Remediation

[#1]

Assignment by Eric D. Brown, Bedford New Scholar 2021

Intro and Context

Remediation takes a text in one form and “translates” it into another. But when that “translation” happens certain considerations need to be taken into account for new audiences and new mediums. For project 1, you all wrote about literacy in some way and you all had specific audiences in mind when you wrote and revised your projects. For this assignment, you will remediate Project 1: Literacy Exploration into a new medium/genre for a new audience. Essentially, you are taking the ideas, concepts, and discussions that you created in your first project and (re)presenting them for new or different readers.

There are a lot of ways you can approach your remediation (see below), but keep in mind that the medium you chose will ask you to focus on certain rhetorical and compositional concerns while asking others to take a back seat. I encourage you to come up with your own idea for your remediation (just clear it with me first), but you will want to make sure that content is dictating form, not the other way around. You will also want to adhere to medium and genre conventions where appropriate. Examining remediation examples will be helpful, and we will look at some student examples that should give you a good idea of what you can do for this assignment.

What You Need to Do

1. Sift through Project 1 and find the “big ideas” and supporting points needed to make your argument
2. Decide the medium/genre you want to work in/with;
3. Shape, tweak, and design the ideas from step 1 to work within your new genre/medium;
4. Adhere to new genre/medium conventions; and
5. Take into account new audiences that your genre/medium will appeal to.

Your Remediation Should

• Encapsulate the main idea(s) of Project 1
• Highlight/Present major points that you went over in Project 1
• Employ appropriate genre/medium conventions
• Adapt for new/different audiences and the affordances/drawbacks of your medium/genre

Possible Remediation Ideas

Idea 1: Infographic

You can create an infographic for an audience that is interested in your topic. Infographics are inherently informative, so you want to focus on informing your audience about your ideas. As an infographic is a different medium than a written essay, you need to carefully consider what is important to highlight and how images will be perceived by your audience. You can view this infographic as a compressed or distilled version of your paper, a distillation that takes particular advantage of visuals, the written word, and space. 

There are a ton of infographic making websites available online, most of them with some form of free version. Most of these sites allow you to download a version of the infographic you create, but you can always just take a screenshot of your infographic if you are having issues. Here are some sites that students have used in the past:

• Piktochart
• Canva
• Venngage
• Visme

Idea 2: Podcast

You could create a short audio file in the vein of a podcast that summarizes and explains your project. There are different ways to situate your podcast (see below), but you would take some time to talk about your project (and maybe even writing processes), not the important points you were trying to get across, and highlight any takeaways.  Your podcast should run between 2-3 minutes tops, and you don’t need a script unless you want one, but you need to be able to translate your big ideas clearly, concisely, and (somewhat) eloquently for listeners. Audacity is probably the best software to use, as it's free, and it has cool sound effects you can take advantage of.

Types of Podcasts and Examples:

• Interview podcasts: These podcasts feature a single host who interviews individuals within a particular industry. Examples: Fresh Air, and Trained by Nike.
• Scripted non-fiction: Typically, serial podcasts that have a single theme for a full season. Examples: Serial, Slow Burn, and Hardcore History.
• News recap: A format that summarizes the news within a specific industry. Examples: The Daily, Kickass News, or Planet Money.
• Educational podcasts: Scripted non-fiction shows that focus on teaching their audience. Examples: Stuff You Should Know, Hidden Brain, and TED Radio Hour.

Idea 3: Text Cloud and Reflection

Text clouds, also called tag clouds or word clouds, are visual depictions of a text’s word frequency, and for your remediation you could create a text cloud and write a brief reflection on that process. After uploading your paper into a text cloud (without your heading or works cited), you would adjust the word frequency and “cloud” shape to more accurately reflect your project. Word Art is an easy to use and free site that you could use, but there are certainly others. 

After uploading and tweaking your text cloud you would put it in a document and reflect on the following:

• What you learned from your text cloud
• Which words were the most used in your original text cloud
• How you manipulated the words in your text cloud to more accurately reflect your project
• Why your original text cloud did or did not accurately reflect your ideas
• Why you chose the shape that you did
• The value (or lack thereof) you see in using a text cloud

Idea 4: Re-Genre

Much like we did in class today, you could translate Project 1 into a different genre. You could make it a brief newspaper article, an abstract, a song, or a poem. If you think that you could effectively translate your project into a new genre, go for it! If you take this option, I’m assuming you have some familiarity with the genre, so make sure that you adhere to conventions while still highlighting the key ideas noted above.

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