Topic Proposal

I will focus on podcasting. I will look at how podcasting is different from other forms of expression, yet also similar to composition. One thing that strikes me about podcasting is that to create a successful podcast, you must sufficiently explore your own voice. I’m amazed at how the use of voice can change the effectiveness of the podcast both by engaging the listener and by influencing the content of the podcast. Furthermore, the voice creates the entire environment within which the audience spends the time. With speeches and v-logs, the speaker has full visual range and can include anything from videos to body language to pie charts. However, with podcasts, the speaker only has the voice.

The closest analogy to podcasting that I can find is to radio. One feature that makes podcasting different from radio is accessibility. There are very few circumstances where anyone – especially a student -- has access to the airwaves. With podcasting, anyone can utilize a podcast for any reason, whether it be to advocate for a specific cause, provide students with instructions on how to complete an assignment, or even simply to wish someone a happy birthday. Podcasts are also not live, which removes much of the spontaneity that a radio program would have unless the podcaster tries to appear spontaneous on purpose.

The traditional idea of the job of a composition instructor is to teach students how to write an alphabetic text. Writing skills can serve an enormous number of purposes that are too numerous to account for. Writing can be used to take notes and write grocery lists. Many jobs expect employees to have writing skills, especially jobs that pay livable wages. Writing is an excellent way to express oneself and record thoughts in a way that is can be revisited and writing also forces these thoughts to be organized and purposeful. Without writing, thoughts can very easily transform into tangents if one is not careful. However, with modern technology, a grocery list can be replaced by a small digital recorder. The boss might someday ask an employee to record some information in podcast format, perhaps so that another employee can listen to the podcast while performing some task. Podcasts might allow much freer flows of thought for students who are more orally adept, as seen with the basketball player in earlier readings. Podcasts are just another tool in the rhetorician’s arsenal.

My paper will focus on convincing educators that podcasting can help students with the writing process and with writing style. Podcasts can help students understand the importance of voice and tone, since the use of the student’s voice can affect how the audience feels about the content of the podcast, and whether or not the audience will even remain engaged. In addition, podcasts can remove barriers from some students who have difficulty brainstorming. One option could be for students to be required to talk about their topic for 5-10 minutes without stopping, which can act as an auditory version of free writing. Students can voice their reactions to readings and research so that they can maintain a unique perspective on the topic being researched that is distinct from the authors of the research. Instructors can have students read their essays out and record them in podcast form so that they can see how their writing sounds, or they can take the content in their essays and convert them into formats that are more suitable for podcasts. For example, information could be broken down into smaller chunks with memorable points and the student can use more examples to help clarify otherwise abstract concepts.

I will likely try to explain to educators that students need them to help understand the rhetorical nature of podcasts. On a superficial level, podcasts might seem to be more the purview of communication courses since both involve oral communication. However, speeches are delivered directly at an audience that is present and oftentimes can only hear the speech once. Podcasts are delivered to distant audiences, similar to how a writer interacts with a distant audience. Also, podcasts can be listened to over and over, with certain parts listened to an extra time if that part is not fully understood initially. Composition instructors have experience working with mediums that greater complexity than speeches, since certain parts can be referenced later on.

I will organize the paper based partially on the research I have found. The essay will encourage educators to consider podcasting in the classroom with arguments backed by research. I will explore the connections between podcasting and writing instruction. The potential pitfalls of podcasting will be explored, including the issue of students retaining knowledge gained from podcasts. The latest research journals I’ve looked at so far have explored topics such as the lack of divide between students and educators regarding podcasts, the difficulty that some students have in retaining podcast content and an essay speculating on whether or not the traditional lecture format is relevant. 

Week 9 Reflections

I wonder if participatory culture is evidence for the idea that hierarchical relationships are not as effective as voluntary relationships. With participatory culture, everyone chooses whether or not they want to participate. Therefore, the motivations for participating are self-generating rather than being generated by the instructor. In many cases, instructors have to work to engage students with Hamlet. But students do all of the work themselves when generating enthusiasm for Harry Potter.

The use of afterschool programs to help students develop multi-modal skills is something I never thought of and which seems obvious now. Afterschool programs could have a much more informal structure, could be much more student-driven and do not require the facilitators to actually evaluate the students, yet the students can be encouraged to self-evaluate. I still think multi-modal technology should be taught in the classroom, but afterschool programs might have much more of the potential to flexibly explore technology proficiency.

Jenkins brought up instances where children more fully understand certain perspectives by playing the roles of characters within a story, such as with the case of the student playing the loyalist who was shot at and arrested. I agree that students can become more engaged when taking on the roles of characters. These actions help students sustain a higher level of engagement with ideas, but will these students then ever learn to maintain engagement with texts simply by reading them. Students might not learn how to effectively empathize with different perspectives without actually role-playing a particular character.

I think I’ve heard somewhere before that for Internet multitaskers, the Internet is becoming almost like a prosthetic brain. Jenkins mentioned how some skilled multitaskers are able to overcome limitations in short-term memory by simply remembering where information is at rather than committing information to short-term memory. Books seemed to serve that same function though. For example, instead of remembering recipes, we have recipe books. The Internet just allows us to more quickly retrieve information than flipping through a book if we know how to use it proficiently.

I like Jenkin’s analogy of the hunter and the farmer. One of the biggest messages that my psychology 101 class tried to put forward was that the human mind is adaptive. That’s an excellent thing since a glance at history will show how rapidly our world can change. Old models of education were built for an older world and if educators want to really help students succeed, they must help students adapt to the current world instead of forcing the students to adapt to the educator. Instead of being an abnormality, the rewired brains of the Internet generation might simply be adapting like we always have. They’re successfully adapting to the new environment and we must help them as best we can, since many skills might be useful to younger generations, yet might not be obviously useful, such as critical thinking skills.

I hope collective intelligence is the new model for solving societal problems. There are many students who seem to wish they could have a positive impact on society, but do not know where to begin. The online collective efforts such as the Haiti relief efforts allow philanthropic individuals to quickly connect with others who can give them a crash course on the relief efforts. These collective efforts also fill the need for affiliation, though in a very positive way. The fact that educators teach students to think independently more than thinking collectively might result in students developing an inaccurate view of their future work life. The education system suggests to students that they must succeed in school ultimately so that they can eventually succeed in the workplace. Therefore, the education system implies that the individualistic and competitive style of education is only comparing them for the future work world and that the collectivistic and multimodal world is merely a diversion from the world of work. 

Reactions to Week 7 Readings

Critical technology usage is a skill of the 21^st century. As most individuals have access to numerous forms of expression, they can now make critical choices about what technologies they will take advantage of.  On the web at least, the most effective students will be those who are able to accomplish their goals using the most effective tools possible. In any given situation… why is a video more useful than a text? Why is an audio more useful than a picture? Maybe the content that the student is exploring is more visually-oriented in one case. Maybe in the other case, the speaker’s voice is important. What better way to express the speaker’s voice than through speaking?

I thought Borton and Huot’s ideas revolving around reciprocity between students and teachers were compelling. I wonder what effect reciprocity would have on students when all of their instructors show their humanity by demonstrating that they do not know everything but that they do happen to be specialized in certain areas, such as looking for rhetoric in written and spoken word. Collectivistic learning environments seem exciting, with each student bringing any skills he or she has to the table with the effort of improving the class’s cumulative learning. This reciprocal learning might also help improve evaluation. What’s the point of evaluation outside of school other than to help us understand if we accomplished our specific goals.

I think peer review sessions might be more helpful in multimodal courses. Students often consume the types of texts that are created in a multimodal course on their own and they have some expertise, as an audience, about what they like or don’t like. Since students rarely read academic essays, I can’t imagine classmates being about to provide feedback from the perspective of a consumer of essays in the same way that they can provide feedback from the perspective of a consumer of movies. However, we brought up in the class and Alexander mentioned in our readings how haven’t always acquired the skills yet to articulate why they like a particular multimodal work.  For example, students might have a difficult time explaining exactly why they like the beat of the song placed over the video essay and why the beat fits well with the rhetorical goals of the essay.

I’m crazy about the “Technology and Literacy in Your Future” section. I think a lot of students would be more motivated if they understood that instructors were not simply wasting their time but were instead actually trying to teach them skills that they would need in the future. However, what might also be helpful is if the classes became more targeted after the students studied members of their intended fields so that students could learn more about the types of rhetorical and writing skills that they will actually be using for a good portion of their lives. I’m not saying that students should only be limited to the types of writing that they will be doing in their cubicle; there’s nothing wrong with branching out a little bit.

Beach et al’s advice that students should not be given too many details in feedback is sound. Not only are too many details overwhelming but students are also less likely to remember important points of revision if they are overwhelmed with the less important points of revision. Revision should work one step at a time. Students need time to practice new writing techniques and break old habits. I remember when working as a writing center tutor, we focused on higher order concerns before moving on to lower order concerns. If a student was supposed to write an analysis of a work of literature and instead provided a summary, I could care less if the student walked out of the tutoring session with a comma splice. I cared a lot more that the student understood what analysis was in the context of an academic essay and that the student was capable of asking the kinds of questions necessary to write an analysis. Of course, instructors have the power to actually write on the student’s paper, so the student can read the papers later on. Remembering comments can be more difficult when you have a discussion face-to-face in a conference if the student has been given a lot of information. Memory can also be a problem in the brainstorming sessions that Beach et al described, with the student and instructor coming up with all sorts of brilliant ideas, 90% of which are forgotten when the student parts with the instructor and maybe another 9% are forgotten if the student doesn’t write these ideas down quickly enough.

Week Six

Beach et al’s story about Derek was a good example of how students can express themselves through other multimedia. Students who might have a potential for developing great critical thinking skills might become bogged down by their difficulties with writing mechanics. Given how second nature writing is to us, we often forget that writing is a very technical activity. Many students have more experience speaking than they do writing. Students can expand their critical thinking skills and later perfect their writing style and mechanics.

I believe that critical thinking skills are far more difficult to teach than writing skills. Students are drawn to different kinds of literacies, perhaps through their own competencies or perhaps through various features in their personalities. Students who are allowed to gravitate towards their preferred literacies can spend more time focusing on rhetorical choices and less time trying to master unfamiliar literacies.

Also, oral communication skills and public speaking skills are almost as important as writing skills in life outside the classroom and may be more important to some students. Beach et al pointed out that students do a lot of writing when creating the scripts used for the podcasts. Maybe the fear of embarrassment plays a role in encouraging students to get their writing just right, since they will have to be actually speaking in front of their fellow students.

I wish more instructors would record their classes in a podcast format. I’ve listened to several podcasts released by instructors from other universities on subjects that I’m interested in but do not have the time or money to take courses in. I almost pursued a degree in psychology and I still enjoy learning about psychology. I’ve listened to plenty of podcasts released by university instructors that include recordings of the entire classroom discussion. The only downside to these podcasts is that I had to listen through parts that were not very interesting like the parts where the instructor was taking attendance. The podcasts were very long, so I could not realistically skip through parts of the podcasts without losing large chunks of the material. Turning classes into podcasts seem like a complete win-win situation. Students have a place where they can refresh themselves on the content of the course. Interested listeners can have access to information that they normally couldn’t afford to have access to. Most excitingly, Beach et al told the story of Sprankle’s third and fourth grade classes where students dramatically improved their writing when given a real audience. This is not surprising, given that one of the main reasons why people write outside of the classroom is to reach an audience.

Whenever I look at some kind of technology like blogs, videos and audio, I always wonder what one technology adds over another technology. With videos, certain images or scenes can serve instructional purposes, especially when the students are demonstrating something visual such as how to create a poster. But if the topic is not visual in nature, such as if the class is simply having a back and forth conversation with each other about To Kill a Mockingbird, for example, I wonder what the point of a video conference might be over simply having an audio conference, especially since some students might feel self-conscious about how they look. Maybe video conferencing vs. audio conferencing could be the choice of the students, since some students might find video conferencing cool. Beach et al seemed to be getting at the idea that with Vlogs, students might make a variety of rhetorical choices such as how the camera is positioned. Beach et al also pointed out that some of the students started off simply as “talking heads” and later began incorporating different features such as a cowboy hat. 

Reactions for Fifth Week

Daniel Keller’s asserted that keeping up with technology should not be a factor for determining why digital technology should be used in the classroom. I disagree somewhat, since composition instructors run the risk of having irrelevant course content when their classroom discourse is not compatible with the ways in which students are creating and consuming digital content in the classroom, as well as learning how individuals are communicating and looking at rhetorical possibilities.

I agree with Keller’s claim that instructors have the potential to help students think about their texts in critical ways. Critical thinking does not seem to be taught to students as much as formulas for getting good grades. Popular media rarely seems to encourage critical thought but instead seems to focus on the presenting of a serious of unquestionable facts or cultural references. Questions are sometimes thrown out at the end of programs, but only occasionally. If only critical reading were emphasized sooner, students might develop stronger writing skills when they are able to learn the fastest.

Many of the film and image-related topics such as camera angle and fadeout might carry somewhat of a learning curve for instructors more fluent in concepts such as tone and metaphor. However, this lack of familiarity with these concepts might benefit students to an extent, since the instructor can engage in modeling for the students by demonstrating how rhetoric can be explored with unfamiliar mediums. In other words, students can see first hand how the instructor handles his or her unfamiliarity with digital mediums.

If multimodal forms of learning become more common in the typical classroom, I wonder if students might benefit from taking a computer course specifically designed for orienting them towards technological skills that are most commonly used in the classroom. One potential drawback to this is that technology is continually changing and blogging, for example, might become irrelevant when some more effective methods replaces the blog. By that, I mean that the specific benefits of the blog are augmented in a future technology. Maybe there are skills that can be taught that help students master new software applications more quickly. The fact that I have been exposed to a variety of software applications early on in my life might have lead me to develop skills for mastering software programs that I’m not familiar with. Branscum and Tascano pointed out that successful teachers are able to rely on their previous experiences when creating effective Multimodal Composition courses and students can also likely develop skills that can transfer to ever changing technology.

I found the four C’s on page 85 to be very helpful. Particularily, I thought “compatibility” and “cool” were useful concepts. Students with high-technology proficiency can be frustrated by over-instruction just as much as students with low technology proficiency can be frustrated with under-instruction. In my experiences as a student, professors who remain calm during tech glitches or poor configuration kept students calm, but these setbacks still waste precious class time. But this time doesn’t have to be wasted as Branscum and Toscano pointed out. Technological mishaps can be a teachable moment.

Should assignment due dates be flexible in a Multimodal Composition course? I say… of course! As students and teachers, we’ve al had experience with the typical essay. We have a general sense of how long it takes to write one and many times, the reason for a late assignment is that the student procrastinated. However, with technology, we must be more flexible with the time-consuming learning curve that students have to get over.

Shipka brought up the debate over what instructors should teach in the composition classroom. In an ideal world, I would say that students should be given a broad range of choices regarding what they could choose to write and then should at some point be given the option of choosing which type of essay they want to focus on. Instead of having instructors decide what writing skills the students will learn, why can’t students make that decision? Shipka said that students shouldn’t be free of standards with regard to their writing. However, couldn’t students be allowed a model where they tell the instructor what they would like to write and the instructor could help them understand the standards for the genre they are aiming for? Unfortunately, many students are only interested in figuring out the formula that will give them the A and instead of telling their instructor what they want to learn, they will likely get frustrated and ask to see the prompt.

Reactions to Readings for Fourth Week

Disorganized Ruminations on Collaboration

I wonder if the concept of plagiarism should be revised itself, given the fact that so much of writing is in fact collaborative. From a practical standpoint, not fighting plagiarism can cause a freeloader problem where students do not pull their own weight and do not develop some of the more solo writing skills.

Hmm… are there any writing skills that are exclusively solo? I have a hard time brainstorming in groups and I come up with fewer ideas, though I remember a lot of students who came to the Writing Center (where I tutored) were able to generate a lot more ideas when the tutor asked them questions that encouraged further analysis. I’ve been told that writing is a solo activity and in some cases it really is, since two students cannot simultaneously write a particular text. But that seems to be the case with many other things as well. Yesterday I built a bookshelf with Joelle (I asked her if I could include this) and the whole process was collaborative overall. There were times when one of us would be hammering in a nail while the other was reading instructions. But there were some aspects of the project that were fully solo. For instance, there was no way that we could both hammer in the same nail at the same time. Writing seems to function the same way, with the overall process of writing being collaborative, while the actual acts of writing are not collaborative. Or are they? When forming an idea that incorporates information that you received from a group member, are you then collaborating?

Group Leadership

I wonder how leaders are formed in group projects. From my personal experience, there have been some group members who take charge of the project and try to get everything organized. Sometimes, the entire group is full of leaders and there has to be a great deal of negotiation over who does what, since no one really has a specific right over any other group member to decide what the group does. If the group is full of members who have different ideas on how the project should go, compromising, synthesis and weighing the pros and cons of each idea can help students decide how the project will be carried out. I always try to see if there is a way that each member of the group has roughly an equal percentage of ideas so that no one feels that they were ignored or that another group member dominated. Of course, this is only possible with group members who want to contribute. Group members who don’t take the initiative when contributing can be guided into the project by asking them what they think about different ideas, but not all group members provide feedback, maybe because they are afraid that their ideas will be scoffed at or will actually harm the project.

Purpose of Wikis

Wikis seem to be the most effective collaborative tools for very large projects that take a long period of time. In our group, I was thinking of setting up a wiki space on one of the free wiki servers, but I felt that our script would be so short that a wiki wouldn’t be necessary. But the larger the project and the more collaborative the project, the more useful I can see a wiki being. But there’s this anxiety over whether or not someone will ruin the wiki by providing irrelevant information or badly editing the wiki. I think wikis record changes made to the wiki so that bad edits can be changed back to their original entries, but the anxiety is still there.

The section in chapter 4 entitled “Using Wikis to Improve Reading Ability and Literary Interpretation” pointed out how students are less intimidated when they are editing the text of others. I can definitely see the editing of the entries of others to be effective in teaching students editing skills. Students usually seem to fear editing their own writing, so editing the writing of others might help them develop editing skills that they can eventually apply to their own writing process.

I like the idea of wiki course books since the multiple authors are more capable of challenging each other’s biases and providing a better-rounded picture of a particular subject. It is necessary that students carefully cite where they have received their information or how they came to the conclusions that they’ve arrived at.

Classroom 2.0 Limitations

In light of the last class we had, the ideas that Catherine McLoughlin discusses seem far removed from the realities of classrooms where administrators are aggressively seeking to prevent the full utilization of the Internet in the classroom. The only way that I can see educators actually preparing students for a wired world is to provide more protections to teachers so that they do not have to fear legal repercussions for classroom Internet usage.

Reactions to Readings for Third Week

Sources

I like the idea on page 26 that students are able to access websites like BrainyQuote to integrate into their own projects. Sites like BrainyQuote, which are not sources with information that is always verifiable, can still add value to the student’s work. Unreliable sources are not always a bad thing as long as they are not the core of any arguments that the student is making. Also, merely linking to the source allows readers to decide whether or not they want to trust a given source or how probable it is that the source is correct.

Search engines like Google are definitely the worst ways to find scholarly information and the best ways to find almost anything else, especially since the majority of scholarly articles won’t even come up on Google. However, I have found Google to be great for finding bibliographies which can be the beginning of my research. Also, typing “site:.edu” into the search engine along with the keyword terms will bring up hits from website content released by universities, which are likely to be more relevant. However, some content found on universities might be postings of college students which might not be as accurate, since university websites sometimes provide web space for students.

Non-Linear Thinking

I’ve found tools such as Inspiration and the old-fashioned notepad to be very useful for exploring ideas, given that many ideas do not always occur in a linear way, which text tends to promote. I wonder if the way in which we read is influenced by the linear style of text that we read and if our thinking would change if tagging, hyperlinks and other non-linear tools became more prevalent in our everyday lives, similar to how multitasking has changed the wiring in our brains.

Gaming Environments

On page 48, Beach et al wrote that gaming environments could be spaces for online, digital discussion of classroom material. While I agree that a discussion could be held in a gaming environment, the gaming environment might be really distracting, unless the content of the game relates to the classroom discussion. However, my hesitation towards the use of gaming might come from my lack of comfort in communicating within a game. I feel more comfortable with asynchronistic communication like email and forums, since more time can be devoted to ideas. I became more convinced of the potential value of gaming as I read more of the ideas put forth by Beach et al. I liked the idea of the students reporting on the train wreck found in the instructor-created Neverwinter Nights world. Online games could be used to simulate environments that would be too difficult to create in a classroom through any other means.

One concern I often have is that some forms of learning such as learning within an online game world would be more time consuming than using textbooks and a projector, since more instructional content can be delivered through text. But are all students retaining the content from more traditional pedagogy techniques or do we need to incorporate video games in the classroom to get students to understand information and think critically.

Pedagogy Drives Technology

I agree that pedagogy should drive technology. Ideally, technology should continue to be developed so that the boundaries of education can be expanded in ways that many students, parents and educators cannot visualize yet. Educational needs could drive technology as long as the goals of are clearly defined.

Student Growth

I agree that informal online discussions outside the classroom can definitely improve writing over time. Sure, many students do not write texts that are considered standard English, but they do have to write clearly to be able to communicate effectively with online acquaintances and they sometimes have to employ argumentative skills. Online conversations can be a training ground for effective written communication as students discover the hard way the effects of poor communication.

On page 53, Beach et al pointed out that teachers can use digital learning to involve students in their own learning. I always wondered why students are not involved in their own learning and why educators often have to try to find ways to drive learning, especially given how willing children seem to learn in early stages of life.