Theory in Reflective Practice Assignment #5

Multimodal Composing

Part I: due in class by 5:15 p.m. on W 10/28/15
Part II: due on blog (posted response) by 5:00 p.m. on F 10/30/15 
 
Goal and Context This is a two-part assignment in which you get to collaboratively explore some online composing tools as a way of testing out some of our theorists' claims about politics of composing.

Working Groups for Part I
Andy, Emma, Sam
Idaly, Maddie, Robert
Daniel, Deanna, Zahra

Part I: The Exploratory Collaboration

Investigate and explore as many of these tools as possible before you settle on one of them for completing your collaborative task:

Using only your chosen to tool to plan, start, and complete the collaboration, select one of the following writing tasks:
  1. a literacy narrative, in which you describe origins and beginnings of -- or landmark moments in -- your development as a writer, reader, or learner;
  2. a multiculturalism narrative, in which you describe significant moments in -- or concepts determining -- who you are culturally and your straddling various cultures or groups;
  3. an intellectual coming-of-age tale, in which you describe a rite of passage with certain ideas, ideologies, or concepts that made some difference for you;
  4. a manifesto, in which you explain a position or an issue on which others could act, with as much intertextuality as possible.

The hard part may be deciding which of these four tasks you will all write together.

At all stages of the collaborative work, keep track of pros/cons of various tools, their affordances, their limitations, how they do or don't allow you to work. Also, keep track of organizational and compositional victories and challenges (after all, it's not always a natural thing to work together). Finally, make note of how your collaboration tests or enacts some of our theorist's key claims from last week and this coming week.

In class on 10/28, I will ask each group to share the following:
  • your collaborative composition in digital form (be prepared to show it onscreen)
  • a discussion of all the things you noted above
  • a discussion of which of this week's theorists (Yancey, Delagrange, or Hayles) and which of last week's theorists (George, Hood, Miller/Shepherd) could help you to explain what you think you achieved, critically, throughout your composing. Whose ideas are reflected in, or even overturned or challenged by, this task you just completed? Or, which of their dilemmas and/or arguments did your activity enact and in what ways did it enact them? Or, which of their claims or key concepts held true or not true for your particular experience (even if they hold true or not true for other experiences, I'm interested in having us test out those claims on this one)?

Please also submit your group's project link to Canvas.

Ultimately, your group's composition may or may not be a visual composition, per se, but it is a composition that relies on certain assumptions about learning, negotiation, environments, spaces, and one another. That's what I'm asking us to explore.

Part II: The Analysis (due 5:00 p.m. on Friday)
For your follow-up critical blog post (which you will do individually), please reflect on the assignment and how some aspect of the task illuminated/complicated/addressed/extended your reading of our texts for this week and last week. Same evaluation criteria as before:
  • quality and completeness -- several screens' worth
  • content -- fairly public so, interesting, objective, performative, intertextual
  • evidence/justification -- provides specific examples from readings to explain or demonstrate your reflection
  • coherence and framing -- guided by a discovery statement, subtly (but well) framed
  • clarity -- you are constructing a public audience not necessarily in this class
  • attribution of sources -- please do it throughout your reflection
  • title -- make it interesting

As always, I'm looking forward to both parts of this assignment and am happy to answer questions as you work through them!

-Prof. G

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)