing.” Computers and Composition 27 (2010): 59-70. Print.
This article introduced me to a Web 2.0 technology I knew little about: information visualization, or infovis. This technology allows users to upload information (parts of a text, personal information, statistics, etc.) and create various visualizations with that data. Madeleine Sorapure argues that this technology can provide students with critical perspectives of Web 2.0 texts and software by offering instructors opportunities for improving assignments, students’ abilities to analyze software biases, and student competencies in conceiving and creating texts. In short, she claims infovis makes students better producers and more critical consumers of Web 2.0texts.
She begins her work with some basic explanation of Web 2.0, mostly emphasizing that our students are often already creators of Web 2.0 texts but are not critical of these texts, which she also calls for in her use of infovis. She then turns to three common writing assignments—textual analysis, personal reflection, and the persuasive essay—but re-envisions them with infovis. She asks students to upload text, create a word cloud (a type of infovis) from this text, and reflect on their choice of text and methods of manipulating the text. Some students noted greater insight into their texts; others found software failing to account for personality or subtly in language. Her second example of an infovis assignment relied on student use of personal information (credit card purchases, music listening habits, or even photos taken, for example) to create a new way for students to think of themselves. Finally, she used infovis to address broader social concerns, asking her students to search for statistical information on a meaningful social issue and put that information into a visualization that would be meaningful for their audience.
Because this article gives examples of typical writing assignments, the application of infovis seems quite achievable. And although this Web 2.0 technology intrigues me, I feel that Sorapure’s goal of being critical of this new technology slips away from her. She does note that students were aware of the limits of this technology; however, she misses (or takes for granted) some key issues. First, she does not say if her students were freshmen/sophomores, juniors/seniors, or graduate students. The class was “Writing in New Media,” which seems to suggest a course designed for undergraduate students at the junior or senior level or graduate students (at least students with writing and research experience). So the types of research and software manipulation she suggest here may be somewhat taxing for lower-level undergraduate students without extensive instructor intervention, limiting the scope of infovis application. Next, and related to this, she fails to mention the learning curves associated with the software discussed here. Harried teachers who may want to incorporate innovative practices may find the programs too onerous to learn effectively. Finally, she does not mention how much visual rhetoric instruction students needed (or had had previously) to become the critical producers and analyzers of Web 2.0 texts she described at the beginning.
This article introduced me to a Web 2.0 technology I knew little about: information visualization, or infovis. This technology allows users to upload information (parts of a text, personal information, statistics, etc.) and create various visualizations with that data. Madeleine Sorapure argues that this technology can provide students with critical perspectives of Web 2.0 texts and software by offering instructors opportunities for improving assignments, students’ abilities to analyze software biases, and student competencies in conceiving and creating texts. In short, she claims infovis makes students better producers and more critical consumers of Web 2.0texts.
She begins her work with some basic explanation of Web 2.0, mostly emphasizing that our students are often already creators of Web 2.0 texts but are not critical of these texts, which she also calls for in her use of infovis. She then turns to three common writing assignments—textual analysis, personal reflection, and the persuasive essay—but re-envisions them with infovis. She asks students to upload text, create a word cloud (a type of infovis) from this text, and reflect on their choice of text and methods of manipulating the text. Some students noted greater insight into their texts; others found software failing to account for personality or subtly in language. Her second example of an infovis assignment relied on student use of personal information (credit card purchases, music listening habits, or even photos taken, for example) to create a new way for students to think of themselves. Finally, she used infovis to address broader social concerns, asking her students to search for statistical information on a meaningful social issue and put that information into a visualization that would be meaningful for their audience.
Because this article gives examples of typical writing assignments, the application of infovis seems quite achievable. And although this Web 2.0 technology intrigues me, I feel that Sorapure’s goal of being critical of this new technology slips away from her. She does note that students were aware of the limits of this technology; however, she misses (or takes for granted) some key issues. First, she does not say if her students were freshmen/sophomores, juniors/seniors, or graduate students. The class was “Writing in New Media,” which seems to suggest a course designed for undergraduate students at the junior or senior level or graduate students (at least students with writing and research experience). So the types of research and software manipulation she suggest here may be somewhat taxing for lower-level undergraduate students without extensive instructor intervention, limiting the scope of infovis application. Next, and related to this, she fails to mention the learning curves associated with the software discussed here. Harried teachers who may want to incorporate innovative practices may find the programs too onerous to learn effectively. Finally, she does not mention how much visual rhetoric instruction students needed (or had had previously) to become the critical producers and analyzers of Web 2.0 texts she described at the beginning.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Into the Blogosphere
Gallagher, Jamey. “‘As Y’all Know’: Blog as Bridge.” Teaching English in the Two-Year College 37.3 (2010): 286-94. Print.
In this article, Jamey Gallagher argues that writing instructors can use blogs to help students gain greater facility with academic writing. Gallagher extends David Bartholomae’s use of the term “commonplaces” as it appeared in “Inventing the University.” For Gallgher, commonplaces incorporate “style and purpose” (286), and four commonplaces that identify the political blogs he examined are “informal language,” “intertextuality,” “the personal address,” and “the rhetoric of the provisional.” These commonplaces help make blogs “examples of emplaced, agency-granting writing and [. . .] bridges to academic writing” (286).
In his examination of a political blog, Gallagher notes the informality of the language makes the work accessible. But the informality is not the result of carelessness. Rather, the informal language, he argues, is part of a carefully structured attempt to mimic thought processes. This informality is also inviting to students because it deemphasizes grammar and correctness and creates a more inclusive atmosphere. Next Gallagher addresses intertextuality, which refers to the linking that typically occurs in blogs. This represents two fundamental parts of writing that writing instructors often tend to teach: using sources as part of an argument and writing as a social act. In addition, the comments that occur in blogs add another layer of intertextuality and open up possibilities for the development of a discourse community. The personal address is a significant commonplace of the blog as well, one that allows specific development of a persona. This, too, is an inviting aspect of blogs. Readers are encouraged to directly engage with the author and become a part of the conversation (something academic writing can sometimes neglect). Such an emphasis on voice can benefit those writing instructors who actively encourage their students to discover their voices in writing. Finally, Gallagher explores the importance of the rhetoric of the provisional. This emphasizes the act of thinking and responding rather than asserting, allowing for more open-ended consideration. This leads him to conclude that, in good blogs, “[t]hought is valued over the rant. The provisional is valued over the final. Community is valued over individuality. All of these qualities are what good, solid academic writing values as well, and what the worst kind of academic writing fails to value” (291-92).
What I find most compelling about Gallagher’s piece is that the suggestion here is not that blogs are good simply because students can relate to them or because they are new. Instead, the author points to key areas of overlap blogs share with the types of writing institutions often expect of their instructors. And Gallagher points to the faults of blogs as well: they can be belligerent and anarchic, sloppy in their composition and thought. However, I think Gallagher’s piece gives writing instructors cause to further consider incorporating Web 2.0 genres as tools to help students move into academic writing.
In this article, Jamey Gallagher argues that writing instructors can use blogs to help students gain greater facility with academic writing. Gallagher extends David Bartholomae’s use of the term “commonplaces” as it appeared in “Inventing the University.” For Gallgher, commonplaces incorporate “style and purpose” (286), and four commonplaces that identify the political blogs he examined are “informal language,” “intertextuality,” “the personal address,” and “the rhetoric of the provisional.” These commonplaces help make blogs “examples of emplaced, agency-granting writing and [. . .] bridges to academic writing” (286).
In his examination of a political blog, Gallagher notes the informality of the language makes the work accessible. But the informality is not the result of carelessness. Rather, the informal language, he argues, is part of a carefully structured attempt to mimic thought processes. This informality is also inviting to students because it deemphasizes grammar and correctness and creates a more inclusive atmosphere. Next Gallagher addresses intertextuality, which refers to the linking that typically occurs in blogs. This represents two fundamental parts of writing that writing instructors often tend to teach: using sources as part of an argument and writing as a social act. In addition, the comments that occur in blogs add another layer of intertextuality and open up possibilities for the development of a discourse community. The personal address is a significant commonplace of the blog as well, one that allows specific development of a persona. This, too, is an inviting aspect of blogs. Readers are encouraged to directly engage with the author and become a part of the conversation (something academic writing can sometimes neglect). Such an emphasis on voice can benefit those writing instructors who actively encourage their students to discover their voices in writing. Finally, Gallagher explores the importance of the rhetoric of the provisional. This emphasizes the act of thinking and responding rather than asserting, allowing for more open-ended consideration. This leads him to conclude that, in good blogs, “[t]hought is valued over the rant. The provisional is valued over the final. Community is valued over individuality. All of these qualities are what good, solid academic writing values as well, and what the worst kind of academic writing fails to value” (291-92).
What I find most compelling about Gallagher’s piece is that the suggestion here is not that blogs are good simply because students can relate to them or because they are new. Instead, the author points to key areas of overlap blogs share with the types of writing institutions often expect of their instructors. And Gallagher points to the faults of blogs as well: they can be belligerent and anarchic, sloppy in their composition and thought. However, I think Gallagher’s piece gives writing instructors cause to further consider incorporating Web 2.0 genres as tools to help students move into academic writing.
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