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Revising Alphabetic Text-Based Assignments

Many classroom assignments require students to draft and revise pieces of writing that summarize, analyze, explicate, and even sell something. This issue of Active and Interactive looks at assignments that also require students to draft and revise pieces with spoken, visual, and musical elements.

With Internet phenomena that permit people to communicate through text, sound, visuals, and interaction, it hardly seems surprising some students come to class knowing a lot about certain technologies, even more than we may. These students, however, often find themselves in an environment where their daily life activities and knowledge often don’t translate into classroom activities that require them to limit their computer capabilities to simple word processing. The three assignments highlighted in this issue begin to resource to that knowledge some students have while encouraging all students to develop it. They, in many ways, begin to bridge various out of school literacies common in the adolescent, adult, and workplace lives of out students and those around them to the academic literacies of the classroom.

A certain caveat seems necessary here. These assignments seek to use technology not for technology’s sake, but with the express interest in the technology as a tool to build knowledge. Consider these three assignments as potential tools for your classroom or as inspiration to stretch traditional assignments in ways that may very well improve them or offer something new that is just as valuable. There is nothing wrong with alphabetic text-based work; but these assignments may push on the tendency we have to value one mode of communication of others.

The Sound Essay

We are proud to feature Dr. Cynthia Selfe of The Ohio State University as our Active-Interactive Newsletter feature article this month. In the following podcast, she discusses the use of sound essays in her college writing classrooms. This piece serves as a follow up to a presentation she delivered at Kent State University on January 4, 2008. Dr. Cynthia Selfe is the Humanities Distinguished Professor in the English Department.

Dr. Cynthia Selfe Portrait

Podcast Coming Soon

The Video Handshake

Assignment Idea and Examples Provided by Beverly Neiderman of Kent State University

It may be difficult to re-imagine the résumé or curriculum vitae, but market competitiveness is leading many job applicants to do just that. These applicants are sending what are called “video résumés” or “video handshakes” to potential employers—and have been doing so for four years now. With the rhetorical intricacies of the traditional paper versions of these documents shifting, Beverly Neiderman devised the following assignment for her business writing courses. She justifies her work on the premise that companies like “Alumwire”, “Real Biography”, “Vault.com”, and others do; people are engaging in the practice, and companies are responding to it in a positive way. Read More/See More . . .

Student Example

The Audio /Music Theme Essay

What’s Your Theme Song?:
Teaching Multimodal Rhetoric Using Aural Essays

By Jennifer M. Pugh

Ph.D. Student at Kent State University

Hans Christian Andersen said, “Where words fail, music speaks.” I would like to suggest that the rhetorical power of words and music can speak beyond what either form can do by itself. The trick is understanding and harnessing the multimodal rhetoric. Writing an essay that will be read silently requires different rhetorical skills than writing an essay that you will read aloud so that others can hear it. To help students learn, critique, and compare these different rhetorical skills, I incorporate the free digital audio editing application, Audacity, along with a conventional essay assignment. . . . Read More/Hear More . . .

Working with Sound in the Class

Hardware needed:

Tape recorder, digital voice recorder, or computer
Microphone (may be built in to recording device)

Software Needed:

Microsoft PowerPoint or Word or
Audacity (freeware software to record and edit commentary)

Sound Tutorials

Now that you've read some about using sound in the classroom, try it out - click here.

Working with Video in the Class

Hardware needed:

Digital video camera, Cell phone, or other video capturing devicer

Software Needed:

Windows Movie Maker (standard on most PC's)
Or other video editing software

Video Tutorials

Now that you've seen video projects in action, see how easy video editing can be - click here.

Resources and Documentation To find resources to help you create and edit audio commentary, or for a short bibliography of sources on recorded audio, click here.

Revising Alphabetic Text-Based Assignments

What’s Your Theme Song?: Teaching Multimodal Rhetoric Using Aural Essays

What’s Your Theme Song?:
Teaching Multimodal Rhetoric Using Aural Essays