Week 2: Online Resources

I have to admit that when I first approached this assignment, I didn’t think it was going to be particularly difficult. Find a few online communities to join and then post which communities I joined and why. Easy enough. What I found was that by searching for online communities – mostly around the keyword of “multimodal composition”, I found some (online communities), but in general I just found so much information. Interesting information, overwhelming information – things that I wanted to read, awesome things that other people are doing, movies I now want to see. There is so much that can be done, that I want to do, that some of the challenge is just to narrow down and focus on one task at a time. It reminds me of why research is often so difficult for my students, because while in many ways research is easier than ever (no need to drag yourself over to the University library on a Sunday morning when you can just search databases from your computers), students often are so overwhelmed by the choices, and they have trouble understanding that finding good and reliable sources requires more than just searching Google. Focusing in on the task at hand and choosing from SO many options the resources that are best for the task , this is a new challenge.



Elizabeth Daley really renewed my conviction that it is really important that I start incorporating meaningful instruction around and using multimedia in my composition classroom. I am interested not just in using multimedia as an instructional tool, but by having students CREATE compositions that incorporate other elements besides print. Daley’s article also pointed out that I have a lot to learn and explore so that I can consciously and meaningfully bring multimedia into my composition classroom. The trouble with writing, and I think that it seems true about multimodal composition, is that often you can’t talk about it, you have to experience it. For my project this semester, I would like to create a website where that I can use in my classes both as a resource and a collaborative space where students can share work and provide feedback. I would like to provide resources that will allow me to provide examples and resources around some of the terms that Daley lists mentions such as “frame composition, color palette, editing techniques, and sound-image relations…” (p.38). I would also like to include examples of different types of compositions, that could be used both as texts for analysis and inspirations for student projects. For instance, one multimodal project I have done in the past has been to have students re-vision one of their written texts in a different mode (another idea from Cindy Selfe), and then reflect on what was gained and lost when the text was transformed. I think that if students could really see different examples of all the different ways a text can be created and appear, this assignment could get more interesting.

So, to the point of this post – I joined a few communities that I hope will help me create an instructional space for my students that will help me move a bit beyond the baby steps I’ve already taken. In Thinkfinity, I joined, besides our group, Erica Boling’s group “Using Multimedia for Communication and Education” that I hope will be a good resource and place to ask questions. I didn’t find anything in Thinkfinity specifically around college teaching or even with the tag “composition”. So, I left Thinkfinity and found a few other resources. I found a blog called “Community College English” that had a few posts about multimodal composition. The site also had a lot of other resources and links all around teaching first year composition. So I am really excited about checking back there. I can comment on posts there and I think I can join the site if I send an e-mail because they say it is a community and they welcome contributions. Through that site, I also found another blog that is really interesting as it is a blog of another community college instructor. I was pulled in right away there, because she talked about using blogs in her classroom, which I have done as well, and how she does peer review with them. It sounds like we use a similar approach, so I am interested in checking out her peer review sheets that she provides. I want peer review to be an important part of the website that I create for my class. Finally, the other community I joined is one I am really excited about. It is a National Writing Project site called “Digital Is”. This first page of the website reads: “The NWP Digital Is website is a collection of ideas, reflections, and stories about what it means to teach writing in our digital, interconnected world. Read, discuss, and share ideas about teaching writing today.” I have poked around a bit and found some really interesting categories and posts that I think will be helpful for me moving forward. People post articles and projects that they are working on. Here’s an example of an interesting post I found on the site in which a teacher guides us through the process of digital writing in his English class:
The Digital Writing Workshop | Digital Is ...

I am looking forward to using these resources and finding others ( I also found a few articles I will be sure to read on some wikis I was browsing) for my project. By the way, here is the trailer for that movie I mentioned earlier called Road to Nowhere I am not sure if any of you have heard of it, but I found a post about it on a website I stumbled upon through a link from the DMAC page to a site called The Failure Project (another really interesting idea and website). The movie looks really interesting and related to some of what I think we are all trying to accomplish. There is a showing in October near me and I might try and check it out.