A cool idea for the serious photographer and social-media participant.

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.

Wordsmiths have argued for a longtime the superiority of words over pictures because of the directness of writing. And, the communication of meaning through images, graphics and layout, as in advertising for example, were historically treated as a genre to critique George states, not one that incorporated and imparted subtle meanings. As time has passed though with the growth of technologically mature audiences, it is now understood that employing both images and words is a form of communication all its own – this revelation was a long-time coming. She makes sense when stating that the image, photograph or graphics becomes the “central thesis,” or main idea, such as in the traditional argumentative essay students are assigned. And as mentioned above, students are probably more visually sensitive today as opposed to verbally sensitive due to television, computer and Internet exposure. But, despite the obvious changes of mankind, George questions and states rhetorically, halfway through her essay what every teacher of writing composition must:

“Are images strategies for getting students to pay attention to detail? Do they mimic the rhetoric of verbal argument? Are they a dumbing down of writing instruction making visible to nonverbal students what the verbally gifted can conceptualize? Certainly, there is the message in much of this work that images may be useful, even proper stimuli for writing, but they are no substitute for the complexity of language.” 

George continues though, by discussing David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky’s reprinting of a portion of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing in their 1987 composition reader “Ways of Reading.” She states a writer’s language is absolutely linked with the visual arts, according to these two authors.

“That idea, that images are not a reflection of a fixed reality, that, instead, our ways of understanding the world around us are somehow commingled with how we represent the world visually was a notion that appealed to teachers of writing like Bartholomae and Petroskey who were searching for ways of incorporating cultural theory into the composition classroom.”

She also writes that as humans we have progressed in many scientific and linguistic areas including cognitive psychology, neurophysiology, semiotics …and writing and visual thinking have proven to be used in combination. Maybe writing has always been a visual language? Is design the act of producing literacy in a material form? Born before computers, and growing up during the development of modern technology and a witness to what is now a mobile-phone society, this writer agrees with George that the advent of desktop publishing may be the pivotal point that changed the face of teaching writing - pushing it into a design world. The transformation of knowledge has become one that occurs through a redesign says George. An electronic Internet document is now focused on colors, font, placement, space, and images to assist the controlling theme of a piece of writing. As a means of understanding writing, teachers and society are now paying attention to a more visual way of thinking.

George has shown that the focus of writing will continue to merge composition with design and there is no turning back. She states the new questions to be answered will be: Does the visual make an argument? How well does the visual communicate that argument? Is the argument relevant to the course and to the assignment? Is it interesting, clear or focused?  This writer is convinced that literacy practice intertwined with the production and distribution of text …and the visual arts all together create the 21^st century composer’s work.

Humans Communicate Outside and Inside of the Box

The readings for this week focus on the importance of integrating new media literacies along with traditional alphabetic literacy into the classroom, as these skills are proven to be a necessity today for composing writing both inside of school, and for preparation to write outside of the classroom as well. Meaning is derived through a diverse means of expression according to the essays written by Cynthia Selfe, “Students Who Teach Us,” and “Box Logic,” by Geoffrey Sirc.

The new millennium student, the ultra modern generation that includes my ten nieces and nephews …enter the earth plane from inside the womb, through it into their parents' arms seeming to understand the use of digital instruments, and then they are able to absorb applications of new media through observation, also through teaching themselves - basically - with little effort. And, I must add here that I wonder if Selfe is taking Selfie pictures to post on social media, which has become an artform among the students of generation X and Y and Z …ha!

Selfe states on page 57: “New media texts, I would argue, are an important part of a postmodern technological culture undergoing the same sort of rapid changes. They exist in electronic and technological environments that change so rapidly, few teachers of English composition are able to keep up. Students, in contrast–frequently immersed in new communication contexts–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.”

I am encouraged by the student featured in Selfe’s essay, a young man from Detroit named David John Damon, who came from a disadvantaged background that lacked financial stability and consistent parenting. Despite his mother’s death while he was still a teenager, Damon credits her love of reading and language as the reason for his passion for expression, as well as the reason for his siblings avid reading of books. Damon actually makes it to college; almost miraculous it appears to me, especially based on the background shared through Damon’s voice within the text. This student then becomes involved with website design and management for his contemporaries on campus, specifically African American organizations and he creates a niche for himself as an online communications expert of sorts, another incredible feat in my mind.

Sadly, the reader learns that Damon is eventually forced to drop out of college due to his inability to accurately grasp the traditional form of composition in his beginning English courses. He is not able to pass them, this clearly talented individual …and an exception for composing, an alternate way to present ideas in writing was not offered as a means to bridge the gap for him, or simply put his professors thinking outside of the old box did not happen. Damon’s story is an urban tragedy for society because this student clearly has the potential to complete a higher level degree; he clearly has the potential to become a role model in the ghetto that Damon states he loves so dearly, but he was not successful in writing the basic traditional alphabetic essay, and this stood in his way of academic achievement – an essay he may not even need to write for earning potential in our current modern world.

Geoffrey Sirc’s essay also picks up on non-traditional ways of expression and communication in “Box Logic.” Let me begin by exclaiming that the mere mention of the name Marcel Duchamp makes my heart skip a beat. The description of writer, designer and artist as a collector resonates with exactly who I really am. The phenomenon of collecting objects …possibly to travel backwards in time and for inspiration found through their 'energy' resonates with my Sagittarian spirit - I get this. A specific line stands out for me near the beginning of the essay written by Jean Suquet commenting on Duchamp’s work - his collecting notes and objects inside of boxes.

He states on page 112: “If an interior journey goes deep enough, at some point it arrives where all roads meet.”

Hmmm. A variety of interpretations come to my mind. Going deep implies thinking outside, uh, oh, or I mean inside of the box in this case, and viewing digital composing in a new way. It’s a new day in the our world for writing composition …and, funny though - some of the old days' ways have returned as well.

Sirc writes on page 117: “A primary goal now in my writing classes: to show my students how their compositional future is assured if they can take an art stance to the everyday, suffusing the materiality of daily life with an aesthetic.”

Uh, enough and well said, and more writing-sharing to come on this blog post …later.

Facebook: A Source of Incidental News for Users

An Incidental Report...

 

A Facebook Inc. logo is displayed at the top of the login page for facebook.com. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images | Getty
 

NEW YORK (AP) — News is an incidental part of the Facebook experience for most users. But since so many people regularly check the social media site, a study suggests Facebook shouldn't be overlooked as a news source.

The Pew Research Center, in a study released Thursday, said that just under half of adult Facebook users say that they get news from Facebook links posted by friends or news sources they follow. Still, the 47 percent of people who say they get news through Facebook represents 30 percent of the adult population.
 

Pew director Amy Mitchell says Facebook represents a different way of consuming news, where it is picked up as a part of doing something else as opposed to being actively sought out.

AP  |  Posted: 10/24/2013 11:27 am EDT  |  Updated: 10/24/2013 12:07 pm EDT

Attention, Focus & Relearning Skills

How ironic is it to discover that the ability to solve a problem for most folks is being able to focus on it, yet then to read this is the very trait that may hinder our success and progress, as well as create blindness in other ways.

As an America citizen born and raised in this country, the first two chapters of Now You See It: How Technology and Brain Science Will Transform Schools and Business for the 21st Century have focused my attention on …how Americans learn to focus and pay attention. The Introduction is aptly titled I'll Count—You Take Care of the Gorilla, and Part One is titled Distraction and Difference, the Keys to Attention and Changing Brain. Below I will discuss what I paid some attention to and focused on a bit in these chapters.

Davidson shares in her Introduction, “For over a hundred years, we've been training people to see in a particularly individual, deliberative way. No one ever told us that our way of seeing excluded everything else. It’s hard for us to believe we're not seeing all there is to see.”

And, as a confident American, yes, the Gorilla experiment described was surprising. How could more than half of the video viewers miss a character standing out with such importance? Davidson's term attention blindness is described as a factor in every action of our lives, including personal, as well as work, school and socially. I was interested to read that this trait plays a role in how we see inanimate objects and each other too.

“It plays apart in our interactions with inanimate objects like car keys or computer screens and in how we value—and often devalue—the intelligence of children, people with disabilities, those from other cultures, or even ourselves as we age. It plays apart in interpersonal relations at home and in the office, in cultural misunderstandings, and even in dangerous global political confrontations,” states Davidson.

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 at times, I’m not sure if multitasking has been more productive than focusing on one task at a time for my brain makeup. 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. Hmm, more attention required here.

Anyway, Davidson describes it in this way: “Our digital age was structured without anything like a central node broadcasting one stream of information that we pay attention to at a given moment. On the Internet, everything links to everything and all of it is available all the time, at any time. The Internet is an interconnected network of networks, billions of computers and cables that provide the infrastructure of our online communication.”

She writes that it is our attention blindness that keeps us connected, in tune, tethered. Unlearning how we focused and relearning a new type of attention is the key. Okay, I’m going with it and will write more on this I promise …gotta run to school now and I'm a little distracted. I look forward to reading more deeply into this text because proper focus is a priority.

Multitasking may be a little like building a spider's web ...this guy was focused on my camera lens.

Delivery of Digital Documents is Now Key

My initial response to the essay by Kathleen Blake Yancey titled Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key is how creative her display of this written talk appears on the pages of the book. She shares information on side panels and in bolded boxes – including a somewhat behind the scenes perspective for her readers and states on the first page this specific paper was more of a dramatic performance than address when given. She questions her genre almost a decade ago in 2004 - when this Chair’s address was delivered alongside a power point slide show of images she had collected - and these were shown parallel and in dialogue with her words. 

Writing and composing have both become diverse in their singular and combined definitions – and composing is more than words composed on the page but also includes word processors, the internet and a variety of new ways readers, students and others are writing on their own – outside of the classroom. In the new millennium writing is interfacing she says – it’s about both technology and the medium according to Yancey, as well as her colleague James E. Porter in his article Recovering Delivery for Digital Rhetoric.

Porter’s paper opens with the desire to position delivery as a Techne, also meaning an art – and to frame delivery in broader ways and terms.  The delivery is the final persuasive force from the human to computer and/or to the viewer.

Reading circles held in the 19^th century that are mentioned in these papers interest me - and show multimodality happening in writing long ago. The performance and delivery of writing still plays a major role in how a text is consumed – and a development of a reading public is happening again …through the Internet and social media web sites.

Yancey shared this sentiment on page 65: “Today we are witnessing a parallel creation, that of a writing public made plural, and as in the case of the development of a reading public, it’s taking place largely outside of school - and this is an age of universal education. Moreover, unlike what happens in our classes, no one is forcing the public to write.”

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 despite the learning curve I faced in terms of experience with digital programs. I feel a little bit of fear still…and possible inadequacy in terms of my geeky computer-usage knowledge – but I am determined to crossover digitally to become a writing composer.

According to Porter, the concept of the body plays a key part in the impact of delivery …as a performer myself this intrigued me. His description of certain portraits chosen for promotional reasons to send subliminal messages without words to their audiences is revealing. He says that both the visual and oral play a role in digital documents on page 213:

“Voice and aurality are a central concern in digital rhetoric, as the World Wide Web supports multimedia discourse that enmeshes textual, video/visual, and aural elements. In digital spaces we have to consider not only textual presentation but oral performance, the very qualities of voice that were central to classical rhetoric.”

Porter shares that the human being and technology are merging and the hybrid form is the cyborg – which takes the reader back to circulation relating to how messages are recycled in digital places. Digital messages often have life of their own and are redistributed without the original writer’s input too.

The new model of composing suggested by Yancey involves circulation of composition, canons of rhetoric, and deicity of technology. Circulation equals Intertextuality - hmmm - this is the aesthetic dimension of composing she relates. Yancey then spills these ideas into remediation. I particularly appreciate the story about the professor taking hourly breaks during her editing to work on laundry – and how her writing is better due to the breaks used for refection. The term deicity is one that is applicable to life in general – nothing remains permanent, change happens fleetingly and as humans our lives are in a constant state of flux.

Envisioning is a term Yancey brings up near the end of her paper; she defines it as taking technology tools and repurposing them - using them in a different way from which they were designed. The action of envisioning appears to be pushing the public along to write more and more on their own, a phenomenon fueled along as well by the screen and the Internet. This idea seems to also include social justice advocacy intertwined in writing, because of delivery to a wider and more interested audience, who might respond and/or act is now more guaranteed. And, Porter finally assures that developing a robust rhetorical cannon for digital delivery is the real key for the continued and future production of effective online documents.

Future of Technology In Society