Critical Photo-Essay

This week's readings and particularly Ken Robinson's Ted Talk got me thinking about the future of education in America and changes that need to be made to engage the next generation of students.  I have two children so this issue is particularly important to me as my boys navigate the public education system over the next dozen years.  In my opinion, the system is broken and we need new pedagogies to inform our communication of knowledge sharing and instruction.  Rather than focusing on how broken the system has become, I would like to focus on innovative techniques, inspirational stories,  and/or current research investigating the benefits (or purported failings) of whatever new methods or theories that are out there to inform the future of education.   So I think my thesis becomes, "How does digital rhetoric inform our teaching pedagogies across curriculums to engage the next generation of students?".

Irrelevant

So much to think about this week!  Even though the readings were relatively "light" compared to prior weeks, so many thoughts have surfaced and personal connections have been made.  I was particularly enthralled with Sir Ken Robinson's Ted Talk (yes, I used enthralled on purpose...) and I think he beautifully summed up the current status of education.  Our education system was imagined during the industrial revolution when we were concerned with churning out laborers, not engaging people's talents.  It is a linear system that is extremely hierarchical and its time has passed.  We need to start engaging our students organically and "reconstitute our sense of ability and talent."  Jeremy Rifkin in his book Third Industrial Revolution, which is a visionary tale of a decentralized power grid, also addresses this very issue.  Rifkin claims that in order for our society to address climate change, we need to embrace a new vision of a power grid that is fed from multiple points (solar panels on roof tops, wind turbine in the back yard) rather than coming from a centrally located source (coal-fired plant, etc.) and he believes that our education system plays a key role in making this drastic change.  He believes that our current and future challenges cannot be met with technology and education of the past and that our classrooms need to be collaborative and customized to the student so that the student then has the ability to be truly creative.  We need to ignite a passion in our youth if we are going to address our social problems and clearly from all the posts last week our system is failing to give students that opportunity.  As Robinson said, "Education dislocates very many people from their natural talents" which to me means, our children need to be taught to be critical thinkers and learners and to engage their innate talents - not taught how to take bubble tests. 

So what does this "organic" education system look like?  The 10 million dollar question...We are truly smack-dab in the postmodern age and yet our major systems are stuck in the industrial revolution.  I thought Wysocki in her essay The Multiple Media of Texts was informing on the subject.  She hits upon the idea that our perceptions of what a particular writing ought to be, for example, an academic text, informs the relationship that we will have with the text.  She then questions this assumption and asks, "What kinds of new arguments are possible (for example) if writers of academic pages take more responsibility in choosing the visual presentations of their arguments?  What sorts of relationships can writers establish with readers through different visual presentations?" (p. 125)  So what if academic texts were more visually informing?  Would this generation of disillusioned youth find some value in a paper that was animated, that had movement to the page or was digitized using sound, sight and text?  Is is time for the establishment to address the social circumstances that now face it and move towards engaging our youth in a way that makes sense to them?

Bernhardt in Seeing the Text compares the movement of homogenized, linear, paragraph style rhetoric and that of visual text and states, "And the closer our models come to literary norms, to the norms of the polite, personal, anthologized essay typical of the Eastern literary 'establishment, ' the greater are the demands on the student to produce essays which are subtle in their organizational schemes."  Is this really what a professor is looking for in an essay, the sort of writing that is "enshrined in the handbooks of our trade."  And if so, what is the student gaining by producing a piece that clearly does not reflect the current social paradigm or their innate talents and creativity?  Our texts are changing.  The way we are getting and interfacing with information is changing and yet we seem unable or unwilling to make the shift.  We need to instill a sense of efficacy as Goetz states in his Ted Talk. Our students need to believe that they have the power to make change and we need to engage them, give them the opportunity to act.  Bernhardt sums it up nicely; "Classroom practice which ignores the increasingly visual, localized qualities of information exchange can only become increasingly irrelevant.  Influenced especially by the growth of electronic media, strategies of rhetorical organization will move increasingly toward visual patterns on screens and interpreted through visual as well as verbal syntax."  I guess the audience really does hold all the cards!

Hello Again!

The Author is Dead

After reading the essays for week two a few thoughts have surfaced.  From Pencils to Pixels by Denis Baron is an interesting dissection of the evolution of literacy technology.  I was particularly taken by his discussion about technology being useful only insofar as it is seen as trustworthy.  Baron says, "In order to gain acceptance, a new literacy technology must also develop a means of authenticating itself" (21).  I had never considered that an object as ubiquitous as a pencil had to "prove itself" as being a worthy means of communication and that even Plato warned of the dangers of the written word.  Baron also discusses the complexity of the pencil making process in Roman times as a "cumbersome and expensive" process that only the wealthy would have been able to afford much like computers and mobile devices of today.  I couldn't help but think of the Britannica Blog video and the discussion by Michael Wesch.  He talks about the "kids these days" problems that many would like to blame on technology.  It is apparent to me that this same line of reasoning is inherent in the evolution of literacy technology.  Sure, today its IPods, IPhones and laptop computers, but in Plato's time it was the pencil.

Not only have we evolved in our writing technology, but according to Johndan Johnson-Eilola "We are comfortable with unreliable narrative... we understand reading and writing subjects as ongoing, contingent constructions, never completely stable or whole...we're at ease with postmodernism" (199).  His discussion in The Database and the Essay intrigued me regarding postmodernism, Intellectual Property, and capitalism.  He claims that IP law has caught up with postmodernism, that "textual content has been commodified, put into motion in the capitalist system, forced to earn its keep by moving incessantly" (203).  I had not considered the economic implications of breaking down and fragmenting texts to be sold like commodities.  Johnson-Eilola argues that corporations will eventually hold the rights to collections of information which is as unpleasant to me as genome patents.  Geisler addresses the IP issue in the essay IText and concludes that "the property metaphor is not adequate for the age of ITexts because knowledge is not a commodity that is depleted if it is shared; rather, it is reconstituted, reformed, and resituated" (289).  If we have truly become a society of collaborative writers then how can a text be "owned" when there isn't a clear cut author? 

Kohl also addresses the issue of collaborative works and focuses his discussion on the Wiki. In History Now he states that the Wiki has further dissolved the distinction of author and recipient and texts are no longer static but fluidly changing forms of writing. Kohl says, "texts that develop in Wiki systems are therefore not singular historical events, but possess a temporal structure. Therefore, they must be understood and analyzed as writing processes and less as final works". (171) The Wiki is a collaborative writing process of constructing knowledge. As Johnson-Eilola says, "authors are more like designers" (222) working as a team to craft a shared message from varying points of view. 

At the crux of Geisler's argument is that more research is needed regarding information technology.  Geisler states "ITexts lie on the far end of the technological spectrum - the bleeding edge, where the two ends of the terms technology and communication overlap each other in critical and exciting ways" (278).   The essay echoes the lament of Johnson that the "author is dead" and that today's texts are collaborative, dynamic - "an ongoing, negotiated process" (279).  Geisler speaks about the need to develop systems that facilitate the usefulness and value of ITexts and poses a multitude of questions that she believes should be asked. 

I was particularly intrigued by Geisler's argument that it has become a "moral obligation" to upgrade.  I have always questioned the wisdom of the pace of information technology "improvement".  Is the IPhone 4S really that much better?  And what about the social consequences of always being available?  She asks, "How can we develop social norms to regulate their [mobile technologies] use so that they are less intrusive, so that work-related frameworks do not dominate, so that complexity does not become overwhelming?"(297).  This question gets at the heart of it for me.  At what point are we slaves to technology?  When is more not more?

Who am I?

I am excited to be taking this course this summer as I believe the subject matter of multimodal rhetoric is fascinating and relevant.  I have one more year to complete my undergrad in Liberal Studies, Quaternity Option and couldn't be more excited!   I recently transferred from the Sustainable Food and Bioenergy Systems major due to scheduling conflicts, but remain focused on sustainability issues
 and particularly sustainable agriculture.  I believe this course will contribute to my ability to communicate the issues surrounding sustainability to a wide audience and hopefully to my ability to affect change in our world.

My husband John and I have been in the Gallatin Valley for 18 years.   I am originally from Kansas and grew up in a wheat farming family.  We have two boys, Nicholas and Haylan:  Nicholas is 9 and finishing the third grade and Haylan is 5 and will be starting kindergarten in August.  They are the joy of my life and keep me on my toes at all times!  It is certainly a juggling act with full-time school but they are always on the top of my priority list (unless its finals week...hehe!).  In addition to my status as mother, wife and full-time student, I own a bookkeeping business with a handful of clients so I can pay the mortgage and the tuition bill! 

When I am not in the role of mother, wife, student, housekeeper, chauffeur, cook, etc. I enjoy gardening, reading, and occasionally having cocktails with my girlfriends.  I have recently been getting into food preservation, so we have a stockpile of canned tomatoes in the pantry and frozen kale in the freezer.  I can't wait to try some new recipes for green tomato salsa and pickles this fall!  I intend to write a proposal for a school garden at the Heck/Quaw Elementary School as my Senior capstone and hopefully I will have the opportunity to see this dream become a reality. 

Virtuoso

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir is a most tantalizingly,beautiful example of digital rhetorics that spans many genres to communicate a shared vision.  What started as an homage to composer and conductor Whitacre in a seemingly innocent YouTube video led to the unprecedented creation of a choir of voices that spanned continents, genres and age groups and has wide reaching influence in its delivery.  Keith Grant-Davie, in Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents defines rhetorical situations as "sets of interacting influences from which rhetoric arises, and which rhetoric in turn influences" (264).  Whitacre chooses to create rhetorical discourse within the context of YouTube, with audio and video, spanning space and time in ways that are unprecedented.   As Grant-Davie points out exigence doesn't necessarily have to arise from a problem but can be a reason to celebrate, and I believe that Whitacre indeed celebrates the exigence of creating a medium in which a wide, diverse audience can appreciate a form of music they may not have had the opportunity to enjoy or the desire for that matter.  The Virtual Choir is an example of kairos or good timing that is crucial for wide spread acceptance or "virality". 

Multiple rhetors and audiences can be identified in the creation of the Virtual Choir.  Over 2000 voices in 58 countries are represented by the "choir" members, each with their own experience and intention.  Whitacre has a vision for what he intends to communicate through the music and the composition itself, as does the editor and creator of the YouTube video; each having a unique identity to transmit a message to millions of online viewers each with their own capacity to understand and identify with the rhetorical device.  Using the platform of YouTube creates a universal audience in which the "roles of rhetor and audience are dynamic and interdependent" (271).  The actors (rhetor and audience) negotiate new identities which may or may not be roles they intended to play.  Whitacre described the participants or rhetors in this project as "these souls all on their own dessert islands sending electronic messages in bottles to each other" (8:31 Ted Talk)  Could we then view these rhetors not as human beings at all but collections of 0s and 1s acting as digital rhetoricians not constrained by geographical issues such as space and time?  Does this form of rhetorics transcend constraints because of virtual proximity?

Covino and Jollife in the essay What is Rhetoric? define style or elocution in postmodern rhetorical terms as "the process of 'giving presence' to ideas that rhetors want their audiences to attend to...'events which, without his intervention, would be neglected but now occupy our attention'".  Had Whitacre chosen to ignore the single voice that reached out to him to create a rhetoric that uses a medium (choral composition) unfamiliar and underutilized by many in the YouTube audience he would have neglected to occupy the attention of such a vast and diversified audience.  He would have missed the opportunity to advance a truly remarkable vision of truth and unity in the beauty that is the music and the editorial comment of the video itself.

What voice does The Virtual Choir speak with?  Is it the voice of the vision that is Whitacre's?  Are the individual voices of the singers the composers of the text?  What role does the discourse community play in the intertextuality of the choir?   The discourse community that is the YouTube community has determined that the choral piece is important and appropriate to examine.  The ethos that Whitacre brings to the project creates an element of validity and importance that appeals to the community's values.  It seems from the enormous amounts of "hits" on the video, many members of the community appreciate the beauty and brilliance of the composition and appreciate the intertextuality which makes this choral piece accessible and relevant.  The Virtual Choir's success can be summed up by James Porter in Intertextuality when he states "success is measured by the writer's ability to know what can be presupposed and to borrow that community's traces effectively to create a text that contributes to the maintenance or, possibly, the definition of the community" (Porter 43).  I believe the Choir has hit the right note!