I bring up the wiener dog to show there is more to multimodal composition than just slapping any random image with any random text. There is a craft to using more that one mode correctly.
This may be in relation to my overall agreeable nature but I do not hate Wysocki and that makes me feel dirty. There are things I found less than readily applicable to the first year composition course, but I also found the reading interesting. I found the Wysocki readings interesting but difficult to relate to my ideas of the classroom. The activities were creative but I feel to silence more critics the authors should have been more writing focused. It felt in some of the activities writing was tacked on as an afterthought in the end. There were cool things done, discussions had, then ..... oh yeah maybe write about it. The text was just hard to relate to but I did not hate it. I think I skimmed the cream and will retain that and let the other stuff go. As I am now safely in my home and far enough away from any one who would care, I like multi-modality. I think that it is new, exciting, and challenging.
Challenging, in that I am not visually creative on my own. I usually need the kind of prompt I will be giving my students to think visually. The few multimodal projects I have been assigned I have enjoyed. I enjoyed them more when they were finished and I was back in my word comfort zone. While working on multi-modal projects my brain juices were forced to flow against the current. This thinking creatively in a new format is a good learning experience for students. It is not often we go into any classroom and find challenges awaiting us. There are assignments, readings, that are more difficult than others but a challenge, hardly ever. There are also few surprises in the work of classrooms. If multi-modality can challenge and surprise me as and instructor as well as my students, I choose to value the idea.
I also think this multimodal work has a place in our classroom. I do not expect it to replace essays. But they can support each other and the student. I do not want to be a hippy new wave teacher and say that “everything is writing” because it is not. But there is a lot of writing out in the world that is not as valued in the first year composition course. I would like to encourage my students to explore this. I don't find multimodal composition to be a form of busy work. I also think that it is hard to separate “busy work”' away from the classroom. Unless I am prepared to sit and watch 24 students write or they to watch me write for the class period there will need to be work done in the classroom, busy or otherwise. The lessons learned in the classroom maybe short but they are at least I hope lessons that will serve the writers in their writing. Not every assignment can be an expository essay that is well thought out, prepared, crafted, and edited. Not that it would not be nice to get a few of those. I would equally like my students to value other shorter less formal types of writing. Take this blog for example. It is not graded by the same rubric as an academic essay and yet I value the writing I am doing. I have had to gauge and hedge against my audience. In fact I value this writing enough that I had three outside class discussions with peers. I briefly outlined my thoughts, and will if time allowing edit it. Even though this is being written for an academic setting this writing is not academic in nature and I value it still. This is a lesson important to impart on our students. Not all writing is academic but all writing should be valued.
One problem I keep coming to in the course is the curriculum questions for the first year writing class. I cannot reconcile in my heart to teach only for the college years. “College is very short, the rest of life is very long” I cannot remember who said this but it was certainly not me. I have a hard time looking forward to teaching my students to write solely academically. Four years, a handful of papers, and some essay tests are there goals. There is a value to them. It is important to write academically, but there is also a whole life past graduation, if we are lucky. If teaching in a multimodal form will encourage my students to write in at least some form that is what I am going to do. If they take away lessons that they can use in writing and presenting information in their careers than I see the class in part a success. The extreme concentration on academic writing I feel is daunting in narrow. That is not to say I don't value academic forms of writing. But I do not believe it is the end all, be all of human communication through writing. I am not suggesting I will teach how to twitter, but I am also not against using it as a tool. I know many people who could not even remember what they had learned from their first year writing course on graduation. Many people do not value the skill set we are trying to impart, because they don't see it as applicable to their own lives. First year writing should not be a throw away course to get though in the first year and never think about again. I do not know how to change these things but I know I am going to try.
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