Podcasting in the School Library

I have listened to podcasts before but never created one. One interesting podcast I've listened to before was called Radiolab. It was more of radioshow because it was about 30 min long but it still involved a lot of sound effects and was very educational. After reading these two pieces, I believe it is something that I could enjoy creating because it helps engage the listener in the topic. Podcasts could be useful at Fort Lewis in order to educate students in a variety of ways. They could be used to aid in registration or to promote on campus events.

Podcasts are different from radioshows because they are much shorter, and are only meant to entice the listener to find out more about the topic. Podcasts can be inserted in between radio programs, like the Wheaties advertisements in "Mars is Heaven".

Wiki Lore and Politics in the Classroom

Before reading this piece, I was pretty familiar with wikis. Like many Fort Lewis students, wikipedia.org is often the first place I go when researching a topic. I'm glad that wikis in general are being recognized as a trustworthy source of information. The fact that they can be peer edited actually makes them more complete than some scholarly journals because they incorporate different points of view.

Not much surprised me about this article; it's pretty self explanatory. It did help me understand wikis better because it used real life examples of students using them in the classroom. It gave me a sense of how peer editing could be beneficial for collaborative projects, an area which I think may have been lacking on my part for our first assignment just because I am not too familiar with the process of creating wikis yet.

Some of the disadvantages of using wikis are that they can increase anxiety by adding a competitive side to assignments. Looking at some of the other wikis, I feel like the one I created is quite inferior. However, I feel like the topic I chose did not have a lot of material that could be covered, so in that sense, wikis are less of an intellectual creation and more of a collage of information.

The advantages are that they decentralize the classroom and provide students with a virtual workspace that can save time and energy. They provide an archive for students' work that can be reviewed as needed. Wikis also resemble a lot of the mainstream media that students use in their daily lives, so they are more familiar with the format and function. Wikis can help students become more involved with the world of social media and integrate their expertise into the work world.

Thinking About Multimodality

I see Takayoshi and Selfe's main argument in this piece to be that teaching multimodal composition is an effective way to get students more involved in what they are learning and can also help accelerate their comprehension of material. I agree with this argument, especially since students are surrounded with multimodal compositions outside of the classroom and are engaged in creating them as well.

The implications that this piece has for a class like ours is that we are going to have to incorporate many aspects of rhetoric and composition in our productions. We need to change the way we look at multimedia. We need to look at it not as a form of entertainment but as a valuable tool for education.

Their discussion of multimodality adds to what we learned in Daley's piece because it further highlights the importance that media has in helping people retain information. Major events in history have remained in the public's consciousness due to photographs taken, as well as news broadcasts, such as during the aftermath of 9/11.

I see this piece fitting in with our blogs because this is our chance to create our own media as well as critique media within our culture.

A Vision of Students Today

I find this lolcat picture to be quite true. I have been assigned so much reading in this past week that I am extremely hard pressed to find time to accomplish. But, at least I'm learning, which is why I'm here in the first place.



Need I say more?



Poor Pluto. I think we sometimes forget in this college environment that we are all still human. Too often we carry over the habits we learned in highschool into our "adult" lives. This picture made me think of the painful feelings of rejection I felt in highschool. Although I feel much more accepted at this school, I still notice other students who are still pushed to the fringes and left out in the cold.

Expanding the Concept of Literacy

Ok, I'm finally getting around to blogging about this. I found it difficult to really get into this article but as I read, it became more interesting. I agree with the argument that colleges need to expand the concept of literacy to multimedia. Yet I also understand why the scholarly world has so long valued text, as it is the best tool for education and literacy. I think in this modern age, we forget that text is still a form of media. The invention of the printing press revolutionized the way information was distributed. I don't think multimedia literacy is in any danger of being lost; there is always going to be a need for that type of knowledge. As Royce said, if everyone becomes multimedia literate, we're going to be out of a job! But a teacher is only as good as their student, and if high school graduates have no knowledge of multimedia creation, the field is going to progress a lot slower. For this reason, there is a demand for media educators in preliminary education, even though not many people realize it yet.

Perhaps what those in the education profession need to realize is the symbiosis that artistic development has to do with literacy. Literacy at it's heart is the ability to analyze and think critically, and that is exactly the purpose of art. Art, however, is the literacy of life. The reason text is becoming so outdated is because students aren't finding it relevant to their personal lives. Why are movies like Star Wars and Harry Potter so popular these days, especially with younger people? The reason is because although they are based in fantasy, the experience feels real. Multimedia engages the senses and transports the viewer into an alternate world, but it also opens up the doors of the subconscious mind and helps the viewer to look inside them-self. For this reason, I believe the growth of media literacy can be used as a positive force in students lives, balancing the desire for drugs and alcohol. We are all searching for something, trying to fill the void within ourselves, and for me, that void is being filled by my growth as an artist and my education in the field of media production. I am also seeing a potential as a high school educator emerging within me, which I never in a million years would have imagined possible.