Multimedia, Digital Media, New Media: Definitions

Well, folks, here’s the problem with blogging about readings: if you start writing after the first reading, you run the risk of writing too much about that one and not having enough space to write about the others. Sigh...

In terms of my own work as an instructor, I’m intrigued by Lovett, et.al.’s statement that “Writing with Video is pedagogy as intervention, expanding the analytical to include the participatory…[it] intervenes in pervasive forces of representations and instills in students, as cultural producers, a capacity to listen to the voices that have been systematically silenced” (14). While Writing with Video (the course the authors describe) is an upper-division class, it’s possible that lower-division students could benefit greatly from a pedagogy that embraces this perspective.

As a composition instructor, I’ve only occasionally allowed students to deviate from the conventions of a particular genre. For example, a Native American student in my course wrote an excellent documented argument on alcoholism among Natives, using her own experiences as primary research. Still, few students step up and attempt to use their experiences as evidence; here in Academiaville, we tend to frown on that kind of thing anyway. The examples of student work the authors describe here illustrate an opportunity to more openly voice their views and embrace their experiences, instead of stifling these experiences by forcing them into a particular mold early in their college education. In other words, maybe we should be having students produce arguments in multiple media forms to help them better understand their own perspectives.

Kress and van Leeuwen discuss this issue of transerence across modes in the introduction to Multimodal Discourse; they argue that design and production should be unified; when they separate, “design becomes a means for controlling the actions of others,” thus limiting the agency of the creator (7). The Writing with Video course illustrated a scenario where design and production were one in the same; for example, one student described his process of creating his video as follows: “Working with the idea of reflections being a type of portrait, the focus of my shots became capturing actual portraits of people that interacted with the reflections on the floors… I sifted through almost twenty different shots, all over five minutes in length, trying to find these really true moments of portraiture and reflection. I was challenged to cut down these lengthy shots into a cohesive one-minute piece that could best describe my motif” (Lovett, et. al., 6-7). His “design” had less to do with translating his ideas to the screen and more to do with using the material he had to create the video. He was essentially designing and producing at the same time.

I see great potential in the approach of allowing students to use multiple modes to compose a message. However, the issue of access would be very problematic in a freshman course, especially one with 27 students. The authors are open about the fact that interdisciplinary, interdepartmental, and administrative collaboration and cooperation are crucial in creating courses that utilize New Media. I’m planning to stay in New Mexico in the long run, and it’s hard for me to imagine this kind of course getting the go-ahead here (where I had to fill out paperwork to get a dry-erase marker in my classroom. Well, actually, I refused to fill out the paperwork, but they tried). So, at least for the moment, I’ll have to find smaller ways to incorporate new media into my classroom and pedagogical work.

~Jen