Why Miranda's Here Today

When I was in the sixth grade, I discovered The Gossamer Project, and the rest (to use a cliche) is history. 


Unlike the 16-year-old Harry Potter fan that told Jenkins that there was a difference between analyzing a short story and his friend's fanfiction, I grew up loving to read everything I could get my hands on. By the second grade, all of my teachers knew I had an affinity for writing and reading, but I resisted pursuing this area because I didn't want to follow in my mother's footsteps. In the late 1990s, though, I found my affinity space. And that was X-Files fanfiction. I would spend hours upon hours on the computer reading and writing fanfiction. And the following note I placed on the first story I wrote (which is still posted on The Gossamer Project) shows that I was definitely thinking like a writer when the thirteen-year-old me penned this story:

Posted October 20, 1999
Spoilers: ReduxII
Summery: A few changes on the scene where Mulder is
crying by Scully's bed.
Feedback: Please!
Author's notes: This is the first story I've posted so
please tell me what you thought my mail is
beside my name!!!(David is Hot!) Sorry, just had to do
that!
Thanx: My best friend Ali for saying it's stupid, but
not badly written.  I is a honerz student!
On with the show...

In just this note, I take a stab at summarizing my work, ask other writers to give me feedback, show that I've already used peer review--I apparently had my friend Ali read the story before I posted it--and show that I care about the writing itself. While I liked what we were doing in my English classes during middle school, I wasn't really motivated to go "above and beyond," to teach myself how to compose. But Fanfiction motivated me, and I wasn't the only one doing it. Instead of circulating notes, my friends and I would circulate fanfiction. Oh, and of those friends, one is now an English teacher and another is a librarian. My experience is proof--pop culture helps kids learn to write, to think, and to engage, even among the geekiest of us!

Jenkins uses the Healther incident to show how fanfiction helps students learn to engage in the writing process--to write, revise, interact with other writers, and even to learn grammar, but I say that fanfiction does something else as well. In the other piece, Jenkins writes that games help students to adopt fictional personalities through which they can learn to write creatively. I say fanfiction writing give skills that are not limited to writing alone. Instead, fanfiction allows students to "become" other people so they see things from other people's perspectives. In the case of X-Files fanfiction, for instance, students must pretend to be one of two FBI agents or an FBI director. This requires a large amount of research. In addition, it requires the writer to think about the character and how their characteristics would shape how they think about a certain issue/would react in a certain situation, etc. These are skills that can be applied to audience analysis, argument, and simply critical thinking. For instance, if a particular show involves two characters who tend to disagree, students can compare the two characters' thoughts and see an issue from multiple perspectives.

Recently, I was in a class where a professor made some negative comments about pop culture. While I do think that many aspects of pop culture can be ridiculous, if pop culture motivates students to become engaged in academic pursuits, it should be used in the classroom. I would not be here today if fanfiction had not been there in the late 1990s. I have it to thank, and that's one reason that I will encourage my students to find their own affinity spaces, whether they be fanfiction, video games, etc.

But encourage your students NOT to put their real names on their fanfictions. That way, 11 years later, when they're "real" writers, they won't cringe when they realize there's no way to take that off the database--a lesson I learned the hard way!

Responding to and Assessing Multimodal Texts

Assessing and responding to student writing is an area that particularly interests me, something that I am considering for a thesis area. I think what intrigues me most about this area is something I hear from my new SIs every semester: "I know there is a problem with this student paper, but I'm not exactly sure what it is or how to tell this student how to fix it." I think this is a challenge for everyone who reads student work. If we were reading (or viewing or listening as the case may be) to student work as an editor, it would be easy to point out where we would make changes. But when we assess or respond to student work as teachers, the issue is much more complex. We must think realize the student is the author of the work, so we shouldn't be trying to change it or alter it in a way that imposes our purpose over the student's purpose. Instead, we should be using formative assessment to help students evaluate and achieve their own goals. And we should be using summative assessment to determine whether a student met his or her own goal.

Formative Assessment 

The progress journal mentioned in the Selfe text is one innovative way to help teachers and students alike strive toward an ultimate goal in their multimodal composition. Like these kinds of formative assessments do in the strictly written composition classroom, progress journals do a good job of allowing students and teachers to keep track of where they are in a project, along with the steps that they need to take to continue. A few versions of this that teacher friends of mine have used are as follows:
1. The Writing Process Pegs: I saw this during the NWIWP institute in 2009. Students would have a small piece of yarn featuring a charm with their name on it. A set of pegs that were labeled with the different steps in the writing process would be at the front of the room. Students would put their names on the peg that best represented where they were in the writing process. Then, students and teachers could discuss in private what needed to be done to advance to the next step, or if the student should take a step back.
2. Status of the Class Conference: To keep her freshman English class on task, a friend of mine would take a "status of the class conference," asking each student where they were in their project and writing it down on a piece of paper. This helped the students feel accountable.
3. Cumulative Progress Journal: Some teachers, like those in the Selfe text, keep a progress journal during an entire semester or course so they can track what concepts their students get the hang of and which ones they are still struggling with.

Each of these ideas can be easily applied to the multimodal project, and I think many of them can be used even more appropriately with this type of project. As the Selfe text suggests, many students become so engaged in their multimodal projects that they find it difficult to stop and turn the project in. They find that there's always something that can be done. In addition, as the Selfe text suggests, some students won't admit when they need help with a multimodal project. For this reason, status of the class conferences, writing process pegs, and progress journals can help the student and teacher stay in communication and on task with the project.

Summative Assessment
Summative assessment is a difficult area for me to discuss because I greatly dislike grades and wish we could go to a system where they are not used. However, because they must be used, I find the rubric the best way to evaluate students. A rubric gives students a clear explanation of what is expected in an assignment. However, I think a weighted rubric is best in the case of a multimodal assignment, a rubric that shows content as more important than technicalities, similar to the rubric listed in the Selfe text. In addition, I think summative assessment should take into consideration the progress the student has made throughout the year or semester. A student who began at the level of C but ended class at the level of A, therefore, I think should be given an A.

Understanding how to assess and respond to multimodal assignments seems challenging to be, someone who has not yet viewed a great deal of these kinds of assignments. However, as the Selfe text points out, all essay crafting is about good rhetorical decisions. Assessing a student based on these components in a multimodal assignment makes the prospect of grading multimodal assignments less harrowing.

Thinking About Podcasts

In Chapter 7 of their text, Beach et al. write, "In creating podcasts, students are doing a lot of writing. They may often write a script or notes to read aloud o their podcast. In performing their script or notes, they may then recognize the need to revise or edit their writing to enhance the sound of it."

This reminds me of a workshop I attended at the 4-Cs last semester. Lead by Peter Elbow, the workshop questioned the patterns of speaking that are found in written text. We analyzed the text of speeches, identified elements of "voice" that we noted in the text, and then compared them to the spoken speeches. The workshop served to reinforce the importance of the concept of "voice," and the exercise lead me to believe that voice can be expressed much differently, or perhaps even superiorly, in speaking rather than in writing.

For this reason, I think Beach et al. are on the right track when they discuss the benefits of spoken projects in the classroom. When students are asked to read their work aloud, they must add elements to achieve the "flow" we often ask them to achieve in writing. When they speak their essays, I think we encourage students to develop their voice and encourage them to revise to achieve the authentic voice we so hope they will discover as they complete our courses. The element of voice is one of the hardest to teach in the traditional composition classroom. It's abstract, illusive, and almost impossible to explain until a student actually does it. When students read their essays aloud, they immediately begin to notice how they "sound." If they're using words that don't "sound like them," they will be quick to realize this as they stand before the sound recorder. They'll also begin to use elements of style, like varying sentence type and length, word choice, and literary techniques (like assonance, allusion, etc.) because they'll start to see that including these rhetorical elements makes a podcast more interesting.

As for the project I am developing, I believe this holds particular implications. Although students can choose any genre in which to create their capstone projects for my advocacy writing class, those capstone projects will be, at least to a degree, persuasive. And perhaps more than any other type of writing, persuasive writing must have the art of "flow," as it's hard to convince an audience to take your side if you're stumbling over your words.  In addition, requiring a project that includes a written and a multimodal component can make it much easier for students to see the differences between writing that is meant to be read aloud and writing that is meant to be read to ones' self. This leads to an excellent lesson on rhetorical analysis, as students can relate the medium of publication to what is communicated and how that message is communicated.

I think using podcasts in the classroom can, as Beach et al. suggest, help students to learn to teach each other the methods of composing and the differences between different kinds of compositions.

Rhetorical Analysis in Multimodal Assignments

I was pleased to see that the Selfe text recommends teachers rely heavily on their knowledge of teaching rhetorical analysis as they prepare to give multimodal assignments. Indeed, it seems that Selfe suggests that a teacher who has mastered the understanding and teaching of rhetorical analysis is ready to move on to giving multimodal assignments, even if her background is not technological. I also think giving multimodal assignments to teach rhetorical analysis can help students, first, get a better understanding of what rhetorical analysis is and, second, get  a better understanding of why it is important. For instance, it's important to perform rhetorical analysis on the television ads we see for political candidates because knowing the author of the message, its goal, and the ways through which it attempts to achieve that goal can help us evaluate our trust for the ad. I often give these kinds of assignments in the classroom, assignments where students are asked to evaluate in multiple modalities. Here is an assignment I gave last week, for instance:

Activity #1 Begin Introducing Informative Essay
a. How is writing to inform different than writing to persuade? 
Students talk in groups for a couple of minutes, then move to whole group
b. Remind the students of the John Lennon song “Imagine” that they watched. Watch the song again, and ask students to post (if they haven't yet) where they see Lennon using ethos, logos, and pathos in the song (This is a RA activity I did second week.)
c. Have the students watch the video for the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. 
Questions:
- What are the main differences between Lennon's goal in the song “Imagine” and Lightfoot's in “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”? 
- We see how Lennon uses ethos, logos, and pathos to persuade in his song “Imagine;” what elements does Lightfoot use to inform?
- Do you note any persuasive elements in Lightfoot's piece? If so, what are they? Should their be elements of persuasion in a piece that is meant to inform?


This assignment asks students to identify rhetorical appeals in a persuasive song and contrast that song with an informative song. The ensuing discussion lead us to think about Lennon's politics and Lightfoot's biases. Even though some of the students originally told me that they had no idea how to analyze Lennon's song, they were soon coming up with examples of ethos, logos, and pathos. I think the activity was especially effective because this was a "real life" scenario where they were being asked to evaluate a "real life" message from pop culture, not a textbook example that they would probably not be able to translate into real life. 


With proper scaffolding (using assignments like these), I think creating a multimodal assignment that asks students to use the rhetorical elements to effectively convince a real audience is very beneficial, as students will not only begin to better understand the daunting concept of RA, but they will also begin to be more vigilant consumers of the messages that are given to them. 


Right now, at PUC, I am working with an assignment that allows a multimodal option, should the students choose to accept it. When completing the new informative essay, students can choose to write a set of directions, with which they may include photos or other visual aids. I have really encouraged a few students to add photos or diagrams to their pieces, suggesting that the process would be confusing without them, and they've been hesitant to do so. In fact, instead of adding a simple photo, they've been more likely to ask if they can pick another genre!


When Selfe writes: "What most teachers add to the process of composing multimodal assignments is a strong background in rhetoric--an understanding of purpose, audience, organization, arrangement, and form," I am tempted to agree, and to even think that a teacher might have an easier time of teaching the actual concept of RA through multimodalities, though assigning an actual multimodal project will still have its frustrations.