Deconstructing Print and Tradition; Reconstruct with Visual Rhetoric and Other

I'm sure we all thought about the fact that print is quickly being ruptured and decentered as visual rhetoric is gaining superiority. It seems obvious to me that cultural studies will use the visual medium more and more as the seconds pass.

Visual Rhetoric Pedagogy

Visual rhetoric pedagogy has only begun to fight! Too bad my technology is so crappy that my computer won't let me put a video right here. (Imagine a video of a monkey in a space ship right here.)

Writing New Media

Wysocki’s “Opening New Media to Writing: openings and justifications”

The point Wysocki makes that “what we know about writing can usefully affect how we approach new media” makes me reflect on how theorists build off of the ideas of those who came before (5). That is—building from Piaget for theorizing how students learn is important. So building from our knowledge of writing and applying it toward an approach to media makes perfect sense. Wysocki’s reasoning that writing needs to find a home in new media is, of course, something that only some care to come to terms with. Writing “needs to find a home in new media” (this is me quoting myself paraphrasing Wysocki) is so important because, the way our culture is evolving, without doing so, writing may nearly die out of popular culture.

Wysocki constantly refers to change, or that media has changed the world, and that writing might as well change with it, I think implying that it will change or die. Kenneth Bruffee says something about needing teachers take on the responsibility of “inducting new members into the community [of knowledge]” in his essay Collaborative Learning and the “Conversation of Mankind.” “Without [them, Bruffee points out] the community will die when its current members die, and knowledge as assented to by that community will cease to exist” (431). If we adapt this statement to consider the current voices who support the use of writing in conjunction with new media, we can reasonably say that if they do not successfully pass the torch, then writing within new media will die. And if it dies there, a space where so many people spend their time instead of with more traditional forms of literature, then writing will be hanging on instead of thriving in a world wide web of great potential.

We know that we can make a difference, that truth is not static, and that we are not simply helpless and completely dependent on the machine of which we are afraid to rage against. Let us be a part of a new media revolution that includes writing within its construct, not a new media revolution that shuns it. If we become “situated people [and] make things happen,” we will have overcome the idea that so many have—that we only make a difference if the superstructure allows it (5)

I won’t say much about the exercises except that I am anxious to try some of them, even with high schoolers.

podcast

Neimeyer’s class…

In listening to Neimeyer’s first two classes online, I found that I would not want to be a part of an online class. On one hand it is can be convenient to take courses online. Moreover, I would not have wanted to be a part of the holding hands experiment, which was done to see how long it would take to transmit a signal from one person to ten people down the chain. So one advantage of being online is that a student could not contract an illness, other than addiction to the internet I suppose, through an online class. I have quite the fear of germs and would not want to hold hands with others on the first day of class.
On the other hand, it is not social enough. Or is it? With interaction such as blogging and any of the various ways to communicate online, there may be an argument for a strictly online class. But not having any physical communication with the teacher and classmates just seems so eerie to me, something an environment I would not care to live in. Even though I basically keep to myself and am not the most social individual in most classes, I fear what I would become if I never met my peers face to face. Of course Neimeyer’s class was not online, but, through getting the lesson as a podcast, I really felt the disconnection of not being there in person. I’m not the most social person, but the idea that knowledge is socially constructed really hit home with these lessons.

The audio effect of two speakers was more pleasant that only being able to hear just one, however. They, like music with multiple vocalists, were able to compliment each other.

The tidbit of information about being able to have babies online…Wow. I have heard of mail order brides but internet ordered babies!!! That is insane and really disgusts me. What kind of world would we be in if everyone ordered their babies over the internet, without having sensual intercourse with the mother? My guess it is one that does not want to mingle with the opposite sex. On second thought—no offense to my lovely wife, but my kids take so much of my time that my wife and I hardly have time for each other. So, there might be an argument for a single parent family with no ex involved. I can see it now, a computer telling the interested single parent to be, “Take me, I am yours,” yet I can’t see how to get the sperm into the parent at the other end. That has to be a joke…that you don’t need to at least go to a lab.

Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World

Now that I’ve read “Visualizing English: Recognizing the Hybrid Literacy of Visual and Verbal Authorship on the Web,” I’m left wondering if my blog’s title and purpose is interesting enough for anyone to pursue reading it, and more importantly interact with it. Should I have named it “globtacular” for it to be taken seriously? You, my fellow classmates, would all probably read it in either case, since it is one of Dr Rhodes’ expectations, yet I wonder if anyone else will stumble upon this glob by chance and make a contribution. My guess is that it won’t pop up on any search engines. (If you are not my classmate and have read this much, could you just say “It happened. This blog popped up on my search for something”?

If the right person does come across this thing, it might gain some interest I suppose if I take the time to make it of interest, to seduce like with word foreplay. Perhaps after I pass the comprehensive exam, I’ll take more time to nurture it, to grow with it. The idea of blogging suddenly has my interest.

Now back to the article. It points to the essential balance between words and images to have a good web page and more importantly, I think, is that the words and images should communicate, talk to each other; images should not simply “illustrate” the words, “but […] invoke the spirit of mutually illuminating dialogue” (32). It makes me think of the handouts I write, for my high school students, where I stick clip art on—the handouts, not the students. The clip art, I think, connects with the activity. They aren’t usually illustrations, but I never thought about using it, clip art, so that it would interact and talk to the words. I can see why that is desirable, of course, as I have done that. But could there not be an appropriate occasion for an image to merely illustrate the words on the page? Hmmm. I guess depending on the way you might look at it, even in children’s books, the images that illustrate the words on the page talk to the story. I’m beginning to think our author, Craig Stroupe, is wasting a lot of ink and, more importantly, energy. I’ve said this before about other great authors and later ate my words, so who knows. Nevertheless for now, I would hate to assume it must be so just because a great rhetorician says it is. If I do, once I do, another great rhetorician is bound to come along with what seems equally plausible. I’ve allowed that to happen to me as well. Is a sentence with an appositive phrases not as good as one without?

Stroupe makes use of Peter Elbow’s metaphor of cooking with complimentary or even conflicting words is nice. Certain words simmering and interacting making the result rich with flavor—what more to say? It seems that cooking with a combination of words and images is being used as support for Stroupe’s point, or perhaps Stroupe is building on Elbow’s idea—yes.

Elbow’s metaphor “Growing,” or “‘trying to help words grow,’ through a recursive and self-interrogational process” is puzzling (19). The way I see this is that growing must be similar to repetition, where one or more words are repeated as the ideas grow. If this is so, Elbow must be building on ancient rhetoric.

Welcome!

I am Marko.

Hmmmm...what you might want to know--I am an in the English Composition program with a composition concentration (is that not redundant?) and scheduled to take the comprehensive exam this Spring. I'm drinking an RC (that is about the extent of my acronym usage. My motto--absolutely no acronyms, AKA--ANA).

Briefly, my title, Marko's Glob, is not a typo. Marko's Glob is short for Marko's Globe. I thought about making it Marko's World, but I think Wayne's brother must have taken that user name.

The purpose of my glob is to think out the course readings.

I am not terribly comfortable with computer tech. I could not even get my picture to show up on my profile or wherever it goes on this blog. I am alright with MS word and MS pp but not much more. Blogging is certainly new to me. I text-msg a little. I use the net but usually from work. Unfortunately, the panoptic big brothers looking over my shoulder from somewhere within the system at my work have blocked all blog sites, so I'm stuck blogging from my home computer, which is no snail, no--it moves at about the speed of a glacier, a rate of approximately an inch every year, a description that is hardly hyperbolic and more like understamentoholic.

Thanks for checking out this space. I look forward to your comments.