In yet another scandalous bout of shameless self-promotion, I'd like to point my Dear Readers' attentions to a couple of recently penned publications...collaborative ventures both, featuring the likes of myself along with fellow, same-minded colleagues venturing forth in the Shadowlands of Digital Media Studies with naught but Courage and Curiosity to guide us. Both pieces are in this Spring's issue of Computers and Composition Online:
>>: "Remixing Basic Writing: Digital Media Production & the Basic Writing Curriculum"--This web article, co-written by Catherine Braun, Amie Wolf, and myself, argues for incorporating digital media production assignments in basic writing as a means of increasing student engagement, better conveying complex rhetorical concepts, and helping up-end the longtime stigma associated with basic writing as a second-class niche of composition. In it, we each share a case study outlining our experiences bringing audio-editing, graphical design, and multimedia assignments into classrooms where such activities are, if not rare, then not much talked about.
>>: "Expanding Composition Audiences with Podcasting"--Doug Dangler, Time Barrow, and I outline some "better practices" for the increasingly popular technology of podcasting, specifically in the field of composition studies (better than what, you ask?...well, we're of a mind that only using podcasting to record and disseminate classroom lectures may close off some exciting applications for the technology that could help build and sustain audiences beyond the classroom). In this piece, we look not only at the classroom, but also the writing center and the academic conference as venues that potentially offer occasions for reaching fellow compositionists and students through innovative audio/video podcasting concepts. Several examples included, along with assignment descriptions and the usual meandering pontifications.
Read and enjoy.
33 dead in Virginia Tech shooting massacre. Something like this is terrible regardless of where it occurs, but it's especially distressing when it happens on a college campus, a potential safe haven for young adults as they learn about the world they're preparing to enter. (Campus updates here)
Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday at 84. Funny, politically savvy, and fierce...he will be missed.
Comics impresario Scott McCloud, author of the highly entertaining and theoretically cogent Understanding Comics (among others), will be speaking this Wednesday at the OSU Wexner Center Auditorium (April 4, 4:30). If you're at all interested in the practice of comics illustration or the graphic novel, you simply have to attend. Event details here.