In fairness, 10 car songs that hit on all cylinders is meant to tie the rise of muscle car culture to some specific instances of popular music, but I've been doing a lot with playlist assignments lately and can't help but sense a missed opportunity. I've been conceptualizing the playlist assignment as somewhere near the textual edge of a print/media continuum that can be helpful for thinking about educational change--instead of walking completely away from print activities and toward media compositions, instructors can traverse the continuum, weaving print and media literacies together as they go.

Playlists, then, work really well, because they require very few non-print steps to implement. HTML is nice, but with a word processor or pencil and pad, you can create the list. But, when you make the list, you also delve into the world of music and sound. Sure, you'll think about song titles. But for the list to really congeal, you'll have tap into the messages and the lyrics. Even better, you need to create patterns of sound based on the musical elements of the songs. Yes, the assignment is easy and composed with print, but selecting and sequencing the songs kicks you into a process of musical analysis and arrangement.

So, I'm not that impressed with some of what's on the list:

Mustang Sally, Wilson Pickett
Little Deuce Coupe, The Beach Boys
Little Red Corvette, Prince
Pink Cadillac, Bruce Springsteen
Hot Rod Lincoln, Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen
409, The Beach Boys
G.T.O., Ronny and the Daytonas
Coupe de Ville, Neil Young
Rocket 88, Ike Turner
Pontiac Blues, Sonny Boy Williamson.

Now, some of these seem like possibilities for a car list, but others just seem to take up too literal a connection between the song and the message that might be woven into the list. I'm not all that familiar with Bruce Springsteen, but I know that any song with the lyrics,

Beyond the Palace hemi-powered drones scream down the boulevard
The girls comb their hair in rearview mirrors
And the boys try to look so hard

probably deserves to jump ahead of "Pink Cadillacs," even if that song has an iconic luxury car in the title. Other observations: no songs by the Beach Boys allowed in the list--no, it's not that I don't like the songs or appreciate the cultural reflections they create; it's just that it's too easy and direct a connection.

Well, it's easy to critique someone else's list, so I should probably offer some ideas of my own. It will take a while to really put together a list, but a couple of candidates that have shuffled across the earscape lately would be,

Neil Young, Unknown Legend
OMC, How Bizarre
The Doors, LA Woman
Citizen Cope, Sun's Gonna Rise
Buck 65, Wicked and Weird.

I'll need to think about this some more. It turns out wikipedia has a heckuva list started. Now to take those raw materials and compose.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 09:33 AM
Taged as >> the sounds of cars reverberate through the earscape | Permalink

Based on personal experience, I have to recognize some grain of truth in this piece reporting on narcissism among Gen Y college students.

The Narcissistic Personality Inventory asks students to react to such statements as: "If I ruled the world, it would be a better place," "I think I am a special person" and "I like to be the center of attention."

The study found that almost two-thirds of recent college students had narcissism scores that were above the average 1982 score. Thirty percent more college students showed elevated narcissism in 2006 than in 1982.

If nothing else, the piece makes me want to think further about the links between the physical and online social activities of today. Read to the end to get to this posting's subject line.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 08:52 AM
Taged as >> it's all about metube | Permalink

Just a quick link to something that caught my eye merely for the headline, Meetings Make Us Dumber, Study Shows. At first I thought this was good for a laugh, knowing how many of us sit in countless meetings every week. Then I got to thinking about teaching and the penchant for relying on group work in writing classes. I still believe there are lots of good things to be had by collaboration, but the perils of groupthink do raise some intriguing possibilities for revisiting notions of the individual author. Plus, I knew there was something about all those brainstorming sessions that brought out the beast in me.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 11:06 PM
Taged as >> i alone know what i know | Permalink

If you subscribe to the Chronicle of Higher Education, you might want to click over to "YouTube Youniversity" by Henry Jenkins. I don't have an account and had to settle for a version of the piece passed around through e-mail, which makes me want to revise my earlier comments about e-mail--the added relative privacy of e-mail probably has its advantages. Jenkins's piece makes a number of points regarding media and teaching. There is the familiar call to move beyond analysis if we hope to provide relevant instruction in new media:

In such a world, the structural and historical schisms separating media production and critical-studies classes no longer seem relevant. Students around the country are pushing to translate their analytic insights about media into some form of media production. And they are correctly arguing that you cannot really understand how these new media work if you don't use them yourself.

Before we started our master's program [in comparative media studies], I went on the road to talk with representatives of more than 50 companies and organizations. They told me that they value the flexibility, creativity, and social and cultural insights liberal-arts majors bring to their operations. They also shared a devastating list of concerns--liberal-arts students fall behind other majors in terms of teamwork, leadership, project completion, and problem solving. In other words, they were describing the gap between academic fields focused on fostering autonomous learners and professional contexts demanding continuing collaborations. Those desired skills were regularly fostered in other disciplines that have laboratory-based cultures that test new theories and research findings through real-world applications.

At such a moment, we need to move beyond preparing our students for future roles as media scholars, wrapped up in their own disciplinary discourses, and instead encourage them to acquire skills and experiences as public intellectuals, sharing their insights with a larger public from wherever they happen to be situated. They need to be taught how to translate the often challenging formulations of academic theory into a more public discourse

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 07:40 AM
Taged as >> youknow who youare | Permalink

I like the piece for the way it tries to resuscitate writing by pulling it away from professional contexts that have sucked out its life:

But as the letter fell out of favor and education became professionalized, with its goal less the expansion of the mind than the acquisition of a job, writing began to be seen largely as the purview of writers. Writing at work also became so stylistically removed from the story of our lives that the two seemed to have nothing in common. Corporate prose conformed to an equation: information x polysyllabic words + tortured syntax = aren't you impressed?

Great stuff, but not enough. The piece takes one more step, explaining that writing works not only because it helps people connect. Writing matters because it helps us make sense of the distractions and traumas of our lives, and, with any luck, writing helps people make it through these difficulties. Tired sentimentality? I don't think so. Wheeling writing back toward personal struggle and survival closes the loop. It's not just that we need a space for writing to be non-professional and alive. Instead we need a place where writing can help keep us alive.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 02:15 PM
Taged as >> getting by with words | Permalink

The Tyger.

Tyger Tyger. burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp:

When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 03:12 PM
Taged as >> Blake poem forged anew | Permalink

Learning bits of Korean history from teachers and my parents, I've always felt bad about not being able to do anything about our history when I've known such sad facts. This is why I wanted to do my video collage with a Korean related topic. There are even more tragic poems written during the Japanese occupation of Korea, however, I chose Kim Gi Rim's "The Sea and the Butterfly" because I thought the clear blue and white images would go well with a visual project. The white butterfly is our nation's innocent students who would come to the world with bright hopes and ideals. However, the dark period of that era would drench their hopes like the soaked butterfly's wings in the poem, and leave them mostly in despair.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 09:22 PM
Taged as >> moods and moments placed into motion | Permalink

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 06:41 AM
Taged as >> from the teaching files | Permalink

The second half of the video deals with the gnomewatch blog, a site that really pushes the limits of familiar conceptions of information literacy. The site is social, multimodal, intricately linked with print and television media, heavily situated in economics and pop-culture, and subtly deceptive. It takes way more than clicking past the first page of a set of search returns to read it.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 08:39 PM
Taged as >> Literacy gnomes are hard to find | Permalink

Captain Planet 1.2mb	The End Game 5.4mb	Pretty Woman 1.5mb

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 07:30 PM
Taged as >> I almost forgot how much I like teachmix | Permalink

Getting used to public writing means getting comfortable with idea sharing. Hard task, given that the currency of communication is built upon ideas, including the foundational original idea. Amplify that with mythologies of owning insights, and the call for claiming, collecting, and guarding ideas sounds clearly over the realms of academia and culture. Dragons with hoards, we protect our mental wealth, waiting for challengers and watchful for opportunity.

But private writers also suffer under the delusions of unique ideas. Take the textbook I’m beginning. I’ve decided to stop looking at other textbooks for a while, because I want to express my vision without having it gravitate too far toward the conceptions others have developed for teaching writing. How wrong is that? The question for me is not just rhetorical. Clearly it makes little sense to propose a complex system without looking at, even building from, what has already been done. And, the impulse to express a personal perspective merely places me in the mythology, finds me further retreating into the metaphysical cave of ideas.

So, yes, it’s wrong. But at the same time, I ask for the counterpoints. Duplication of ideas makes little sense without identifying those worth trying to emulate. And, it’s likely that I’ll have great difficulty escaping the constraints of the existing idea system for teaching writing, so the least I can do is make a strong effort to break away, to resist with the knowledge that the forces of inertia will pull the project back in the direction of the already known. So, for now, I write alone in avoiding the models that shape the field of first year composition texts.

But, of course, I write here publicly and welcome the thoughts of others. And, I write having spent plenty of time studying books meant to teach writing. Further, it’s clear that such conventions are fixed enough to influence the text, regardless of my intentions. Through the lenses of argument, the rhetorical situation, critical thinking, and the writing process come projected images of what writing looks like and of which instructional templates are needed to teach composition.

The question becomes even more pressing, then: how can I send out my message, given this institutional structure? I should admit I’m jumping straight to vowing to work within the institutions to try to evoke change. I like the more radical, overturn-the-system camps, and I know a leap is needed to assume I can have an impact within these constraints. But, I believe I can work with many of these structures, use the constraints, sonnet-like, pushing my ideas and teaching even as I borrow from existing forms. (I do know this is not an unfraught proposition.)

I really want to focus on the new media and the old media texts. To ask students, What are you making? In part, I think the technology-based writing I prefer necessitates this kind of foregrounding of projects, of texts, genres, and media. Working with code or cropping tools casts composition as construction, foregrounding files, tags, shapes. Really what’s needed is a strong focus on products. Of course, few compositionists would advocate for a product-based pedagogy in a writing text. But, I’ll figure out a way to help students focus on the physical aspects of the projects they will be making.

Similarly, I want to write expressively, and I want students to do the same. I want to invite students to identify personally with their writing projects. It’s not just that topics should be connected to interests, but projects should be relevant in form as well. Images. Sounds. Essays. Playlists. Enjoyable. I want students to have a sense that they can be insightful. I want them to be unsure about their tasks, to test and learn about new techniques and materials. I’d much rather err on the side of making things fun and creative, than on the side of making them familiar and formal.

And, I want students to know that, while it’s right to write the personal, much of what they say will be radically public. They will be buffeted by the media maelstrom. They will read and build upon the writings of others. And, they will address an audience. They will pass their compositions through a medium, feel it shape the writing, send the work through channels to be shared with others. They’ll project through space and time. They’ll project to people. Pitch. Sway. Entertain. Write.

So, the question again: How can I emphasize texts, advocate for expression from authors, and champion public writing given the constraints of educational and rhetorical institutions? My response is to build upon familiar ideas. The image here represents notes I’ve taken on my proposal for the writing guide. My notes pull out the time-worn rhetorical triangle, a structure handed down since Aristotle and featuring ethos, pathos, and logos (or author, audience, and text in other constructions).

I’d like to restate this three part structure with terms more in line with my goals for the project—identify (ethos, author), connect (pathos, audience), and construct (logos, text). I’m similarly thinking through how to respond to terms and structures like argument and critical thinking; more on that later. My hope is that this template and others will emphasize aspects of writing that matter to me. I also hope that this represents more of a building from than a capitulation to traditional structures and the status quo. In fact, I see a possible broadening of the current structures of writing instruction through terms like identify and connect, terms which not only derive from familiar conceptions like author and audience, but which, I hope, also urge writers to express their own ideas.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 11:07 AM
Taged as >> planting pivots and shouldering forward | Permalink

Using applications on the Web is a bit clunky still, but there are some clear opportunities for writing and teaching through the new Web. In addition to the bubblesnaps image and the mychingo voicemail recorder embedded here, I've been experimenting with snapvine, which brings the cell phone into the mix.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 12:56 PM
Taged as >> teaching through applications of the second Web | Permalink

Second, if you click on the ProCreate tab, you can see that the Web site makes explicit calls for participation from new media writers.

The only limitations are please use the logo provided, a positive campaign message and the website URL somewhere in your video.

• Large Green Apple logo.
• Download our footage from the e-waste yards in China (67MB) and India (34MB). These files are large Quicktime files for editing only. Here are our videos suitable for viewing.
• Large photos you might want to use.

If you want to send us a video, publish it on any popular video sharing site and send us the link. We'll feature the best videos here on the site. But some of them we'll only share with you first by e-mail, so be sure to sign up.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 10:50 AM
Taged as >> greenpeace spoof writing bites into apple | Permalink

Paris Hilton Voicemail

Batman Voicemail

Mother Nature Voicemail

I'm thinking of a number of twists that might go with this assignment. The first would simply be to have both the voicemail prompt like these, and then to record a message from a caller that demonstrates a different character or perspective. As a challenge, I'd like to tell a story or make a point using a series of calls left on a voicemail.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 02:55 PM
Taged as >> profiles in audio presence | Permalink

1.) As a writer, I'm eager to use mash ups to create new messages. My Yomamma Mash was great fun to make, but also helped me see through the issues circulating around the controversy over Stephen Colbert's speech at the correspondent's dinner. Yomamma offers strong virtual slaps to the face, and blending Colbert's words with the video clips from the M-TV show made me realize the serious criticism and angry challenges beneath the humor of the speech.

2.) As a writing teacher who favors new media, I'm encouraged by the trend to remix video content because it results in sentiments like

Top-down marketing, when the company creates a message for consumers to absorb, is an antiquated approach, said Tim Hanlon, senior vice president at Denuo, a division of the advertising firm Publicis Groupe. Consumers are savvy about the messages companies send and are now empowered to offer feedback about those products. "They don't need marketers," he said. "It's the new landscape."

3.) As someone who studies writing and media, I wonder similarly if and when mash ups will make it into the conversations of scholars. I don't mean, when will scholars talk about mash ups, like now in this blog posting. I mean when will they talk through mash ups. Jeff recently posted a video trailer for an academic article. My Mission Improbable mash up was done mostly for fun and does not work as well as the Yomamma clip, I think. What can scholars make of with these alternative forms of expression?

The Washington Post includes with its article a mash up challenge. I'm going to try to use the raw materials to create a response to something academic, probably to follow up on the recent discussions composition teachers have had about writing outcomes. Anyone care to join me?

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 08:47 AM
Taged as >> let's mix it up academically | Permalink

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 01:27 PM
Taged as >> screencast reflecting teaching at the edges | Permalink

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 01:43 PM
Taged as >> new writers take the lead | Permalink

I’d like to send out a message aimed at two different audiences. It’s a post to weave together two threads of conversation I’ve been considering of late. The first thread is Web 2.0. I know: not another summation of what makes the second Web different from the static Web. But, remember, I’m thinking of two different audiences here. And one of them needs to learn more about the current state of the Web, and especially about writing on the Web. Consider the composition outcomes offered by the Council of Writing Program Administrators:

By the end of first-year composition, students should have a critical understanding of digital literacy, including:

• using the computer for drafting, revising, responding, and editing
• employing research strategies using electronic databases
• conducting web-based research and evaluating online sources
• understanding the difference in rhetorical strategies used in writing traditional and hyper-text prose/graphics.

I should note that these outcomes are the current set listed on the WPA technology plank blog and they may have shifted some after discussion at the recent WPA conference, but they will serve to highlight the need to explain something about the second web to the WPA audience. The outcomes represent a static understanding of the Web and technology-mediated writing. (For expansion on the concerns regarding the statement, see the recent discussion collected nicely by Kathie Gossett and Derek Mueller.) I’m in an odd position, since I really know just a little about Web 2.0 and even less about how to construct outcomes for writers. Further, the members of the WPA community represent an audience of sophisticated writers, expert teachers, and gifted scholars. I feel, though, that I can address this group to say, focus more on the nature of writing today on the Web. I can say this because I, too, need to think through the kinds of writing outcomes that might play out on the current Web.

So, what might writing teachers remark about the Web today? Well, clearly the Web is growing functionally and visibly social. Take the communication activity that characterized healthy e-mail or newsgroup discussion during the first years of the Net boom (say, 1994-2001), and then translate it into Web space. The Web and its mechanisms of subscription, notification, trackback, and comment now facilitate a more public and spatialized version of e-exchange. If e-mail once eclipsed the letter, it now sits in the shadow of the social Web. Where does that leave writing teachers looking toward the future (present)? Note: this is not a train on the tracks argument. (It's not about technology's ubiquitous nature and reach. The claim is that writing can be a social act, a claim nearly every writing teacher would support, but a claim often not reflected in many classrooms.)

Perhaps there really is only one audience addressed in this message, since the second audience I had in mind concerns itself as well with the nature of writing. This group might be represented by the sample in the latest Pew report on the state of blogging. Members of this group almost certainly “get news from the Internet” (97%) and most of them (77%) “have shared their own artwork, photos, stories, and videos online.” Seventy-seven percent. And, get this:

Bloggers also like to create and share what they make. Forty-four percent of bloggers have taken material they find online – like songs, text, or images – and remixed it into their own artistic creation. By comparison, just 18% of all internet users have done this.

And this:

[F]our out of five bloggers (80%) post text to their blog, but nearly as many (72%) display photos on their blog. Nearly half of all bloggers (49%) say they have posted images other than photos to their blog – items such as drawings, graphs or clip art. Close to a third (30%) of bloggers had posted audio files to their blog and another 15% vlogged, or posted video files to their blog.

True. Writing rules the blogosphere, but three quarters of bloggers posting images? Thirty percent posting audio files? Fifteen percent posting videos? That’s a lot of writers dealing in multimedia.

Of course, not all bloggers post multimedia. More to the point, not all writers blog. So, maybe this is just a fringe element, a blip. But I don’t think so. The Pew report notes the rapid growth of blogging. Twelve to nineteen year olds blog more than twice as much as older bloggers. The percentage of blog readers has shot up since 2005. No, this is not an insignificant shifting of the ways people are writing. Writing is moving into social Web space. And Web writers compose with multimedia.

And, that’s exactly why I’d ask a group of teachers, scholars, and practitioners of writing to think about the activities and opportunities (tag as outcomes, if needed) afforded by the second Web. It’s a chance to put forth some suggestions about what you need to know and what you need to do to write today. To write today you need to

• Conceptualize networks,
• Find and move materials,
• Make rights decisions.
• Edit images,
• Edit sounds,
• Use a movie or authorware program,
• Compose prose,
• And what else?

You need to spatialize the net. Understand computing metaphors, established (desktop, server) and alternative (bus stop, kitchen sink). Know about files and applications. Understand and shape your computing environment. Find archives and databases. Compose searches. Get into the public domain. Know not to be thwarted. Capture. Screen shot. Exercise your fair use. Make decisions. Give credit. Know about layers. Resize. Crop. Add text. Move among media. Compose with a timeline. Fade in. Say something. Shape it. Fade out.

I list these needs as expectations. I would hope students leaving a writing class could meet such expectations. I list them because I feel there are more important outcomes that these activities might facilitate. One, they might enable students to participate in written exchanges with currency. And, two, they stand a good chance of engaging writers with their materials. The outcomes might be the ability to say something meaningful personally and relevant socially. Only then are we likely to discover that unnamable suspension felt when writing well, forgetting (I would hope) the assignment, and instead fixing on the mixing

 

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 08:57 AM
Taged as >> weaving the second Web and writing outcomes together | Permalink | Comments (3)

On a side note, the interview was conducted with an M-Audio Microtrack--a portable digital recorder that will run a phantom powered microphone. I'll report back when I experiment with the equipment a bit more.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 12:29 AM
Taged as >> reflecting images through images and sounds | Permalink

My take is that, while it's possible to balk at a single print essay in a composition or literature course, an assignment that takes that essay and works it and reworks it over the course of a semester might mitigate against concerns about abandoning print (which I share). The realization, though, wouldn't have happened without the compressed schedule of summer. In four weeks, it makes sense to work steadily on an essay, but I wouldn't have seen that in the middle of a fifteen week semester. I don't see why the strategy couldn't translate to a larger session. Zooming out, I see what I'm trying to do is take the spread across genres from a typical compostion class--profile essay, research essay, persuasive essay, etc.--and translate it using media--print essay, audio essay, collage, video essay. Keeping the prose composition going the whole time somehow makes sense in this context.

Let me also share a couple of projects from the classes.

The first is the podcast, The N-Word, by Josh Wallace. I don't think this piece should be heard as offensive, though it does take up offensive language. I do like the way it weaves in music, television, and student voices to explore the topic.

Next, let me point to a collage by Crystal Borne, who also did the Poke Hemingway profile. I like how Crystal has created a first, a second, and a third version of her character analysis collage. She mentioned to me her questions about how the different versions might be read, based on the subtle changes in the lower-right corner. For instance, the splash of color in the green flatline vs. the subdued tones in the same spot in the other two versions might add a contemporary feel and resonate with the drug connotations in the red needle.

Today we should be collecting some mid-term portfolios so hopefully I can learn more through some of the reflections and responses.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 09:01 AM
Taged as >> teaching really fast | Permalink | Comments (2)

My thinking is that writing is many times about trade-offs, having to compose what's required. The key is to push it at least until it becomes something that sustains your interest. A textbook that features profiles must have essays in it, but why not also projects like Crystal's? Today we'll make voice-mail messages as a final gesture in capturing the essence of a person, and then we'll try to sort out what works best and what compromises might be required to create a textbook section on profiles. The bigger questions about why the compromises must be made will probably remain open.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 06:34 AM
Taged as >> profiling profile assignments | Permalink

  

I have two classes starting today, second semester first year composition, Summermix, and a sophomore level literature course called, get this, Major American Authors, what I'm calling, America. I first tried to find a way to bring both courses under one Web site--to my mind there is enough overlap between composition and literature to combine the two, especially when funneled through new media. But I really wanted to keep some emphasis on the readings from the book in the literature course and in the end it was easier to do a site for each.

So, here is a blog composition reflection: I can't abide the plain template, the generic theme. I had an illuminating glimpse at this tendency last night when setting up the Drupal sites. I wanted to add the meta theme so that I could give the sites a less-out-of-the-box feel. Copied over the themes, but couldn't for the life of me get them to show up as options in Drupal. I spent probably thirty minutes poking around the admin menus, thirty minutes deleting and reinstalling the theme, thirty minutes checking and uploading the settings files. Sucked in, I banged my head against the wall of design, rather than moving on to the course organization and assignments. It was a weird disjunction between function--getting prepped--and form--getting a look.

And, I realized I need to conduct the computing metaphors exercise right away. It turns out I had been logging into the ISP with the wrong account, so while I was typing in the server correctly, fixing configuration files, and generally running on a fine set of fumes, I was uploading files to wrong space. My bad. It just goes to show that I always have to go back to the beginning sometimes. A good lesson.

Finally, some thoughts on the courses so far. This is the first time I'm assigning a profile as a formal writing task. I've seen profile assignments in lots of books and talked to teachers who laud them, so I will be curious to see how they turn out. Here are my thoughts so far. Using a metaphor can help pitch the assignment. I'm going with profiles as portraits, as it gets at the objective tension in the assignment. The ethnographic bent to the profile makes traversing the objective/subjective continuum a key process in the learning mix. I'm going to say the profile is about the author as much as the subject. And, if you're not thinking about truth value when writing a profile, then you are not doing it right. Finally, I need to think through the necessary tweaks and encumbrances. We did the Drupal user's profile today, adjusting the categories based on discussion, but I feel there is more to be done with profiles on the net to get some resonances going with the prose assignment. We also will be doing playlist complements.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 07:10 PM
Taged as >> out of the frying pan | Permalink

I also came across this piece today with the engaging headline IPods More Popular Than Beer. Not much to the piece beyond its pointing out a wide open avenue for extending teaching and writing. Steve also recently discussed some of his podcasting efforts, and I really like the audioblogger channel he has set up for his classes. It seems like he's well on the way to streamlining the process of creating teaching materials and getting them to the earbuds.

Also this week, Jenny has posted about the enviable week she is spending at audio camp. She offers this helpful reflection,

- Think in terms of “scenes.” Audio documentaries need to create action and sounds/images within certain “sites” for the listener. This means that your sounds will need to create certain textures of scenes. Setting the action and narrative within scenes will help to make your words “thicker” for the audience. For example, one of our instructors played us an audio documentary about military wives, and the “scenes” included a woman talking in her kitchen. You could hear the sounds of kids playing around the table, while the narrative voice talks over the sounds. A little thing, maybe, but it gives the listener *some* image to hold see.

- Create layers and textures of sounds. More than just a music soundtrack (my audio drug of choice), textures of sounds include the kind of thing I just mentioned. This means, practically speaking, that you have to think about recording *sound*, and not just words for an interview. The sound should be 3-D so that scenes are created.

Finally, I need to make one connection with my previous post about e-books. One of the things that bothers me about Roger Sperberg's reaction to John Updike's speech was the sense I picked up in the podcast of Updike's struggle against new publication paradigms and media. Sure, it's easy to denigrate the speech for its unwillingness to seek common assumptions. But listening to the speech gives me pause. Perhaps I'm just too forgiving, but I read a confusion, a fish-out-of water effort to survive the e-book phenomenon. The key, though, is that I get this reading not from the words, which convey resistance, but from the sounds, the tone and resignation in the voice, which for some reason evokes in my sympathy. Here (to show I'm not a knee-jerk defender of Updike and the book paradigm) is a small snippet.

So, I'm eager to hear more sounds, to better learn to read them.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 08:05 AM
Taged as >> there's something happening here | Permalink