Response to Alexander & Rhodes and Shipka

Danielle Donelson
Dr. Kris Blair
English 7280
Weekly Response 9/28/15

As Shipka points out, the communicative landscape is changing; as such, we--as composition and rhetoric instructors--need to heed Sirc's advice: in order to make our discipline/subject relevant to students, we must (re)discover (and I would argue, embrace) new processes, materials and products or ways of teaching composition, through multimodal means. To fail to do so would make our courses lack usefulness for our students and create a disjunction between the multimodal (including but not limited to digital media and digital writing) and the print world. On a greater scale, as Alexander and Rhodes point out, to fail to engage with multimodality and digital writing/media is to risk putting our jobs and the future of our discipline at stake.

Though not to sound too superior, and in manner of full disclosure, I must eat my humble pie and heed Shipka's advice, as I am someone who (I fear) uses the terms of multimodality and digital writing interchangeably. Therefore, I appreciated the ways that these readings challenged me to expand my thinking and to reconsider alternative composition processes, like using a shirt or shoe as a means of text. In considering non-digital forms, I was forced to confront my own misconceptions that multimodality is not synonymous with technology and that it is not an entirely new discipline (Shipka).

Lastly, Shroeder's assertion that narrative is a powerful genre and tool toward the goal of critical efficacy of alternative rhetorics and discourses in composition is provocative and thought-provoking. This claim seems to echo teachings from Decolonial Theory and Indigenous Studies courses, where storytelling is held in great reverence. In other words, storying and storytelling blur in the boundaries with theory and methodology; no longer is the latter seen as the more elite, the superior, because the walls are broken down between these categories. There seems to be a connection here, especially as Shroeder encourages scholars in the field not to discount narratives since they are "central to intellectual work" (p.39).  

To end, I appreciated Alexander and Rhodes' claims that digital media and digital writing may be used in both effective and minimally effective ways. I comment them for acknowledging how often "techno-illusionism" takes place, when educators become over eager to employ "technology for technology's sake." However, at the same time, when executed thoughtfully and effectively, assigning digital assignments may be effective educative tools, if paired with rhetorical teaching and critical pedagogy values. The sample assignments at the end of Chapter two helped me to gain a more concrete idea of multimodal assignments, that still encourage students to learn about rhetorical situations and engage in critical thinking in the (digital) composing process.