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Articles Conference Reviews |
2007D25VieD.25: Representing Writing Stuart Selber, “Institutional Identities And Academic Computing” Selber presented his project which builds on the 2000 CCC article, “Institutional Critique: A Rhetorical Methodology for Change” by James E. Porter, Patricia Sullivan, Stuart Blythe, Jeffrey T. Grabill, and Libby Miles. Selber’s work here draws on postmodern mapping and boundary interrogation. He also provided a handout of three boundary interrogations of academic computing at Penn State. He looks at the institutional value of projects and the relationships between multimedia projects and support. He finds that (1) original multimedia work (composing) is valued but (2) remix production to create new content from older work is not valued or supported. Examples of projects that are not institutionally supported at Penn are Napster, wikis, and a redesign of a course to redesign a website without creating new text. Selber ends by noting that pedagogical support tends to reflect institutional values, such as a school’s approach to authorial value. However, he argues, one can rely on institutional support while at the same time resisting particular practices. Johndan Johnson-Eilola, “Unbound: Text In The Age Of Artifacts, Gizmos, And Spimes” (Title Was Changed Since The Program Was Put Together) As always, Johnson-Eilola’s work is visually intriguing and his PowerPoint presentation offered visuals that expanded on the presentation he gave. He begins by noting that “our work with text is rickety and not moving very fast”—most of our responses to text are manually generated and the majority of readers don’t communicate with the authors that they are responding to. Our first step toward alleviating this was intertextuality; next was the Internet. Yet the bulk of our writing is still disconnected from a larger network. Johnson-Eilola poses a question at this point: What percentage of texts that we work with on a daily basis support interconnection and, even if they do, do we actually interconnect? He answers his own question—no. Johnson-Eilola then moves on to the artifacts, gizmos, and spimes portion of his talk, connecting these to the larger idea of interconnectivity. He references many different projects as examples of interconnectivity:
In closing, Johnson-Eilola asks, “What do texts as spimes allow?” They allow extensive feedback on how texts are used. They allow constant usability tests. They offer the ability to see connections between the text and other media. They allow for constant surveillance as well (here Johnson-Eilola describes RFID-embedded and scannable passports). In closing, these technologies often offer exciting potential and also bring up tricky ethical issues. Kate Latterell, “Loop, Sample, Remix: Identities In Composition” Latterell notes that we tend to think about writers having stable, coherent identities. As teachers, we try to help writers achieve clarity, purpose, audience, and so on. But now we accept the shifting identities of writers and as a consequence, our view of writing has also shifted. There is a major push in first year comp to ask students to include images and audio in their writing. We tend to use visuals for image analysis as way for “handling” the students who don’t “get” writing. These visual prompts tend to be seen as “dumbed down language.” Teachers who use the visual tend to use it in analysis. But in our multimedia world, students are already savvy readers of remix culture. Latterell references the Pew Internet and American Life project (2005) that paints a picture of the content creation habits of teens: Some 57% of American teens are already media creators (not readers), which amounts to about 12 million youth. Youth create blogs, post art, create web pages, and remix music and videos. Latterell notes some of the advantages of teaching remix. As Henry Jenkins has noted, “most of the classics we teach are themselves … sampl(ed) and remix(ed).” Remixing is participatory, fun, clever, and it helps students negotiate the larger forces that influence their senses of identity. Perhaps most importantly, it helps move us past the analysis model. Latterell ends by highlighting some of the remix materials that can be used in the classroom: Fanfiction, Japanese manga, “adbusting,” photoshopping, anime and anime music videos, My Pop Studio (http://www.mypopstudio.com). She offers two remix assignments, “Creating an identi-kit” and “Designing a roadside attraction.” In the former, students identify in a visual collage the cultural markers of identity that mark them and reappropriate them. In the latter, students are asked to investigate local histories and redeploy and transform the histories into popular amusement. Comments? |