Takayoshi and Selfe-- Multimodality

Throughout their piece "Multimodality", Takyoshi and Selfe argue that the current classroom situation is out-of-date and needs to be updated to include facets of the new generation. They focus on roadblocks teachers from the "landscape of print" seem to encounter while teaching their students about multimodality, or "texts that incorporate words, images,and sound." I particularly agreed with point three made by Takyoshi and Selfe: "The authoring of compositions that include still images,animations, video, and audio—although intellectually demanding and time consuming—is also engaging." Text has a lot to offer, but I feel that, because we are a society that is so 'plugged in', it is much easier for students to learn and to be interested in topics that are presented to them using a medium they are comfortable and familiar with. I do not believe that any less stress should be emphasized on how important text and writing is, but I do think that it is easier for students to learn when they don't really feel like it's work. In our society, words and text are usually associated with boring lectures, or hard school work. When that same information is delivered in a different manner, it becomes more engaging and interesting to the students.

That is a topic I gathered from Daley's piece as well: students learn more when they are engaged, and they are engaged more when they are processing audio/visual elements in conjunction with text.

Walker/Nardi-- Why We Blog

I am a blogger. I have been since November of 2003. That's six years of my life that has been chronicled on a webpage somewhere, sitting as a jumble of mass code. As a blogger, and someone who has been active in the blogging community for many years (given my age) I feel like Walker and Nardi give too much credit to the blogging medium. It has been my experience that the majority of people who blog are trolling attention whores who use the anonymity of the internet to make as much noise as possible.

That being said, I see where the work we are doing in this classroom certainly fits in with Walker and Nardi's very small sample group. Because we as an upper educational classroom have created these blogs for the purpose of pursing knowledge in the medium of that classroom, it is unlikely much trolling or attention mongering will be going on here. I feel such is the case for the sample group chosen by Walker and Nardi. Their sample group was comprised of mostly people who are either in the process of, or already have, obtained a degree of somesorts. As a classroom, I feel we fall into the category of "blogging as a community". We are all here for the same reason, and though we may all have different opinions, we are all here to communicate our thoughts on a universal topic.