The final project:
http://www.christopherlovelljones.com/depaul_fall/
The portfolio:
http://www.christopherlovelljones.com/sites/NMS_504/
What did you accomplish last week?
Last week I wrote almost all of my tutorials. I also captured screenshots to integrate into the guides to make them more readible, and made some edits with the copy on the other pages to have a more cohesive (and engaging) voice. I’m using more humor than before, as I think it’s an easy way to keep the reader engaged with the writing. I think this will be more apparent in the ethical posts.
What are your goals for next week?
Simply put—my goals are to finish the project. I have to finish the articles, proofread and make any edits for the site, and start promoting the site once I have content worth showing. Needless to say, I think I’m going to be quite busy for the next few days, but I think I can handle it.
What’s going well?
So far things have been going fairly smoothly. I was able to grab screenshots from a new utility that is included in Windows 7. I have finished several of the tutorials, and just need to move forward on a few other aspects of the site and I will be satisfied with the content as the final project. I’ve also taken some of the feedback from class and applied it into the final project.
What’s not going well?
I’ve had some problems with my web server and image hosting, which I resolved but not in time to add images to this iteration of the project. Writing these articles has proved to be more time consuming than I expected, and I feel a bit behind schedule. Since this is due next week, I need to get everything in order as soon as possible, so I can start the portfolio and final documentation of the project.
What help do you need from classmates and the instructor?
In a perfect world, I would have more time to focus on the project, but I have to make the best of what I can. At this point, I don’t know what help others could be, as I need to write all the posts for this project myself. Although, I would like the opportunity to present this in the future, but probably not until after I have finished the portfolio aspect of this course, and I have more time to spend preparing some form of a presentation.
What did you accomplish last week?
Last week I finished writing the first posts about “A Brief History of Media” and made some final changes with the layout and aesthetics of the site. The week before I built the site, based on a template using the content management system “Joomla!”.
What are your goals for next week?
Next week I hope to have most if not all of my tutorials finished. If I can get them finished within the next week or week and a half I think I will be in good shape to have the project finished well in time for the end of the quarter. Also I need to start expanding and promoting the project on various social media channels, and investigate the potential of working with the career center to provide this resource to others.
What’s not going well?
I think I should start by saying what IS going well. At this point I have clear direction with the project, and I am confident that I have the tools necessary to finish it. I haven’t hit any technical limitations as of yet, and I don’t forsee any. This is good because I want the project to be focused primarily on the content, and not negotiating a new technology.
What isn’t going well, is that to finish this project it will take quite a few hours, and I don’t know how many I will have available from now until the end of the quarter. Outside of this class I am taking two other graduate courses, in addition to working part time, and looking for a full time job, while I plan for more graduate study as a personal contingency plan. I feel stretched somewhat thin and it looks to be a very busy next 4 weeks. Also along those lines, I don’t want to present anything that isn’t my best work. I take a lot of pride in my writing and I don’t want the project to be anything substandard. To create relevant, funny, and informative content takes a lot of time. It’s difficult to be able to sit down in one session and write jokes, and make my points without having to go back and revise. The revision process takes me a very long time. Ultimately, I think I’ll be able to create something worth showing off—it will just take me until the end of the quarter.
What help do you need from classmates and the instructor?
I don’t know if I need any help with the actual project, but if the instructor or students could facilitate an opportunity to present it to an audience that wasn’t the instructor or students, that would be helpful. I always try to create something with my coursework that will be used after the class is completed, so I would appreciate any opportunity to share this with others.
I thought the Graves lecture was very interesting, especially for someone who ultimately doesn’t study rhetoric or the pedagogy of rhetoric. What I found very enlightening about the differences between American and Canadian modes of instruction was how much they were influenced by history. It’s easy to forget that much of Canada’s original population came from British loyalists during the revolutionary war in the United States. Many of those loyalists were aristocrats who would go on to found college’s in the British academic tradition. I assumed that Canadian higher education was more or less the same as American, yet I learned that there are many differences, and in fact Canadian higher education more closely resembles coursework in the U. K. The idea of a Liberal Arts education, that is taking many general education requirements in conjunction with focused study doesn’t exist in the same form in Canada. In many cases, coursework is purely focused within the major. Writing in general, isn’t taught with a theoretical framework so that students can focus it within their major (such as taking a composition class as a freshman, and then applying it to technical aspects when a student studies engineering later), but rather it is taught within the major. So in the case of an engineering student, they learn technical writing last, and that becomes their writing education. I also should point out that from a multimodality perspective, there can be different “modes” of writing. In Canada they seem to separate and focus on these modes within a major, whereas in the United States, we don’t make this discrimination. Worth noting too , before a revolution in the 1940′s-1970′s, writing instruction made a shift from teaching literature first, and rhetoric last, to the opposite. It’s an interesting way to approach the study of writing.
Below is the link for the site:
Below are the links for my project prototype.
For the final project I am proposing a multimodal initiative aimed at educating new college students, and invariably high school seniors on social media. I will focus primarily on teaching how to use various types of social media: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Blogging, LinkedIn. I will also look at some more ancillary types of social media, such as FourSquare, Posterous, Vimeo, and Scribd. In “teaching” I want to focus on not just the pragmatic functions of setting up an account and using the media, but also the ethics and social norms that have been set in place. It would be naive to think that young college students are not currently proficient to some degree at social media, but not as many may understand the ramifications of using such media. As I explore the questions about ethics, I hope to start a discussion with my audience about what this new shift in communication means for us. While I will temper my focus to social media application, training, and ethics; I would be remiss in my role without including some content on media history. To truly understand what exactly it means to use a website like Facebook, one needs to know how this technology evolved from its predecessors.
In terms of the media used in this project, I will use several modes, but primarily will rely on text (in the form of written blog posts) and images (non-moving pictures that accompany the blog posts). To make this project multimodal, I will incorporate some video and perhaps a podcast in addition to the blog posts. Given the longer post-production time needed for video or audio, and due to my desire to provide relevant content, the primary medium will be traditional blog posting. But that isn’t to say that the blog will not take advantage of multimedia or have multimodal characteristics. As our working class definition states, “What makes multimodal communication unique, compared to mono-modal communication, is the intersection and integration of various modes of communication to achieve the desired communiqué as the message would not be received properly if any of the modes used in multi-modal communication were split up.” Because of this property of multimodality, I will be sure to understand the multimedia that I am working with, and fulfill the requirements of said modes to communicate effectively.
This will all be hosted on a website. If the opportunity arrives during the course of this project to do some in-person facilitation of these topics, I will be eager to take advantage.
Through the progression of all of my projects initiatives, I will explore through the lens of media theory. I will aim to make turn the theoretical questions that we ask in our class, and in others I have taken, and turn them into practical ideas that can be applied to our use of Facebook. While this proposal and the final paper will be written in academic style, the blog will have a more conversational approach in its texts and conventions. Going further on this topic of academic writing style versus blog writing style, particularly in my use of the words multimedia and multimodal, I would like to turn to the Claire Lauer reading. She states that “As a result, the use of multimedia in industry remains dominant, while the use of multimodal within composition scholarship has grown. The definition of a term should be driven, in part, by the audience who will encounter and use it” (237). In this regard I will use the terms multimodal and multimodality for my academic project requirements, and multimedia for the practical applications.
In terms of defining and attracting an audience, I will use my existing connections on social media as well as exploring other avenues. If possible I will work with any LA&S or Media studies faculty that may find this project as a valuable resource for their students. Additionally I am a contributor to the Career Center blog, and as this topic is relevant for that blogs audience as well, I will use that tool to gain readership. Additionally if any other tools or ideas come up during the course of this class and my graduate study, I will incorporate and amend this project so it is the most effective in educating and fostering a discussion about social media and the ways that people can now communicate.
Sources:
Claire Lauer, Contending with Terms: ‘Multimodal’ and ‘Multimedia’ in the Academic and Public Spheres, Computers and Composition, Volume 26, Issue 4, December 2009, Pages 225-239.
Example #1: A Twitter backchannel conversation at a presentation or conference.
Sources:
http://www.youtube.com/v/cSectN4EaZo?fs=1&hl=en_US
Advice on how to sanction a backchannel conversation correctly:
http://mashable.com/2010/03/07/twitter-backchannel/
As Lauer argues that multimedia texts are “inherently multimodal…they combine a variety of modes (such as image, animation, and sound) disseminated through a single medium (such as a computer screen)” (Lauer 229), we can look to a new form of presentation, the Twitter backchannel presentation, as a project that both satisfies Lauer’s definition of multimedia and multimodal. A Twitter-based backchannel presentation, is any presentation that publicly posts a Twitter feed from those in attendance, and those following the feed elsewhere online. Commenters can post reactions to the presentation and interact with other users as they contribute to a discussion that is concurrent with the presenter. This is a significant shift in the way that presentations are sanctioned. The ubiquity of New Media is never more present then in this type of presentation, as once again, New Media threatens the traditional roles of producer vs. consumer. It’s important to recognize the increased multimodality with this type of presentation. While a traditional lecture, given with Powerpoint, or possibly a film accompaniment is inherently multimodal, with the addition of Twitter(which can provide text, but also link to images and videos) the multimodality is multiplied. What I would suggest to complicate Lauer’s definition is that multimodality is not a binary characteristic, that is, something is not purely multimodal or not. Rather, as in the case with the Twitter backchannel, I would suggest that there are varying degrees of multimodality, and in regards to multimedia, these degrees of multimodality can be measured by the preponderance of “modes.”
Example #2: A “21st century News Laboratory” at the University of Florida’s school of journalism:
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20100924/ARTICLES/100929721/1007/NEWS?p=1&tc=pg
Lauer sites a number of characteristics to describe multimodal texts, borrowed from Alexander.
He refers to the following (Lauer 229):
Digital and new media communications technologies
Multimodal, multimedia texts
Multimodal experiences
Array of multimedia
Media experiences
Multimodal composing
Multiple forms of new media
Multimodal new media texts
While he argues that “the more terms suggested, the more possibilities for interpretation emerge” (Lauer 229) in response to what could be an endless list of characteristics for multimodal texts, he points out that these definitions (at least in the academic circles) can vary depending on the type of publication. He states that “this continuum–from process to production and distribution—is one I will discuss later in the article to illuminate why, despite terms being used interchangeable in the examples above, in fact multimodal is the preferred term of scholars in rhetoric and composition while multimedia is preferred in non-academic or industry contexts.” In the example of the New Media lab, the University of Florida is embracing the pedagogical shift in the field of journalism instruction, yet still struggles with the somewhat nebulous interchangeability between the terms “multimodal” and “multimedia.” In both the cited news story and on the University of Florida’s website, the term “multimedia” is used exclusively in regards to this lab, with any reference to the term “multimodal” absent. This inconsistency might cause a divergence of opinion within the school. One can only assume that media students, particularly ones in a state of the art New Media lab, will still study the theoretical groundwork that comes from discourse on the terms “multimodal” and “multimedia.” If Lauer is correct, that academia favors the term “multimodal” then UF students will learn about multimodality in reference to new media, yet the university externally uses the term “multimedia” in reference to their lab. What I would offer, based on the example of the New Media lab and Lauer’s own struggle with the perceived interchangeability of these terms, is that the media industry and academia need to either find a way to ultimately decide on what they mean, and have some standardization, or to abandon the argument and accept that the terms are interchangeable.
Example #3: Alice in Wonderland on the iPad
http://www.youtube.com/v/gew68Qj5kxw?fs=1&hl=en_US
Lauer writes that “The contexts in which multimedia and multimodal are used become clearer when we recognize that each term is associated with certain stages of the continuum along which a text evolves from design/process to production/distribution” (236). In her definition, the process of creating a text can have varying degrees of multimodality or multimedia, depending on the modes used to reach the end production. Even further, she writes that “the difference between modes and media thus can be looked at as a difference between design/process (modes) and production/distribution (media). (236)”
What I believe this iPad application (and any other that follow suit) does, is essentially throw a monkey wrench into the Lauer’s definition. Alice in Wonderland in this case isn’t simply a book that has been adapted to the iPad, in the sense that the pages of a paper copy are simply represented by digital images on the device. The story is interactive. The user has many more “modes” than with a traditional book. Additionally the “media” as she puts it, is included in the design as well as the production. With this new trend of book design, and even the term “book” should be up for debate, more modes are possible than ever before. Even further, what can be said about the “production” of the book? One could argue that a narrative that has different levels of interactivity and possibly even different narratives, there may never be an end product. I think projects like this that challenge the accepted standard of any type of media must frustrate and delight media scholars like Lauer. In the case of Alice in Wonderland on the iPad, it may very well be impossible to categorize the multimedia and the multimodality of the project, and as I concluded in the second example, eventually it might be for the best if we accept a certain degree of interchangeability between the terms.
Sources:
Lauer, Claire. “Contending with Terms: ” Multimodal” and ” Multimedia” in the Academic and Public Spheres.” Computers and Composition (October 2009).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSectN4EaZo
http://mashable.com/2010/03/07/twitter-backchannel/
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20100924/ARTICLES/100929721/1007/NEWS?p=1&tc=pg
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/14/alice-in-wonderland-ipad_n_537122.html
Word Specific
Picture Specific
Duo-Specific
Additive
Parallel
Inter-Dependent
Montage
The Kress reading Multimodality pages 1-102 was a good starting point for understanding the relationship between various forms of visual, verbal, and textual communication from an academic theory perspective. I thought Kress broke down the various concepts pretty extensively, although I would have prefered if he would have included more concrete examples. Many of his points are better understood with the corresponding images or vignettes. For instance, I enjoyed his point about a flight attendant giving directions with her left hand, while verbally discussing exits on the right side of the plane. This was a good example to illustrate his definition of representation and communications. He also used the example of different forms of packaging of salt and pepper, with his illustrations on the way various airlines present them. I was reminded of a practice I have seen in hotel rooms, airlines, and restaurants with sweetener. I have seen on more than one occasion the colors of name brand sweetener being used to represent a generic alternative. For example I have seen Equal’s (aspartame) generic alternative frequently packaged in baby blue, alongside a generic alternative for “Sweet ‘N Low”(saccharine), packaged in bright pink. It seems the default for plain sugar is white. I find it interesting that the color is more of a signifier for the contents of the package than any text, which lends merit to Kress’ argument that there is a blurry definition of what text or color really means.
That being said, Kress also touched on the effects of globalization on textual and image representation and from here I took my inspiration for the prompt: Chicago is a typography town. I chose to take photos of various signs in my neighborhood, Logan Square. I think Logan Square is a community that has experienced a high degree of globalization, even by Chicago standards. The neighborhood is undergoing a rapid transition, similar to what Wicker Park went through over the past 10 years. Once a poorer community, with a particular large Latino population, Logan Square is in the process of a dramatic transformation. New condos and business developments are being built, and the neighborhood is becoming more shared between the Latino population, and white young professionals. However, this transition in population demographic has only just begun, and my photo essay should characterize the intersection of culture through text, as we see on private businesses, graffiti, public notices and road signs, and billboards.
Here are the photos below with some comments. A few notes. The full album is hosted on my Flickr account here. (I would recommend viewing them there, as I had trouble getting full resolution images to upload successfully to WordPress).
These photos were shot with a digital SLR camera and have been edited in post production to enhance the aesthetics of the image. (If the instructor wants the original, non-edited versions, I will be happy to provide)
Chicago Police written in all capital letters.
This sign was outside a new french restaurant. The menu on the inside was written on a chalk board in cursive.
I thought this sign was interesting with the multiple fonts—quite appropriate for such a diverse part of town.
In Logan Square, it’s even possible to see some graffiti in not only another language, but a language that uses Cyrillic characters (I think it’s Russian).
Profanity handwritten underneath a bench.
Like many parts of Chicago, graffiti isn’t limited to gang signs—-in many cases it’s artistic in purpose. Logan Square seems to have an even representation of gang signs and street art.
The graffiti cleaning crew was washing the side of a building, this graffiti more closely resembled gang signs.
In Logan Square, many advertisements and signs are written in both Spanish and English, and some contain no English whatsoever.
This was an official Chicago Street sign, written in official Chicago Helvetica.
More official Chicago Helvetica, this time for the CTA and the Logan Square El stop.
Graffiti written on the wall of an abandoned building, adjacent to the El tracks. An old swing hangs from the tracks.
This is a bar that opened a few months ago, interestingly enough their text is hand painted to look like a courier font (a font that resembles writing from an old typewriter).
Old English typeface chiseled into the side of a church near my apartment. This particular parish offers both Spanish and English mass service.
The full set is available on my flickr account here.
