blogging readings

After reading the selections from Blogging for Dummies, I feel compelled to state for the benefit of Las Cruces Public Schools, which claims (to) the (couldn't figure out how to make strike-throughs) right to monitor my computer activity, that I am blogging as a requirement of an NMSU class, Media Theory English 543.

Okay, what struck me the most from these readings were the expectations that bloggers will display ethos and support their arguments stylistically with a sense of humor. In terms of ethos, I was surprised how very like the unofficial journalistic code of ethics are the expectations of blogging ethos. I say unofficial because journalists do not swear to anything but are loosely expected to adhere to tenets of fairness, truth, accuracy, impartiality. Just as journalists rely on attribution to avoid getting into legal trouble, bloggers are expected to cite their sources through links, real or metaphorical, in order to avoid unethical appropriation of others' work. Unlike journalists, though, bloggers are expected to correct their errors in such a way that rectifies the error and demonstrates and preserves the trail of the error in the same "space" that it occurred. Print journalists "clarify" their misstatements in buried spaces on inside pages. Another difference between journalism and blogging is the amount of factual self-policing that bloggers do. In my experience as a print journalist, news articles were reviewed for conventions (spelling and grammar) and "journalistic style" (summary lead, continuity, attribution etc.) but rarely for accuracy.

The blogging glossary best demonstrated a blogging sense of humor -- wry, mocking, witty and well-informed. And I never would have guessed that the blogosphere has created an entire "new" or hybridized (such as "blogorrhea") language of its own.

Blog mates, can you explain to me what an RSS is? How does one "syndicate" WEB content?

blog glossary and other stuff

I loved the blog glossary, especially, as you allude to, Jen B., the barking moonbats. I have a friend who got sucked into responding to a troll who writes for the LC Sun-News as a guest columnist but who apparently is a full-time blogger. I sent my friend the definition of troll, which suits him so perfectly in so many ways.

Okay, so this posting is not especially scholarly, but I want to try to keep in touch with everyone.
Judy

new media

As I read these articles, I kept returning to Aristotle's definition of rhetoric: "the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion." Indeed, Kress and Van Leeuwen seem to recall Aristotle when they state: "discourses appear in very many modes...[A]ll the semiotic modes which are available as means of realization in a particular culture are drawn on in that culture as means of the articulation of discourses." Thus, my definition of New Media would be something such as "New Media is the faculty of discovering and using in any particular case all the available semiotic modes and appropriate media to create meaning through signs or ideography, ideally to facilitate discourse."

Blogmates, what do you think about having to read Kress and Van Leeuwen upside down? Interesting modality. I loved the Sorapure article as a testament to the effectiveness of multimedia in either teaching or conveying meaning.

Week two response

I found the least theoretical and, thus, most potentially relevant of these four articles to be "Writing with Video" by Lovett, et al. "Least theoretical," however, does not translate directly to most relevant professionally because of the limitations of funding and technology access. Teaching unmotivated "retrieval" (failed) freshmen for the first time in my career, I can see tremendous potential application of the concepts and practices outlined in this article. These students, having quite low reading levels, have a natural disinclination to commit their poor writing skills and damaged egos to the written page yet they are rather adept at manipulating various technologies, such as texting devices, the internet, and MP3 players. They also have a strong awareness of social issues that affect them. Given access to the technology, I would happily design similar assignments for these students with a fair expectation of their success, or at least ability to complete the assignments with some competence.

Having taught broadcast journalism, I know how powerfully engaging are the camcorder and editing deck. I never experienced the students' enthusiasm for writing that this article describes, possibly because broadcast journalism is so product-driven. In a course such as Writing with Video, I predict the results would be different.

Having said all this, however, I still believe that in an indirect way, this article is still more relevant professionally to me than the other three. Even without the advantage of the advanced technology in a lab environment, modifications of some of these ideas could be implemented in various ways. For instance, my retrieval students are working on an argument about a social issue, in which they must interview three primary sources and produce a letter to an authentic audience to attempt to effect change. Using Kress's terms, these students will be engaging in discourse, design, production, and distribution. Only the medium of production will differ from the visual argument described in this chapter. In short I think that on a practical level, we must look for the most engaging way to achieve similar results, given the resources we have. In a comment that could apply to teachers as designers as well as other designers of communication, Kress notes that what we need to consider is what is the design that best meets requirements of the social and cultural environment, with these demands for communication of these materials, for that audience, with these resources, and "these interests of mine" (as quoted in Wysocki 2 ).

Although I found the Kress and Leeuewen article incredibly tedious, their model of close "reading" of the children's bedroom design demonstrates that one may read anything for meaning. I may add something similar to my visual rhetoric/media literacy units.
I appreciated Wysocki's clarifying notes on the term "affordances," which I had interpreted as possibly connotations or peripheral meanings while reading Kress. As an educator whose autonomy is threatened by increasingly more prescriptive dictums on teaching, I also was struck by Kress's statement "...when design and production separate, design becomes a means for controlling the action of others, the potential for a unity between discourse, design and production diminishes, and there is no longer room for the 'producers' to make the design 'their own', to add their own accent" (9). I suppose if push came to shove as a result of NCLB and my school's "failing" status, I could refer critics to this article.

Group partners, what do you think about Wysocki's assertions (roughly paraphrased) that Kress's usage of dichotomies (writing/page, image/screen) is incompatible with the concept of multi-modalities and, essentially, perpetuates the us/them, male/female, etc. limitations inherent in dichotomies? See you on Wednesday. Cheers!

Response to Cope and Kalantzis

As an educator, I have known that change in literacy pedagogy is imminent, inevitable, and necessary. Like the ancient Greeks at the advent of writing, though, I have feared this change meant the end of civilization as we know it.

What I took from these assigned chapters is that change is all of the above, except the end of civilization as we know it. I now see the potential for empowerment of the student, teacher, and society in the changes proposed by Cope and Kalantzis. Two key concepts common throughout these chapters are design and, of course, multi-modality or multi-literacies. An example of multi-modality in action is that figure 1.1 on page 26 helped me understand the inter-related and dynamic nature of design elements more clearly than printed words did. The concept of multi-modal approaches to learning or designing makes absolute sense, whereas we use all of our senses to make meaning. As the authors say, "Literacy is just one aspect of linguistic meaning" (217).

What do you think of the authors' idea of technology as the "demise of spatiality"? I suppose I have known that on an intuitive level, but I found it intriguing to contemplate.