Composition Theory: Multiliteracies

Reading

Eyman, D. (2015). Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Method, Practice. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Read online at links below. Physical copy on reserve at Woodruff Library.

• Introduction
• One: Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric
• Two: Digital Rhetoric: Theory

Writing

Live tweet.

Discussion lead.

Preparing

Pedagogical Probe 1 due in two weeks on February 23.

In Class

1. View (oldies). Think about how elements of these videos elaborate or exemplify Eyman’s claims about digital rhetoric and texts. What are some elements for critique?

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

A Vision of Students Today

2. Jing Activity

Develop a claim about a digital text or texts that you can inscribe and distribute via screencast. You might produce a video along the lines of the ones linked above, conduct a real time rhetorical analysis of a digital artifact, or take some other approach. Share your link from screencast.com in this google doc.

3. Discuss pedagogical probe assignment.

See connected resources.

• Assignment-sheet guidelines.
• Syllabus guidelines.
• First-year writing syllabus template. (and Emory first-year writing website)

4. Discuss readings.

Reading

Bitzer, L. (1968). The Rhetorical Situation. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 1(1), 1–14. (reserves link).

Anderson, D. (2008). The Low Bridge to High Benefits: Entry-Level Multimedia, Literacies, and Motivation. Computers and Composition, 25(1), 40–60. (reserves link)

Bean, J. C. (2011). Designing and Sequencing Assignments to Teach Undergraduate Research. In Engaging ideas: the professor’s guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom (pp. 224–263). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. (reserves link)

Gardner, T. (2008). Designing Writing Assignments. Urbana, Ill: National Council of Teachers of English. http://wac.colostate.edu/books/gardner/

• Chapter 3: Designing Writing Assignments
• Chapter 4: Defining New Tasks for Standard Writing Activities

Writing

Live tweet.

Discussion lead.

Preparing

Pedagogical Probe 1 is due in three weeks on February 23.

In Class

Screen writing and Celtx.

WeVideo and Multiliterate Welcome to Emory.

Captioning with YouTube.

Discussion.

Reading

Read these articles in the order they appear below to see how thinking about writing unfolded.

Freire, P. (2003). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum.

• Chapter 2 (reserves link)

Berlin, J. (1988). Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class. College English, 50(5), 477–94. (reserves link)

Russell, D. R. (1999). Activity Theory and Process Approaches: Writing (Power) in School and Society. In T. Kent (Ed.), Post-Process Theory: Beyond the Writing-Process Paradigm (1st edition, pp. 80–95). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. (reserves link)

Aull, L. (2015). Linguistic Attention in Rhetorical Genre Studies and First Year Writing. Composition Forum, (31). Retrieved from http://compositionforum.com/issue/31/linguistic-attention.php

Writing

Live tweet.

Discussion leadership.

Preparing

Sign up for next rounds of discussion leadership. Note that the next two rounds call for collaborative leadership.

In Class

Diigo, Storify, and Zotero.

What is a writing course?

Discussion.

 

Guest Speaker

Charlie Bennett. Mastermind of Lost in the Stacks. Topic: Podcasting.

Reading

Read these articles in the order they appear below to see how thinking about writing unfolded.

Flower, L., & Hayes, J. R. (1981). A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing. College Composition and Communication, 32(4), 365–387. (reserves link)

Bizzell, P. (1982). Cognition, Convention, and Certainty: What We Need to Know about Writing. PRE/TEXT, 3(3), 213–43. (reserves link)

Bruffee, K. A. (1984). Collaborative Learning and the “Conversation of Mankind.” College English, 46(7), 635–652. (reserves link)

Mlynarczyk, R. W. (2006). Personal and Academic Writing: Revisiting the Debate. Journal of Basic Writing, 25(1), 4–25. (reserves link)

Writing

Establish your WordPress site.

1. Register a domain at emorydomains.org. (Ask Fisher for coupon code.)
2. Create a subdomain for the class on your site from within the cPanel and install WordPress there. Title it something specific to our class, like “theory” or “multiliteracies” (e.g., multiliteracies.davidfisher.org).
3. Get an API key (basic plan) for the Akismet plugin and then activate it.
4. Sign up for a Gravatar and associate it with your principal email addresses. It’s helpful if your Gravatar is a photo of you, but not required.
5. Create an “About” page. On that page write a brief paragraph or two about yourself. Include an image of yourself on that page, possibly the one that you’re using with the Gravatar.
6. Email the URL of your WordPress site to me at d.d.fisher@emory.edu.

Email your Twitter handle to me, too.

Live tweet.

Discussion leadership.

Reading

Bedford/St. Martin’s – The Bedford Bibliography: History of Rhetoric and Composition. (n.d.). Retrieved December 27, 2015, from http://www.macmillanhighered.com/Catalog/static/bsm/bb/history.html

The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60-92. (emailed to class) (reserves link)

Writing/Thinking

Before class

• Think about how your current research interests might articulate with one or more elements of writing studies detailed in the brief history of rhetoric and composition.
• Develop a question about the multiliteracies article that you think might spur discussion.

In Class

Measuring Cell-Phone Electromagnetic Radiation.

1. Describe the resources employed for meaning making in each representation.
2. What, in particular, does one version make salient that the other does not? Or, how do the representations provide access to the activity in different ways?
3. How do the materials involved in the experiment provide clues about how they might be used?

Describing multliteracies. (exhibit)

• Describe this visual for someone who might not be able to see it.

Re-inscribing multiliteracies.

• Reconfigure the preceding visual in a way that might be more accessible to someone who can see it.

Sign up for initial discussion leadership.

Timeline development

Represent what your group views as one important strand in the development of rhetoric and composition studies by creating timeline that can be shared via the web:

1. Find a free tool that will enable you to show the development of the thread by representing both events and time spans. Probably the easiest to use is TimeToast. TikiToki isn’t bad, either.
2. Include at least three points and one span on your timeline. These need to be developed with a brief description of the event and what you see as its significance. You should also include a creative-commons licensed photo for at least one point and the span.
3. Develop a simple claim (thesis) about the ensemble of points and spans you’ve included. This claim will serve as the caption for the timeline when you link to it or embed it in a webpage.

Share the link to your timeline here. Caption it with your claim.