Videos
The DWRL Presents DJ Spooky's Sound Unbound
The DWRL Presents DJ Spooky's Sound Unbound (1 of 3) from DWRL on Vimeo.
The DWRL Presents DJ Spooky's Sound Unbound (2 of 3) from DWRL on Vimeo.
The DWRL Presents DJ Spooky's Sound Unbound (Q&A, 3 of 3) from DWRL on Vimeo.
Animoto Movies after the UT shooting Tragedy
Image Credit: "Flower on UT Campus" taken by RHE 306 student
Rhetoric 306 is a course in argumentation that situates rhetoric as an art of civic discourse. It is designed to enhance students' ability to analyze the various positions held in any public debate and to advocate positions effectively. Students work in this course will help them advance the critical writing and reading needed to succeed in courses for their major and university degree.
Discussion
Students took documentary photos (15 minutes) and then used those photos to create a slideshow (one class day).
Flickr account (need a professional acct. depending on the number and size of photos)
Animoto login
digital cameras (many students had digital cameras with their iphones, etc)
Before class: I had to procure some digital cameras, as well as USB cords. I already had a Flickr account set up, but I had to pay for a professional account to upload all of our pictures.
In class, leading up to taking photos: We had a discussion of the Ted Talks video "The Happy Planet Index," as connected to the last part of our course text No Impact Man by Colin Beavan. We led in to a discussion next of the UT Tragedy on campus, which had occurred the previous day. Students made connections between the video and the event. Then, students had about 20 minutes to leave the class and come back with documentary photos.
Before class, leading up to the Animoto video: Set up an Animoto account. I believe it is free. For DWRL staff, see Sean McCarthy's page on Social Media Workshop for the DWRL login information.
Instructions for Photos: You are documenting UT campus the day after the shooting and suicide on our campus. Try to think outside the box and create a different view of campus, an alternative to the way the media tends to portray places of tragedy. Think the typical feelings provoked by an event like this one (fear, horror, anxiety) and think about creating different feelings with your images. You will work with a partner for this project.
Instructions for Videos: Select an audience for your Animoto (troubled students, Austin police, prospective students, UT staff), select an existing text to go along with your images, and then create an Animoto slideshow with the texts and images (adding the music when the software prompts you). Please only use the images we took and uploaded as a class, and please cite any sources you use in the slideshow.
Student reaction: Students loved the assignment. They were giddy and very "animated" while taking the pictures and creating the videos. They expressed some frustration with Animoto, since they had little control over the design of the slideshow and music selections. However, they were able to complete the assignment in one day, which was incredibly satisfying.
Things I would change: The photos students took could have been better, as they did not have the best composition. If I did it again, I would have a lesson on photos considering elements of composition, or I would include an article about what makes a good photograph. Finally, I would introduce the idea of context earlier in the assignment (before they took the pictures). Another thing that was problematic was the music selections. I thought Animoto would provide fair-use music, but instead it seems to be copyrighted music. I had hoped that students would have full rights to their work.
For DWRL staff, you can see Sean McCarthy's explanation of Animoto on the DWRL pbworks page under the Social Media Workshop.
Sample student videos
http://animoto.com/play/sbbRaBRPTGW0jlTYPD0TaQ
http://animoto.com/play/5DD0O021n70vJUbDBQ2zTg
http://animoto.com/play/KcES1bv1fqpHKRBgNWRwBQ
http://animoto.com/play/xrGUh0m0lbvIfwPMWOGNJA
http://animoto.com/play/X2fS1OxYGJvFku7aYjq6I
http://animoto.com/play/MlAWdvgifEhdfMvGdJF00w
http://animoto.com/play/fsoFqrF3lj1nY7vIHz90ig
The assignment was graded on a basis of completion. However, if I had graded it, I could have considered: student understanding of context and audience, whether they cited the text they used, whether they had a strong concept to communicate, and whether they created an new feeling or "affect" with their invention (pathos).
Selfe - "Stories That Speak to Us: The Intellectual and Social Work of Literacy Narratives & Digital Archives"
Watch this video in HD on Vimeo.
This talk by Cynthia Selfe of Ohio State University focuses on autobiographical literacy narratives from the Digital Archives of Literacy Narratives (DALN) and demonstrate the informational value of these vernacular digital accounts for students and teachers of composition, as well as members of the public. The DALN is a national archive of autobiographical recollections about how individuals learn to read and write; the conditions under which they continue to do so; and the influences and values which shape their literate practices. The DALN, like the Mass Observation project in Britain, depends on the voluntary contributions of individuals and traces the "everyday literacy practices of ordinary people" which often remain invisible in our culture—especially during times of dynamic change (Sheridan, Street, Bloome). These first-hand social media accounts—which exist in a variety of digital formats (e.g., print, video, audio) and are accessible to members of the public through a Web-based interface—constitute a valuable digital resource for research on literacy, for the teaching of composition, and for the public.
DWRL Rechristening
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The Computer Writing & Research Lab has become the Digital Writing & Research Lab. This is the second name change for what began in the late 1980s as the Computer Research Lab, which was founded by Jerry Bump and a handful of graduate student hackers who literally drilled holes in the walls in a crude but successful attempt to wire a lab and a classroom for synchronous online communication. The innovation of the CRL, as John Slatin once defined it, was its pairing of a “computational lab” with a “classroom,” of technological research and development with teaching, making teaching a research activity and granting research a pedagogical investment.
The CRL became the CWRL around 1993, continuing the very same dedication to cutting-edge research and outstanding teaching at the intersection of writing, rhetoric, literature, and technology. Now the CWRL has become the DWRL, a new name for an abiding vision.
Social Justice & Evidence Based Assessment with the Learning Record
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Dr. Margaret A. Syverson of the University of Texas describes the Learning Record assessment system, an alternative to traditional grading.
Mind Maps for Teaching & Research
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Sean McCarthy and Lauren Mitchell present a workshop on using mind maps and mind mapping software.
Joyce – "Touching Upon the Truth"
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Siegfried Zielinski’s notion of media as “spaces of action for constructed attempts to connect what is separated,” offers a perspective from which to consider Gregory Chatonsky's hauntingly simple 2004 interactive installation, "Se toucher toi: installation pour trois espaces à distance." Chatonsky’s work is proposed as an instance of the shared experience of withinness of media through which we interdependently construct truths. These reflections borrow upon Jean-Luc Nancy’s 'The ground of the image (Au fond des images)' and other texts in the course of revisiting what Joyce has called “the interdeterminability of points of perception.”
This talk was given at the DWRL on April 2, 2009.
Academic Blogging
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Liz Jones-Dilworth discusses how she maintains her blog "Becoming Dr. Jones", including the genesis of the blog, what it has done for her professionally, and how she fashions a topic to make it relevant for her particular audience.
This video was recorded on April 7, 2009, at the DWRL.
Blogging 101
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In the competitive environment of the academic job market, blogs are becoming an increasingly important means of representing scholarly work and networking with others in our field. Josh Jones-Dilworth covers the basics of blog creation, including establishing a blog, building expertise, and creating and managing a community of followers.
This video was recorded on April 7, 2009, at the DWRL.
Using Google Maps as a Writing Tool
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In this presentation, Sean McCarthy discusses how to use Google Maps as an interactive writing tool to help students engage with social issues. He presents the basics of building a map and suggests ways of incorporating this flexible and easy-to-use technology into various classroom activities and writing assignments.
Teaching 'The Blind Side'
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In the spring of 2009 The DWRL Pedagogy Group hosted a round-table discussion on ways to approach teaching Michael Lewis's The Blind Side in the composition classroom.
Featuring Professor Jennifer Wilks of the University of Texas at Austin English Department along with Amena Moinfar, Susan Todd, Jasmine Mulliken, and Charlotte Nunes.
Maruca – "Eighteenth-Century Cyborg Writing: An Unnatural History of Literacy"
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Lisa Maruca received her Ph.D. in English in 1997. Since then she has published work on the eighteenth-century book trade, including 'The Work of Print: Authorship and the English Text Trades, 1660-1760,' which was published by the University of Washington Press in 2007. Currently, Dr. Maruca teaches in the English Department at Wayne State University.
Dr. Maruca’s talk is titled “Eighteenth-Century Cyborg Writing: An Unnatural History of Literacy.” Coined in the 1960s, the term “cyborg” has been deployed in environments as varied as TV sci-fi and academic cultural studies. But the melding of bodies and machines has a history as ancient as humanity itself. This talk discusses the ramifications of the cyborg metaphor for understanding eighteenth-century print culture and the construction of instructional literacy technologies.
In early modern England, student writing was seen as aphysical skill based in the transcribing of others’ texts. Starting in the eighteenth-century, however, the marketing of new educational media and methods cast the process of reading the machined text as purely cognitive, transcending both the material artifact and the embodied student reader. An analysis of how the print trade's economic motivations created new conceptual relationships among reading, writing and the body provides insight not just into eighteenth-century literacy practices, but pedagogies of composing with today's new media as well.
Dr. Maruca delivered this talk at the Computer Writing and Research Lab in February 2009.
Ulmer - "ELECTRACY: Writing to Avatar"
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Gregory Ulmer's talk at the Computer Writing and Research Lab in October 2008.
According to Ulmer, Electracy is to digital technologies what Literacy is to alphabetic writing. Each is an apparatus (social machine) including technology, institutional practices, identity formation. The invention of electracy is underway in all three dimensions of the apparatus, with a major role to be played by the arts and letters disciplines. Avatar is to electracy what writing is to literacy. Has it already been invented, or is it a project for the coming electrate generation?
Dr. Ulmer is a professor of English at the University of Florida where he is also the coordinator of the Electronic Learning Forum. His most recent books are From Literacy to Electracy (2003) and Electronic Monuments (2005).
