Part 1:
Directions: Choose a technology you use with some regularity. I'm using the word "technology" broadly here, so you can consider hardware (the cell phone, the laptop, the fitbit) or software (an app, a social media platform) or entirely outside the computer sphere (say, a sewing machine or a cookbook). Reflect on how "our sense of humanity, individually and collectively, is potentially enhanced, extended, delimited, estranged, dispersed" (199) by/through/with this technology. Create a multimodal text that represents/shares your reflection.
I chose to look at Instagram and the ways in which it disseminates information.
Here is a link to my poster using Piktochart because the writing is super small in this view. Although I value that Instagram is a primarily visual communicative tool, it still prioritizes the alphabetic text in not only how users communicate with one another in the comments section, but also how they annotate their photos and archive their photos with hashtags. Instagram is a great tool because it allows people to stay connected and to view other's lives from an interesting perspective. In these ways it extends humanity in rich ways that are encouraging for composing in ways other than print and primarily written text. However, as stated previously, there is a connotation towards prioritizing the written over the visual in how that composition is understood (it's almost as though there is a "justification statement" for each photograph. In my multimodal response I've made a flowchart of how information is disseminated with Instagram as well as a list of pro's and con's that I feel the app contains. I use Instagram frequently and love the hybridity of the app, however, in looking from a macro-perspective and considering the reading's we've done thus far, there is a sense of "colonization" (Selfe and Hailwasher in Alexander and Rhodes) that occurs in the need to create a hybridity with the visual (meaning, they won't allow the visual to stand alone). I see this as potentially limiting to people wanting to interact visually who may not speak the same language.
Part 2:
In considering Jody Shipka's Toward a Composition Made Whole in reference to the technology i've chosen to analyze, I think a lot about hybridity and how Shipka might be more of an advocate for taking actual photos and developing them. Sure, Shipka is critical of what we mean when we say technology and that it doesn't always have to be digital, but she also makes it a point to emphasize that all communication and composing is inherently multimodal. Not only is it multimodal, but also Shipka attunes to sensory experiences in composing (how did something smell? how did it feel?). I think when reflecting on something like Instagram Shipka would be weary of the collaborative aspect missing from sharing pictures. We don't get to feel the waxy photographs in our hands, we don't get to have an actual conversation where the photographer explains the moment of the photograph. We don't get to hear the stories, we don't get a real sense of the emotion behind the photo. In a program like Instagram I think Shipka would find the whole experience very monomodal.
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Part 3:
Introduction: The introduction of Jody Shipka's Toward a Composition Made Whole discusses the past and current conversations and terms associated with multimodality. Shipka makes a point to caution her readers against viewing terms such as "technology" to only function alongside new media, encouraging us to reshape our perspective of place and our classroom and what we make revision as "technology" in looking more towards the semiotic features we inhabit within the classroom. As part of setting up her conceptual framework within the chapters to follow, Shipka seeks to begin to explore composing questions such as "how do we choose what to include? What to leave out? Who does the choosing? And based on what grounds?" (17).
Chapter 1 "Rethinking Composition/ Rethinking Process": To begin, Shipka returns to her discussion in the introduction concerning technology stating "a composition made whole requires us to be more mindful about our use of a term like technology" (21). In reflecting critically about the material, Shipka discusses technologies such as the light bulbs in the classroom, the books and seating and how we might be more attuned to how these objects factor into not only our ability to compose, but also how they contribute to our meaning making process. To expand upon this notion, Shipka also asks us to consider what it means for a composition to be "whole", stating "by asking students to examine the communicative process as a dynamic, embodied multimodal whole--one that both shapes and is shaped by the environment--studnets might come to see writing, reading, speaking, and ways of thinking and evaluating as 'a function of place, time, sex, age and many other elements of life' (Malstrom 1956 qtd in Shipka 26).
Chapter 2 "Partners in Action: On Mind, Materiality, and Mediation": To follow the previous chapter's discussion of asking students (and teachers) to reconceptualize composing and its relationship to "technology", Shipka begins to provide a theoretical framework grounded in the sociocultural and mediated action. Within this framework, Shipka attunes to "social and individual aspects of the composing processes without loosing sight of the wide variety of genres, sign systems, and technologies that composers routinely employ while creating texts" (40). Within chapter two we also are introduced to considerations of the body and how the physical and new mediational means "impacts or alters the body and in individuals relationship with his or her body" (51). In addition, chapter two also enourages us to reconfigure and reconceptualize cultural tools, questioning roles of who decides what cultural tools are used and which are not. In addition, there is also a strong connotation of communal practice in how our text are shaped by others and the institutions and environments in which we author.
Chapter 3 "A Framework for Action: Mediating Process Research": Chapter 3 deals primarily with the application of the framework Shipka presents within chapter 2. With important visual depictions within the chapter, we learn about Shipka's students process sketches and assignments in which they detail their composing process for their projects. What I found so interesting is that all of the students projects were radically different. From running around Walmart to composing on a Abercrombie tshirt, each student engaged with their composing process differently, reflecting critically on not only their struggles, but also the inherent effect their community had on their relationship to their project (in considering both other people as well as the materiality of the "technology" they incorporated). From there Shipka discusses semiotic remediation and the ways in which Muffie engaged with writing and the body in her project. What I found most interesting is that writing didn't make it into Muffie's final project, but rather served as a process activity that helped her revise and reconceptualize her final project (which was a collaborative dance performed in person). Although Muffie had a fear of writing, Shipka notes that Muffie used writing as "a way of tracking the relationship between what her classmates' "moods would be on paper versus what they did with their bodies" (70).
Chapter 4 "Making Things Fit in (Any Number of) New Ways": Chapter four focused on the rhetorical sensitivity and what it meant for students to be in control of their own choices within an assignment, stating "what is crucial is that students leave their courses exhibiting a more nuanced awareness of the various choices they make, or even fail to make, throughout the process of producing a text and to carefully consider the effect those choices might have on others" (85). With this, Shipka highlights how she turns to the sociocultural framework within chapter 2 to craft assignments in which students exhibit nuanced understandings of how cultural, historical, and technologically mediated practices shape their work (85). We learn within chapter 4 about three students projects and how they exhibit rhetorical sensitivity in the way they approach their projects (and the struggles the record along the way) in the mirror project, the power interpretations, and lastly, the lost and found assignment of the OCD diary. I really appreciated the reflection questions and objectives listed within the back of this chapter and plan to include them in some way when I teach 101 next.
Chapter 5 "Negotiating Rhetorical, Technological, and Methodological Difference": The last chapter within Shipka's book focused primarily on assessment and reflection. I thought it was interested that Shipka didn't really highlight rubrics or any "concrete" assignment techniques but rather encouraged having students articulate their rhetorical choices and composing process. In asking students to look back on their work, Shipka stresses that they articulate how they're meeting objectives or making particular rhetorical moves. I think this model serves to mitigate some of the "critical feedback" we give students and changes the dynamic of the assessment process in really thought-provoking and important ways. Shipka notes that while others have discussed multimodality and assessment with similar text, she focuses on the production and assessment of dissimilar texts (112). Moreover, Shipka argues predominantly for "the importance of requiring that students assume responsibility for describing, evaluating, and sharing with others the purposes and potentials of their work" (112). For me this is really important and practical for students and I appreciate Shipka's move with the SOGC's in asking students to not only reflect, but also be critical of themselves.
Conclusion "Realizing a Composition Made Whole": Shipka concludes by arguing that we need to expand our "disciplinary commitment to the theorizing, researching, and improvement of written discourse to include other representational systems and ways of making meaning" (131). Though she stresses this may come with resistance and will continue to be a daunting task, she advocates for doing so in that it better prepares students for the ways in which they will be asked to compose in the future as well as what we (as teachers) conceive what it truly means to compose. Shipka turns to Dunn and the misconception that asks students to compose beyond words is merely "play" and not as critical as written text, urging us to push back against this notion and construct assignments with our students that asks them to be critical and rhetorically sensitive about the ways in which they compose using, engage with, and understand technology. Lastly, Shipka highlights what is "academic writing" and encourages us to push against this notion, reconceptualizing and rethinking our understanding of composing and meaning making in an ever changing world.
Metadata tags: #Muffie, #semioticremediation, #balletslippers, #technology, #thebody
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Part 4:
Question for Jody Shipka:
Within our conversations with Jason Palmeri and Alexander and Rhodes we’ve talked a lot about reflections or justification papers accompanying multimodal projects. As I learned about your project within chapter 3 and more specifically your student Muffie’s project for your class, I see the writing was instrumental to the process, but didn’t actually show up in the final project. I think this is an interesting approach and I’d be curious to try something like this. Do you ever include reflections or justification statements asking students to explain the choices they made, is it ever a multimodal response?
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