The students in my composition classes contribute to our class blog. The goal is to allow them to publish various writings to an audience that includes classmates but reaches far beyond the traditional audience of college writing. I am the chief moderator of the blog while the students operate as contributors. They have authorship privileges and can log on and post without my permission. Of course, I have the ability to remove any inappropriate posts or to block student access. One thing I did not expect was that my first act of censorship would happen in the initial week of blogging, or that the censored post would be removed, not by me, but by a student.
One thing that became apparent as students began to sign in and use the blog is that they had a very different sense of how to use the space than I did. For example, students left such introductory comments such as “Woot let’s blog!” or “Let’s do some blogging WOOO!” The apparent enthusiasm pleased me and I chalked up the students’ informal approach to the similarities between blogging and social media. After all, I had requested that all users use a head shot photo as their profile image so that the site would indeed be more social.
As a teacher, I intended the blog to be an active class text, a place of collaboration, and, I thought, a slightly more relaxed rhetorical environment. What I did not realize was how traditional expectations for college writing were so ingrained in my understanding of this rhetorical situation. The big moment came as I prepared for class one evening. The class reading was a challenging article about, of all things, rhetorical situations. In the article, Keith Grant-Davie proposes that the rhetor is a constituent of the rhetorical situation. Many traditional descriptions of rhetorical situations conceive of the rhetor (writer or speaker) as approaching a situation constituted by exigence, audience, and constraints. Grant-Davie’s model shows an active relationship in which the audience is one of the rhetors and a rhetor is at times her own audience. Therefore, the rhetor must be a constituent of the situation. I read it. I agreed with it. I did not, however, recognize it when I read the class blog comments.
My misunderstanding emerged as I read the following comment left by a female student: “I play world of warcraft and read comic books in my free time . . . jus’ sayin.” I felt sure the students were taking over the site with their own digital obsessions and rhetoric. Then two more comments came in, the first a male student congratulating the female on playing video games, and then the female responding that she was indeed “blood elf warlock level 8” in the game World of Warcraft. I immediately posted the following comment:
“Just a word about the rhetorical situation of this blog. We want to be social, but as a research community. There have been some comments here that are more appropriate for the rhetorical situation of an email or Facebook. I absolutely want the class to find common bonds and foster friendships. Let’s use this space, however, to discuss literacy. No worries!”
No sooner had I posted my comment than I found myself rereading the questionable comments. To my horror I saw two things I had not previously realized. First, the video game comments, even though they discussed media that was alien to me, were absolutely about literacy. The female student expressed her intense literacy in gaming media. Next, I failed to recognize a student’s digital literacy because of my misunderstanding of the rhetorical situation. As Grant-Davie proposes, the rhetor and audience are so intertwined that at many times they are the same person. In a blog, the comment writer is also a rhetor. The blog is, after all, a circular rhetorical space. As the moderator, I was as more of an audience member than an author. Clearly, I would have to allow more freedom than my comment suggested.
In a few minutes my actions saw the consequences: the student removed her post. In the space where her vibrant claim to digital literacy had once rested, stood words of a much different voice: “This post has been removed by the author.” Yes, the student initiated the removal, but the writing was a default statement generated by the computer as she clicked the delete icon. Essentially, my misunderstanding of the rhetorical situation had taken away her voice.
It all worked out in the end. The incident provided a fascinating and moving introduction to the article, one that I shared with all three sections of the composition course. The student held no hard feelings, and all students appeared intrigued that I would own such a mistake. We all learned from this. I, however, still feel the pain of my actions. It opened my eyes to the vast difference of the rhetorical spaces encountered in the digital world. If I insist on approaching composition studies from a digital perspective, then I must ask myself the very questions I encourage my students to pose. What does digital literacy mean? What does it look like? Why do we want to move beyond traditional modes of writing? How does it change the rhetorical situation?
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Multimodal Collaborations
One learning outcome in the First Year Writing curriculum at my university states that students should understand that meaning is socially constructed. I try to model this understanding by engaging students in activities in which the social interaction is conspicuous. Collaborative multimodal discussion can depict the social interactions that are part of the composition process.
The site www.voicethread.com offers the ability to create and publish multimodal discussions. One can upload any sort of document and then others can comment in several forms: text, webcam recording, and audio recording. My classes use this technology to share ideas about collaborative documents and for peer critiques. Another way I use Voicethread is to have students create and publish multimodal discussion in-class.
Since we do not meet in a computer lab, we use my laptop with students taking turns recording their understandings or questions about a class text. This method has one drawback due to the fact that I am logged in as the user: all comments appear to originate from my avatar. At first it is strange to see a student’s video emerge as an extension of my profile photo. This is actually an opportunity to explain the idea of literacy sponsorship. My user identity sponsors their use of the technology in a way similar to how teachers sponsor students’ discourse within the class. For me this is not ideal, but it allows us to collaborate in a non-lab classroom as well as talk about issues and problems with sponsorship.
Below is an example of a Voicethread collaboration that students created in the classroom. The students’ task was to address the three learning outcomes for our first three readings. They were asked to state ideas that they understood or ideas that they still needed to consider, share these in small groups, and enter a statement into our Voicethread discussion.
The artifact shows various levels of understanding. Some are uneasy statements read from spiral notebooks, while others are confident orations of complex ideas. Once we published the Voicethread, we observed it as a class. Students raised important questions about the multiple modes of discourse and the ways that each mode demonstrated authority. They also wondered whether the quality of a student groups’ understanding of a learning outcome affected the choice of mode. In fact, we raised many more questions than we answered. At this early time in the semester, that was more than OK. Students were working together to identify important lines of inquiry about the social aspects of discourse and writing technologies. In activities like this, students can clearly see their role in the ongoing research of rhetoric and composition.
The site www.voicethread.com offers the ability to create and publish multimodal discussions. One can upload any sort of document and then others can comment in several forms: text, webcam recording, and audio recording. My classes use this technology to share ideas about collaborative documents and for peer critiques. Another way I use Voicethread is to have students create and publish multimodal discussion in-class.
Since we do not meet in a computer lab, we use my laptop with students taking turns recording their understandings or questions about a class text. This method has one drawback due to the fact that I am logged in as the user: all comments appear to originate from my avatar. At first it is strange to see a student’s video emerge as an extension of my profile photo. This is actually an opportunity to explain the idea of literacy sponsorship. My user identity sponsors their use of the technology in a way similar to how teachers sponsor students’ discourse within the class. For me this is not ideal, but it allows us to collaborate in a non-lab classroom as well as talk about issues and problems with sponsorship.
Below is an example of a Voicethread collaboration that students created in the classroom. The students’ task was to address the three learning outcomes for our first three readings. They were asked to state ideas that they understood or ideas that they still needed to consider, share these in small groups, and enter a statement into our Voicethread discussion.
The artifact shows various levels of understanding. Some are uneasy statements read from spiral notebooks, while others are confident orations of complex ideas. Once we published the Voicethread, we observed it as a class. Students raised important questions about the multiple modes of discourse and the ways that each mode demonstrated authority. They also wondered whether the quality of a student groups’ understanding of a learning outcome affected the choice of mode. In fact, we raised many more questions than we answered. At this early time in the semester, that was more than OK. Students were working together to identify important lines of inquiry about the social aspects of discourse and writing technologies. In activities like this, students can clearly see their role in the ongoing research of rhetoric and composition.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Collaboration
The first few classes in a semester are a busy time in a composition course. Not only do teachers have the difficult task of jumpstarting students into a mode of high production and risk-taking, we have so much to explain, demonstrate, and model. In the past, these efforts led me to talk too much. How could I introduce students to course procedures, technologies, and conversations by involving them in these very practices?
On the second meeting, I asked the classes to create in-class collaborative visual presentations. The exercise asked students to:
1. write reflectively about their writing experiences.
2. share writing experiences in small groups.
3. contribute to a class-wide collaborative presentation.
4. experience a potentially unfamiliar digital composing technology.
5. raise problems and questions concerning “what we know about writing and how we know it.”
What I liked about this exercise was that it involved the students in most of the practices important to the course: reflection, composition, collaboration, use of digital technology, publication, and presentation. On the second day of class, they were modeling the course practices to each other.
We used Prezi (www.prezi.com) for the collaborative presentations. Prezi allows users to create and publish non-linear presentations on a large canvas that can be navigated in numerous ways. One of the best features is the zoom which allows a holistic look at the presentation. We used my laptop to create the Prezis. Below is an example from one class. Use the arrow and zoom to navigate.
As groups wrapped up discussion, they sent representatives to the laptop to enter their information into the presentation. At least one member of each group experienced hands-on use of the technology. The action was broadcast on the large screen for the class to see, and students paid attention to the fluid construction of the presentation. In the third section, questions from the viewers emerged, leading to an impromptu whole-class discussion while the representatives were still creating. In fact, it was the spontaneous, unexpected moments of the collaborations which were most profound and occurred at real points of inquiry, places where the dialogic communications demanded the immediate address of questions and problems. The final digital product was interesting as an object of analysis, but the Prezi’s big payoff was the rich discussion and meaningful inquiry that emerged as we used the technology to map our understanding of writing.
Incidentally, the internet connection in the third section wouldn’t allow Prezi to operate, so we made a lightning fast switch to good ol’ PowerPoint. The less exciting format still created the spontaneity of collaboration that made the Prezis so useful in the earlier classes.
On the second meeting, I asked the classes to create in-class collaborative visual presentations. The exercise asked students to:
1. write reflectively about their writing experiences.
2. share writing experiences in small groups.
3. contribute to a class-wide collaborative presentation.
4. experience a potentially unfamiliar digital composing technology.
5. raise problems and questions concerning “what we know about writing and how we know it.”
What I liked about this exercise was that it involved the students in most of the practices important to the course: reflection, composition, collaboration, use of digital technology, publication, and presentation. On the second day of class, they were modeling the course practices to each other.
We used Prezi (www.prezi.com) for the collaborative presentations. Prezi allows users to create and publish non-linear presentations on a large canvas that can be navigated in numerous ways. One of the best features is the zoom which allows a holistic look at the presentation. We used my laptop to create the Prezis. Below is an example from one class. Use the arrow and zoom to navigate.
As groups wrapped up discussion, they sent representatives to the laptop to enter their information into the presentation. At least one member of each group experienced hands-on use of the technology. The action was broadcast on the large screen for the class to see, and students paid attention to the fluid construction of the presentation. In the third section, questions from the viewers emerged, leading to an impromptu whole-class discussion while the representatives were still creating. In fact, it was the spontaneous, unexpected moments of the collaborations which were most profound and occurred at real points of inquiry, places where the dialogic communications demanded the immediate address of questions and problems. The final digital product was interesting as an object of analysis, but the Prezi’s big payoff was the rich discussion and meaningful inquiry that emerged as we used the technology to map our understanding of writing.
Incidentally, the internet connection in the third section wouldn’t allow Prezi to operate, so we made a lightning fast switch to good ol’ PowerPoint. The less exciting format still created the spontaneity of collaboration that made the Prezis so useful in the earlier classes.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Tutorials
Video tutorials are a great way to offer students intuitive and explicit instructions on how to access and use technologies. It sure beats drawn-out text instructions or constantly re-explaining the directions. I made video tutorials for using www.voicethread.com. The free software CamStudio enabled me to record the action on my computer screen. It syncs with the computer’s microphone which let me narrate the keystrokes and clicks.
Here a tutorial on how to register:
I share these videos with the students by creating a YouTube page and linking that to our course website. You can also embed the videos in an email. Easy to make; easy to share. I like it!
Here a tutorial on how to register:
I share these videos with the students by creating a YouTube page and linking that to our course website. You can also embed the videos in an email. Easy to make; easy to share. I like it!
Saturday, September 3, 2011
A Public Service Announcement
This semester I decided to have students post all of their work publicly somewhere in the digital world. I had been moving in this direction for a couple of years, but spent much worry over issues of sensitivity, privacy, and exposure. The writing class can be a place of egos, a place where confidence and insecurity often settle into dullness. This tepid situation is worsened by students’ attempt to give the teachers what they “want.” Is the problem one of rhetors or one of audiences? I blame both sides.
The one-on-one relationship that characterizes the traditional scenario of individual submission to the individual grader is often seen by the student as a battle of wills or, literally, as “submission.” Students often submit the digital essay to the plagiarism-checking software or to the teacher’s personal dropbox. The student doesn’t simply turn in her writing; she turns it over to the power of a machine or another human. This mindset is far from the instructor’s goals for the writer or the course (I think). We often boast of empowering and authorizing student writers, but is that really the case when students turn it in, submit it, or drop it into a digital space that is hidden from their view? Or do students give in to preconceived notions of the teacher’s desires or the perceived criteria of past successes (e.g. what got them the grade)? I know that sometimes they just give up. Is that what we mean when we ask them to “submit” their papers?
I decided to answer these questions with an opportunity to publish. My hopes for this public participation in discourse are partly influenced by the theoretical writings about “publics” (see Michael Warner’s work for provocative discussion about multiple publics). The prevalence of digital literacy, from gaming to social media to texting, suggests that our students are hyper-aware of the ways their discourse exists in these various publics. To ask them to go public is to allow them to continue their practices. For many of us, students and teachers alike, awareness of our publics is second nature. If not, it can’t be hard to awaken.
Assignments can be publics. The collaborative space of a wiki site charts and maps the creative history of a public (click the “history” button to see this intriguing record). A blog post may reflect its public in more mysterious ways, but every time the author answers reader’s comments or views the blog stats, an awareness of the public emerges. I view these activities as awakenings. Students may find social and academic awareness through their writing that contrasts sharply to the act of submitting the writing to the teacher. What are the implications of this difference? That is a research question we need to pose to our students.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Class Management Systems
The world of graduate assistantships and adjunct teaching can be difficult. Moving to new campuses, or back and forth between them, can mean more than empty gas tanks and shared office space. One’s digital class management systems are on different servers and, many times, they are different systems. The learning curve for learning a new CMS is not so bad, especially with Web CT, Blackboard, and Moodle. The real problem is that classwork, documents, links, gradebooks, and other important aspects of a course must be recreated, posted, and linked from system to system. What a pain.
This issue led me to seek out an independent CMS that would allow me to easily transfer and share items from any class, at any school, and during any semester. I found this freedom at www.rcampus.com. Here I can move and share documents and assignments from class to class, regardless of the campus, using convenient drop-down menus. That’s fresh! The free version is slightly limited in features, but for a relatively small investment one can create a powerful and dynamic class management system. I choose the free option because it was, well, free. The lack of RS feed blogs, wikis, and massive memory was not a problem because I wanted to use more powerful public tools like Blogger, Wikispaces, and Voicethread (note: the discussion board feature can function as a blog or a forum). Links to these sites are easily posted to the tiles on my Rcampus class homepages. Since so much of my students’ work is publicly posted on the servers for these sites, I do not have to worry about overloaded download queues in the CMS or storing documents on my personal computer. That means the CMS classrooms are clean portals from which students can access assignments, grades, and links to the course extensions.
The Rcampus messaging is convenient and I use it to create impromptu discussion threads concerning issues that come up in class. There is even an IM-style message board on each class homepage. A student can ask a question and a peer may answer it before I do. Talk about creating a dialogue and a community.
The Rcampus messaging is convenient and I use it to create impromptu discussion threads concerning issues that come up in class. There is even an IM-style message board on each class homepage. A student can ask a question and a peer may answer it before I do. Talk about creating a dialogue and a community.
One of the best features is Rcampus’ hosting of ePortfolios that work as actual websites. Each site is hosted by the personal student accounts which they can share or open to public viewing. These sites use convenient templates, and are easy to use and personalize (as is the actual classroom site). Since the ePortolios are essentially websites, they can be linked to any place on the web where the student has created work. This means the multimodal possibilities are endless. I can’t wait to see what my students create during the semester.
Wherever I find myself next semester, I can easily recycle the pedagogical tools that I want to continue to use. That is, if I don’t want to create newer, more innovative ones. Either way, it will be easy to do and, best of all, the artifacts will remain with me through my journey.
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