#9.

Wysocki, Anne Frances. "Introduction: Into Between--On Composition in Mediation." Composing(Media)=Composing(Embodiment). Eds. Kristin L. Arola and Anne Frances Wysocki. Utah State UP. 2012. 1-22.

Banks, Adam. "Oakland, The Word, and The Divide: How We All Missed the Moment." from Race, Rhetoric, and Technology: Searching for Higher Ground. NCTE Press. 2006. 11-46.

I feel like the heart of Wysocki’s argument is that writing should be thought of “as a technology that enables us to experience our bodies as our bodies,” even as it “mediates those bodies in line with existing institutions” (22). So, in my understanding of her argument, writing makes us aware of our own experiences as a consciousness inside of a body—we understand our own physicality as we write—but our bodies are simultaneously negotiated and remediated by other ideologies. I definitely understand why we read Wysocki’s article with Banks negotiation of African American rhetoric. I see Banks’ argument fitting very much with the second part of Wysocki’s argument regarding the ideologies thrust upon/remediating bodies. Banks writes, “African Ameican rhetoric has always been multimedia, has always been about body and voice and image, even when they only set the stage for language” (25).  Banks writes about the dumbing down of course material for African Americans, about the assumptions regarding ebonics, and how the internet provides an interesting and unique space for a “dropping out of marked race” (30).

I agree with Wysocki that writing encourages an awareness of our bodies. When I sit down to write a paper, I have a very specific process, space, and method. If I skip a step, I’m distracted and my writing seems off. To be sure, this could simply be a reflection of my own neuroses, but my process makes me think about every decision I make before, during, and after I write, down to the gum that I must chew to deal with my own nervous energy. I wonder how Wysocki’s argument might be translated in terms of multimodal projects—I’d think that these multimodal projects would make us even more aware of our bodies and our processes of making. 

#8.

Chapter 3 of O'Gorman, Marcel. E-Crit: Digital Media, Critical Theory, and the Humanities. Toronto, Ontario: Toronto UP, 2007. Print.

O’Gorman asks, “Just as Ramus’s scholarly method had a great influence in shaping a print apparatus that has persisted for five centuries, might it not be possible to invent scholarly methods to shape the digital apparatus?” (50). He continues by arguing that this trend of “transferring the practices of conventional scholarship… from one medium into a newer more efficient medium” is nothing new, and that the reluctance to accept new forms of scholarship isn’t new either. In my understanding, O’Gorman uses Blake’s works of composite art as a means to explore digitization. He argues that “Blake’s works of composite art might not arouse our senses of smell, taste, and touch, but he invites us to engage with his prints on something other than a visual level; his work compels us to react in ways that might altogether change the way in which we see and experience the world” (57). O’Gorman also brings us back to the image-text, asserting that it is an “enigmatic space in which word and picture meet but never reconcile, for they are bound in a dialectical relationship  in which ‘neither can be reduced to the other’s terms’” (62). He then discusses how he applied these notions in his classroom through a multimodal project, though he never really calls it that. He asks his students to “write with” Blake by giving them the freedom to interact with his text without context.

A main thing that I wondered regarding this “writing with Blake” project was that if his interpretation of what occurred—the different interpretations of Blake’s text—is fair/accurate. To be sure, students have very different educational and personal backgrounds. O’Gorman asserts “by creating exercises such as “Re-writing Blake,’ instructors are not asking students to write about the poet/painter; they are asking students to write with him” (66). My question is this: can the same goals be achieved if a handful of students have already read/are familiar with Blake’s work? How might that change the classroom dynamic?

I feel there are TONS of connections between O’Gorman’s work and the other course readings. This chapter is very much concerned with the construction and the interpretation of texts, which I see connecting to Lanham’s “at” versus “through” method as well as Slatin, who argued that it is up to the author to predict how a reader will look at a text and to guide them through it without being too predictable. I see Faigley and Kirschenbaum reflected when O’Gorman discusses how the Ramist spatilization “haunts our educational apparatus to this day; the same technological drive toward efficiency that spawned text-books on logic is now producing distance education and the ambitious electronic archiving projects that characterize much of humanities scholarship in the digital age” (50). I see a link between O’Gorman’s “Re-writing Blake” project and Shipka’s discussion of multimodality, and a link between his discussion of how Blake “teaches us not to trust our visual sense alone—an invaluable lesson for students bombarded daily by the words and images of a postmodern mediascape in which the imagetext is the dominant mode of communication” to George’s discussion of the value of visual arguments and Selfe/Hesse/Selfe’s discussion of aurality (66). O’Gorman’s interpretation of the “writing-with” strategy made me think of co-authorship issues and the authors that we’ve read that are concerned about them—Lanham, Slatin, and Bolter&Grusin.

#7.

Yancey, Kathleen Blake. "Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key." College Composition and Communication. 56.2 (2004): 297-328. Print.

George, Diana. "From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing." College Composition and Communication 54.1 (Sept. 2002): 11-39

Selfe, Cynthia L. "The Movement of Air, The Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing." College Composition and Communication. 60.4 (2009): 616-663. Print.

Hesse, Doug. "Response to Cynthia L. Selfe's 'The Movement of Air, The Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing.'" College Composition and Communication. 61.3 (2010): 602-605. Print.

Selfe, Cynthia L. "Response to Doug Hesse" College Composition and Communication. 61.3 (2010): 606-611. Print.

To begin, while I thought the content of Yancey’s article, “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key”, was interesting, I had a hard time reading it due to her the choices she made while making. The text looked jumbled to me, with bold quotes and questions and footnotes along the right side of the text rather than the bottom. I wasn’t sure, at first, if she was following the tradition of pulling out key quotes from her text for more attention—I quickly realized that she was remediating the footnote. A key thing that I took away from Yancey (other than that I, as a reader, have trouble negotiating texts when too many things are happening because I’m not sure what I should be reading and in which order—thank you, #Slatin) was her notion of composition. She writes, “we already inhabit a model of communication practices incorporating multiple genres related to each other, those multiple genres remediated across time and space, linked one to the next circulating across and around rhetorical situations both inside and outside school. This is composition—and this is the content of composition” (308). Since starting this class in August, I’ve had the question of where our classrooms end, and, in Yancey’s view, it seems as though they don’t. Our students are always learning new writing genres on their own, outside of school—it is only our direct consciousness over their process that ends when they leave our physical (or online) classrooms.

George’s article followed the tradition I previously mentioned of pulling out key quotes/crucial information for more attention. I actually read George before Yancey because the link on our course schedule isn’t working and I googled to find Yancey’s article—this order of reading probably has affected my interpretation. Anyway, George’s overall argument was that “the terms of debate typical in discussions of visual literacy and the teaching of writing have limited the kinds of assignments we might imagine for composition” (11). I agree with this, especially after thinking about the traditional alphabetic forms of assessment (mentioned in Yancey’s article) that we grow up with. Being a student that tests poorly, I violently agree with the notion that being assessed in a strictly alphabetic way in both classrooms and standardized tests is both limiting and stunting. George argues, “our students have a much richer imagination for what we might accomplish with the visual than our journals have yet to address” (12). She also delves into Lauer’s question of “what do we call it?” and Kirschenbaum’s question of defining our field.

The Selfe-Hesse-Selfe discussion was also pretty interesting in the sense that George discussed visual arguments—that is, arguments that “make a claim or assertion and attempt to sway an audience by offering reasons to accept that claim… primarily through the visual” (30)—Selfe delves into aural composition, arguing that “the relationship between aurality and writing has limited our understanding of composing as a multimodal rhetorical activity and has therefore deprived our students of a way to make meaning” (616). I agree with Selfe—students are not only in a culture obsessed with the visual, but also with the aural. She explains her goal in looking at aural scholarship, writing, “I hope to encourage teachers to develop an increasingly thoughtful understanding of a whole range of modalities and semiotic resources in their assignments and then to provide students the opportunities of developing expertise with all available means of persuasion and expression, so that they can function as literate citizens in a world where communications cross geopolitical, cultural, and linguistic borders and are enriched rather than diminished by semiotic dimensionality” (618). I see this notion of molding citizens in certain ways to be very Foucaultian. I feel the main thing that I learned from reading the Selfe-Hesse-Selfe discussion was a better sense of how to define what we do, which is a question Hesse posed. He asked, “Is our field “rhetoric/composing” or is it “writing/composing?” Selfe answered in her 2010 article, writing, “[rhetoric/composing] suggests an openness to multiple modalities of rhetorical expression…a literacy education focused solely on writing will produce citizens with an overly narrow and exclusionary understanding of the world and the variety of audiences who will read and respond to their work” (606).

After synthesizing and negotiating the readings, I guess I can say that my biggest take away is this: multimodality is an equalizer and a way to prepare students for the culture they participate within. As intimidating as I sometimes find multimodal projects, I can’t disagree with this. Multimodal projects and scholarship ask students to synthesize information in a way that plays to their strengths. 

#6.

 -New London Group. "A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures." Harvard Educational Review. 66.1(1996): 1-32.

 -Shipka, Jody. Toward a Composition Made Whole. Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh UP, 2011. (read through pg 82)

I see a wild amount of connections between The New London Group’s “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures”, Jody Shipka’s Toward A Composition Made Whole and the timeline I recently constructed. Actually, a concern that Shipka mentions in Chapter One of her book seems describe my timeline better than I previously had done. Shipka quotes Carolyn Handa, writing, “Not all that long go our writing classrooms looked like any others in the university. They contained desks arranged in rows, a podium facing the class, and blackboards covering one or two walls. Technology may have existed only has an overhead projector displaying transparencies with additional class material. Occasionally, instructors would show films related to course topics…Visuals were incidental props, tricks to spark students’ interests, more than viable communicative modes in themselves…By contrast, today’s wired classrooms provide students easy access to “a flood of visual images, icons, streaming video, and various hybrid forms of images and text” (18). My timeline tracked the evolution of these remediated technologies. Shipka connections this idea of a technology dependent visual society with issues of accessibility, especially in learning computer programs. I address this issue with my timeline too, as I look at the development of coding. My timeline uses the (fake) hashtag “literaciesoftechnology”, because I did not want to generalize in terms of just one technology; Shipka’s view aligns with mine, as she writes, “what I am cautioning against here is, first, an overly narrow definition of technology. It is not entirely clear of Handa counts the blackboards, podium, or desks arranged in rows as technologies. It appears not. But the description clearly overlooks many of the technologies typically present in the classroom: books, light switches, lightbulbs, floor and ceiling tiles, clocks, watches, water bottles, aluminum pop-top cans, eyeglasses, clothing, chalk, pens, paper, handwriting, and so on” (20). Shipka asserts that these technologies are also communicative modes, making my (fake) hashtag apt. I also include another (fake) hashtag, #computerdevelopment, to discuss the remediation of computer based technology, which Shipka recommends we differentiate from other technologies.  

I feel that my timeline connects with The New London Group’s article by way of accessibility. The New London Group’s interest in multiliteracies, which “overcome the limitations of traditional approaches by emphasizing how negotiating the multiple linguistic and cultural differences in our society is central to the pragmatics of the working, civic, and private lives of students” aligns with #Ohmann, #Selfe1999, and their analysis of Design makes me think of #Fitzpatrick’s making versus creating. The idea of lifeworlds and our ability to help shape them takes us back to the debate between Selfe and Slatin (and, in my interpretation, Bolter and Grusin) regarding our responsibilities as teachers and where the boundaries of our classrooms lie. 

#5.

Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.

I feel that an argument Bolter and Grusin make is that “whenever our identity is mediated [by technology] it is also remediated because we always understand a particular medium in relation to past and present media” (231). This argument is very relevant to English studies, especially when we think of remediated selves—both in terms of teachers and students. I see a connection between the remediated self and the online classroom. Bolter and Grusin’s section regarding the networked self relates to Marilyn M. Cooper’s article with Cynthia L. Selfe, “Comptuer Conferences and Learning: Authority, Resistance, and Internally Persuasive Discourse”. Cooper and Selfe discuss online forums as a space where students can converse freely with one another without the pressures and inequalities of a traditional classroom. I view this online forum as a remediated space—that is, an online forum that refashions the classroom. Students are still responsible for attendance via participation, though their attendance is shown through their virtual submission. Students in these remediated classrooms must present remediated selves; interestingly, Cooper and Selfe present this idea in 1990, nine years before Bolter and Grusin’s groundbreaking book. While describing the parameters for their student’s participation on an online forum, Cooper and Selfe wrote, “class members contributed to the conference at their convenience, as long as they did so twice a week, and they were invited to use pseudonyms to identify their entries if they wished” (Cooper and Selfe 853). Thus, students like “Velcro,” “Disgruntled,” and “Bink” all projected remediated versions of themselves, giving their instructor the ability to see and juggle both versions of their selves, the self attending class under their given name, and their online self, posting under a chosen nickname. Being able to see both selves would change the way I’m able to interpret the actions of various students who are quieter in the physical classroom, which, in turn, might change the way I teach.

#4.

Faigley, Lester. "Literacy after the Revolution." College Composition and Communication 48.1 (1997): 30-43.

Selfe, Cynthia L. "Technology and Literacy: A Story about the Perils of Not Paying Attention." College Composition and Communication 50.3 (1999): 411-436.

CCCC Position Statement on Teaching, Learning, and Assessing Writing in Digital Environments. Conference on College Composition and Communication. (2004).

Having never attended any of the CCCC conferences, I can admit to being intrigued by the nightmare stories Faigley describes, especially about linguine. Linguine aside, I enjoyed the overall tone of both Selfe and Faigley’s essays. Here are overlapping ideas found within these essays:

-Members of CCCCs (and scholars in general) are uncomfortable with technology and talking about technology. Faigley writes, “Writing teachers who have been at the forefront of initiating change have run up against a multitude of institutional barriers and attitudes that would limit writing instruction to teaching students to replicate the traditional forms of academic and professional discourses” (32). By limiting writing instruction to the traditional forms of academic and professional discourses, writing students limit, and, as Selfe points out, cripple their students. Selfe claims, “technology is either boring or frightening to most humanists; many teachers of English composition feel it antithetical to their primary concerns” (Selfe 412).

-Faigley and Selfe address is the idea of technology accessibility technology, though they tend to disagree regarding culpability. Selfe asserts, “We also need to recognize that technological literacy is our responsibility... We need additional research on how various technologies influence literacy values and practices and research on how teachers might better use technologies to support a range of literacy goals for different populations” (431). In this way, Selfe argues that we, as teachers of literacy, must “recognize that if written language and literacy practices are our professional business, so is technology” (Selfe 431).  Faigley disagrees, stating, “we as teachers have little control over who gains access to higher education and even less control of access to the Internet” (Faigley 39).

Regarding the five assumptions—I do think these are all realistic goals to employ in my classroom, though I think it’s unrealistic to set every class in a computer lab, or have every class session revolve around technology. Assumption three includes the word “much”. What does “much” mean? Does “much” mean every day? Does it mean every other class? I feel that assumption four, “engage students in the critical evaluation of information” is something that most teachers currently do, especially in terms of the Internet and Wikipedia. “Provid[ing] students with opportunities to apply digital technologies to solve substantial problems common to the academic, professional, civic, and/or personal realm of their lives” is also equally doable, especially in a class structured like my English 101 class, where my focus question for the semester is “Who do you want to be?”. I ask my students to think about who they were, who they currently are, and where they want to go in terms of their lives and academia. Our use of the AML (as well as the AML’s orientation and helpful figures in blue), makes it easier to fulfill assumption one, which is to “introduce students to the epistemic characteristics of information technology,” and carefully structured writing exercises and reflections afterward encourage students to actively think about their choices with both technology and writing. 

#3.

Lanham, Richard. "The Electric Word: Literary Study and the Digital Revolution." New Literary History. Vol. 20, No. 2, Technology, Models, and Literary Study (Winter, 1989), pp. 265-290.

Slatin, John. "Reading Hypertext: Order and Coherence in a New Medium." College English. Vol. 52, No. 8 (Dec., 1990), pp. 870-883.

Cooper, Marilyn M. and Cynthia L. Selfe. "Computer Conferences and Learning: Authority, Resistance, and Internally Persuasive Discourse." College English, Vol. 52, No. 8 (Dec., 1990), pp. 847-869.

Hawisher, Gail E. and Cynthia L. Selfe. "The Rhetoric of Technology and the Electronic Writing Class." College Composition and Communication, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Feb., 1991), pp. 55-65.

Other than the fact that all of these articles deal with technology and the way that we, as teachers, and as humans, interact with it, I found a few interesting connections, which I've listed below. (Also, was I the only one who kept wanting to call Slatin "Stalin"?)

• Technology is a tool, and that it has both flaws and major perks. Selfe and Hawisher express this sentiment quite well within their article, “The Rhetoric of Technology and the Electronic Writing Class,” arguing, “we can no longer afford to simply, and only, to dwell on the best parts, to tell stories about the best classroom moments, and to feature the more positive findings about computers. Rather, we must begin to identify the ways in which technology can fail us” (61). Lanham’s analysis of dated technology in the form of the textbooks student use in high school echoes this sentiment; he writes, “these volumes—physically ugly, worn out… bound in vile peanut-butter-sandwich-proof pyroxeline covers…written in a prose style intentionally dumbed down…do a terrific job of teaching students to hate reading” (271). He also notes that “digitization both desubstantiates a work of art and subjects it to a perpetual immanent metamorphosis from one sense-dimension to another” (273). Slatin addresses this issue through looking at the hidden dangers within hypertexts, referencing Jeff Conklin as he states, “because the hyperdocument contains so much material, and because relations between the components…are not always spelled out, there is a significant danger that the reader will get lost or become badly disoriented” (Slatin 875). Finally, both of Selfe’s articles, written separately with Hawisher and Cooper, address the “social and political dangers that the use of computers may pose” (Hawisher and Selfe 56)

 

• Within Cooper and Selfe’s article, “Computer Conferences and Learning: Authority, Resistance, and Internally Persuasive Discourse,” they make the comment that “education, even as it empowers students with new knowledge and the ability to operate successfully within academic discourse communities, also oppresses them, dictating a specific set of values and beliefs along with appropriate forms of behavior” (850). I feel that this is comparable to Slatin’s analysis of how linear books are read. Slatin argues, “the reader is expected to begin at a clearly parked point whose appropriateness has been determined by the author…and to proceed from that beginning to an ending which is just as clearly marked and which has also been determined by the author in accordance with his or her understanding of the subject matter and the reader” (871). In this way, the students in an education empowering them with new knowledge while simultaneously oppressing them are similar to the students/humans/chimps reading linear books that empower them with new knowledge while simultaneously stripping them of agency.

• Slatin and Lanham both urge online publications, but for seemingly different reasons. Lanham thinks that by switching to an online forum, “the whole censorial process by which our efforts are judged ‘worthy of publication’ might change as the meaning of ‘publication’ changed” and cites an “80-90 percent” rejection rate for the social sciences and humanities, while Slatin states that switching to an online medium would cut costs, writing, “text is always mutable, always subject to inadvertent error and deliberate charge, and it has to be coerced into standing still. That’s why publishers charge you money if you make too many changes in a text after it’s been typeset”( Lanham 284, Slatin 872).

I feel that much of what these scholars were concerned with in the 1980s and 1990s is still very applicable today. For instance, Lanham poses apt concerns regarding the protection of intellectual property, determining what is “new”, and navigating co-authorship/property ownership that we’re still dealing with today, especially in terms of every new technological invention and the freedom to create that it gives us. Slatin voices his concern about the construction of hypertexts and balancing the need for readers to be able to predict things about hyperdocuments without giving up the author’s ability to shock them, for “there can be no information without surprise” (873). With so many multimodal scholarly journals, Slatin’s concern is clearly still very relevant. And as for both of Selfe’s articles? I don’t think there will ever be a time where good teachers aren’t worried about power dynamics in the classroom.

#2.

Foucault, Michel. "Panopticism." Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan, 1977. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. 195-228.

Foucault, Michel. "The Eye of Power." Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. Ed. Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. 146-165.

Ohmann, Richard. "Literacy, Technology, and Monopoly Capital." College English. 47.7 (1985): 675-89.

After forcing myself to stop referring to Jeremy Bantham’s Panopticon as Panopticon Prime (which was difficult, and I still find myself relapsing), I was actually pretty fascinated by “The Eye of Power” and “Panopticism”. Admittedly, this was my first experience with both of these works. The following are arguments that I thought were central to both pieces (and particularly interesting!):

1. Supervision should be anonymous and seemingly constant. Foucault first establishes that there is a vulnerability in being seen, that “visibility is a trap,” and argues that the “major effect of the Panopticon [is] to induce in the inmate a state of consciousness and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power” (“Panopticism” 200-201). In this way, Foucault agrees with Bantham in that “power should be visible and unverifiable,” that citizens within the Panopticon know they are being watched, but they should not know precisely when the surveillance occurs, if it ever stops, or who is watching them (“Panopticism” 201). However, as Foucault mentions in his conversation with Jean-Pierre Barou and Michelle Perrot in “The Eye of Power”, “Bentham himself has no clear idea to whom power is to be entrusted” (“The Eye of Power” 157). Thus, I feel a central part of this argument is answering the question of whom to place within the central tower of the Panopticon. He contends that “it does not matter who exercises power,” that “any individual, taken almost at random” will do; in fact, “the more numerous those anonymous and temporary observers are, the greater the risk for the inmate of being surprised and the greater his anxious awareness of being observed” (“Panopticism” 202). Foucault furthers this argument of “permanent, exhaustive, omnipresent surveillance, capable of making all visible, as long as it could itself remain invisible” through the notion of the “faceless gaze,” which “transform[s] the whole social body into a field of perception: thousands of eyes posted everywhere, mobile attentions on the alert” (“Panopticism” 214).

2. Foucault refuses to let his readers romanticize the Panopticon. He asserts, “the Panopticon must not be understood as a dream building,” as it is “the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form …[and] must be represented as a pure architectural and optical system” (“Panopticism” 205). He juxtaposes the Panopticon with the idea of a Utopia, “perfectly closed in upon themselves”; however, he then dismisses these Utopias, as they are “common enough,” and effectively separates the Panopticon through defining it as “a cruel, ingenious cage” (“Panopticism” 205).

3. The Panopticon is all or nothing. As both Bentham and Foucault establish, the Panopticon can be “applicable to all establishments” (“Panopticism” 205). If it is implemented in a temporary situation, such as a school, the students must know that the faceless gaze has the ability to follow them home. Foucault writes, “Thus the Christian school must not simply train docile children; it must also make it possible to supervise the parents, to gain information as to their way of life, their resources, their piety, their morals” (“Panopticism” 211).

I feel that, at its most simple, the Panopticon is about eradicating the possibility of poor decisions due to constant (or the perception of constant) supervision. Again, at its most basic, the Panopticon system can work well for teaching. For instance, while teaching in a computer lab, informing your students that you’ll be monitoring their computer screens and that there will be some kind of penalty if they’re caught off task is a great idea. (If you’re working in the AML, I’m pretty sure you can ask a consultant to help you with this—and even if you can’t get this technology, I personally have no qualms about saying I have access to it anyway). Sitting in the back row of the classroom and asking your students to sit in front of you (so you can see all of their computer screens) also works, though I think it’s a lesser choice (especially because I need to wear glasses to view things that are not close to me). The idea of a faceless gaze while teaching is seemingly impossible, and the idea of surveillance outside of the classroom is equally unrealistic. The Panopticon did not deal with FERPA.

So, seventeen years have passed since Ohmann’s article, “Literacy, Technology, and Monopoly Capital,” was published. Even so, I feel that his concern regarding “the computer and its software… carrying forward the deskilling and control of labor…that has been a main project of monopoly capital” is still quite relevant (Ohmann 683). For me, juxtaposing the proposed democracy of the Panopticon structure, where everyone is individually susceptible to the same surveillance, with Ohmann’s representation of the upper class mentality of “how can we keep the lower orders docile?” regarding education and literacy instilled in me a greater sense of concern regarding the perks and dangers of technology. His examples of replacing keyboards with letters with keyboards with photos for jobs in the food service industry were apt and eye opening. While discussing differences in social class, Ohmann quotes James P. Munroe arguing to abolish free high schools to offset the costs of educating the two and three year old “children of the masses” about cleanliness and punctuality (676). While the state of Idaho isn’t abolishing public high schools, they are offering a chance to try the technology of online classes in an attempt to switch to a purely online school. They are offering an optional K-12 curriculum, entirely online (though they do offer extra curricular activities and “in-person meet-ups”). This is potentially terrifying. It is optional now, but what about in a few/several years? Online classes take a lot of student initiative, and the “children of the masses” Munroe references probably will not get the necessary motivation (or surveillance) from their two working parents. I also agree with Ohmann when he mentions the deskilling of laborers due to technology. A prime example of this is text speak. So many people communicate via text and use abbreviations like “r” and “u” and “2” and “4”; while this is socially acceptable writing (even though I hate it) from phone to phone, occasionally, it bleeds into work related emails, essays, and handwritten documents, which are all detrimental to a professional ethos. 

#1.

To be entirely honest, I hadn’t spent very much time thinking about what I call non-alphabetic texts until I explored Lauer’s article, "What's in a Name? The Anatomy of Defining New/Multi/Modal/Digital/Media Texts". Several of her interviewees expressed a dichotomy in speech that I agree with—we express ourselves in an entirely different way around people who do not do what we do or do not do it in the extent that we do. I think this quality of being audience oriented is what affects me most when determining what I call non-alphabetic texts. 

In the past, as I admitted earlier, I didn’t realize that I should be thinking about defining these texts, and simply used the terminology given to me. For instance, within Lisa Ede’s The Academic Writer (also known as the common, required, English 101 textbook), there are multiple For Exploration projects at the end of every chapter. One of these is a non-alphabetic text made from a series of questions regarding student assumptions and experiences as writers. The way I’ve previously expressed the different venues my students could take with this project echoes some of what Cynthia Selfe expressed within her interview—she explained that she doesn’t use shorthand or buzzwords to explain these texts, what she says is “I’m having students do videos, I’m having students do audio essays, I’m having students do written compositions” (quoted in “What’s in a Name? The Anatomy of Defining New/Multi/Modal/Digital/Media Texts”).  In this way, while I’ve mentioned that they can make a mix-cd, a painting, a scrapbook, a collage, a comic, a video, an interpretive dance, a rap, a drawing, anything creative, I’ve never used the term multimodal. However, I have always requested that they provide a written explication of their creative choices, which supports Wysocki’s use of new media, which “encourages us to stay alert to how and why we make these combinations of materials, not simply that we do it (19). 

I violently agree with her argument that new media has the ability to “imagine and build other possibilities for our selves as men and women who do not think and feel with such disconnection,” by upturning inherited traditions of “serious” versus “remedial” and renaming them. I feel that rearticulating these choices and incorporating new media will encourage students from all backgrounds, inclinations, and abilities to feel more comfortable and successful regarding the writing process.