Textuality

HOME CHAOS IDEOLOGY Play CyniCISM TEACHING Final Thoughts How can the concepts of Datacloud specifically apply to Computers and Writing Pedagogy? Readers can also view a different version of this question on a short video clip->>> I see everything in Datacloud as applicable to C&W PEDagogy. Fair enough. Perhaps then, you could give me your working definition of textuality here or offer an anecdote of one way you've worked with textuality in your classroom practice that either worked or didn't? I USUALLY use TEXT in that postmodernist, foucauldian shorthand way where anything can be read as a text: architecture, songs, billboards, television shows, corporate hierarchies, whatever. Like a lot of people, I've been working more with remixing, having students combine pre-existing fragments of texts into new forms. One graduate class project I've talked about elsewhere (in Todd Taylor and Irene Ward's edited collection) had students take our course textbooks and assemble a collaboratively authored text composed of just fragments from the textbooks and hypertext connections among the fragments. Traditional composition would say that this wasn't really 'writing,' since it didn't involve the creation of any original text, but to me (and to the students, I think), creating that text of fragments was as creative and challenging an act as writing a traditional research paper. I've also done things like have students read and analyze stills from films in terms of their use of color, wardrobe, shot angle, and relationships among things in the frame; compose children's books out of rudimentary, cut-out shapes without text (so that the images need to carry the narrative); etc. If everything is a text, then everything is fair game for a class activity.	Do you think composition education has been 'flattened' [a term you use in Datacloud]? What does this mean to professional development for writing instructors? Interesting question. For the most part, I think composition still operates on older, deeper models of learning: Apprenticeship , extended textual study, etc. The flattening trend seems to still be limited primarily to aspects of composition that directly relate to new interfaces. Microsoft Word and Dreamweaver are two applications that tend to structure learning about work (learning about how to write or learning about how to design a website) as flattened activities. Such programs make suggestions about how to work with prominent, visible interface elements. Font selection and layout options are offered at the top level of the interface, an approach that may encourage users to consider their use as (pun intended) a surface-level decoration. That's not to say that users are prevented from thinking about their work in deeper, more complex ways. But when interfaces surface important aspects, they tend to do so in ways that decontextualize and oversimplify their use. The bulleted list icon in Words tool ribbon is easy to use, but at no point does Word's interface suggest to users that constructing a bulleted list is a relatively complex rhetorical move, >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>one that's effective in some specific rhetorical situations and not in others. So surfacing of information about work, at least in its current articulation, may tend to disconnect functional use from meaningful rhetorical use. This critique doesn't mean that surfaced interfaces absolutely prevent those more complex, rhetorical ways of working. In fact, experienced writers can benefit immensely from surfaced interfaces because they increase the usability of an interface by bringing important functional activities to the surface. I'm more likely to use a bulleted list because I can just click a button in the interface to structure my text. So the problem occurs when surfaced features are disconnected from more complex understanding about why and how those features function rhetorically or socially or ethically. For compositionists, then, teaching becomes bound up with the need to teach students how to both benefit from the increased usability of surfaced interfaces and to understand those surfaced features in a more complex, rhetorical way.	This is interesting to me as an instructor. Do you explain these complex rhetorical moves in your classroom? Are the students receptive? Response is mixed (as usual). I've found that people can generally understand a very concrete example of rhetorical activity (like how to construct a bulleted list), but less good at being able to apply that knowledge to other rhetorical moves (how and when to use a numbered list, or how to use a hanging indent for other purposes, etc.). My teaching strategy has always been to alternate between specific examples and general principles, but I've discovered that people take a while to make the jump to applying general principles in concrete ways. I think they have to build up a large enough repertoire of knowledge about specific examples to give them the flexibility to begin transforming them into general principles they can apply in new ways. There are, of course, other ways that composing could relate to surfaced interfaces, particularly when research and writing begin to rely more heavily on surfaced information. We do much less of this sort of work in composition, partially because massive amounts of data seem disorderly or out of control to our traditional ways of working. But we'll need to get more comfortable with them, soon.

HOME CHAOS IDEOLOGY Play CyniCISM TEACHING Final Thoughts

How can the concepts of Datacloud specifically apply to Computers and Writing Pedagogy?

Readers can also view a different version of this question on a short video clip->>>

I see everything in Datacloud as applicable to C&W PEDagogy.

Fair enough. Perhaps then, you could give me your working definition of textuality here or offer an anecdote of one way you've worked with textuality in your classroom practice that either worked or didn't?

I USUALLY use TEXT in that postmodernist, foucauldian shorthand way where anything can be read as a text: architecture, songs, billboards, television shows, corporate hierarchies, whatever. Like a lot of people, I've been working more with remixing, having students combine pre-existing fragments of texts into new forms.

One graduate class project I've talked about elsewhere (in Todd Taylor and Irene Ward's edited collection) had students take our course textbooks and assemble a collaboratively authored text composed of just fragments from the textbooks and hypertext connections among the fragments. Traditional composition would say that this wasn't really 'writing,' since it didn't involve the creation of any original text, but to me (and to the students, I think), creating that text of fragments was as creative and challenging an act as writing a traditional research paper. I've also done things like have students read and analyze stills from films in terms of their use of color, wardrobe, shot angle, and relationships among things in the frame; compose children's books out of rudimentary, cut-out shapes without text (so that the images need to carry the narrative); etc. If everything is a text, then everything is fair game for a class activity.

Do you think composition education has been 'flattened' [a term you use in Datacloud]? What does this mean to professional development for writing instructors?

Interesting question. For the most part, I think composition still operates on older, deeper models of learning: Apprenticeship , extended textual study, etc. The flattening trend seems to still be limited primarily to aspects of composition that directly relate to new interfaces. Microsoft Word and Dreamweaver are two applications that tend to structure learning about work (learning about how to write or learning about how to design a website) as flattened activities. Such programs make suggestions about how to work with prominent, visible interface elements. Font selection and layout options are offered at the top level of the interface, an approach that may encourage users to consider their use as (pun intended) a surface-level decoration.

That's not to say that users are prevented from thinking about their work in deeper, more complex ways. But when interfaces surface important aspects, they tend to do so in ways that decontextualize and oversimplify their use. The bulleted list icon in Words tool ribbon is easy to use, but at no point does Word's interface suggest to users that constructing a bulleted list is a relatively complex rhetorical move, >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>one that's effective in some specific rhetorical situations and not in others. So surfacing of information about work, at least in its current articulation, may tend to disconnect functional use from meaningful rhetorical use.

This critique doesn't mean that surfaced interfaces absolutely prevent those more complex, rhetorical ways of working. In fact, experienced writers can benefit immensely from surfaced interfaces because they increase the usability of an interface by bringing important functional activities to the surface. I'm more likely to use a bulleted list because I can just click a button in the interface to structure my text. So the problem occurs when surfaced features are disconnected from more complex understanding about why and how those features function rhetorically or socially or ethically.

For compositionists, then, teaching becomes bound up with the need to teach students how to both benefit from the increased usability of surfaced interfaces and to understand those surfaced features in a more complex, rhetorical way.

This is interesting to me as an instructor. Do you explain these complex rhetorical moves in your classroom? Are the students receptive?

Response is mixed (as usual). I've found that people can generally understand a very concrete example of rhetorical activity (like how to construct a bulleted list), but less good at being able to apply that knowledge to other rhetorical moves (how and when to use a numbered list, or how to use a hanging indent for other purposes, etc.). My teaching strategy has always been to alternate between specific examples and general principles, but I've discovered that people take a while to make the jump to applying general principles in concrete ways. I think they have to build up a large enough repertoire of knowledge about specific examples to give them the flexibility to begin transforming them into general principles they can apply in new ways.

There are, of course, other ways that composing could relate to surfaced interfaces, particularly when research and writing begin to rely more heavily on surfaced information. We do much less of this sort of work in composition, partially because massive amounts of data seem disorderly or out of control to our traditional ways of working. But we'll need to get more comfortable with them, soon.