A Quick One
. . .is also the name of an album by the Who.
A thought: ostensibly, there are other GTAs and instructors assigning new media logic/hip-hop pedagogy/box-logic/et cetera assignments here at Wayne. So. . .why haven’t I seen these assignments come into the writing center?
All of the assignments I’ve seen come in (well, for comp classes at least) are personal narratives, argument papers, et cetera. The sort of narrowly categorized essays we’ve been exploring alternatives to this semester. So, again, why?
I speculate: Perhaps these assignments are. . .well, I don’t want to say easier as such, but maybe there’s something more to Bartholomae’s argument. Maybe these assignments, in which personal investment is part of the assignment, make the process of writing easier? Not that mystories (or similar assignments) are blow-off assignments, but students perhaps feel a bit more comfortable writing when they’re more invested in the subject?
Much of what I hear from students in the WC is not so much that "writing is hard" but that they don’t know what their instructor is expecting. So, on one hand, it might be that some of our colleagues are not making their expectations plain. On the other, I think this might also suggest that the student isn’t invested in his topic. . .the question then is less one of "how should I write this?" than one of "why should I write this?"
This really flipping bugs me. All of these ideas that are coming to me now I half-recognize from earlier in the semester when maybe I wasn’t engaging the readings as fully as I should have. I guess I’m spending my holiday break (the Xmas one) looking over all those articles again. Urg.
I. Am. Not. A. Comp. Rhet. Student.
Right?
I. Am. Not. A. Comp. Rhet. Student.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
Btw - regarding all the box logic stuff in the earlier post. What happened to that Flickr idea you had and that you brought up in class?
Comment by jeff — 16 November, 2006 @ 2:24 pm
Well, two things happened to it:
A) I sort of momentarily forgot about it while thinking of the other assignments.
b) I still plan on using it, but I’m sort of thinking now about how to incorporate it into the syllabus. I’m pretty much decided about using Text Book, and its final section is on the mystory. . .the assignment is sort of mystorical. . .
TB isn’t really visual, so I’m thinking of doing a week or two on reading visuals, for which PowerPoint may come in handy. That would lead to a smaller assignment based in Flickr. Then, the research/artifactual annotation project would follow based on the ideas/skills developed in the previous one.
Comment by Mike — 16 November, 2006 @ 2:43 pm