Wow! What a great class session on Wednesday! We took the full three hours in discussing our topics, ideas, and articulating our concerns pertaining to our potential topics for our papers. I went first in our discussion of topics, so I didn't really get as much feedback, but I'm totally ok with that because I feel like I had a lot to learn and think about based on what other people were proposing for their papers.
For my paper, I want to write about the role of technology in the classroom. Specifically, I'm interested in T.V. Reed's discussion of "integrating" vs. "using" and what that looks like for both the student and the teacher as it applies to multimodal composing in the composition classroom.
On the teacher end, I want to talk about how technology is essential in its ability to "bridge the gap" between platforms of composing that students are already using outside of the classroom into composing within. As teachers, I believe that incorporating a multimodal pedagogy which "uses" multimedia and multimodal teaching strategies shows students ways that you are composing as a teacher as well as a means to incorporate diverse learning styles. On the student end, being able to see teachers "integrate" technology and multimodal projects into a sequence of assignments can help students understand technologies relevance, and how literacies and composing doesn't necessarily mean just words.
During our round table discussion, Lauren mentioned that I should consider the ideas stressed in your "Slow Composition" colloquium presentation a few weeks ago. I think this was a valuable suggestion as it is important to stress that composing multimodal projects takes time in order to do them well. I think I can incorporate this into the discussion of how "using" and "integrating" are very different in that integrating is much more mindful then simply using technology.
Other sources I'd like to consult are Diana George, Kathleen Blake Yancey, Pam Takayoshi, Gail Hawisher, Cynthia Selfe, and the book by Adam Banks that Pierre and I will be presenting on in our class during week 12.
I really believe that technology belongs in the composition classroom. More specifically, I argue for the inclusion of multimodal pedagogy and composing as a means for "bridging the gap" and helping students to compose in ways that will help prepare them for life outside of the classroom. I believe that the traditionally written composition is still important, and I don't mean to suggest that we need to move away from that entirely. Rather, I want to discuss how using multimodal pedagogy and projects can help us become more metacognitive in our writing process, and how these projects and exercises rooted in technology can challenge us to compose and think critically in ways that we may be doing already, however, within the discursive space of the classroom, we're showing students that such platforms are not so separate from other facets of their lives.
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Sorry if that's not well articulated at this point. Do you think I'm biting off more then I can chew? During class a few students suggested that I might want to focus on technology and the student or technology and the teacher. I think it's important to show how it can impact both, and how through such pedagogy, one can influence the other. However, if you think it's too much for a seminar paper, I'm down with it. I don't want this to be too much of a continuation or redundancy of my thesis, but I'm hoping to incorporate this paper into my dissertation in some shape or form, so any feedback or suggestions are very helpful!
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