These quotes, taken together, help to establish my original interest in new media and experimental, multimodal writing as part of the process of transforming first-year writing at WMU.
I find the quote from McLuhan fascinating because, although he made this statement in 1958, it shows an attention to the fact that one cannot produce texts using different media without understanding the affordances of those media as a complete re-working of relationships.
The quote from Kress is important to me because it adds the component of choice—the idea that it is the activity of choosing from among the available tools that allows for more complex kinds of knowledge-creation. |
When Kress's words
are combined with Wysocki's words, we have a concept of "new
media" that includes not just the use of digital and non-digital
tools to compose, but a focus on the importance of "highlighting"
the range of available material choices, and making those choices
in a way that reflects an understanding of interdependence.
A CHAT-based remapping of rhetorical activity creates a space where these quotes (and the tree-story I am about to relate) can be considered in connection with the kinds of research enacted in the other texts in this collection. Together, this combination of perspectives helps me to understand how research that encourages students to analyze (and follow) complex rhetorical trajectories might become the foundation of first-year writing.
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