Week 13 readings Part 2 April 4, 2010

Cynthia Selfe’s “The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning:  Aurality and Multimodal Composing”

I like that we get more readings on the aurality of language and composing. Like I said previously, it’s not something I had ever considered before. Like she points out, music and sound is increasingly important to students and their lives. If that is the case. this is most likely one more direction the future will take and one more thing we need to teach students if we are to keep learning relevant. Like she points out, students don’t necessarily value discussion in classroom settings, but they do value listening and speaking in other ways. I think it’s interesting that she uses the term “deprive{ several times. About how teachers cannot deprive students of this valuable tool. But I don’t think teachers have meant to deprive anyone of anything, we just weren’t aware of its importance before now. Pedagogies change all of the time, it’s getting so hard to keep up with everything we should be teaching. I can’t hardly blame teachers if they fall behind n some things. And like most of the people we have read in this class, she’s not claiming that we exchange aurality FOR writing, rather use it along with composing In the traditional words-in-a-row manner, which any teacher should be more than happy to comply with if they can. We need to teach teachers to embrace multiliteracies and the many ways in which students can and should compose.

I think her brief history of aurality was pretty cool and like the history of the pencil as technology, important to know. Writing isn’t the only way of knowing or doing anymore and we need to keep that in mind. Although the English classrooms worked hard to distance themselves from orality in the past, there is a lot to be said about embracing it now. I also really liked her point on page 631 that

Walker noted, they often found the texts of television and radio, which

involved the aural presentation of information, to resonate more forcefully than

the written texts of historical eras. Walker pointed to the successes of teachers

who focused on popular culture and who used aural texts and popular music

as foci for classroom assignments. Similar suggestions for assignments were

put forward in subsequent years—with assignments that examined the music

of the Beatles (Carter) and Billie Holiday (Zaluda); popular music in general

(Kroeger); and the writing associated with popular music (Lutz)—for instance,

the liner notes that accompany albums and CDs.

Students understand and respond to aural texts and can find comfort in the mediums they are so used to dealing with on a daily basis, like TV and music.

Doug Hesse’s “Response to Cynthia L.Selfe’s “The Movement of Air,the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing”

At first it might seem like he is praising her, and he’s definitely not tearing her apart, but he has doubts and questions about her research findings. I think that in his first point he is saying that a composition course is about composing, and you can’t exactly compose in composition without text. While aurality may be important, it can never take the place of composition and the need for students to learn it. His analogies were helpful to what he was saying if “I’m to teach German but, noting the world’s economic drift (not to mention sheer numbers), I decide instead to teach Chinese, I shouldn’t be surprised if some stakeholders object.” And he’s right. If I am supposed to teach one subject I need to teach that subject and give my main attention to that one subject no matter how important I thin this other subtopic may be. I like that he is friendly in tone and doesn’t cut her down even though he clearly has a differing view point, he knows that she’s not calling for a total new way of teaching compositions and the ignoring of words-in-a-row texts, but just a more expansive definition in the mean time. He makes a lot of really good points including, “The question of whose interests the course ought to serve ultimately is an ethical one. Part of it involves “what’s good for the student”—but the student as worker, citizen, friend, soul? Part of it is “what’s good for the various cultures and subcultures” in which decisions are made, resources distributed, and ideas championed.” If organizations like the NCTE feel a certain way of teaching is better than another, shouldn’t we stick to that as best as we can and add in the other stuff we think is important along the way. I’m thinking mini-lessons. I love that he says he wants to ponder adding aurailty into his own class, but still has other implications to think about before he can do so.
Read and discuss Selfe’s response to Hesse

I love how academics talk back and forth to one another in essays published in a public forum. I wonder if they ever resent the things other scholars say about them. I mean, if I had just written an article and someone told me I was wrong or needed to think things through a little more, and I said, “so and so’s thoughtful response to my article…” would most likely be me cursing him or her internally. Is it not like that in Academia?

Selfe, as I expected, made many great points back. She brought up the questions that many of us who teach comp wonder, how can I teach all this other stuff when I barely have time to help my students write better? And the point is incredibly valid, but as she said, no one should leave writing out of the curriculum, but consider a multitude of literacies in which students can compose. Because of this new 21^st century that we live in, we must be open to communication across all modes, not just the narrow and limiting methods of writing in the traditional linear manner. Her response reminded me of what we do here in the freshman comp classes, have students compose across multiple genres so that they can one day transfer that knowledge of how to analyze genres for their format, content, style, purpose, audience, etc and do that when it comes time to composing in new and unfamiliar ways. She also makes the important point that in order to compose and communicate effectively for different groups, one must sometimes address the means in which they go about doing this, and teaching across multiple modes can get students there.

She also says that, “in rhetoric and composition should serve as role models in this regard, showing students that they, too, are willing to learn new ways of composing, to expand their own skills and abilities beyond the alphabetic by practicing with different modalities of expression that may be unfamiliar and difficult but increasingly expected and valuable in different twenty-first-century rhetorical contexts both in and out of the academy.” She couldn’t be more correct here, teachers need to expand their own ways of writing and embrace change and challenges within the classroom setting. And then finally, she links what Hesse is saying as kind of elitist and high brow ways of thinking, and all I can say is ouch!

Week 13 Readings Part 1 April 4, 2010

Converging the ASS[umptions] between U and ME; or
How new media can bridge a scholarly/creative split in English studies

I think the controversy between the high art and low art and literature with a capitol “L” is really interesting and important to know about. We studied this a lot in the children’s literature department and I find it fascinating how in order for the English department to gain credibility within academia they had to shed their feminine/childish image and “grow up”. That’s when the canon formed and they had a call for the “man book”.  Its very exclusionary and elitist in many ways, and purposely wants to leave out those they feel are “beneath them”. And if this is the case, what does that say for the English classroom? We want to leave people below us behind? We want to look more intelligent than others? There is just too much to point out here for all the negative consequences that could come from this type of thinking! If the high art leaves out postmodernism, which it does from my knowledge, then I wouldn’t want anything to do with it! I embrace pomo texts and theory and cannot imagine a literature classroom without it. I wonder why they devalue pomo so much, maybe because it takes away from the professor as the one who has all the answers and makes it seem like anyone could teach a text and they want to keep it more exclusionary?

The parts that talk about high and low brow art are the ones that stood out to me the most because it’s a point that I studied quite a bit as a CHL person. So this may be a little bit of a rant on my part, but talk about exclusionary! If education has always been a means to teach students high brow from low brow, and to teach the “acceptable” forms of reading, writing, and thinking, then we apparently have only been trying to homogenize our children and make them fall into line with social norms. Why not teach them to question everything? To think on their own in new, unique, and radical ways? Maybe if we taught this more often the world wouldn’t be falling apart, we wouldn’t have so much waste and pollution. How about instead of focusing on who’s better than whom, let’s focus on working together to make the world a better place. Grr. That makes me mad. Some people in education really seem to have their priorities all wrong. I mean, in some ways, who cares about “taste and sensibility”? as long as students are reading and writing, does it really matter whether it is viewed as high brow art? My Manga-loving students are some of my smartest, but a lot of people take them to be garbage texts and don’t take the texts or the students who read them seriously. What are we telling students if we continue to do this?

I like that they mention creating more of the “remix” culture in order to help students learn in a scholarly way. Mostly because this is my research project, but I agree that it has the potential to be incredibly helpful to students and the way they learn. I also thought it was cool how there were hyperlinks in this text, it really stood out to me as being an important facet of the 21^st century and the texts we read. If I didn’t know who Wesch was, or the Web 2.0 they authors were talking about, I could click on their links and BAM! I am all caught up. It truly shows how the nature of literacy is changing. I wonder is there is a program that is semi-permanent I could have my students work on to create something like this- a “professional” article with links to outside sources. Would it just be a Wiki or blog? I’m not sure, but it seems cool! I also liked the mentioning of Scott McCloud, while I clicked on the hyper-link a few times, it never let me listen to the podcast, or whatever it was, I think my wireless internet was being picky, but the fact that they mentioned McCloud as a way to kind of bridge the high and low debate was really great in my mind. And I agree, we need to teach new media with new media and compose in new media. It’s the only way to get students accustomed to the more professional ways of using technology. Even though they’re considered “digital natives” doesn’t mean much as most of our other literature has pointed out.

Voice in the Cultural Soundscape: Sonic Literacy in Composition Studies by Michelle Comstock

I really liked her point that, “Even with the renewed emphasis on visual and digital rhetoric, however, we as writing teachers are still very text-centered in our classrooms.” Even though we have been so excited to incorporate technology into the classroom, we’re still favoring texts rather than multi media literacy. How do we move away from this? I think it’s super interesting that she said, “However, we both believe sonic literacy–the ability to identify, define, situate, construct, manipulate, and communicate our personal and cultural soundscapes–should become an integral part of any course aimed at developing students’ skills in writing and digital literacy.” I mean, I’ve been such a huge advocate for visual literacy and digital literacy these last few months, but have paid little to no attention to sound literacy as well. It makes sense that we need to fuse that into the curriculum as well. Students need to know how to use sound and their own voices as compositional tools. The way we speak represents who we are, what we stand for, and the position we take on any given subject. This article made me see just how much the ELA classroom needs to take into consideration when teaching!

“When we ask students to compose voice-over narrations and soundtracks, we are asking them to write scripts and produce sound files that function as narratives in the cinematic sense–in relation to text, photographs, graphics, and/or moving images.” It just now dawned on me that there are so many things you can do with this in a classroom! Things that would have a specific purpose, teach a valuable lesson, and still allow the students to have fun with literacy and composition. They said that students who compose in these ways, “develop a stronger, more embodied sense of audience and of our popular cultural soundscapes. When they record a voice over, for example, students develop a closer attentiveness to how their words and sentence structures resonate with their own voices and their chosen audiences, and as a result, produce better texts with more awareness of the emotional impact of tone and style.” I wish I had thought about this earlier! I kind of feel like this is a bombshell that was dropped on me that I need a few days to really think about and how I would use it in my own classroom, but it is a wonderful place to start. To be honest, I am afraid I will forget this and not end up bringing it back to my classroom. I wish I had started a journal while I was in grad school of all the cool lesson plan ideas I’ve come across. And if all us TOW students did it, the cool stuff we would have to share at the end!

Week 13 Research Update April 4, 2010

So I finished my last 10 annotated bibliography entries and entered them into the Wiki already, now it is on to outlining my paper. These are kind of my week-long goals. I already have a chunk of the paper written (a very rough draft of course) but now I need to really go back through my annotations and the sources I know for a fact I want to use. Not all of my annotated bib materials will make the cut, while not all the materials I wanted to use are in my annotated bibs (if that makes sense). I already have a working outline of my paper; I will just go back through, polish that up and solidify my thesis. I think I was told I was trying to cover too much in my thesis so I need to narrow it a little more. I don’t think that will be a problem at all since some of my paper I feel I need to send some time explaining my definition of literacy, why I think digital literacy and remixing is important, and how metacognition comes into play. I plan on having my 10 page rough draft done by Friday and then after getting the feedback from peers, I will edit and revise it until I feel it is ready to be turned in the following week. Yay! We’re almost there! I wish I could take another TC class with you! That was super informative and a lot of fun! so all in all, I have a plan and am moving quickly to get it all done. The good thing is that I have literally been thinking about this project all semester long and with every reading I have made mental connections to my own topic, so I feel like I am ready to bust out the final product! But I need to be less Angie-Like and not go overboard like I always do and just stick to the guidelines. I tend to make much more work for myself than I need if you haven’t noticed