Sorry this wasn’t posted clearly before! I put it in the wrong section, not on its own page!!! Here are my questions for my group:
Do you think my organization is effective? Should I move things around? Are there areas I should delete and expand on others? Should I spend more time giving examples of ways to use remixing in the classroom? I didn’t want it just to be an information dup, I wanted to spend some time arguing for its importance as well as setting up why this is important in the first place. I’m at 3016 words and there’s a limit of 3000, so I had to stop writing. Should I expand my conclusion or is it ok? What do you think about the intro? Are there places where I’m too repetitive? Where are my awkward areas? Anything not make sense? I look forward to any and all questions/comments J Thanks so much!!!
Here is my paper:
Remixing and Rethinking with Multimedia Projects in the English Classroom
The past few decades have seen more than their fair share of changes within the realm of composition pedagogy, but never before have these changes been as fast-paced and necessary as now, in the 21st century. With the expansion of what it means to be literate, students today are expected to be able to compose in more than just the typical words-in-a-row essay. Now, they are expected to be able to navigate between reading, writing, visual imagery, sound compositions, and keep up with other technological advances as they occur. There is no longer one way for students to be considered literate and educators must begin to change the way they teach in order to meet the needs of today’s students and societal concerns. One of the best ways for teachers to help students of the 21st century become literate and compose in ways that are meaningful to their lives is through using remixing in the classroom. The use of remixing (as a form of visual and digital literacy) in the secondary English classroom can aid students in developing a deeper, more critical understanding of a text, increase motivation, build a strong sense of community, and enable students to engage in creative and reflective ways of learning that will help them become more successful writers both now and in the future.
As The New London Group has pointed out, “the very nature of language learning has changed” (64). Because of these transformations, it has never been more important than now to define what it means to be literate in this ever-expansive, socially dynamic world. Unfortunately, many educators still feel as though teaching the typical words-in-a-row text are all they need to focus on for students’ education, but this is no longer the case. In order to keep up with the advances being made in society and to make sure our students’ learning remains relevant to their lives, schools must begin to redefine the term literacy in a manner that suits the changing face of schools, businesses, and communication the world over. For the purpose of this text, the working definition of literacy we will use will go something like this:
In order to be considered literate in today’s society, students must be able to
read, understand, analyze, think critically about, discuss, and compose within a multitude of ways, including, but not limited to, traditional texts, visual images, oral/sound compositions, digital technologies, and web-based programs such as wikis, podcasts, hyperlinks, and more.
Although this is not a perfect or all-encompassing definition of literacy, it begins to broach the subject and importance of having students compose within a multitude of ways, rather than exclusively in reading and writing like curriculums of the past have focused on. Students who do not know how to navigate the World Wide Web and retrieve information from its pages will be less likely to obtain a job compared to someone who is skilled in this area. As Cynthia Selfe has pointed out in a chapter of Writing New Media, “Evidence of this fact is clear if we examine the increasing importance—for many citizens in our country and around the world—of being able to access and act on information presented online in new media texts as well as to produce such texts themselves” (Wysocki et al. 55). The very nature of texts and what it means to be literate is changing, and we need to make sure students are ready to meet these challenges head-on with authentic, hands-on learning experiences with new media texts.
One of the best ways to bring new media texts into the classroom is through remixing, or multimedia projects. These multimedia remixes can be defined as any project that allows students to combine two or more of the following: text, images, graphics, sounds, and digital components. They can be made of paper-based materials such as books, light-based materials such as slide shows, audio-based clips such as podcasts, moving-based images such as TV shows, and digitally-based projects such as a computer-created video on a program like iMovie (Green 2-3). Timothy Green and Abbie Brown state that “Student-produced multimedia projects can help develop visual and media literacy skills by providing students with opportunities to examine the component parts of multimedia and the ways in which each of the parts are used to create elaborate and evocative presentation” (2). Through the complex examination and analysis of these multiple genres, students will begin to understand more deeply the intricacies of the composition process.
When students compose in the traditional words-in-a-row format they tend to take the writing process for granted and go on “auto pilot.” They are so used to writing in the exact same, formulaic manner that they’ve been writing in since elementary school that typically get an assignment and just start writing with little to no thought about their purpose, audience, message, and voice. But when composing through remixing/multimedia texts, students are no longer permitted to be passive writers, they must learn how to begin making active decisions and how to choose the best genre to convey their message. This could be in the form of a print brochure, an informative commercial for the public, a PowerPoint presentation for a company, a flash poem, etc. Remixing is so incredibly powerful because it forces students to analyze the genres they could possibly use to meet the requirements of the assignment and make decisions about how best to convey the content and message of their project to their specific audience. Remixing makes students critical thinkers and will help them define the ultimate purpose behind their project and create goals for their research and compositional process, goals that will be meaningful to them, and goals they can work toward with a strong sense of agency.
In classrooms of the 21st century, the research essay is no longer the most beneficial way to present materials studied. Research essays are becoming more and more outdated on a daily basis. With students and other large corporations around the globe taking advantage of composing through emails, text messaging, blogs, wikis, social networking sites, and more, it is imperative that English educators begin to transform the way they teach the English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum. In “Beyond Technology for Technology’s Sake” the authors state that there is a monumental shift from “traditional literacy to twenty-first century multiliteracies” which “have impacted the nature of texts, as well as the way people use and interact with texts” (87). In order to keep student learning relevant, teachers must help students learn how to analyze all of these digital and visual genres and compose within multiple media forms so that students can begin to determine for themselves the best methods to use when conveying specific information. This constant analysis of the writing process will help students learn when to write in one genre versus another, and to actively apply this knowledge in other areas of their writing lives as well.
As Simkins et al. says, “Audience is a key word. The point of making a multimedia presentation is to communicate a message to an audience” (12). Allowing students to choose the best method for conveying their message will increase their sense of agency over the task at hand and increase motivation for them to choose topics that are not only important to them, but which also allow them to work with the types of media they enjoy composing within. In his text “Media Convergence: Creating Content, Questioning Relationships” Johnathan Alexander points out that there are “visual and textual modes of meaning making,” and in this “media convergence,” one has the power and potential to “create complex and rich sites of meaning” (2). Students have the potential to do so many new and exciting things with the many forms of technology out there, that ELA teachers would be doing their students a huge disservice by ignoring the importance of this media convergence. Right now, students willingly spend hours creating homemade YouTube videos and parodies on their own time with a fair amount of ease and a tremendous amount of pleasure. These videos may appear to be “amateur,” but if looked at closely, have a clear purpose and audience. Making these videos forces the creators to make conscious decisions about the things they choose to include in their final production. Alexander talks about the “mixing and matching” of media to produce these complex and incredibly rich and sophisticated texts (2), a practice that can no longer be ignored in the ELA classroom. Already a popular practice amongst teens and students, it would be silly to ignore remixing’s potential in the writing classroom.
In this instance, remixing is being used as a means of taking something that has been read and discussed in class and creating something unique, something that has been fashioned out of new or pre-existing materials. Like mash-ups on YouTube, performances from the perspective of another character, or flash poetry based on a novel, students can be using technology as a means of composition, as a means of displaying what they have learned in one context and transforming that into another context through metacognition, or informed decision-making. As Lawrence Lessig said in his book Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in a Hybrid Economy, “For anyone who has lived in our era, a mix of images and sounds makes its point far more powerfully than any eight-hundred word essay in the New York Times could” (74). Remixing is so powerful because it makes use of images, words, sounds, and any other medium it needs, to make a significant impact on its audience. Through conscious decision-making skills, students can gain agency over their works and become “producers and participants” of a culture rather than just consumers of the texts teachers give them. Remixing is NOT taking the original text and just redoing the exact same script in a new medium, it is the making of something new through conscious decisions throughout the creative process. Students must think of the best medium in which to portray their message, their purpose must be clear and concise, they must have full agency over their work, and they must have a strong sense of audience awareness. By bringing remixing into the classroom, teachers will be opening up the door for student success through digital literacy.
One of the best things about multimedia projects like remixing is that they easily lend themselves to becoming collaborative projects, and it is well known that collaboration increases student motivation and excitement to learn and produce great work in the ELA classroom. Authors Green and Brown point out that not only is collaboration exciting for students, but professional multimedia projects are also collaborative and demand “the skills and talents of a number of people working together for a common goal” (22). They suggest that when putting students in groups, every individual is given a role to perform (23). Some of these roles can be production manager, graphic artist, designer, talent director, etc. They also suggest that students performing each role have the opportunity to workshop with members of other groups who are performing the same role. This will allow them time to get tips from the teacher, talk to others who may be experiencing similar concerns, and generate ideas for how to handle their assigned task (23). Workshoping amongst others can help alleviate some of the pressure group members may be feeling and also help generate more creativity in the classroom.
Not only will the inclusion of remixing in the classroom allow students to work together in collaborative ways, it will also make conscious the decisions they will have to make when creating their projects. When teaching students how to remix and create this new patchwork collage from previous ideas and concepts, teachers need to make the students’ thought process visible so everyone begins to understand the thoughts and experiences that inform their current decision-making. In their book, Metacognition, Strategy Use, and Instruction, authors Waters and Schneider say that educators need to teach students how to think about the writing process, make conscious decisions about genre, audience, and purpose, and decide how and when to apply their knowledge. Along with that, they need to learn how to self-monitor their understanding and make sure their writing is meeting all the goals they set out to accomplish (228). At its most basic level, metacognition can be defined as “1) knowledge about cognition, or thinking, and 2) deliberate, conscious regulation and control of cognitive activity, which demands self-regulation (227).
Metacognition is vital to the teaching of remixing in the classroom because digital literacy will be a relatively new educational genre for many students and they need to begin thinking about the creative process as they go through it. Metacognition will help students be more conscious about their work from the time they get their assignment and plan it out, all the way to the moment they revise it and turn it in. Instructing students in such a way that allows them to think about their process can lead to higher quality work and production (229). Waters and Schneider say that metacognitive activities are the things that separate strong writers from struggling writers. Strong writers think about their process and what works for them so they can continue to monitor and evaluate their own work (230-231). Metacognition in creating a remixed project will help students create goals and reflect on their practices until those goals are met. Some of the things teachers can do to increase metacognition in the remixing classroom is to first set clear goals for a project, give students strategies to use when writing and creating these pieces, model the strategies suggested, give students the chance to practice those strategies, offer feedback on how they are doing, and continuously monitor and support students (240-241). When used in the classroom, metacognitive activities have the ability to strengthen student writing in a multitude of ways, and is essential when teaching remixing.
Although it may not be obvious to some, remixing is writing and is even more complex than the typical words-in-a-row essay. The remixing process is a rather lengthy one, but one that pays off in many ways. It typically (but not always) goes from brainstorming, to researching, to planning, to storyboarding, to drafting/scene writing, to revising until “ready,” and then into the production phase, which has its own editing process. Yes, it is more work and more challenging, yet at the same time, it increases student’s critical thinking through metacognition and typically has the full interest of the students (Herrington et al 101). Carolyn Miller Handler calls this type of excitement over learning the “Lean Back Versus Lean Forward Effect” (57). Passive learning and entertainment is when students can just lean back, relax, and things come to them, while active learning and entertainment has them leaning forward, engaged, and excited for what is coming next because they have choice and control over what is happening (57). Giving students this agency over their work in a nontraditional manner will help students write in creative and meaningful ways.
Incorporating remixing and other forms of multimodal projects in the classroom doesn’t have to be hard, stressful, or inconvenient. In fact, using technology in the classroom often times compliments the curriculum, like reading challenging and complex texts and composing and engaging in all aspects of the writing process (Borsheim 88). Starting out, teachers can ask students to simply transform their traditional research paper into a new medium. One school that does this is the J. Graham Brown School in Louisville, Kentucky. Students at this school know that in order to graduate they must complete a senior project that is presented to a panel of judges from the neighboring community. These projects are initiated through student’s personal curiosity to learn more about a topic of interest to them. They spend all year reading about it, researching it, interviewing people, writing, revising, and finding the most successful modes in which to present their information (109). One student presented his final project, “Splashing Through Still Waters: The Crippling of Zambia as a result of AIDS and Hydrologic Poverty,” to the Senior Board Panel through a combination of audio, video, and a PowerPoint presentation (108). These presentations not only meet state and national standards for reading and writing curriculums, but they do so in real-world, meaningful ways (107) and show the community how students can present what they have learned in new ways and demonstrate not only knowledge of that material, but also how they can apply it to life (109). Several drafts of the paper are collected throughout the year, workshops are offered on numerous topics in the composition process (both written and digital), and individual conferences between teacher and student happen on a weekly basis (111). These students are highly motivated and their work is self-directed, just like it would be in the working world.
Students at the Brown school are taught valuable lessons about what it means to be an active and participating member of society, while also learning skills important to the ELA classroom (and metacognition) such as how to develop ideas, audience awareness, voice, purpose, message, sentence structure, organization, and more (121). It would be difficult for even the most anti-remixing/multimodal/technology educators to deny the significance of what is happening at Brown and other schools across the world. But such an in-depth and time-consuming project may not for everyone. There are plenty of other ways for teachers to start integrating remixing into the classroom in more manageable ways. Teachers can also help students develop podcasts (for free) through websites such as PodBean and iTunes. Here, students can learn about the importance of aurality and how the voice is a powerful compositional tool. They can create movie trailers from the perspective of a different character, one other than the protagonist. Students can create flash poems from themes they gathered in their latest novel. Public Service Addresses can be filmed in groups; brochures can be created, printed, and distributed to the school and community. The list of meaningful projects that can come from using remixing and multimedia projects in the classroom seems almost endless, and it can be if teachers remain open to the possibilities technology brings into our classrooms and our literate lives.
Even though many schools are hesitant to change their curriculums due to its time consuming nature, today’s youth are “increasingly inattentive and disinterested in school” because what they are learning is not relevant to their lives outside of the classroom (Alvermann 50). Unless teachers and educational systems begin to meet the needs of the 21st century student and make learning relevant to their student’s lives and the advances happening in society, they will only serve to homogenize our youth and hold back the potential of students everywhere. Remixing and multimedia projects are essential to the ELA classroom and should be incorporated in any and every way possible in order to make the future as bright as possible for the youth of today and the promise of tomorrow.
Hey Angie,
Interesting stuff here! I think I more clearly understand the concept of remixing after reading this than I did when reading some of the articles for class, so thank you. You clearly lay out why remixing is a good way to expand students literacies in the writing classroom, which is insightful. In my comments, I want to hit on the things that you mentioned above that were concerning you.
ORGANIZATION –
1) I think that your conclusion might work well as your introduction…? It seems like you worked toward what you wanted to say and finally nailed it at the end. Even if you don’t use the whole thing as your intro, you might think about working in some of the ideas from your conclusion into your intro. Your intro doesn’t really highlight the problems with using the traditional essay, which is something you mention in throughout the paper, so I think that’s something you might want to incorporate.
2) I wonder about how things would look if you moved the section about the problems with just using a traditional essay in the classroom up to more the beginning of the essay – it might make your argument more cohesive to start out with, “Hey, look, we have a problem here…we’re using the wrong kind of literacy in the classroom.” And to then go into details about what remixing is and how it works.
3) One of the paragraphs that hits on the core purpose of remixing comes late in the essay. How would things work if you moved the paragraph that starts with, “Although it may not be obvious to some, remixing is writing…” up to more of the beginning…like not long after you talk about the problems with the status quo English instruction?
4) To summarize my thoughts on organization, I would think about starting with your conclusion, discuss the problems with current instruction, move into highlighting the advantages of using remixing, and end with some practical ways that teachers are currently using remixing. I don’t know…just some ideas to think about.
ELABORATION – The paragraph that starts with, “When students compose in the traditional words-in-a-row format…” Has a ton of great ideas in it, so you might think about breaking it apart a bit and elaborating on the things you highlight (like the problem with using traditional essays and the advantages of using remixing).
DELETION – I think your intro might be a place where you can pare down a little…it feels like you take a while to get to the point you want to make. I really think you might be able to use some of the great stuff from your conclusion to lead into your topic in your intro. Also, the two paragraphs immediately following your intro might not be super necessary. It feels like you might be able to cut these down and merge them with the meat of your paper – highlighting the problems with using the traditional essay and the advantages of remixing.
Hope this gives you at least some new ideas! You have my phone number – give me a call if you want to chat or have questions about any of my comments.
Thanks for letting me read this and give you my feedback! Your questions were really helpful in guiding my reading and comments, so thanks for making it easy
Hey Angie… just checking out everyone’s projects so I thought I’d comment on yours even though I’m not in your “official peer group”
This essay is really cool. I think remixing is really important and fun… and I like how you present it. Generally speaking, I think it’s organized pretty well and you provide a nice balance of argument/examples. Here’s a few notes/suggestions I thought about while I was reading it:
“advances being made in society” seems kind of vague and maybe over-reaching. Maybe something like “converging media platforms” or “advances in how we communicate/represent.” “advances in society” just seems to include too much and begs the question… ‘what do you mean by that?” You say it again at the end too. Consider re-wording that.
You do a good job of defining literacy, but maybe you want to move the paragraph where you talk about how remixing is writing too, up a bit. It seems to be important to your argument, but comes up late in the essay. Before I even got to it, I was thinking, “She should really re-define “writing” like she does “literacy.” Then I finally got to it towards the end.
“In classrooms of the 21st century” … that sounds a little odd to me.
“It is well known that collaboration increases student motivation”… Be careful there. Stating that something is “well known” can be problematic. Seems like there should be something supporting the claim that it’s well known… like a list of works/scholars that support that claim.
Your conclusion is really good, but I question the “in any and every way possible.” Seems to suggest that the mere existence of these projects are inherently valuable, even without careful consideration of how they are planned or organized. I guess I’m thinking along the lines of “incorporating technology into the classroom is always good.” That’s not necessarily true if it isn’t used to enhance the learning. “In any and every way possible,” is reminiscent of this kind of blanket-statement.
Overall though… really good work. It’s eloquently written, informative and engaging.
Angie,
A few things here. First i really like your idea here, i think that if society were more open to thinking of digital technology as more valid way of writing students would not struggle so much to be successful in school, but my ideas about overhauling the educational system is for another day. One thing that I feel you need to do is give a def of remixing very early on in your essay. You do it a bit about half way through but it is not enough for me to know (if i didnt) what that means. you need to really give that to the reader because i think a lot will get that image of music and mixing, which is not bad, but not totally what you are talking about here. One question I have is that assumption that all students have knowledge of technology and i know from experience they dont, not even here. I think that issue of words in a row is valid but also can be used in remixing as well, but again you have to define that for the reader. What you say about it allowing or forcing them to think more is good too becaseu they then are thinking about process, audience, and so forth. But i think you can also do that with genres that are not technology based either. I think your point is that the way that academic writing is going is getting away from the way that papers have looked for years, and that is a good point to make. you have a lot to back up what you say and that is good too. One issue that you cant address here, and keeps coming up becasue it just does is how to use this and include it in how we test students. Im going back to the K-12 issue here. I know you are not just talking about doing this in college, i am going to guess this is for middle and HS teachers also, even more so.
THANK YOU SOOO MUCH!!!! All of your suggestions were incredibly helpful. I moved a lot of stuff around and have been working on it all day. I’m finally happy with my organization and think the message is much clearer now.
You guys rock!!! Dave especially since he didn’t *have* to help