One of my favorite things about multimodality is that have control. Students get to chose how the want to present the ideas they have learned. Whether it be an essay, a video, a vlog the students have control over the process, materials, what they make. I thought that multimodality included some form of technology, but it more about the freedom. With the freedom we have on this assignment I have so many ideas I don’t know what to do. I know I want to do a narrative of some sort about the five paragraph essay. I’m not sure if I want to write a fictional narrative from the five paragraph essay’s perspective. I also like the idea of doing a video interview sort of like a VH1 where are they now about the five paragraph essay. I love creative writing and I also like making videos so those two are a possibility. I also like the idea of doing something more creative in a different way. I am thinking of doing something this photography. I like taking and editing pictures for fun and I feel like right now is a critical time for people with essays and big assignments due so I’m thinking of trying to capture a student working on an assignment. I don’t know if that makes sense but I have a lot of ideas and if you my blog partner have any ideas or thoughts on what I’ve presented that’d be awesome!

Technology and I have a love hate relationship. I have done multi media projects and had an amazing time and been very proud, but I have also worked on projects where I just want to rip my hair out and it takes everything inside of me not to break my computer. It seems more and more classes are going to the vlog for responses instead of the blog. I actually had to do one earlier today for an online class. Personally I don’t like the vlog, I have a hard time articulating my thoughts through spoken word and then I have to awkwardly look at myself and listen to my awful voice after, it sucks! I like Shipka’s idea of letting us chose how we want to say things. Sometimes I would prefer to write a quick one page response instead of having to do the video response. I have also experienced making a website for a project and I have had a lot of fun with that, but that’s because wix is a cite that is easy for me to use, but for some people that don’t like computers or website creators why not let them make a poster or draw something. I like the idea of letting students chose, especially in college Shipka’s piece says “Students have a much richer imagination for what might be accomplished in the course than our journals have yet even begun to imagine, let alone to address.” (282) So why not let students use their imagination, I know personally if I’m excited by a project I will work 10x harder because it’s something I care about. In Fosen’s Rhetoric class my group and I decided to go outside the box and actually make a board game to show how we comprehended Rhetoric and we had so much fun working on it that we put a lot more time and energy into it then we would have if we would have only made a video describing how we understood rhetoric. And while teachers will mostly get students who just do the standard like me writing the blog it’s nice to know we have the options!

Russell says a lot about writing and literacy in this piece. Some of the points he made and claims he stated tie into what we have already been learning in our class. One thing I really like was “Literacy is not learned in and of itself and then applied to contexts (activity systems)” (8). This applies to what we’ve been talking about in “Situated Learning”. You don’t just take a class on literacy and then boom understand it and everything about it. You don’t even necessarily have to take a class about literacy to learn it and things about it. I took the Literacy class here at Chico and I can tell you I was originally more confused about literacy. Then it just sort of clicked. Like Russell says “Literacy is always and everywhere bound up with the activity systems that is changes through its mediation of behavior – and which change it, for writing is an immensely protean took that activity systems are always and everywhere changing to meet their needs” (8). This goes into the discussion we had in class about writing for teachers. Literacy changes depending on the mode it is being used in. For example my posts on Facebook are different than my posts on instagram just like my writing for this class is different than the writing I’ve done for other teachers. This ties into Russell’s metaphor about balls. I wasn’t taught my different ways of writing through school and there isn’t one way I write all the time. I write text messages to my friends differently than I write emails to my professors. I feel like in school we are taught writing is this one thing you do in school to talk about what you’ve learning but the concept of literacy is so much more than that which is my prefer that term. Another one of my favorite things Russell said was “Adolescents and adults do not ‘learn to write’, period” (7). This again reiterates what we have been talking about in class. How if you want someone to learn how to write then let them write don’t make them learn and do all these things before they can even try it out.