First off I just want to say I had a great time taking this class, despite the occasional moments I wanted to throw my laptop out the window during the multiple times I struggled with movie maker editing. I really liked the unique style of this course, and how it had a sort of informal, community feel to it. It is a breath of fresh air to have a class that not only teaches unique material with unique methods, but also has a completely different classroom style compared to the traditional lecture hall we are all too familiar with.
I like the concept of using online applications such as youtube, blogs, and facebook as an everyday function of the class. It really made the class easier to learn from and work on assignments since it uses many of the technologies and applications I am use to and enjoy in everyday life. I think more english courses, and academics in general should consider implementing a style more like this class so that students who are better aquainted with these applications and style of teaching can better soak in the material that’s being taught to them that they otherwise might find difficult flipping through a thick textbooks. I am currently taking 3 history courses, and a foreign language course, all of which require a great deal of constantly flipping through large textbooks and writing up endless amounts of papers.
I took this class because I was aware of this and felt I needed to mix things up, which I happy to find worked out. Admittedly I didn’t know much about what this class would consist of, but I did some research on what multimodal comp. entailed and at that point I knew I’d be interested in this class.
I took a class similar to think in which we discussed the implications of technologies in society and utilized applications like blogs and google docs. I enjoyed that course as well, but it didn’t quite focus on how these technologies can be used in an english class, and being an ITK course, focused more on the drier aspects of technology such as coding, student servers, and economics. This class was very helpful and interesting to me because it combines two aspects I enjoy; writing, and internet applications, and it has helped to expand my understanding of both.
I also liked the fact that I finally had an excuse to mess with move maker. Up until this point, I had just been using movie maker in my spare time here or there as just some fun little program that I used to put together the occasional funny video clip or music video that I would show off to my friends. I was excited to hear of the prospect of actually using it for an academic course, since I enjoy editing and making (or attempting to make) videos.
I think multimodal composition is a very under-examined topic because it really has proven to be beneficial in society and I really think in the near future we are going to see it explode in popularity as far as being utilized in the classroom, not just by students in their leisure time. I think this class is really ahead of the curve in terms of how useful it will be in the future in a society that is using more technologies as means of social networking, entertainment, and education.
Going into this class, I had a vague idea about multimodal composition, but throughout the course I’ve really learned the implications of progams like blogs and google docs being used in academics and learned that multimodal composition is becoming more and more relevent and popular all the time, moreso than I realized. I also was able to learn more about the background of multimodal composition and how it compares/constrasts to traditional writing, and how a new generation of students have a tendancy of learning more visually/non-linearly (is that a word?) as a result of new technologies. I didn’t realize before this class how seriously many professors are taking this influx of technologies and found it interesting to learn about some of the new classroom prototype designs at the Watson Conference that accomidate this new generation of students.
Presenters such as Michael Trice and Katherine Hayles in particular taught me some interesting information I hadn’t really considered; that technology was causing a sort of disruption in the traditional academic system in the sense that a relatively new concept like flash design is being taught in the some manner from the middle school level to the master’s level. This is because the academy simply has not figured out at what level something like this should be taught, as opposed to english and grammar skills which academia has reached a clear concensous and has a clear system of what information should be taught at what grade level. I also learned whath Katherine Hayles dubs the “Hyperattentive” vs “deepattentive” generations which learn better from multple information streams/images/video or from text in a long novel respectively.
I felt the class was very non-specific in terms of what objectives we were to achieve as students and exactly how we were suppose to go about creating projects and assignments. In part this is a good thing, because it gave us a lot of freedom for us to chose the topics and applications that best suit our interests, which was a liberating feeling from the constrictions and limitations placed on us by many other more traditional classes. At the same time though things were at times a bit vague to the point where I got confused from time to time as far as what certain assignments should be like, and how I should go about creating them. One thing I would suggest would be to get a little more in depth teaching things like the student servers and move maker, since all of us ended up using them a lot but were left in the dark about certain aspects of these applications.
I also felt we could have spent a little time at least exploring certain other applications such as google docs, youtube, and maybe even something like second life, since that is something I think will hit it big sooner or later as well. I do understand though that this class is a relatively new concept, and there are a huge amount of technologies out there to be examined, so it’s not an easy task setting presice goals and fitting everything into one semester.
Still, those nitpicky gripes aside, I really enjoyed this class and learned a lot of useful information that I feel will benefit me greatly in the future, since I am considering a career in online journalism and creating a website and/or blog.
