Alicia Freeman and the Multimodal Project: What to Do?

Initially when I thought of my blog this week, I thought I would do an in-depth look at the articles and videos about multimodal projects. Then my computer crashed, and I lost all my highlighting and notes on the articles, so I lost interest. Instead, I shall discuss my ideas for the multimodal project itself. I’m not sure what to do.

The first idea I thought of was to write a story and create a cool book with it containing illustrations and pictures. I wanted the story to center around my father and his own struggle with education. I have a personal theory about his… let’s say eccentric social media posts that my relate back to how his schooling may have stifled him. Yet, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if this will be a particularly flattering story to him, and I think my mom will be mad if I do share my theory with others. I do, however, still kind of want to do it.

My other idea centers around the webinar example we saw in class. I have friends from many walks of life and from different areas of California, so I thought it might be interesting to talk with them about their education experiences. I hope to ease into it with questions first about if they ever felt stifled in early education – perhaps a teacher told my sweet English major friend she was bad at math, so she chose not to pursue it – then get into if they used the five-paragraph essay (to bring in a little bit of Wiley.)

I’d then probably ask about their idea of “inventing the university” – if they themselves felt they had to belong to the university community when they first arrived and didn’t know how. My hip recording engineering friend went to UC Hayward before transferring to an art college, so I wonder if she may have interesting insight on this. Perhaps then I could ask about the idea of first-year comp classes – do they think the concept of comp at CSU Chico is better than at their college? Did they even have to take first-year comp at all?

Finally, I think I would end with discussion about multi-modality. My sensible graphic designer friend (and former college roommate) loved the more art centered projects, and seemed in her element when doing those opposed to the papers she had to write for other classes that she stayed up all night doing.

I have asked these three girls if they would be interested in the idea, and only one responded so far. Another did as well, but she proclaimed she was too inebriated to make any clear plans. I’m waiting until her hangover wears off to ask again. I think they all would do it (though they all have real jobs with their degrees, and I am the old peasant still in school with part-time jobs supervising children and writing terrible romance stories), but I worry about my technical skills in setting up a webinar. I am not the best at new technical things, so I feel there will have to be practice runs with my boyfriend as we sit in the same room on two separate computers.

At this point, I am not sure what I will do. I think the webinar sounds good, if only to give myself an excuse to have a nice conversation with my friends who live far away. Still, I have the story in my mind, so maybe I’ll still do that. I’m not sure.