Unit 2 Reflection (15 min)
Think back to workshops on design (pamphlet last week, activity with Microsoft Publisher) and readings on design and accessibility (color theory, Park on redesign, accessibility). Think back to stuff on modes of expression (on visual rhetoric, on infographics, on the activity with audio news reports) and on quantitative rhetoric. Go back to lesson plans, notes from those days, and your own writing that used these elements. Take 10 minutes to write some reflections in response to the questions on the sheet. When you are done, post them to the Google Docs link under the heading of “Unit 2”.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Bm3D74DRRZqcKm4VqIP-CS3lUUge9KfC3iUgPyZQ12c/edit?usp=sharing
Pedagogical Object Assignment and Logistics (15-25 min)
Collaborative Pedagogical Object Proposal. About 250 words. Due 11/29 by end of class to BB. As a capstone to the course, you and three or four other students will collaborate on creating a “pedagogical object” that incorporates your own writing from the semester. This object “teaches,” that is, it will illustrate key principles in public writing through activities and examples to someone else who wants to know more about public writing. As a group, you will first come to a consensus about key elements of public writing that you all value. In this proposal, you will write to me as a group on what these consensus values are. Next, you will briefly get into some ideas you all have brainstormed on how you would teach these consensus values. For instance, you might make a “mini-textbook” with activities or assignments as well as examples from your own writing. Or, you could create a website that explained the key values with video and games. Maybe you produce an instructional video or record a podcast. Be as creative as you want. I’ll offer feedback to get you from what you value to how to teach it. IMPORTANT: the only rigid requirement for the final pedagogical object is that you must incorporate your own writing (e.g., white paper, campaign piece, writing done in class, blog posts) into the pedagogical object in some way.
Pedagogical Object and Presentation. 10-15 minutes for presentation; the pedagogical object will be negotiated in regard to “length” or “amount of work.” Due 12/13 to BB and in class. As stated in the prompt for the proposal, you will come to a consensus about what you value in public writing and then you will figure out ways to teach those values/principles of public writing. You need to make an object that allows the student to experience the value and really “do” it in a scaffolded way. What I mean by “scaffolded” is that it is a good practice to allow the student to do a little bit at a time, to be guided through a process of thinking about your public writing values/principles. You will submit the object on CourseWeb (just one of you has to submit) and will present it to the rest of the class on the last day. The presentations will be informal. IMPORTANT: the only rigid requirement I have is that you must incorporate your own writing (e.g., white paper, campaign piece, writing done in class, blog posts) into the pedagogical object in some way.
What we’ll do now: Split off into groups.
First, because you have been working with the same folks all semester, in order to get some cross-pollination going on, no group should have the same makeup as your campaign group. Therefore, only 50% of any group can be made up of a campaign group. I think we can do 5 groups (4 groups of 4, and 1 group of 5).
Start talking about consensus values (consult Google Doc on reflections from Unit 1 and Unit 2), and start brainstorming some ideas. Want you to get started now, and keep working in November. Be in touch, happy to help out as you start forming ideas.
What’s left? Delivery. First up: Rhetorical Velocity (45 min)
The next unit’s focus is primarily on how you will deliver it. What documents? Why? How will they circulate to the public you are targeting? What media will you use? What is the timing of all of this? Etc.
One concept that can aid in thinking about your plan is rhetorical velocity, the subject of the reading this week. Let’s get to the blog posts and some questions you got me thinking about.
What is rhetorical velocity and how does it apply to the kind of writing we are focusing on?
One blog post reads that a writer works:
toward the higher meaning of the final argument and independently as a meaningful statement on its own – then recombination can be a powerful, if unwieldy, tool for reaching a wide audience.
What is the difference between “higher meaning of the final argument” and something “as a meaningful statement on its own”? Do we always do this as writers? If not, should we?
Similarly:
“Composing for strategic recomposition” is a plan that involves making sure that your writing is something that people would want to recreate or write about further. To me this means that your writing should make the reader think and form questions. These opinions that the reader has formed may cause them to want to explore the topic of your writing more to possibly argue or approve of your statements or it may cause the reader to create a piece of writing from another viewpoint with an opposing argument.
When does writing not want to do this? Why is it useful to think about things from being aware of rhetorical velocity as you write? Or is it not? Or are there simply times where this is not a matter of concern for a writer, and, further, shouldn’t be a matter of concern?
Ethical considerations?:
We have a responsibility to produce quality documents and share them wisely. As we’ve seen with memes, we don’t always know where our content will go.
And:
Ridolfo and DeVoss specifically use the word ‘remix’ to describe part of this phenomenon, and they want to get the idea across that it isn’t just “anchored and only related to music.” I find it interesting how remix sometimes toes the line of plagiarism, but never becomes immoral (unless done incorrectly).
What are all the possibilities of rhetorical velocity? What might it look like in different contexts? Here are some examples from the blog posts:
Video:
In my experience, I believe people become incredibly passionate when their hometown or home area is being affected. On social media, there are often passionate articles and videos that are posted, and then are repeatedly shared. It is certainly possible that a dramatic video, with pictures of the deficient bridges and views of the city would be most effective in reaching my group’s desired audience. Viewers will then most likely share the video, and most likely add their own sentence or two explaining their receptions and/or opinions about the problem. In extreme cases, viewers might create their own video showing their reaction to the original video. These reaction videos have become more popular over the years, especially on YouTube.
Social Media Posts:
Particularly on Facebook, one of the common conventions of the genre of sharing a post on the platform is adding text above the shared link featuring a person’s opinion or perspective on the text or topic. These insights might include calls to action (“Why does no one talk about this? Spread this like wildfire”), complaints and critiques of a piece (“This writer’s examples are trash but this is still important”), a fitting anecdote or personalization to complement the original text (“Sarah, remember we were literally just talking about this yesterday?”), or some other kind of addition (#metoo). It is also very common to include a quotation from the original text as a way to highlight a particularly strong piece of the text, to give possible readers a sample so they can get a feel for whether they would like to read more, or to distill the point of the text into one easily digested chunk so that even those who do not read the whole text can take understand the general message of the text before moving on.
Tweets in particular:
Articles and blogs often reference each other (much like this blog post is itself doing right now), weaving a large tapestry of opinions pieces and posts and arguments. From there, entire websites are dedicated to writing “articles” that are really just curated lists of quotes from other sources and screenshots of posts from Twitter and Facebook, attempting to present how what they usually refer to as “the internet” feels about a certain topic. These articles are then themselves shared online, taking its contents several iterations from its original context.
Template document URLs vs. static documents:
However, one of the unique things about a Prezi is that anyone can access it though the distinctive URL each Prezi possesses. This distinction of using a Prezi to give a presentation allows the rhetorical velocity to take shape, unlike a presentation using a PowerPoint, since the Prezi is out on the internet for anyone to see and repurpose if they so choose. On the other hand, a potential way of increasing the potential for rhetorical velocity of both fronts (the Prezi and PowerPoint) would be to give the presentation and then post the presentation online on some website where the information provided in the presentation would be put to good use.
What about print?
With this in mind, it came to me that a physical newsletter (made of paper) that is mailed to homes or handed out in public gatherings of the community members is written completely differently than another form of media.
While the press release can be written with digital media in mind, this genre of writing existed prior to the digital age. One can still copy writing down from a press release and “remix” it for a news article or a television broadcast. That being said, the reach of a press release is probably greater now, considering the reach of articles, blog posts, and social media posts on the internet. So I don’t know where I come down on it all. What do you think?
Let’s try out the activity in the Ridolfo and DeVoss article. I was more direct on what to do in steps one and two, but copy/pasted the rest of the assignment (some rhetorical velocity of this activity, eh?):
Steps One and Two): Go to https://www.prnewswire.com/
Select press release from last seven days. Event-specific or popular news item.
Step Three) Select and search for phrases (in word groups of three, preferably including one proper name) on both the web and the Google news aggregate site (www.google.com/news). Use quotation marks to perform a more honed search. So, rather than searching for a string of terms, search for an exact phrase from the original release, for instance: “three U.S. servicemen, missing from World War II, have been identified and will be returned to their families for burial with full military honors.” The quotation marks will direct the search engine to search for that particular phrase, rather than for web pages that happen to have individual words (e.g., families, burial, honors) within their content.
Step Four) If you’ve located some hits, analyze the results and compare what you have found to the original press release. In what different types of documents has the press release content been used? For what purposes? For what audiences? Are there any authors listed on the original release? On the new documents you have found? What can we learn about the compositional use of the original release?
Also:
What sentences and paragraphs are worth focusing on here between the press release and some of the articles you found? What about that selection or two seemed easily lifted from the original press release? Was it remixed in any way or was it a verbatim reprint?
Step Five) To what degree is it strategically plausible to think that experienced writers in this genre anticipate or strategize the re-composition of their work?
What other contexts in your future might you have to compose to be re-composed? Any professional writing contexts? Where does this most happen in public writing do you think?
Break (15 min)
Workshop Activity: Rhetorical Velocity in Action (30 min)
One student’s campaign piece was a press release. So I thought it would be a cool idea to read it together with rhetorical velocity in mind. Like many memes or GIFs, a press release always has rhetorical velocity at the forefront of its mind. It has an agenda, and that is to make that agenda most apparent in certain chunks, to encourage journalists to write their articles lifting its text in certain ways.
As you read, mark off passages you find to be the most “portable.”
What message do you think the press released wants other rhetors to carry forward?
What sentences and paragraphs are worth focusing on here? How would you write an article based on the press release? What could you easily lift do you think? Do the most “portable” parts of this press release mesh with what you believe to be the goal or message of the press release? In what ways?
Room for revision? What might you do differently?
Stepping back: any relevance for any particular campaign piece your group is working on? How can you compose (or revise) for recomposition in a strategic way?
Campaign Plan and Second Campaign Piece (20-30 min)
How are you going to deliver your campaign? In what order? Why? What is the rationale? The more detail, the better here.
In your groups, work on your campaign plan and/or your second campaign piece. As a group, since we are getting closer to the end of the semester, you should be getting more on the same page. I can come around for questions.
Admin (5-10 min)
Next class we are working on making a “video meme” together. We’ll be using Adobe Premiere Pro, so we are going to have class in computer lab because the software isn’t free like Audacity is. Go right there instead of coming here. We will be there for the entire class. The room is Cathedral 435. Also, be sure to bring headphones.