DH presentation post critique

I really enjoyed the opportunity to do critique with Lacy and Mark. Both were exceptionally professional in their feedback and I feel as though they had valuable suggestions and criticisms regarding my initial presentation. Lacy liked that I had a humanist focus throughout my presentation, continually referring to the question of what does it mean to be human, and personalizing it with my research project of defining 21st century literacies. Lacy also asked how I might include digital humanities scholars in that conversation, which I thought was very helpful (my project is very comp/rhet focused, so I think that's an excellent addition to discuss how this weaves into conversations we see in DH). Lacy also really appreciated that I referred to technology as "assistive" and not dominant. She also asked me "how would incorporating the language of digital technology affect the academic language?" Which I thought was an excellent question. Considering that my project deals with SMS platforms and how such vernacular might have validity in composition classrooms, especially for first-generation and minority students, it's important to discuss the rhetorical implications for those two groups of people. Mark agreed with this focus as well and it is probably the biggest revision I will have in moving forward with this presentation.

Mark's comments were also very valuable in both praise and suggestion. Like Lacy, Mark liked that I continually made references to my own project throughout my conversation, embedding definitions of DH and what may be at stake with personalization as it pertains to my own project. He thought I had a really sound definition of what DH is, noting that my continual referral to keeping it "human centered" mirrored nicely with placing the word "human" on the top of the slide as well as bolding it so it stood out compared to the other key words. Mark asked a very important question, "why first-generation and minority students alongside one another?" While I don't have an answer at this point, I think it's an important notion to consider. This project started out as a seminar paper for Kristin's course where she recommended I look at how SMS platforms may help to "bridge the gap"  in literacies in and outside of the composition classroom for first-generation and minority students. To address this, I will return to Kathleen Blake Yancey's article "Made not only in Words: Composition in a New Key" during my presentation to help frame why bridging the gap between these notions of rhetoric and access are important. I think they have sound ties to DH in that students are accessing these platforms outside of the classroom, making and creating digital ways of communicating. This speaks to the concept that there is no longer just "researchers making things for other researchers". In understanding that what it means to compose in the 21st century is largely expanded to address visual, auditory, and other ways of making meaning, I return to rhetoric and different means of discourse. I'll talk about it more Monday, but I'm really really glad Mark brought this to my attention. Mark also noted that he liked the natural pauses I was taking between sections of my presentation. Although they weren't deliberate, Mark noted that they allowed the audience to have a nice transition between important ideas, giving emphasis to transition and also focus of important concepts. Mark also liked my discussion of design features and keep things human central (as it refers to SMS spaces and also universal access and end-users). In addition, Mark also asked how my project would be sensitive to regional differences, which is something I hope to work out as I fine-comb my methods portion of my project as I move forward.

As far as the visual presentation on my prezi, I didn't make any text changes because 1) we were only allowed to work with six words so I felt as though the words I had currently chosen couldn't be replaced 2) Most of the feedback was on the explanations not the prezi slides themselves. The changes I did make were largely influenced by Mark's presentation and how he considered visual representations of content. I chose to include an image with each slide as an additional point that I could reference during my presentation. I subbed a picture out, and then added images where I felt I could expand upon particular ideas. Here are the revised slides: