#multimodal text

My composition process of this piece was much as described above, perhaps with more confusion and less procrastination though. It was incredibly interesting trying to put my process into something other than just words. In fact, I cannot say that I have ever described my composition process at all, so this assignment forced me to thing through the steps I take when creating. This is not the first multimodal text I have made, but is the first that is not a story using an online hyperlink format.

I cannot say that I am happy with what I have created. It is not terrible, in my opinion, but I feel like my composition process is better explained orally rather than through text and images. I am a rather scatterbrained individual at times, which is why this matching incoherent process is better represented through verbal conversation than it is through steps and images.

I also created this using Microsoft Word because my computer does not have any other creation software and I did not have time to download one yet. In any case, I would have preferred to include audio, specifically audio to the link I pasted in the middle that leads to Markiplier’s Outlast play through that I usually put on in the background when I compose anything of merit. I felt incredibly limited by what I could put together on Word. I constantly tried editing things to try to make them the exact way I wanted them, only to be denied such artistic footing due to the construction of Word. For example, I had selected an image from Google to use as a background, but could not get it to sit behind everything else already present. Perhaps had I tried using PowerPoint, it would have worked, but Word seemed like a decent place to try out a multimodal text for the first week of class.

Regardless of the construction and outcome, the thought behind multimodal texts is intriguing, and I look forward to learning about them and composing more of my own throughout the following months.

WEEK TWO

Article One Points

Multimodal texts are not new, as seen through maps and other older mediums, but the availability with which one can make such a text is broader than it used to be. As a result, students, not typically from economically neglected households, come into the classroom with abundant knowledge of technology and how to make multimodal texts. Teachers in turn must adjust to the technological divide, as well as guide students to understand and use multimodal texts beyond just writing in order to encompass art, music, production, etc.

Metadata tags: Title=“NTCE Position Statement on Multimodal Literacies”/ Author=National Council of Teachers of English/ Length=5 Pages/ Publication Date= November 2005/ Keywords=NTCE, Multimodal, Multimedia, Multimodal Literacies, Digital Learning

Article Two Points

The definitions of the terms multimedia and multimodal are closely linked together, with the main difference involving the users of the term and their goals. Multimedia was first and is still heavily used in industry, as it is the final product that is most important, whereas multimodal exists primarily within the academic community due to the focus placed on getting to the product rather than finishing in itself. This can be seen through the academic focus on design rather than production because being able to produce the necessary aspects of a final product are valued more in academia than simply getting the product. 

Metadata tags: Title=“Contending with Terms: “Multimodal” and “Multimedia” in the Academic and Public Spheres”/ Author=Claire Lauer/ Length=20 Pages/ Publication Date=2009/ Keywords=Multimodal, Multimedia, Production, Composition, Media

Article Three Points

Composition classes have strayed away from the experimental, both due the professional constraints placed on students and to the bland, “prison” like architecture of modern classrooms. It is important to look back in history to when writing was less about proper grammar and more about doing things that have yet to be done. The main example used throughout the article is the Happenings, but the author makes it clear that simply redoing the same sort of Happenings is not constructive to rethinking composition. Rather thinking back to the freedom of creativity can put us back on the right track. 

Metadata Tags: Title=“The Still-Unbuilt Hacienda”/ Author=Geoffrey Sirc/ Length= 20 Pages/Publication Date=2002/ Keywords=Happenings, Composition, Architecture, Bartholomae, Petrosky, Modernism, Lutz

Article Four Points

Change is coming, or rather is here, as technology has brought us away from simply writing with a pencil and instead challenge us to use new forms of media in their intended ways and in ways that go against their original design. It is necessary to embrace and adapt to these changes, for departments labeled English are disappearing, either due to shifts in title, to pure composition or communication, or because of being unable to keep up with the modern way of writing. Circulation of texts and ideas is also critical to the survival of composition in classrooms, seeing as those outside of instruction write freely and often to an open public, but classes usually just ask for one audience member for a student to write to. Ultimately, change is necessary in this moment in order to ensure proper education of composition. 

Metadata Tags: Title=“Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key”/ Author: Kathleen Blake Yancey/ Length= 27 Pages/ Publication Date: Speech= March 25, 2004, Print=December 2004/ Keywords=CCCC Convention, Composition, Graduation Rates, Rhetoric, Media, Circulation

Article Five Points

Designs and designing are key to meaning making and designing includes reading, seeing, and listening in order to make meaning of an Available Design and give it context. The Redesigning phase of the meaning making process attempts to make something new, knowing that it cannot simply repeat the original design, nor can anything creative be truly individual and personal. In order to make meaning, regardless of the discipline and discourse, metalanguage acts as a dictionary and communication tool available to both instructors and students throughout the process of making. 

Metadata Tags: Title=From A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures”/ Author=The New London Group/ Length= 18 Pages/ Publication Date=1996/ Keywords=Multiliteracies, Meaning making, Available Designs, Designing, Redesigning, Metalanguage, Transitivity, Nominalization

Article Six Points

The visual side of education has long been in place, but only in relation to keeping students interested and bridging away from pure text to include things the students would see on a daily basis, such as a television. Visual components to instructional books asked students to engage with more than words, as they were likely to be required to do outside of school and in a professional world. Beyond that, visual argumentation is a rare and valuable tool for the classroom that does not, like believed, require less effort than a research paper and allows students to not only be creative, but also explore how to make a nonverbal argument. 

Metadata Tags: Title=“From Analysis to design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing”/ Author=Diana George/ Length= 22 Pages/ Publication Date=2002/ Keywords=Visual Communication, Visual Argumentation, Visual Literacy, NTCE, Composition