Instructions for posting RRs:

Please write each RR in a text editor first (say, in Microsoft Word, choosing "plain text" or "text only"), and then cut-and-paste it directly into the text box for where you are planning to submit it; this might be one of the Discussion Forum threads in Laulima, but more likely it will be in our class blogsite in Wordpress. Do NOT upload your document as an attachment.

Reading Response #1.  Due as a post to our Discussion Forum in Laulima by 11:59 pm on January 23rd (essentially, the midnight BEFORE our class meets next time, which is two weeks from our initial meeting, thanks to the Martin Luther King Jr Holiday). 

Read Stuart Selber's book, Multiliteracies for the Digital Age in its entirety. Although it's a full book, it's not that long, and it's not that theoretically intense. So you should be able to comfortably get through it all.

Once you have read through the book, write a discussion post in which you do two things: first, describe your own educational experiences thus far in relation to computing and on Selber's terms: what sorts of functional, critical, and/or rhetorical literacies have you been taught, particularly within English studies? Second, describe what you see as a necessary direction for us as academics to be headed in, illustrating with concrete examples.

Feel free to be enthusiastic, challenging, contradictory, mixed, pessimistic, or fully on board: you need not agree with Selber, you need not even see the value of technology in English studies. Just be engaged.

Post your response to the discussion forum in Laulima by following the instructions above this prompt.

Reading Response #2: Due as a reply to this prompt on our class blog in Wordpress by 11:59 pm on Jan 30th (essentially, the midnight BEFORE our class meets next time).

Read the following articles, being sure to note their dates of publication. Two of them are online and the other three are stored in PDF form in the RESOURCES folder of our class site in Laulima.

Ohmann, Richard: “Literacy, Technology, and Monopoly Capital.” (PDF)
Kress, Gunther: “Mulitmodality, Multimedia, and Genre.” (PDF)
deWinter, Jennifer: “Multimedia Narratives.” (PDF)
Kellner, Doug: “Reconstructing Technoliteracy”
Gee, James: “A Situated Sociocultural Approach to Literacy and Technology”

Once you’ve read through them, write an essay in which you attempt to define the particular kind(s) of literacy you think we ought to be teaching in English studies at the college level and why. You may use the adjectives we’ve been reading (functional, critical, rhetorical, techno, technical, etc.) or you may consider others or even invent your own. The possibilities of what we could teach are endless, but if there was a theme to last day’s discussion, it was “how much can we realistically do?” So offer what you think is necessary and good, and try to illustrate with examples.

As you write you essay, make direct reference to at least three of the articles under examination, reminding us of, and working with, their terms and/or arguments. That will force/enable you to put your essay in dialogue with the majority of the readings.

Post your essay as a reply to the prompt using the reply link to the right of the title or the reply box at the very bottom of the page.

Once you’ve posted, read around in the other students’ essays and feel free to respond to any of them.

Reading Response #3: Due as a reply to this prompt on our class blog in Wordpress by 11:59 pm on Feb. 6th (essentially, the midnight BEFORE our class meets next time).

Read the following articles, being sure to note their dates of publication. They are stored in PDF form in the RESOURCES folder of our class site in Laulima.

Winner, Langdon: “Do Artifacts Have Politics?”
Payne, Darin: “English Studies in Levittown.”
Tufte, Edward: “The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint.”
Peterson, Patricia: “The Debate About Online Learning.”

Once you’ve read through them, write an essay in which you respond to the following thread in our ongoing discussion:

We’ve begun the semester with a disciplinary framework for considering the role of technology in English studies and for our obligation as teachers and administrators in that context. We’ve already established a few key terms, including “literacy” and some important adjectives that have been placed in front of it: functional, critical, rhetorical, and techno-. During our last meeting, we grappled with the ways in which English studies could remain the same and/or the ways in which it must change to accommodate technology. We explored a few possibilities for remaining firm in our traditional commitments to teaching disciplinary materials that are independent of new media (ie, “the classics”); however, we also explored some ways in which a primary function of English studies–to study literate activities and teach students competence in both producing and consuming texts of varying kinds–demands that we engage with technologies that are relevant to that function (probably not gene-splicing technologies or fuel converters, but certainly technologies that facilitate communications, poetic expressions, rhetorical agendas, etc.).

Continue that conversation in your response to these readings, hearkening back to specific terms, arguments, or theories we’ve talked about, written about, and read about over the past few weeks. Work toward being synthetic by talking about all of the readings listed here, though you should not feel you necessarily have to talk about them all equally, in any kind of order, etc.: just consider them all in relation to, and as part of, your response to the above paragraph.

Post your essay as a reply to the prompt using the reply link to the right of the title or the reply box at the very bottom of the page.

Once you’ve posted, read around in the other students’ essays and feel free to respond to any of them.

Reading Response #4: Due as a reply to this prompt on our class blog in Wordpress by 11:59 pm on Feb. 13th (essentially, the midnight BEFORE our class meets next time).

Our online (and offline) conversation last day explored a number of related issues/constructs. We examined some of the ways in which technology mediates interaction, shaping discourse in both form and content. We also examined the ways in which–at least insofar as pedagogy is concerned–any mediating technology must be considered in its social and physical contexts; our classroom conversation in Laulima’s chatroom was a product not just of the interface and all its constraints and encouragements, but also of the institutional setting and the relations among the students. Literate activity in digital spaces, then, is rife with political, social, and technical dynamics that are worth attending to if/when we teach “literate activity in the digital age.”

That said (rather summatively, and without any leaning toward the positive or negative), I would like for you this week to engage some readings by teachers of English studies who are working to embrace the critical, rhetorical, and functional dimensions of literate activity in their teaching practices–specifically in what they teach when they teach “composition.”

So, for this week, read the following four essays:

From Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition (This is one of our books; it has four authors): Read in this order:

Anne Wysocki: “Openings and Justifications” (pp. 1-42)
Anne Wysocki: “The Sticky Embrace of Beauty” (pp. 147-198)
Cynthia Selfe: “Students Who Teach Us.” (43-66)

From our Resources folder in PDF form in Laulima,

Sean D. Williams: “Toward an Integrated Composition Pedagogy in Hypertext”

When you’ve read the above items, write a response that continues our course’s conversation thus far.

Also, an additional request, not for grade: respond to at least one other student’s post this week.

Reading Response #5: Due as a reply to this prompt on our class blog in Wordpress by 11:59 pm on Feb. 20th (essentially, the midnight BEFORE our class would meet next time if it weren't a holiday).

For this week, finish reading the remainder of Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Read whatever selections you have so far not completed. There is one essay from Geoffrey Sirc ("Box Logic"), Johndan Johnson-Eilola ("The Database and the Essay"), and another from Cynthia Selfe ("Toward New Media Texts").

(Also begin reading The Peep Diaries, but set it aside for the purposes of this RR, which should be entirely about Writing New Media.)

Once you've completed the reading, write a response that continues and extends our course conversation thus far. Continue to write the kinds of smart, synthetic, critical, exploratory essays you've been writing.

By Wednesday, Feb. 23rd, please reply to at least two of your classmates' contributions in this forum (by contributions I mean either someone's RR #5 or someone's reply to another's RR #5).

Reading Response #6: Due as a reply to this prompt on our class blog in Wordpress by 11:59 pm on Feb. 27th (essentially, the midnight BEFORE our class meets next time).

For this week, finish reading The Peep Diaries. Write a response that continues our course conversation by considering some of the author’s arguments related to digital media and social participation.

Reading Responses #7, 8, and 9: Due as a reply to this prompt on our class blog in Wordpress by 11:59 pm on March 6th, 13th, and 30th, respectively (essentially, the midnight BEFORE our class meets each time).

During these three weeks, we'll be working on the Technology Presentation Assignments. In-class time will be limited, so we'll be using Wordpress and the RR assignments to extend the face-to-face learning from the workshop/presentations. And we'll be taking a break from reading scholarly discourses in the meantime, though there will be suggested readings posted to our Online Resources page in Wordpress.

For each week, your response will be to a different kind of "reading"--namely a reflective reading of the presentations from class. Depending on what your role was/is, here is what you should write each time:

Presenters: Please write a reflective commentary on your own presentation in the context of the course conversation thus far. By "reflective commentary" I do NOT mean evaluative. You are to consider the application you presented, the experience of presenting/teaching it, and the further remarks you'd like to have been able to make about it in relation to our course conversation. (These are fast presentations, so everyone will leave their own presentation thinking, "I wish we'd discussed.... " or "If we'd had more time...." Here is your opportunity to communicate some of that.) As always, strive to be connective/synthetic in relation to prior discussions/readings.

Observers/Participants: Please write a NON-EVALUATIVE response to the presentation. Some possible (but not mandated) things to talk about: what did it teach you that you hadn't considered? How did it further the course conversation thus far? What questions are you left with? How has it "fleshed out" your thinking about what kinds of engagements with technology we should be pursuing in English studies these days? What was the hands-on experience like for you? What critical/theoretical insights emerge for you in relation to this presentation? Etc. (And as always, strive to be connective/synthetic in relation to prior readings/discussions.)

Exempt: Those presenting do NOT need to write an RR during the week prior; you should work on the presentation instead. So everyone skips one RR.

Back to Syllabus

page last updated spring 2011