CCCC 2005: ReviewReview: N.01: Multimedia Approaches to Teaching and Using Technology in Writing Classes Multimedia Approaches to Teaching and Using Technology in Writing Classes Scott (Bump) Halbritter: “The Sound of Voice in Multimedia Composition: A Pedagogy of Resonance.” Halbritter begins by playing music of himself singing, and says that when he thought about his voice, he thought about his singing voice. Talking, the foundation of community life, often becomes something to avoid. When he was singing well, he felt at home. When he wasn't singing well, he didn't feel good. Now that he's not a singer, his voice doesn't control him. The concept of voice is changing because of multimedia composition; he calls it “integrated media.” Listening to our audible voices enables us to hear ourselves in new ways, to hear that we have not one, but many voices; that we have choices about the way we sound, both metaphorically and literally. Hearing our remediated voice can help see that our voices are inherently rhetorical since they produce identifications. Voice is thus paradigmatic of composition studies itself. Pavel Zemliansky: “Gaining Access through Multimedia Writing: Two Case Studies.” Most of us know and understand that it's important to teach multimedia because students are consumers of multimedia. There's still considerable resistance to allowing teachers to use multimedia. To counter the resistance he starts by teaching images in multimedia using basic rhetorical analysis. At some point he realized that this was not enough. Much more can be done with images. How do we use multimedia in writing? Our interpretation of media is influenced by our likes and dislikes and our experiences. He proposes a theory of looking at a movie or a Web site as a sentence. Each image is seen as a sentence with a subject and a predicate. Students wondered why they needed to look at images as linguistic compositions. In the first year class, they read Mary Louise Pratt's Arts of the Contact Zone. He used this model to demonstrate to students how images function as linguistic presentations. There are elements in the message that suggest that they're constructed on linguistic rules. The freshmen responded to these ideas much better than the upper division students, applying the linguistic theories of multimedia works at every stage of the writing process. He has used the approach as a prewriting technique, trying to map and draw the paper conceptually. He has used it as a revision technique, asking students to switch back to visuals. He has found that assigning hybrid visual textual arguments demonstrates the ways that the visual furthers arguments rather than just illustrates them. Carole Creekmore: “It's All in the Presentation—Or Is It?” This is a presentation on an informal study at Georgia Perimeter College, a two year college in the state system. The study was in a first level composition class. In the fall, she had four of these classes. One was a traditional campus class; she had access to a computer but none of the students did. One of these classes was a teleweb distance learning class. They provided videos for students and met once or twice. Two were CAI classes on campus. Both of these were classes in which students had access to the computer. She tried to go into the experiment with few expectations. She tried to keep as many elements as similar as possible. She used the same common course outline and syllabus for each course, which they use across the college, with the same objectives and same number of assigned essays. For campus courses, she gave them the full week by week syllabus. For the teleweb courses, she gave even more detail. The campus syllabus was 7 pages long; the teleweb syllabus was 26 pages long. She learned that students in both situations were not reading the syllabus, so she reorganized them. Now, the traditional class syllabus is longer and the teleweb syllabus is eight pages shorter. Everyone made adequate progress. In the teleweb classes, she didn't see as much progress as she usually does. Retention rates were acceptable for all of the classes. The grades surprised her. They were higher significantly in the campus classroom. The least technological classes had the highest grades. She concludes that communication is the key to success in all classes. You also have to challenge and lead the students to be independent. It was also interesting that the best grades were in a class with no computer enhancements. She feels that the lack of technology gave them more time to think about writing. She's asked for more of the traditional classes in the future because of this. She took the best elements of the teleweb and included them in the f2f class. She's learned to make her assignments much more detailed. She also put the syllabus on the Web so that students would have increased access. Using the teleweb has lead her to being more creative in the classroom. The two kinds of classes are informing her pedagogy in interesting and unexpected ways. Scott (Bump) Halbritter: “The Sound of Voice in Multimedia Composition: A Pedagogy of Resonance.” Halbritter begins by playing music of himself singing, and says that when he thought about his voice, he thought about his singing voice. Talking, the foundation of community life, often becomes something to avoid. When he was singing well, he felt at home. When he wasn't singing well, he didn't feel good. Now that he's not a singer, his voice doesn't control him. The concept of voice is changing because of multimedia composition; he calls it “integrated media.” Listening to our audible voices enables us to hear ourselves in new ways, to hear that we have not one, but many voices; that we have choices about the way we sound, both metaphorically and literally. Hearing our remediated voice can help see that our voices are inherently rhetorical since they produce identifications. Voice is thus paradigmatic of composition studies itself. Pavel Zemliansky: “Gaining Access through Multimedia Writing: Two Case Studies.” Most of us know and understand that it's important to teach multimedia because students are consumers of multimedia. There's still considerable resistance to allowing teachers to use multimedia. To counter the resistance he starts by teaching images in multimedia using basic rhetorical analysis. At some point he realized that this not enough. Much more can be done with images. How do we use multimedia in writing? Our interpretation of media is influenced by our likes and dislikes and our experiences. He proposes a theory of looking at a movie or a Web site as a sentence. Each image is seen as a sentence with a subject and a predicate. Students wondered why they needed to look at images as linguistic compositions. In the first year class, they read Mary Louise Pratt's Arts of the Contact Zone. He used this model to demonstrate to students how images function as linguistic presentations. There are elements in the message that suggest that they're constructed on linguistic rules. The freshmen responded to these ideas much better than the upper division students, applying the linguistic theories of multimedia works at every stage of the writing process. He has used the approach as a prewriting technique, trying to map and draw the paper conceptually. He has used it as a revision technique, asking students to switch back to visuals. He has found that assigning hybrid visual textual arguments to demonstrate the ways that the visual furthers arguments rather than just illustrates them. Carole Creekmore: “It's all in the Presentation—Or is it?” This is a presentation on an informal study at Georgia Perimeter college, a two year college in the state system. The study was in a first level composition class. In the fall, she had four of these classes. One was a traditional campus class; she had access to a computer but none of the students did. One of these was a teleweb distance learning class. They provide videos for students, meet once or twice. Two were CAI classes on campus. Both of these were classes in which students had access to the computer. She tried to go into the experiment with few expectations. She tried to keep as many elements as similar as possible. She used the same common course outline and syllabus for each course, which they use across the college, with the same objectives and same number of assigned essays. For campus courses, she gives them the full week by week syllabus. For the teleweb courses, she gives even more detail. The campus syllabus was 7 pages long; the teleweb syllabus was 26 pages long. She learned that students in both situations were not reading the syllabus, so she has reorganized them. Now, the traditional class syllabus is longer and the teleweb syllabus is eight pages shorter. Everyone made adequate progress. in the telewe b classes, she didn't see as much progress as she usually does. retention rates were accedptable for all of the class. the campus classes and was the 95%, the online student retention rates was about 75%.The grades surprised her. They were higher significantly in the campus classroom. The least technological classes had the highest grades. She concludes that communication is the key to success in all classes. You also have to challenge and lead the students to be independent. It was also interesting that the best grades were in a class with no computer enhancements. She feels that the lack of technology gave them more time to think about writing. She's asked for more of the traditional classes in the future because of this. She took the best elements of the teleweb and included them in the f2f class. She's learned to make her assignments much more detailed. She also put the syllabus on the web so that they have increased access. Another thing that she's found is that she was using an extra credit assignment; she's started carrying assignment from one mode to another. She's started using a lot more artwork. Using the teleweb has lead her to being more creative in the classroom. The two kinds of classes are informing her in interesting and unexpected ways. |
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