John’s Comments (group member since May 10, 2012)

John’s comments from the Composition and Rhetoric group.

I might eventually start a new thread for posting quotations that stand out to you while reading, but for now I'll keep it here since it fits so nicely with my previous post:

"While I remain both cognizant of and optimistic about the ways newer technologies promise to impact our research, scholarship, and pedagogical practice, a composition made whole requires us to be more mindful about our use of a term like technology. We need to consider what is at stake--who and what it is that we empower or discount--when we use the term to mean primarily, or worse yet, only the newest computer technologies and not light switches, typewriters, eyeglasses, handwriting, or floor tiles as well" (Shipka 20-21).

You don't have to be a moderator to add books to our group's digital shelf. Feel free to add anything you'd like to read.

You can also write suggestions in this discussion thread.

Our current reading list is not set in stone. I simply listed a few books on my shelf to motivate myself to read them and to figure out how to set up the group schedule. If you'd like to break up the new technology/remix stuff with something else, please list suggestions here. Nothing rhet/comp related--very broadly defined--is off limits for the reading list.

I'll get the ball rolling here. Not really a question, more of a comment (I love when an audience member opens with this at a conference Q&A):

"Again, my concern is that a narrow definition of technology coupled with the tendency to use terms like multimodal, intertextual, multimedia, or media-rich as synonyms for digitized products and processes will mean that the multimodal...will be (provided they have not already been) severely limited by the texts, tools, and processes associated with digitization" (10).

In my assignments, I'm often guilty of conflating multimodal with all-things-digital. I should know better than to fall into that trap, but, well, it just sort of happens. Perhaps its a byproduct of designing and teaching in online and hybrid classrooms, where even non-digital multimodal projects still have to be represented digitally. Or maybe its just sloppy thinking on my part (more than likely). Regardless, I'm quite fond of the way Shipka's book is shaking me out of some bad habits.