Catching up with my students...

DMAC Day 4
 
At times, I feel funny having discussions about the value of multimodal composition because it seems like an old person's conversation.  My students would immediately tell you that they compose all the time in different modalities, particularly outside of school.  To bring these different modalities into the classroom can only enhance students' understanding of composition as a whole and, as a huge side benefit, make their non-academic composing better.

Remixing like a Semi-Pro

DMAC Day 2

Today was audio production day -- well, half of it was.  Which means I made an audio commercial with four layered tracks in half a day.  That is a steep and really great learning curve.

Splicing Audio for the Sake of Literacy

Day 1 of DMAC
(note my Ohio Buckeye color choice!)

• Turns out, this is the last year I could have attended DMAC, as they are moving it to before Memorial Day after this year.  I cannot miss two weeks of work, so I feel lucky that I slipped in for the last June DMAC.
•  The DMAC philosophy: people first, teaching and instruction next, and technology following to support both.  Good stuff.
• Today's topic was literacy, and Cindy said that one of our challenges will be learning "how to be humble with the fact that you will be illiterate at some point in this institute."  A great reminder of the many modalities of literacy as well as a thought-provoking introduction to where we are heading.
• We jumped right into production by recording and editing our literacy narratives.  After some cutting and splicing using Audacity, here is mine, already waiting for you at the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives.  I already have overcome some aspects of my audio illiteracy and am proud of the seamless splice between two audio tracks.  Just try to guess where it is!
• For my future and more complicated audio work, Scott offered one key piece of wisdom: The more pieces of audio you have, the more creative and artful you can be in your crafting of a final product.  More (pieces) = less (restriction on what the final puzzle looks like).

Once you have listened to me literacy narrative, I thought you might enjoy reading the Strausberg Bardette's now famous poem ...