Before the pandemic hit, my friend Harmony took a self-guided tour of civil rights sites: she walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (aka the Lynching Memorial), but she had a special epiphany at the Selma Interpretive Center. At the very back of that museum, she saw a white button about the size of a quarter with one word on it in bold black type: NEVER. Below the pin, she read that this was one of the symbols of white power in Selma and Dallas county [that was] worn to demonstrate defiance to court-ordered integration and opposition to equality for Black Americans. Sheriff James Clark and other segregationists would wear their “NEVER” pins to identify themselves in public. Harmony, who is a textile artist, says that the moment she saw that pin and read the inscription, “the idea just struck me to make an ALWAYS pin to show support for racial equality.” And so she did! (See above.) She designed the pin and then found a manufacturer owned by a woman of color in Detroit to produce 1,000 buttons that she is now giving away to anyone who wants one. (I have mine on right now and plan to wear it “always.”) When I told my grandnieces about the pin, they not only wanted one of their own to wear, but they also wanted to think of other pins or buttons they might design to help carry the message. That got me thinking about using the NEVER and ALWAYS pins as a writing prompt for class discussion about racial justice and as a challenge to students to do some research on their own or in small groups about the role buttons/pins have played in other historical periods. They could then design buttons of their own that contribute to the conversation. Their research might lead to interviews with older relatives or neighbors who might remember particular buttons (or even have them in a box somewhere), as well as to archives in their home towns. Such investigations might lead them to reflect on the line between advocacy and propaganda (is there one?) and the way such buttons or pins were used in other movements (such as feminist and LGBTQ+) or institutions (like the military and universities). And, of course and always, to the way language is used to shape our views, often without our even recognizing that it is doing so. In the meantime, you can find out more about Harmony’s trip and the ALWAYS pins on her blog. Image Credit: Andrea Lunsford ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned" video, Barclay Barrios (@barclay_barrios), author of Emerging and Intelligence, reflects on the transitions happening in higher education, the permanence of online education, and the opportunities to create an education system that is inclusive and safe for students of all backgrounds, identities, and beliefs. ... View more

    Sidney Blaylock (recommended by Kate Pantelides) is pursuing his PhD in English with a concentration in Rhetoric and Composition at Middle Tennessee State University. He expects to finish in May 2021. He teaches Expository Writing and Research and Argumentation. His research interests include multimodality, rhetorical analysis, new media, cultural rhetorics, digital rhetorics, film, and afrofuturism. Allison Dziuba (recommended by Jonathan Alexander) is a PhD candidate in English at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). She teaches courses in the lower-division writing sequence, in person during the school year and online during the summer. She also teaches the Summer Bridge writing lab, a pre-college course for incoming UCI first-years. She has served as the editorial assistant for College Composition and Communication and Rhetoric Society Quarterly. She is currently the Campus Writing & Communication Fellow at UCI. Allison's research interests include college students' self-sponsored literacy practices and extracurricular rhetorical education, and intersectional feminist approaches to rhetorical studies. Michael S. Garcia (recommended by Kimberly Harrison) is pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Florida International University. He expects to finish in April 2021. At FIU, he has taught Writing and Rhetoric, Writing in Action, Essay Writing, and Creative Writing: Forms and Practices. He has also taught 11th and 12th grade English at a Title I high school. As a writer, he has published short stories, essays, web articles, and poetry. Sarah Heidebrink-Bruno (recommended by Jenna Lay) is pursuing her PhD in English, with a concentration in literature and social justice pedagogies, at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. She expects to finish her degree in 2020 or 2021. She teaches a range of composition and rhetoric courses, including English 1, 2, and 11, in addition to interdisciplinary courses in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies as well as Africana Studies. She has also taught online courses in English and WGSS, with a focus on pop culture themes, including modern relationships. Her research interests include restorative justice practices, women's literature of the 1960s-present, feminist theory and praxis, and writing center tutors' instruction. L. Corinne Jones (recommended by Lissa Pompous Mansfield) is completing her PhD in Texts and Technology with an emphasis in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Central Florida (UCF), where she expects to finish in Spring 2021. She currently teaches Composition II (Writing about Writing and Research Writing); in Fall 2020, she anticipates teaching Business and Technical Communication. She also works as a legal writing adjunct at Barry University (Law School). Previously, she has taught Composition I (introductory writing) at UCF, as well as First-Year composition for conditionally admitted students at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Additionally, she has worked extensively in writing centers. Her research interests include digital rhetoric; circulation studies; digital, qualitative, mixed methods and methodologies; and feminist and queer studies. Sierra Mendez (recommended by Diane Davis) is pursuing a PhD in Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. She expects to finish in May 2022. Sierra currently teaches a custom RHE 309K course entitled "Rhetoric of Texas" and serves as Assistant Director for the D.R.W.'s Digital Writing and Research Lab. In the past, she has taught "Introduction to Rhetoric and Composition" and served on the Lower Division Curriculum Committee. Before beginning her doctoral program, Sierra worked for three years for a museum branch of the San Antonio Public Library, creating educational community-based resources, installations, and programming. Her research interests concern border, material, visual, and memory rhetorics: specifically, the historical and ongoing constitution of Mexicanx bodies via narratives held both tenuously and powerfully across San Antonio’s urban space. Christopher Peace (recommended by Louis M. Maraj, on behalf of DBLAC) is pursuing a PhD in English with a concentration in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Kansas. He expects to finish in May 2022. He currently teaches Composition 102 and plans to teach a 203 course on Digital Storytelling in Fall 2020. He has also taught online first-year composition and world literature. His research interests include rhetorical genre studies, (African-derived) religious rhetorics, writing ecologies, spatial rhetorics, digital storytelling/mythmaking, and ecocomposition. He also serves as a professional tutor for the KU Gear Up program and is an affiliate of the Project on the History of Black Writing.   Kalyn Prince (recommended by Roxanne Mountford) is pursuing her PhD in English with a concentration in Rhetoric and Writing Studies at the University of Oklahoma. She serves as the Senior Assistant Director of First-Year Composition and teaches first-year writing. She has also co-taught a composition theory survey course for graduate students in the OU English Department. Her research interests include public argumentation, nostalgia as ethos, and rhetorical analysis. Josh Scheidler (recommended by Brian Gogan) is pursuing his MA in English with an emphasis on Medieval Language and Literature at Western Michigan University (WMU). He expects to finish in May 2021. He teaches WMU's first-year writing course, Thought and Writing, as a graduate teaching assistant. His research interests include ethics and politics in medieval literature, first-year writing pedagogy, rhetorical analysis, and new materialist environmental rhetoric.     Benesemon Simmons (recommended by Khirsten L. Scott, on behalf of DBLAC) is pursuing a PhD in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric at Syracuse University. She teaches WRT 105 and WRT 205 and serves as a writing consultant. Her research interests include Black Feminist Pedagogy, Critical Race Theory, and Activist Rhetoric.   For biographies of Bedford New Scholars in previous years, click here.   ... View more

There are things that one wants to end. For instance, the election. You know which election. And why. And also the pandemic, which is roaring back just as the promise of reliable vaccines begins to glimmer on the horizon. But then there is this other ending—self-chosen—that will begin for me in less than six weeks: I'm retiring, and it occurs to me that retirement is something worthy of a semiotic examination. I will limit such an analysis here to the popular cultural image of retirement (excluding here the recent FIRE movement and its own particular imagery aimed at thirty-somethings), which is most often to be encountered in advertisements for investment services aimed at sixty-something retirees. These generally feature beaming couples walking hand in hand—preferably on a beach—with beautiful white hair and clearly having the time of their lives. They are also usually white, but Black couples sometimes appear, as well (which is about the extent of diversity to be found in such ads). The overall message is clear: retirement is an endless vacation, healthy and carefree, often augmented by the appearance of grandchildren: happy grandchildren playing with even happier grandparents. The image is rather different in the movies and on television, however. I think that On Golden Pond, tinged with its golden aura of well-ripened mortality, is most representative of the cinematic version of retirement, while TV's Golden Girls would make an excellent televisual example but for the fact that its spunky protagonists are still working—and retirement is not precisely synonymous with "old age." I'm sure that there are other examples (a co-starring sit-com grandparent sprinkled here and there), but the point is that retirement, while not exactly being a taboo subject in American popular culture, isn't a common one either—which is entirely to be expected within the context of a culture devoted to youth. Thus, in a society where popular culture has taken over from such traditional institutions as the family, the church, and classical literature, the task of providing framing narratives for the conduct of life, retirees have been left pretty much on their own. And that, actually, is probably a good thing, because the broad-brush narratives that cultures paint are rarely adequate to the immense diversity of our lives, and retirement is no exception. Not everyone is going to be able to retire—healthily hand-in-married-hand—to a beach. Not everyone has grandchildren, and of those that do, a significant number are having to raise them themselves. For all too many, the vanishing of company-provided pensions is turning retirement into a struggle, not a vacation. And with American lifespans getting longer and longer (knock on wood and pass the COVID-19 vaccination, please), one's retired years can actually exceed those of working life. In short, it is not a Hallmark-greeting-card cliché to say that retirement is really a beginning rather than an end, with many possible itineraries. Popular culture, with its laser focus on youth, simply isn't concerned with providing much in the way of imagining such journeys, and this, when one comes to think about it, may actually be the most semiotically significant thing about American retirement of all. Photo Credit: Pixabay Image 1334441 by geralt, used under Pixabay License ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned" video, Barclay Barrios (@barclay_barrios), author of Emerging and Intelligence, discusses the complications of planning for and setting up online classes, and of accounting for factors outside of student or instructor control - such as the weather's effect on internet access.  ... View more

Josh Scheidler (recommended by Brian Gogan) is pursuing his MA in English with an emphasis on Medieval Language and Literature at Western Michigan University (WMU). He expects to finish in May 2021. He teaches WMU's first-year writing course, Thought and Writing, as a graduate teaching assistant. His research interests include ethics and politics in medieval literature, first-year writing pedagogy, rhetorical analysis, and new materialist environmental rhetoric.   What is your greatest teaching challenge? Right now, connecting with students the way I could face-to-face is proving to be challenging. There are often delays in internet connection that create a distance between students and their peers, and students and me, which also proves challenging. Right now, I’m working with students to help them become familiar with online spaces and how to navigate that learning curve; I know it took me a period of time to become acclimated to the online infrastructure we use in our program. But the work I’m doing with students to familiarize them with our online platforms and the resources we are using for remote instruction has allowed some connection with students. I’ve been pleasantly surprised that students have reached out to me, and one even called me early in the semester. Making connections online is challenging—especially considering we are working from a distance and with seemingly indiscriminate internet lag—but the vast amount of energy needed to build and sustain relationships requires us to be all in. How will online or remote learning affect your teaching? Remote learning is slow. The first two class sessions I have in Fall 2020 are 75 minutes each, but time has seemed to just disappear with these classes. It’s almost as if class is over just as soon as we’ve started. So, I am trying to give students exercises and activities that don’t ask them to traverse the various online platforms we are using so their time can be spent writing rather than navigating unfamiliar places. Remote teaching has truly highlighted the necessity of a writing instructor, or indeed any instructor, to demonstrate everything, give clear instructions, and explain what is being asked of students simply and thoroughly. The many ways to miscommunicate or misunderstand with online learning underscores the need to continue practicing with and developing written communication skills. Remote learning is making me work harder to ensure my students are given instruction and practice that will help them develop useful skills for the future. What projects or course materials from Bedford/St. Martin's most pique your interest, and why? What is exciting to you about Achieve and why? I think Achieve is really cool. Being able to view a timeline and visualize progression through the peer review process is extremely helpful and can give students a way to plan their homework more efficiently. Having to finish one step before moving to the next step is critical in making sure students take the time they need to complete one task before moving to another task. Most importantly, though, the timeline functions as a visualization of a writing process, which is crucial for those who think writing is nothing but a product or a paper turned in for credit. It can demonstrate writing to be something that is shaped by place, time, iteration or need.  The depth of the revision planning in Achieve is absolutely fantastic. I enjoy there being a built-in reflection too. That there is an entire process for writing that is streamlined in this way — with revision plans built from peer reviews and a means for clearly tracking the changes from one iteration of the writing to the next — is incredibly useful for gauging student progress, development, and need. Having all of this integrated with an online learning platform or LMS is awesome to me. It really deals with the problem that I’ve encountered where students are being asked to go from one platform to the next, with peer review in one place and assignments submitted for a grade in another; this back-and-forth gets confusing for students and takes valuable time away from writing and developing successful writing habits. The activities that students have to do online should not obscure their endeavor to learn writing.    Josh's Assignment that Works During the Bedford New Scholars Summit, each member presented an assignment that had proven successful or innovative in their classroom. Below is a brief synopsis of Josh's assignment. For the full activity, see Paragraph Cohesion Activity. This activity asks students to consider how paragraphs work with one another at the sentence level. The goals of the assignment are two-fold: I want students to practice working with another to solve writing problems, and I want to play an enjoyable game in class with students to give them individualized instruction when they need it. This activity approximates the peer review students will engage in with each other to determine what works in writing. It also lets me practice working with students somewhat individually, despite being in groups. This activity is something I do near the beginning of the semester as students are still developing relationships with one another and with me, and it has helped students to become comfortable working with one another.  ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned" video, April Lidinsky (@april_lidinsky), one of the authors of From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A Text and Reader , reflects on instructor support communities, being available for students, and take care of oneself. ... View more

This blog series is written by Julia Domenicucci, an editor at Macmillan Learning, in conjunction with Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. There is never a bad time to reflect, and there are endless topics on which to do so! The end of the semester is a natural time to ask students to consider how their writing has improved or what they’ve accomplished over the past few months of class—and you can use Grammar Girl podcasts to aid you in a reflection assignment. Podcasts have been around for a while, but their popularity seems to increase every day—and for good reason! They are engaging and creative, and they cover every topic imaginable. They are also great for the classroom: you can use them to maintain student engagement, accommodate different learning styles, and introduce multimodality.  LaunchPad and Achieve products include collections of assignable, ad-free Grammar Girl podcasts, which you can use to support your lessons. You can assign one (or all!) of these suggested podcasts for students to listen to before class. Each podcast also comes with a complete transcript, which is perfect for students who aren’t audio learners or otherwise prefer to read the content. To learn more about digital products and purchasing options, please visit Macmillan's English catalog or speak with your sales representative.  If you are using LaunchPad, refer to the unit “Grammar Girl Podcasts” for instructions on assigning podcasts. You can also find the same information on the support page "Assign Grammar Girl Podcasts." If you are using Achieve, you can find information on assigning Grammar Girl in Achieve on the support page "Add Grammar Girl and shared English content to your course." If your English Achieve product is copyright year 2021 or later, you are able to use a folder of suggested Grammar Girl podcasts in your course; please see “Using Suggested Grammar Girl Podcasts in Achieve for English Products” for more information.   Using Grammar Girl Podcasts in Reflection Assignment A: This activity will ask students to review how they’ve improved in their writing over the course of the semester. First, ask each student to review their first draft or first essay for your course. Using the instructor and peer review comments they’ve received, each student should identify the area in which they struggled most. You may wish to give students some common areas of concern to choose from, such as citations, organization, topic sentences, comma usage, and active/passive voice. Students should submit their chosen problem area to you. Alternately, you can identify the areas you found to of greatest concern in your students’ first drafts. Next, assign students relevant Grammar Girl podcasts based on their chosen problem area. For example, if a student says they had trouble with active/passive voice, you could assign “A Common Passive Voice Mistake,” “Active Voice and Passive Voice,” “Active Voice Revisited,” or “Passive Voice Revisited.” You may wish to put students into groups by topic if that seems appropriate, for example, if three students identify problems with their comma usage. If you do so, have them discuss the podcast(s) after listening. Ask students to take a later or final paper and evaluate it for the issue they identified in that first paper. Finally, have each student write a short reflection on how they’ve improved and where they still have some work to do! Assignment B: Every year brings difficulties, but also accomplishments. This activity will ask students to reflect on an accomplishment from the semester.  Ask students to identify an accomplishment or something they are proud of from the past few months. This could be related to academics and writing, or it could be something more day to day such as getting a new job, forming a new good habit or breaking a bad one, learning how to cook something new, or doing something that scared them.  Assign the following Grammar Girl podcasts for students for homework. Writing Scripts and Speeches  Sentence Length Are You Annoyingly Redundant? Then, ask them to take what they’ve learned about podcasts and writing to craft a podcast script about their accomplishment. Don’t forget a title for your podcast episode, and podcast series! They might consider answering some of the questions in their script: Why is this an important accomplishment for me? Did I plan to reach this goal? What steps did I take to achieve this? What is the next personal goal I hope to complete? Once scripts are completed, you can ask students to present them, either in small groups or to the whole class. If time and resources permit, you may also wish to ask students to record and submit the project as a podcast.   More Grammar Girl Activities If you are looking for other activities, be sure to check out the other Grammar Girl posts, especially: Using Grammar Girl Podcasts in an Online Classroom Grammar Girl & Ideas for Teaching Online Using Grammar Girl Podcasts for Fun, Low-Stakes Activities Using Grammar Girl Podcasts to Improve Student Writing Using Grammar Girl Podcasts to Discuss Pronouns   Credit: Pixabay Image 2538429 by MichaelGaida, used under a Pixaby License ... View more

From last February when I was beginning to see contours of this pandemic, through the terrible losses of the spring surge and the relentless and often hateful cacophony of a presidential campaign on steroids—I often felt like I was in a maelstrom, whirling about, trying to find some footing and a way to act or even think straight. The “wave” of the pandemic that just kept on cresting seemed to me to parallel the wave of misinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies that just kept on coming—and that are still flooding the ether even weeks after the election revealed a clear winner. During all this time, I have been reading—almost obsessively—national newspapers and magazines, and watching or listening to news programs on TV, radio, and the web, focusing on local, national, and global effects of the pandemic, the systemic racism so powerfully present, and a disastrously divided electorate. This week, however, I decided to take a break, to step back, take a very deep breath, put aside all the news, and focus on my immediate surroundings. While I had been taking long walks—something I could do safely here on the northern coast of California where there are few people out and about—I had spent them thinking and worrying about the virus and the election. Enough, I thought. Enough. So I began taking walks of a different sort, slow walks, sometimes just a few yards in one direction or another, looking closely, trying to take in every leaf, every twig, every stone. I paused under a homemade owl house and counted tiny skeletons of mice the local owl had been feasting on. I sat on a large rock on the bluff and watched the waves crest and break into the little cove outside my house, the plumes of foam shooting straight up. I counted a squadron of pelicans flying low over the water as they began their migration, laughing as one straggler hurried to catch up. I discovered a tiny clump of wild iris clinging to a cliff side, already poised to send out green shoots. I came home and re-read Wendell Berry’s “The Peace of Wild Things.” Perhaps it’s time for all of us, and all of our students, to try to take a step back, to lean in close, and to observe something in the natural world that they connect with. Doing so can be soothing and calming, as I have found, but can also be revealing: I note, for instance, the dryness of the landscape, in drought and wildfire conditions now for three quarters of the year. But in every case, such close observations, I believe, have a grounding effect, bringing us back to the reality of the earth around us. So while I might well be giving students assignments to engage them in analyzing the current moment with all of its competing narratives—I think now I’d rather ask them to step back, take that deep breath, and do some very close observing. And then write about what they have seen, and what they have learned from the seeing. They may find, as I have, that they see themselves more clearly now as well. Image Credit: Pixabay Image 984083 by Free-Photos, used under the Pixabay License ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned" video, April Lidinsky (@april_lidinsky), one of the authors of From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A Text and Reader, emphasizes the importance of community-building in composition classrooms, and offers strategies for creating a sense of community in synchronous remote classes using Zoom. ... View more

This post is difficult to write, and I approach writing this week with humility and a sense of empathy for the challenges that all of us are facing. I have ADHD, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), and I have written, reflected, and created multimedia as a way of processing how these disabilities interact with my brain and the rest of my body. I cannot say how Zoom fatigue feels for anyone else, but for me it was a shock to the system.  ADHD helps me hyper focus when I teach on Zoom, but I cannot shut off the hyper focus when I shut down Zoom, and then, also off camera, GAD kicks in. After two months of fully synchronous Zoom teaching, GAD erupted in shrieks and loops of non-stop thinking. Overthinking, over-emotional, idealistic, taking life too seriously—all the words applied to me by others in childhood, graduate school, and afterward, came ripping out of my brain again. This was quarantine, but also not quarantine, the election, but also not the election. This was my brain on too much Zoom. In “Higher Ed Needs to Go on a Zoom Diet,” Joshua Kim suggests: “Whatever the reason that Zoom tires us out, we should all start listening to our bodies and begin making some adjustments.”  The first body part I knew I needed to adjust was my brain, and I decided to ask for accommodations for next semester: I would need to spend less time teaching on Zoom, and more time working with students asynchronously on email and google.docs; work I already knew how to do because of online training I received years before this pandemic, and my current employer’s online training. Changes in policy and scheduling are mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and as an adjunct, I understand that asking for such changes presents risks. Yet, as Eddie Glaude, Jr. reminds us, James Baldwin urged that we use our pain “to connect with other people’s pain; and insofar as you can do that with your pain, you can be released from it, and then hopefully it works the other way around too; insofar as I can tell you what it is to suffer, perhaps I can help you to suffer less.” In other words, it seemed an even greater risk to ignore what felt like a tornado in my brain, and there was no option to keep the tornado invisible.  Sharing our suffering shares our humanity as well. With white privilege, and with the privilege of excellent mental health care, which is rare in this country, comes the responsibility to resist invisibility. I asked for accommodations and received them. Thanks to the ADA, with proof of documented disabilities I am legally eligible to receive reasonable accommodations to do the same job as everyone else. In The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, Audre Lorde, “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” who also lived with disabilities, writes, “I began to recognize a source of power within myself that comes from the knowledge that while it is most desirable not to be afraid, learning to put fear into a perspective gave me great strength.” Indeed, we cannot wish away the problems and consequences of this pandemic. But, for me, for my students, and for my colleagues, my hope is that those of us with disabilities feel less invisible, less ashamed, and less alone. ... View more

As a concept, “representation” shimmers with meaning, a complex topography of politics, textuality, and power. What does it mean to represent oneself, or to be represented — politically, culturally, textually, academically? What are the ripple effects?  Senator Kamala Harris’s glass ceiling-smashing election to the role of Vice President has focused our national attention on the shimmer of representation. As the first Vice President-elect who is a woman, woman of color, and graduate of a HBCU, Harris strategically deployed these many meanings of representation on her November 14 speech in Delaware. Dressed head to toe in suffrage white on the 100th anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment, she declared, “While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last — because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.” The viral image by artist Bria Goeller of a striding Kamala Harris casting the shadow of desegregation icon Ruby Bridges reminds us of the histories represented in this moment. We can launch timely classroom conversations about representational significance (including the fact that we’ll have a first second-gentleman who is also Jewish) by asking our students, “Do you agree with the claim that ‘you can’t be what you can’t see?’ Discuss!” My experience with college students has been similar to Kalyn Prince’s in her description of students who are moved to apply rhetorical insights to the wider world as advocates.  With that in mind, you might also invite students to consider the power of citational representation, as we writers decide whose voices to include in our written conversations. I have been inspired by the Cite Black Women Collective in my own work and have introduced students to the principle of mindfully including a diversity of voices in every scholarly conversation. Citations are a core power move in scholarship, whether or not writers are conscious of this fact. We can help students understand that the decisions they make as writers, even at the level of citation, can have ripple effects. Quotation is about inclusion. Citation is about representation. As instructors, we can commit, now, to decolonizing our spring syllabi, breaking open our schedule to include more voices, and discussing with our students the rationale behind the decisions we make about classroom texts. I’m inspired by Susan Bernstein’s post on “Centering Black Lives,” and I would love to hear what is working in your classrooms and your plans for the coming semester. Regardless of our students’ partisan leanings, we all likely share an ideal of a “country of possibilities.” What our students can learn from you is that their decisions about which quotations to include in their writing are the work of making that ideal a reality. Photo by April Lidinsky ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned," Mike Palmquist, author of Bedford Researcher, discusses the benefits of labor-based grading, and how the process of integrating knowledge can lead to a short-term decrease in performance, but a long-term gain for students. ... View more

Today’s guest blogger is Kim Haimes-Korn, a Professor of English and Digital Writing at Kennesaw State University. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning and critical digital literacies and focuses on students’ powers to create their own knowledge through language and various “acts of composition.” She likes to have fun every day, return to nature when things get too crazy, and think deeply about way too many things. She loves teaching. It has helped her understand the value of amazing relationships and boundless creativity. You can reach Kim at khaimesk@kennesaw.edu or visit her website: Acts of Composition Overview One of the most exciting things about multimodal writing in digital contexts is that we can compose non-linear texts that encourage readers to connect deeply and individually through engaging links, images, and exploratory paths. Writing and reading become participatory experiences in which we create dynamic spaces that encourage exploration and critical reading. When we read and write in non-linear spaces, we have opportunities to combine content in ways to create multidimensional experiences for our audiences.  Educational researchers, Howell, Reinking and Kaminsky define this process as writing in which readers and writers go beyond two-dimensional writing and, “add a third dimension of depth by simulating layers of visual elements.”  These features are also referred to as multimedia stories which, as media theorist, Jane Stevens, explains are “ a combination of text, still photographs, video clips, audio, graphics and interactivity presented on a web site in a nonlinear format in which the information in each medium is complementary, not redundant (Multimedia Storytelling, 2019). It is these additional layers though which writers can create interactive texts where readers choose their own paths and directions as they navigate documents.  In order to create non-linear writing that is complementary and not redundant, writers must choose content that does more than tell the same story.  Instead parts of the story are told through different media, secondary research and different paths for readers to explore. Through following these paths, readers are able to engage, and understand multiple perspectives through a more comprehensive lens.   I find that it is often difficult to communicate this idea of non-linear, multidimensional writing to students although they interact with these texts all of the time on the Web.  I find that they rarely consider how much content we consume is inherently interactive.  Students are so used to presenting material in linear formats that this type of assignment challenges them to compose through the lens of interactivity to create depth and audience participation in online settings.  Interactive components can take the form of text, links, video, audio, images, animation, graphics, etc. The most challenging part of this assignment is getting students to understand interactivity and the ways composing takes on new shapes in digital contexts. I find that it is useful to concentrate and distinguish between three important concepts: Purposeful linking, Multimodal Components, and what I call Exploratory Paths. Purposeful Linking involves students in embedding links within their texts in order to guide their readers in a direction that will both engage them and extend their subjects through secondary sources.  I help students to consider linking in meaningful ways. Many students will link merely for duplication rather than extension or link to commercial sites that do not really add value or depth to their conversations.  Like other research practices, we look for students to evaluate their sources for integrity, validity, and interest.  It is also important to teach students about the logistics of purposeful linking and how to contextualize and place their links.  Students will often link to “here” or some other generic nomenclature.  They need to learn to carefully name and find the places in their sentences that connect most directly to where they are linking.  Multimodal Components add a visual and potentially interactive dimension to texts as we engage readers through images, videos and other graphic content.  The difference between multimodal components and embedded links is that these components appear on the original pages and do not require readers to follow them to other content.  Instead, they add to the reading experience through reinforcing and extending ideas through visual components. Exploratory Paths take readers deeper into productive, related tangents that allows readers to experience different layers that extends their content.    Unlike embedded links or multimodal components, exploratory paths are authored by the student on embedded pages.  They takes the form of mini features (or chunks of Composing Exploratory Paths (courtesy of author) information) in which students compose, interpret, synthesize and extend on ideas related to their subjects from their own perspectives. These paths include links or graphic connectors where readers engage and interact for related feature information. Essentially students create a master feature, along with associational content to give a larger picture that includes multiple perspectives and positions on their subjects. Background Resources The St. Martin’s Handbook - Ch.11d: Conducting Internet Research; Ch. 18b: Planning Web-based texts The Everyday Writer (also available with Exercises) - Ch. 10f: Use Web and Library Resources;  Ch. 20c: Plan Features of texts EasyWriter (also available with Exercises) - Ch.13d: Finding Useful Internet Sources; 13a: Conducting Research Steps to the Assignment: Have students generate an essay, story, feature article, or research paper. Ask students to search for copyright free images to include in their writing that extend or reinforce their ideas.  Have them include a caption for each image and pay attention to location to anchor their images close to their ideas. Discuss and show examples of purposeful and non-purposeful linking. Ask students to research and embed links that extend their subjects in purposeful ways through secondary sources. Emphasize that these links should extend, not just duplicate information in their texts. Discuss placement, purposeful naming and location of their links within the document. Introduce the concept of exploratory paths in which students find several related subjects and ideas to shape into mini-features that expand their ideas or offer synthesized perspectives. Have them include links or graphic connectors that take readers to this supplemental content. Have students pull together their drafts and elicit response and feedback from Content Design Teams (peer response).    Reflections on the Activity I find that although these concepts can be difficult for them to grasp, students benefit greatly from understanding these basic practices.  Most of us were taught to write linear documents that are read from top to bottom.  We have to retrain the ways that we think and compose. These principles provide a foundation for purposeful multimodal and interactive writing. References Kaminski, Rebecca, et al. “Writing as Creative Design: Constructing Multimodal Arguments in a Multiliteracies Framework.” Academia.edu, 2015, www.academia.edu/14079689/Writing_as_Creative_Design_Constructing_Multimodal_Arguments_in_a_Multiliteracies_Framework. Stevens, Jane. Multimedia Storytelling: Learn the Secrets from Experts. 22 Feb. 2019, multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/starttofinish/. ... View more

As I (along with the rest of the country and much of the world) await the final outcome of an election that has so strained the bonds that hold this country together—so much so that one wonders whether it can ever be united again—I cannot help but be minded of Abraham Lincoln's famous adaptation of Mark 3:25: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." For whatever the electoral outcome (and I do have my own predictions, but they are not the stuff of cultural semiotics), one thing is certain: roughly one half of the country is going to be enraged by it. And this is something that does belong to the practice of cultural semiotics—something, in fact, that Sonia Maasik and I anticipated as we worked on the 10th edition of Signs of Life in the U.S.A., restructuring the text to make its foundational chapter "American Paradox: Culture, Conflict, and Contradiction in the U.S.A.," as well as focusing its inaugural exemplary semiotic analysis (found in the book's general Introduction) on the two-part Avengers saga, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. If you wish to explore the cultural significance of Election 2020 in your classes, these sections of the new edition provide you with ample resources for doing so, resources that engage critical thinking upon the current state of our nation without inviting partisan conflict among your students. I think it quite unlikely that anyone will disagree on the basic point that the country is very badly divided, so what the text does is provide ways for understanding how we got this way and what to expect in the foreseeable future. And, as always, the book leaves it up to you and your students to determine how you may want to respond to it all. With that, I will return to my own obsessive internet surveying of the latest election news (this is being written on the evening of November 4), and hope that the new edition of Signs of Life (which has just appeared in print) will be useful to you. Photo Credit: Pixabay Image 3801639 by GDJ, used under Pixabay License ... View more