In "This Was (NOT!!) an Easy Assignment," Shipka provides some good food for thought about the process students, for lack of a better word, endure while composing multimodal texts.
Similar to Shipka, I assigned an open-ended multimodal composition this semester, partly because I needed some baseline for what students could accomplish. Almost similar to Amanda's assignment, students needed to examine cultural objects as symbols. We discussed tools and I provided examples of multimodal compositions in general but students needed to conceive of how they would approach their own symbolization for their audience of students.
Looking back, though, one of the things I wish I had had is a more ample array of examples to show students. I think they had only a few teacher-prescribed ways of conceiving of the project and thus they stuck to those conceptions. Reading Shipka's article, I thought of a way to expose students to ample multimodal compositions that don't limit them to my rather academic preconceptions:
Instead of finding and showing them multimodal compositions, I think it might be helpful to require students to find them. They should show each other, in small groups, the compositions they had found as well as examine and present some key features that it may be important for them to understand when composing their own multimodal compositions, things like genre, subgenre, modes, etc. This way, students can set the terms of what constitutes multimodal compositions and how they effectively communicate.
Another thing I'm still troubling over is how to work with students on conceptualizing an audience for their compositions. More work to do...
About Me
- J. Edwin Paschke-Johannes
- n. ('jA-'ed-w&n-pash-kE-jO-'han-es) 1. A male homosapien of U.S. citizenship, w/ diffused hereditary origins from the Polish, Swiss, German, Lithuanian, Nebraska white trash, and Minnesota backwoods missionary. 2. Name of said male homosapien. 3. One of few individuals, if not the only one existent, to be credited, on public records and various publicly distributed documents, with a Bachelor of Arts in English Education from Midland Lutheran College and a Master of Arts in English, specializing in Creative Writing (Fiction), from Iowa State University, and enrolled in a doctoral program in English, specializing in Rhetoric and Composition, at Ball State University. 4. One of a married couple that have adopted two children, a precocious female and winsome male, from Ethiopia, thus constructing a nuclear family known as “multicultural,” or specifically “transracial,” and grafting onto the couple’s mutual/individual family tree a branch that, to America's racial psyche, is considered radically divergent.
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