The Process

After reading several pages on the Visual Rhetoric website and discovering more about images and the theory behind photography, I found myself really grappling with Roland Barthes's comparison of photography and death. I had always thought of viewing a photograph as a chance to relive a moment in time rather than the capturing of a moment that cannot be relived. I began thinking more about this his idea while considering its relationship to the wide range of images we use today--from advertisements to online scrapbooks. In the sense of a pure raw image, I think Barthes was correct in stating that with photography we freeze time but reliving this second becomes impossible hence it is the death of a moment. But if we start thinking in the sense of a multimodal world, then I think we can use these moments in time as a part of our ongoing process.  We use these raw images to build new images and they become apart of a living and breathing creation that is subject to change at any time.

In education, the emphasis on the final product often pushes students towards this same idea where they capture the assignment but find no need to return to the product. With multimedia assignments such as the ones mentioned in  Chapter 6 of Crafting Digital Writing, students are getting a chance to physically see the process behind the product. Smagorinsky in The Dynamics of Writing Instruction places emphasis on the process as well: "We need to teach them how to do so rather than simply give them assignments and show them the models of end products" (Smagorinsky 185). The world constantly uses images and words--recycling, repurposing, and rebuilding them for whatever the need may be.  Students need to be given the tools so they can do the same, so they can understand the process behind the product and so they can take part in the world's exchange of images and words.

In Chapter 6 of Crafting Digital Writing, a Hicks creates a focus around video texts—how we can view them as mentor texts and how we can teach students to generate their own video text.  In a world beaming with visual stimuli, students should know the path to successfully creating and compiling their own visual stimuli, which will help them better understand the purposes behind the craft. Hicks states, “Your [the teacher’s] goal, like that of all good writing teachers, is to guide your students through the composing process” (Hicks 105). He goes on to state that this process can be messy, so I think its important to help students organize this process that works best for them without stunting their creativity.  The structure can be hard to master but just like writing, crafting multimedia texts require constant revision and sharing. As Christopher Micklethwait states on the Visual Rhetoric website, “Graphic design is a communicative practice characterized by the mixed use of text and images, organized spatially on a grid with various rhetorical goals ranging from political propaganda to more mundane forms of publicity such as commercial advertising and product packaging” (Micklethwait). Students should learn to have purpose while crafting, to be selective, and to work with an audience in mind. There will inevitably be a product at the end of the process but students should know that their work does not die when the grade is calculated. Their work should represent a moment—their moment—that can always be enhanced and revisited in order to produce a product that satisfies their purpose.

For my DLN, I am excited that I also am able explore this process further. The process is not something that just the students should partake in.  Teachers should be exploring the process as well. They should be guiding their students on their journey to the end product but they should also be exploring their own process.  I think this important because the process is always changing and if its not always changing then at least there are about umpteen different directions you could take. I have completed a few video projects before but never class--always on my own. So, I'm excited to see how I can apply what I have already learned and also so I continue to learn about what is out there and how I can use it to my benefit. 

I thought long and hard about my argument and, honestly, it's still an underdeveloped idea waiting for a spark of genius to vamp it up. My DLN began as a quick write about how I changed as writer as soon as learned to not think so much about the grading process behind my product. I think I want to continue this idea because its something that I still struggle with. If I could do away with all grading, I would. John Jone's "Image as an argument," helped me to imagine my argument in a more complete way. Not only do I have to find images that support what I have to say, but I also need to consider the elements of these images--angle, lighting, purpose, etc. While searching for images, keeping this idea in mind has helped me to be a little more specific with my search, which can be hard when the internet is just a database full of pages and pages of images.