Progressing and New Awareness of Computers and Composition

 http://amyreloomis.blogspot.com

 

Welcome to my digital composition blog, a series of texts, videos and images that derived from the English 642 course taught by Professor Thomas Peele called Computers and Composition. My main goals for knowing and teaching digital writing is to assist students in gaining crucial skills for their academic careers and to help them to express themselves efficiently through writing, as well as to communicate well as they navigate throughout all of their worlds. 

The flow of ideas, precise language, specific examples, and grammatical clarity along with partnering with students to ensure they walk away better writers ...whatever it takes to reach the student is my ultimate objective. As the instructor, it is a duty to ensure and instill in students a willingness to learn. And, utilizing digital skills falls into this category. Having more knowledge is the bottom line – because more equals more, more diversity, independence and accuracy – and mo’ better knowledge from the wisdom of the crowds.

The great experience of expressing oneself is the ultimate exercise of tapping into our creative nature. The discipline of writing produces subjectivity and it shapes our world to discuss its shifting discourse. Writing has become digital, visual and audio centered, and teaching composition is now about breaking out of routine, and being a learner too.

The essay as a digital composition tool expresses idea, opinions, puts is all in writing - a shape and it becomes concrete. The purpose of composition also is to tell a story, share ideas, to hone conversation skills, vertical thinking, self-revision, and reading and writing, which are inextricable and cannot be separated. And, knowledge of grammar is always important ...so what do we want students to learn about writing again? Maybe how to be a prosumer - a producer and a consumer. I appreciate Professor Tom Peele's guidance in achieving this aim to support the modern composure and student, teacher and professional ...with a digital technology influence.

Although students (this writer included) sometimes find multimodal tasks challenging because of the technologies needed to learn and the methodologies ...the end result creates a broader scope and more open-minded producers of new knowledge. A point being made here also is that multimodal tasks are not easier for students, but more thoughts and actions are needed to complete them making digital technology more fulfilling. This would sum up a great lesson learned this semester in computers and composition.

My end goal is to help the student and myself feel empowered, to write more textually authentic and to construct original knowledge. Bottom line - when students are asked to explore identity throughout digital writing platforms and all of its complexities and tensions ...this encourages invaluable personal growth for the student and teacher.

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Check out "The Pilgrims," a Prezi about preservation I created, featuring
photographs of Louis Comfort Tiffany Studio stained glass windows.

  

 

I am one of those folks who started learning about computers in college when the Mac classic was built and I still have it in my storage room - I’m not sure what to do with it.  The computer used to have a back pack style carrying case that came with it - if you can imagine.  It weighs around thirty pounds. Mainly, I have completed word processing for the past ten years and I learned computer graphics in the late 1990s. I signed up for Facebook in 2007 but didn’t begin using it until 2009, and then more regularly in 2010.  I learned how to use computers in school and although my first computers were a Mac Classic and a Mac Powerbook – this was during the 90s when Macs and PCs did not mix – but anybody who was cool and an artist used a Mac computer. 

 

When the new Millennium ushered in I converted to PCs due to my office environments and I have not looked back – until now.  Unfortunately, my tools have been inadequate for this class and I have learned that I need both a computer upgrade and to go to the Mac lab on campus to finish this project. Considering all of this – I’ve come far in just opening my mind and upgrading my basic skill level quite a bit to being on the way to a digital composer – and multimodal producer of texts, images, video and audio... Selfe states that new media texts are an important part of a postmodern technological culture undergoing rapid changes. She says few teachers of English composition are able to keep up but students in contrast are immersed in new communication contexts and are often the first to experiment with new kinds of texts, to discover new literacy values and practices. They are also the first to understand the functions new media texts fulfill in their lives.

 

Surgwiecki shares that the human intellect as a large group basically has good intuition and direction for resolving issues on a local level, as well as this large group has better odds at a more diverse, thoughtful outcome - in general. The human population is described as “boundedly rational,” and on our own and in small groups we simply have less information than we would want - and we often have limited foresight to see into the future. All knowledge benefits from a collective intelligence, including financial stability, and lastly humans may let their emotions affect their judgment while working in a small groups. Ok. So if this is the case, and if our lives and brains have changed so dramatically paralleling with the societal, technological and environment changes described in this text, my question is how do I/we harness this power in the best way possible?  Davidson’s answer is through multitasking and relearning focus and attention skills. Multitasking she says, mimics the world wide web and the internet in the way that all things become connected – it is the ideal mode of the twenty-first century. Although I can relate to Davidson’s backstory ...as an artist myself, a visual person and someone whose creativity has been misunderstood, I’m not sure if I'm convinced multitasking is more productive than focusing on one task at a time. Of course everyone is forced to multitask in these times because of hectic lifestyles, but I probably produce a higher quality of work when I focus on one project at a time, it seems. Hmmm, more attention required here.

How the ‘screen’ plays a role in writing stuck with me after reading Yancey’s piece too; it is the third literacy paralleling with oral and print literacy. More folks are finishing on the high school diploma level these days, and folks are using cell phones as mini computers more and more. Yancey states the screen is the language of the vernacular, and the modern/educated student should know how to combine words, pictures, audio and video. And, this would be the reason I took this class. I feel a little bit of possible inadequacy in terms of my geeky computer-usage knowledge – but I am determined to crossover digitally to become a writing composer.

Near the beginning of the essay “From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing,” written by Diana George, she shares the idea that tension exists within electronic modes of expression, specifically between writing and images.
She writes, “I actually believe that some tug of war between words and images or between writing and design can be productive as it brings into relief the multiple dimensions of all forms of communication.”

As a visual-writer – a phrase my fingers just typed, which means this author as most other social-media participants creates documents using design and text together electronically on a daily basis. Ironically, the concepts of writing and text, versus photographs and graphics or design appear to be innately opposite on the surface. The two mediums require different sets of skills for understanding and interpreting, yet scholars such as George, and The New London Group state that writing and visuals work together as a unit, and both help to develop more-relatable multi-modal designs. According to scholars, the use of mass media, beginning with the originally perceived threat of television’s passivity in the mid-20^th century, all really seem to connect the dots for students, and inspire new and more interests for them, rather than lead students astray. And, the 21^st century student has grown up in a visually aggressive culture therefore combining writing with visual components intuitively, innately almost, and possibly modern students understand writing better delivered in this way …than text without any design element.

Although students (this writer included) sometimes find multimodal tasks challenging because of the technologies needed to learn, and methodologies ...the end result though creates a broader scope and more open-minded producers of new knowledge. I appreciate the assignment produced by Shipka's student in which the student prefaces the presentation with these words:

“Imagine you are sitting in an empty classroom with just one desk in the center and a ticking clock in the background. The room is drafty and cold with very dim light. It is eight o'clock [and] the score from this test will determine your future by deciding which school you will be accepted to. You tried to study for the test but your friends, your parents, and your annoying siblings continually distracted you. [...] You ended up only studying for an hour before you fell asleep, and now you are only half awake to take the exam. [...] When you dig out your pencil the tip is broken. You search for a pencil sharpener but there isn't one in the room so you have to ask the proctor for an-other one. They hand you a stubby pencil with no eraser and tell you to sit down because the exam is starting.”

 

 

Look for the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University in this pic where Computers and Composition / English 642 is taught ...yes it is in my midday airplane window photo - top right - near the center some - a little above the park about an inch from the edge.

 

Every student and professional has experienced scenarios similar to the one above. I have come far from where I started and I'm grateful for the new awareness of multimodality ...ever present today, as well as my expanded digital technology skills.

Other Links -

Amyre Loomis: Digital Composition, Photos, Videos: "The Pilgrims" Prezi

Amyre Loomis: Digital Composition, Photos, Videos: Digital Media Influence in 2013 ...and a Facebook ...: A Facebook Inspired Poem