Tag Archives: remediation

Thinking Out Loud

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As I contemplate how I will create my final image for the teachnology philosophy remediation, I am kind of stumped. So, here I am, thinking “out loud” about it. Forgive me jumping around as I take notes for a few minutes. As I discussed in earlier posts, I had a sort of mind movie idea in place. A movie, or course, is composed of many, many images. So how am I going to get that “movie,” that PPT of several slides, down into a single image? There is a sense of time there that I will have to try to capture. I was also trying to get a sense of balance between digital teaching and more traditional teaching that I will want to include in  the image. And of course, intentionality is part of my philosophy, so how does one illustrate a concept like “purpose”?

*look at the suggested applications to create the image, which has the abilities that seems to speak best to your vision?

*a “life cycle” like you might find in biology textbook’s image concerning the “time” problem

*actually the time aspect isn’t all that important here. you showed how technology has kind of invaded our classrooms and how a teacher has made intentional choices in trimming the fat so as not to become overwhelmed, but you can simply address the “now” of the situation – we are already inundated by technological options, just illustrate what you think is important about limiting tech’s takeover of a classroom ***and why you think that is important.***

*one half of the screen versus the other half? two cycles occurring together, one inside the other perhaps? which inside? why?

*Venn diagram/s? Tech vs. Traditional? Tech vs. Teacher? Tech vs. Student? Intentional vs. Indiscriminate?

*there is a sense of “coming together” in your PPT project, and it is recurring here as you bounce thoughts around, how can you maintain that piece? concentric rings acting as filters as you approach the innermost circle? that is a separation though… several categories being distilled, yes…but the categories blending as the reach the center?

*how would you address this project with colored pencils, clippings, glue, etc. – traditional art supplies?

Statement of Goals and Choices

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I was wondering what I had entered into my search box last week, because I remember at one point only having results concerning educational remediation (as in intervention, taking a step back) come back to me. I don’t think the “visualizing a text” search I mentioned in my last post was the combination that brought me there. At any rate, I was looking to explore remediation again this week as I work on finishing up my philosophy remediation, and using “remediating composition assignments” With this combination, I found relevant results much more easily this week. This search brought me to Remediation by Becca Tarsa on the Digital Rhetoric Collaborative. Tarsa gives us the “who” “what” why’s” of remediation, and she also includes a brief interview with Dr. Lori Beth de Hertogh from Washington State University. Dr. de Hertogh relates her experiences with using remediation in her classroom for the first time.

One aspect of assessment that de Hertogh used in her application of the assignment was the SOGC – Statement of Goals and Choices (borrowed from Jody Shipka’s Toward a Composition Made Whole). Shipka’s call to ask student to “detail how, why, and under what conditions they made their rhetorical, technological, and methodological choices” is relevant in comparing their text product to their remediation, but may also be useful in exploring the composition of  a text alone. I have made it through a round of a major composition in my FYC course now, and I see students aren’t all intentionally considering the rhetorical situation in which we are writing. While Tarsa, de Hertogh and Shipka all offer pieces for consideration concerning remediation, and they have got me thinking of how to tie that activity to my class rather than just how to navigate it for myself, the SOGC calls to me in particular. I think this may be a way to address some of what I see lacking in many of the first full compositions I am seeing from my students this semester. I think we are still missing (in some cases) that rhetoric is a series of intentional choices with a goal of persuasion. Too many students are still looking at assignments as hitting all the criteria the teacher has listed, without ever looking at the process of how they are writing, without ever asking why they are doing it one way (i.e. the fastest, easiest way – which is the answer in most cases) or how they could be doing it more effectively.

Remediation Movie

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I plugged the search “visualizing a text” into Google as I thought about remediating my teachnology philosophy, and found the article Brain Movies. It focuses on younger students and language learners boosting comprehension by visualizing what they are reading. Useful, but not what I’m doing. Exactly. In my case, I am creating a bit of a movie of slides, but more so out of concepts than what a young reader might be doing in a fiction or nonfiction world of concrete objects. But still, the technique can apply.

It is interesting how trying to tell the same story in a different medium, or with a new set of constraints, makes you have to really get to the bottom of what you were trying to say in the first place. I’m working on a series of slides that show a progression of involvement with technology vis-à-vis students and teachers. But I know that there is more to my philosophy written in my text version. Part of my philosophy deals with how we interact with technology through time, so it can become a “brain movie,” but other pieces are more static perceptions. How they will get translated into images is a mystery to me yet, but I don’t doubt that it can be done. The process of distilling my thoughts down to images that someone else should be able to successfully “translate” is a challenging and useful process in the understanding of my work myself.

On a side note: I’m not the most creative person, and am certainly not an artist, but I do enjoy creative processes. Reworking the text into a visual is fun for me. I can see how this assignment would be really difficult for some students. Maybe even more difficult than writing the philosophy in the first place. This is a great way for us to get students to stretch themselves and their abilities, maybe not with the content of the course per se, but with the abilities they believe they have.