When I think about incorporating other forms of technology into the composition process I start to get very anxious. I start sweating. This is not an aversion but a lack of confidence in my own ability to wield the necessary technological prowess necessary to bring all of these different ‘modes’ together but also maybe a crotchety old unfounded fear that the visual will take over the alphabetic texts and they will cease to exist.

After reading the Palmeri text, I realized that the unconscious actions that make up the writing process is something that we can engage with and possibly have better access to through multimodal types of composition. I think it was inspiring to think about how this approach could make writing more of a play than a theoretical process existing outside of the writing itself.

To switch gears a little bit, the Adam Banks keynote was a breath of fresh air for me! It was like listening to a pep talk, and I really felt as if he offers the justification for multi-model forms of composition in that there are ways in which the stagnant, academic discourse that sort of forces students to conform loses a lot of students but also really doesn’t bring with it the sort of freedom that writing really can give an individual. I like the idea that by combining these things, students and professors can really connect on different levels and that these combinations could bridge gaps that maybe seem unbridgeable. Bank’s speech itself was refreshing in the sense that I feel that encouraging students to incorporate their own types of languages and ways in which they express themselves is a form of composition in many ways. I think we should be messy, even though I do still fault the monster that is the academy for brushing the importance of rhetoric and composition aside. Overall, this was an extremely uplifting and inspiring set of readings and I would love to do a multi-model project with my class for the final writing assignment.