Anderson, Manovich, etc.

Anderson

I was impressed with the relevance and usability of Anderson’s multimedia presentation. Initially I experienced some techno shock in having to negotiate the barrage of images, speaker, sounds, videos, and texts. I soon began to utilize the pause button and limit the amount of multi-tasking his presentation requires. Of course, experience with TV and films with subtitles prepared me to handle the multiple elements to some extent. I agree with Anderson’s arguments that “knowledge currencies are increasingly digital” and share his goal of not leaving my students behind to become mere “road kill on the information superhighway.” Anderson’s goal to integrate low-end tech into the lives of the needy is admirable. Diana George’s reminder that most teaching does little to encourage visual (or new media) production gels with my experience in secondary education. For years it seems that tech is used primarily for researching and word processing. Anderson’s realization that students had intuitive skills as how to create new media pieces made sense and helped to ease tensions I have about integrating more tech into the classroom. Students, especially from the privileged class, are not starting from scratch. The project with options to be a paper or a video was cool. It was interesting to think about essay like video arguments and “how to use images to pull out the important parts of text.” I feel that his lesson exemplified what future classrooms, virtual classrooms, will look like. Such tech and teaching seems to threaten contemporary-in the classroom- instruction. We’ll have to see what will be cheaper- paying people to be there in person, or buying machines for all the students? I thought the following was an important question in the presentation: “When applications like imovie open literacy spaces for writers, do they also limit literacies by nature of their ease of use?” I also was interested in the notion that we are now less like creators, and more like remakers.  

Project Muse: Teaching Digital Rhetoric

The cohort’s collaborative writing about the emergence of digital rhetoric and what it means for teachers was standard overview. Much of the piece seemed to echo best practices and standard pedagogical goals, while showing how they translate and operate with new media approaches. I was annoyed, out of the gates, with Bill Gates’s quote that “the next step for technology is universal access.” Certainly he could have spearheaded pursuit of this utopian dream in how he marketed his software these last decades. Hard not to guffaw cynically here as the steps to bring about universal access to water, food, and shelter haven’t touched ground. I think that his contributions to our digital revolution will ultimately widen gaps between haves and not haves, those struggling to keep up with the tools available and those struggling to get their hands on the tools at all.

The article voiced concern with “access to the technological tools and to the literacy skills required to make meaning with such tools.” Considering my own classroom, I see this concern as valid. I have one class consisting of refugees, new English language learners. I feel that becoming technological adept might be a great equalizer for these students, but technological skill acquisition is difficult with populations that aren’t soundly grounded in orality and struggle with literacy. Compounding this problem is the fact that the school I teach at only has two computer labs, which all classes must share. I thought about Manovich’s theoretical practice with computer programming without seeing a computer. Hocks mentioned that “technology is always already over.” If I immerse my students as much as possible with the new tools, I wonder if the tools/tech I teach them will be building blocks or obsolete by the time they get their hands on technology-if they ever do. I hope that public libraries continue to get more computers with free access in our city and in all cities.

The most important thing I got from the article was the need to transform students into producers of technology instead of uncritical downloaders and consumers. I’ll certainly make this my aim and try to prepare students to write digitally. Most writing, I’ve seen in the Boise schools, is still taught as if it “purely text driven practice.” A lot of time has been lost preparing students for the 5-paragraph DWA.

The mention of the “virtual girlfriend” was funny. Why would someone want to be nagged by someone they can’t even sleep with? Did anyone else see the sad irony of Native Americans using tech to preserve their stolen way of life and cultural history of being displaced by technology?

The article also made me think about how writing teachers have always encouraged prose “that shows and not tells.” Now, writing seems to have less of a burden to show as this can be accomplished with the inclusion of visual elements such as images, videos, and interactive elements.

In conclusion, I thought that the article’s backslapping and bragging about the successful community space the class created was annoying. Academics are prone to the fallacy that what is successful in collegiate classrooms works in public, secondary spaces. It is a little more challenging to create a successful environment when you’re teaching technological know nothings, refugees undergoing great cultural and lingual adjustments, and adolescents undergoing puberty. But I’m happy to hear that masters’ students can behave in class, collaborate, and play fair with technology. Good grief, what a relief.

Manovich

I read it. I’m not sure what to say about it. In my opinion the history of the computer prior to it becoming a modern media processor is not that interesting. I like the comment about how “new media objects assure users that their choices-and therefore, their underlying thoughts and desires-are unique, rather than preprogrammed and shared with others.” The notion that the computer is now making up for its initial use of making us all the same, by convincing us we are all unique, is a fine one. We are all unique and beautiful snowflakes, just like everybody else. However, at the end of the piece, Manovich infers that the uniqueness is illusionary and that we’re merely lemmings of others’ mental trajectories-“asked to mistaking the structure of someone else’s mind for our own.”  So is post-symbolic communication simply painting on the walls in our own virtual caves with other people’s colors and patterns? I look forward to discussing page 61 in class.