So after a few drinks with Elisa the other day I was pretty sold on the idea of making a Zine. However, after a slight amount of thought, I thought I could do something more fun using that as an idea. So here I present that idea, and expect great praise when it is completed. Essentially a zine has similar qualities to that popular youtube genre of “draw my life”. So, I figured I would “draw my experience in this class”. However, rather than just adopting that idea, I figured I would combine many different ideas to bring out the experience of the class. Seeing as probably most of us entering this class would find multimodality confusing and difficult, I think there has been progress as a whole of understanding it better, and wanting to use it more. That being said I want to show this evolution in a video. First start in text…then showing that evolve into perhaps the click of a link to show a meme. Then incorporate some music, leading to maybe video to represent vlog responses, and maybe something special to finish it off. Essentially I want to represent our shift as a class toward moving to a more multimodal accepting class.  Just an idea though…

I made a vlog/rant for anyone who wants to see me talk about the things we recently went over for class while I drink a few beers. I did little editing for I thought it was funnier without it… I kind of explain my ideology on editing vlogs in the video so I won’t expand here. So yeah, watch it or don’t. It is your call. Here is the link !

I never really thought about how many multimodal projects I have made. Now being pressed to do so I have learned two things: I have much more experience than I originally thought and NONE of it has been for school. I feel the best way to show what I’ve done is through a list.

–Skateboarding

–Travel Vlog

-Photoshop and Gimp usage (example can be found in videos I made)

–Blog

–Yugioh YouTube channel…

Wow, those are some embarrassing things I just shared, but a lot of good experiences.

I started making videos at an early age with my brother. We would often go skateboarding and make videos of us and our friends skating. However, we both forgot the channel and names of the videos so I can only share some of the bad ones we made, but granted we were around 13 years old so the quality makes sense. Later in high school me and my friends made a card game channel and would go over our decks…which is something I wish I could forget about. I am really proud of the beginning of my latest two projects which was my YouTube channel and my recently formed blog website. I liked how the YouTube channel was going….but I felt like the program I used took the joy I had of making the videos out of it. Also I needed to spend more time on them but simply couldn’t with how much I had to study in Japan. The blog is too new to really say much about it, but I just needed a space to write about things I like so I went for it. I liked making all of these things when I made them, but thinking back on it now I would change a lot about them. In my mind successful multimodal projects are so much more fulfilling than say like an essay. There is just something about the creative process for them that is so different than school work that really just makes the experience of making these projects so fun.

 

I really do not know how to extend this blog, but if you have follow up questions based on some of the stuff I produced, let me know. Oh and all of these different modes of media in which we use to produce these different multimodal projects all have their own unique experiences and techniques, so in that sense it is similar to writing and writing skill acquisition.

I’m pretty late on this one, which is silly because it has been a completed draft since Wednesday. I forgot to upload it. Anyways, here we are.

 

I guess I’ll start this blog with talking about the prompt and see how side tracked I can get. Basically I am all for using one’s knowledge to cheat the school system. C’s get degrees and I will stand by that till the end of me. I see very little correlation between college and actual working, so in my opinion cheating your way through college saves time and stress. Now I understand the argument, there is no creativity, no sense of analysis, and all those bad things. Honestly, if school allows you to beat the system, then it’s not doing a good job in promoting the things they want from students. Also a lot of school has no application to most peoples dream jobs, so if you can have a tool to bypass all the dumb classes we are forced to take during general education classes, well I think that is pretty cool.

That being said, I think this is something hard to do for say ESL center students. If you are still learning the language, and haven’t been to an American learning institution before, well I think you’re stuck up a creek with no paddle. You won’t know that reading a teacher is a key skill in American college.  In my tutoring session at the ESL center one student had a personal narrative assignment. Instead of using a real memory he totally lied about the whole scenario and had trouble making up all the details. When the tutor and I tried to give him ideas of where he could add some details, it proved to be extremely hard for him to do so. For us native speakers fudging a few details would seem natural, but was hard for him.

For the essay I really think I am going to do the proposal of an application of the articles we have learned in a Japanese classroom. There are many differences that exist between the Japanese schooling system and American, and exploring these and my potential to change the existing classroom expectations in Japan seem like a fitting way to apply what we have learned and relate it to my potential future job. I’m sure it will be more exciting than maybe I am leading you to believe, but I am actually pretty pumped to look up information on it. Hmmm, I feel bad because I usually have much more to say than this but unfortunately I have not much left to say so with this, adios.

Have you ever followed a prompt perfectly? Right down to the very last detail? You have? Well so have I and I usually get B’s on my assignments. One would think if you follow prompts to the smallest detail you would get an A, but that is not how it always works out. I think this form of grading first occurred in my life around middle school and high school, that fuzzy period that all bleeds together into one mass, painful memory. It was when I was first introduced to the five-paragraph essay format. Now, I never was a great writer by any means. I actually always excelled in mathematics and science, but I never found those all too interesting. I was just good at it. The five-paragraph essay really helped me learn to write because it granted me a formula I could follow, like in math, to achieve a clear presentation of my thoughts and arguments. However, there have been many struggles that I have come across during my use of the five paragraph essay that I think go hand in hand with the criticism we read by Wiley.

So, basically, I want to rant about the cruel unfairness of being taught the five paragraph essay in terms of grading and expectations of teachers promoting this form. I remember every time I would question why I would get “B’s” on essays growing up, I would always be told, “You need to go above and beyond the prompt to get an A.” I’ll tell you right now, that is some bullshit school genre writing right there. No job will tell you, “Sorry I know you met your quota this month, but we really need someone that goes above what we are asking you to do. I know we never told you that, and could have put that in our job description, but we assumed you kind of just knew that already.” It is absolutely ridiculous and I will claim this all stems from the use of five-paragraph essay formats: “The primary emphasis on achieving the proper format in the Schaffer method renders content a kind of afterthought”  (Wiley 64). Wiley is arguing that what I am experiencing as a student is directly the cause of the format I was taught to use. The relationship of me being told to follow a structured essay format has forced me to not feel the need to go above and beyond, which I agree with and fully understand, but still think it is hogwash to be expected to go above and beyond.

Into the other drawbacks of this format, I find this format to be very limiting. Having one quote and two lines of commentary on those quotes is hard. Wiley says, “Formulaic writing of the kind Schaffer advocates forces premature closure on complicated interpretive issues and stifles ongoing exploration.” Relating this to the previous quote, Wiley is making an interesting point, which I often have felt. It is hard to for me to just keep writing and stay focused, while a structured essay format keeps me on track: I never know how deep my analysis should be and if it is necessary to pass the assignment. I usually will stick to a few points of evidence and expand only a few points then move on. If I need more material to reach a word count, then I return to these sections and build on the ideas more. These formats usually do not force me to write less, but they give a great argument for me to do less work, which being a lazy student usually trumps my inner “try hard.”

To briefly sum up this rant and expand my thinking on to all of you I have just a few things to add. First of all there are a lot more issues to talk about concerning this structure. While I agree it is a good base for writing and is extremely adaptable to collegiate work, having that being explicitly told to students would help them internalize that this form of writing will not always work and should be expanded upon. This being said, who the hell writes an essay when they don’t have to? So, even this may not solve some of the problems associated with this structure. Secondly, teachers should tell students to go beyond the damn prompt and structure if they expect them to. Why would you just randomly decide to go above and beyond if you don’t have to? I might just be lazy, but I think this is a very big issue. The expectation that students love to write an essay and always want to do better is BS and students shouldn’t be held to that standard. Lastly, I see this formula of five paragraph essays in almost every essay I’ve read in college. They might be more than five paragraphs, and they might have more commentary, but the same principles exist in well received essays. I think as future teachers this is an excellent tool to present students with, but we should let them know it is only one strategy that needs to be built upon to actually serve them any good later in life. Or something like that.