I'm beginning to feel a bit like the proverbial old dog that can't learn new tricks. I created a basic visual argument, but my results are definitely not spectacular and most definitely don't reflect the time I spent working on the argument. Visual argument is really something that I am not good at. That said, my students are going to be faced with many visual arguments, and probably this visual nature of argument will become more prevalent, not less, in the near future. Furthermore, many of my students will probably be much more visually-oriented than I am. So I appreciated Selfe's chapter on visual literacy, aimed specifically at "teachers of composition" who "feel less than prepared" to work with new media texts (67).
I will not, of course, be able to teach my students a whole lot about new media texts, since that is not my strong point; nor are new media texts the major focus of the class, since we are required to assign a certain number of fairly traditional arguments. But I'm considering integrating one or more of Selfe's suggestions as minor assignments. I'm considering having them do one of the assignments and then spend a class period viewing and commenting on each others' work. Selfe describes hanging the assignments on the wall as a 'gallery,' I believe. If I did this, I would most likely require students to do a couple of 'peer-reviews', giving feedback about what worked and what didn't, suggestions for improvement, etc, perhaps using forms like Selfe provides. I have the feeling that my students could learn more about the effectiveness of their visual arguments from their peers than from me. My grading would be based more on completion of the assignment, documentation of sources, etc than on a value judgment of the quality of the work, since I don't feel particularly qualified to comment.
Some assignments that I thought would be relatively easy to use in this way include the 'visual essay' on p. 76, perhaps adapted for my class. Rather than showing their relationship to literacy, the students might perhaps show their/their families' relationship to immigration or war. I also liked the 'traveling photo exhibit' assignment, which seems to fit well with the scope of my class, as it focuses on "hatred/dispair and hope in America" (94). To prepare students for one of these assignments, I might use Wysocki's "expectations of seeing" activity (25), in which students look at photographs/postcards and try to discern as much as they can about the picture without reading information about it. Do any of you more-visual people have other suggestions?
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I think these are good ideas.
As for me, in teaching the course I would start with more traditional assignments and moved to some visual complications a little later.
I have read somewhere that children nowadays are very good in perception of visual media but mayface problems with understanding a simple piece of text (without pictures or anything like this). So, maybe we even have to work in two directions: moving towards new media and developing "traditional" skills of analytical reading.
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