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[calm electronic music fades in]
[music fades out]
Davis: I do want to thank everyone.
I want to thank Will, who had his first year this year and did a great job as program coordinator;
Hampton, who's isolated himself in the back, [scattered laughter]
our systems analyst, who's magnificent as always;
our ADs, our project leaders, our group members.
It's been a really wonderful year, and you've been doing some cool stuff and exciting stuff.
So thank you all for your work, for your energy, and here's Will.
Burdette: Okay. So this is the order of the presentations.
I'm going to start with this so you guys sort of know which order you're going in.
But I also wanted to say--
I had some notes, but I also have some animated GIFs [crowd laughs]
that are basically just a way of saying thank you guys
for a wonderful, wonderful year.
It's been really interesting for me
and things are going to run a little bit differently than they have in the past.
So here's a quick rundown on how things are going to go:
We're going to have five really quick presentations from each of the project groups,
and each group is going to have about six-and-a-half minutes to present. So we should be out of here in no more than 45 minutes,
and at that time we invite you to follow us to FAC 7, FAC 9, FAC 10, FAC 14, and FAC 17--
FAC 17 is Diane's office--to interact individually with the project groups,
to engage in more discussion,
and also to eat some snacks.
[crowd laughs]
Just a little levity. Well, all right. I think Currents is up first.
Moench: It's an awesome thing to be current.
It means you're going with the flow and conscious that everything can change in the blink of an eye.
One second you're, say, riding your bike, and the next you're on the ground bleeding.
In an instant, times have changed and you must deal with the new reality.
In this spirit, let me tell you a little bit about our year.
Inspired by the events in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, and, of course, Occupy Wall Street,
we--like so many others--began to wonder where all these uprisings were headed.
Would they be seen as a tragical-historical "what if" like the Prague Spring?
Or maybe they would be remembered more like 1848, when revolts spread like wildfire
but none actually resulted in a revolution. And in the public debates about the meaning of these events,
the rhetoric we kept hearing centered not around the words "communism" or "socialism," but "social media."
The digital component was the piece everyone wanted to debate. So we said, "All right."
Let's invite scholars to question how digital media is affecting modern activism,
like Malcolm Gladwell did in his much-publicized New Yorker essay "The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted."
Gladwell argues that the role of digital activism in these recent movements
has been overblown by, quote, "techno-evangelists" who he says underestimate
the sacrifice, courage, and real-world connections needed to create meaningful social change.
When we called for papers, we envisioned scholars expanding on Gladwell's thesis,
but instead, what we got was a rambunctious reply.
In our first piece, "From Activism to Occupation," Jim Brown takes issue
with Gladwell's suggestion that digital activism blunts the possibility of change,
and takes issue with his idea that it, quote, "appeases our lethargic non-involvement"
and deludes us into thinking that clicks and likes and reposts
are the equivalent of, say, a lunch counter sit-in.
Brown proposes that digital activism is instead best understood as a rhetorical practice
that occupies and transforms spaces, exposing contradictions and power imbalances.
For instance, when hackers rewrite code, it draws our connections into the contradictions
in procedure, and in fact demonstrates how entangled
online and offline life have become. And in this context, online activism can transform
the rhetorical space. Ultimately, Brown says that, in our modern world,
these digital efforts can indeed function like the sit-ins of North Carolina
or the physical occupation of Zuccotti Park. In our second piece,
John Jones dissects the idea that digital media's increasing involvement in online activism constitutes a major change.
He places the debate in a broad historical context of networks,
and reframes the issues as being defined not by the digital aspect, but rather as simply
an extension of the familiar network structure of human associations.
Jones argues against Gladwell's praise of hierarchical structures
as being more effective, and uses Wikileaks' 2010 release of US diplomatic cables
and the resulting international effort to prosecute Julian Assange
as a case study for the way networked activism can organize an online society
that resists networked power in traditional spaces.
Next up, Jeffrey Swift zeroes in on the Internet Defense League
as an example of an online activism that would not be possible without digital technology.
Swift argues that the Internet's greatest advantage lies in how it allows like-minded people to mobilize
during times of opportunity or crisis--something he connects with kairos,
arguing that digital networking literally changes the kairotic element of modern politics
by allowing activists what he calls "networked kairos," which provides them a way
to perceive the right time for action, and then mobilize a response before the kairotic window closes.
In a similar vein, our next essay by Rhode Island scholar
Joannah Portman-Daley reminds us that we must connect in order to make change,
and online communication tools allow us to connect in spades.
Further, it allows us to keep abreast of the issues we care about. To illustrate her claim,
Portman-Daley profiles ten college student activists,
who completed interviews and recorded time-use diaries for their social media use.
She uses these students' stories and their accompanying data to demonstrate how the concept of public pedagogy
can be used as a lens to analyze the informal learning that occurs within digital spaces,
illustrating its powerful civic value.
We will also have a script, as well as a downloadable MP3, from Trevor Hoag's wonderful interview
with Rita Raley during her recent visit to campus. [audio clip plays]
Hoag: One of the thing people are skeptical about with digital media, digital activism,
is this idea that you can't build flesh-and-blood solidarity through networks.
Raley: Well, since this is following a conversation about fandom--and this won't translate as well to print--
but fandom is a good example in the sense that you see how meaningful it is for people to think about the communities to which they belong or in which they participate.
You could never tell someone who was active in the fan world
that what she was doing was somehow not real. [audio clip ends]
Moench: So what happens when you're super-current? Well, for us we began to question what we stand for as publishers,
and our response was we began to design a new author agreement
that allows for open access and leaves the copyright with the authors. And in the process,
what we discovered is that opening access to scholarly work
is still very much a fight in progress, something the dastardly status quo--
academic publishers--are staunchly resisting.
So we, like the valorous cat-signalled Internet Defense League, have pledged to carry on the fight.
Thank you. [applause]
Burdette: All right. So A/V is up next.
Herbly: Hi!
We're A/V. So you know all of us,
and so I don't need to introduce us to you.
But we're glad that you're here; thank you for being here.
I also want to take a moment to thank Eric for being such an awesome project manager
and being really great to work with. He's going to be AD next year,
so he's going to be your boss--you better respect. [crowd laughing]
And he's about to do awesome on his--what is it, field exam?
Detweiler: Yeah, I hope so.
Herbly: I'm old, I don't know. Yeah, so that's it. So thanks for watching our thing, and we're happy to represent the DWRL
both nationally and internationally through this podcast. We hope you like this and like our work.
[Neil Young song "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" fades in]
Young [singing]: When you were young and on your own ... [song fades to background]
Voiceover: The year was 2012. Neil Young and Crazy Horse headlined the Austin City Limits music festival.
The presidential debates between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama were in full swing,
and Hala Herbly had yet to complete her dissertation. Meanwhile, in the basement of the Flawn Academic Center,
a group of graduate students were putting together the rhetoric and technology podcast that would define a generation.
[Neil Young song fades out, instrumental guitar music fades in] Have you ever wished you could go back to those days
when Neil Young dominated the top 40 charts and Dr. Herbly's name had yet to go down in University of Texas history?
Well now you can, with the first season of the Digital Writing and Research Lab's Zeugma podcast.
From the very first episode, listeners knew something revolutionary was happening.
Herbly: This is going to be a podcast about rhetoric in everyday life and everyday practice,
and I think that's where technology comes in, right? Voiceover: And who could forget the episodes that followed?
From the interview with technology guru Bob Stein in "Reading"--
Stein: When you start to give yourself up into these sort of new modalities of reading and learning,
something that actually, I think, was ridiculously unsatisfying and hard
suddenly can become fun.
Voiceover: --to Hype Machine founder Anthony Volodkin's appearance in "Sharing."
Volodkin: Hi, I'm Anthony Volodkin and I'm the founder of Hype Machine.
Hype Machine is a music website that's been around for over seven years
that looks at the most blogged music on the web. Voiceover: From "Procrastinating"--
Herbly: There really is so much emotion caught up in procrastination. And it's a lot of negative feelings
a lot of pain, disappointment, shame, and self-loathing. Voiceover: --to "Trolling."
Phillips: Until people, particuarly people in the media, are willing to just drop this us-them rhetoric,
until they're willing to really think about the ways that their behaviors
are reflected in trolling behaviors and vice versa, you're always going to have trolling,
and you're always going to have a place for the trolls to go. So trolls essentially live and are most comfortable
where people are the least self-reflective,
and that's kind of the state that we find ourselves in now.
Voiceover: From the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Las Vegas--
Rice: I would say my time in the CWRL--it's hard for me to make the switch to the "D"--
was probably the most transformative thing that happened to me. We were not only allowed,
but we were encouraged and almost required to be experimental.
I look back on that time and just think, wow, I was really lucky to be there with that.
Voiceover: --to a chat with Austin, Texas-based documentary maker Ben Steinbauer.
Steinbauer: Lots of stuff that was big in the tape-trading community,
when it was possible to put that stuff online, eBaum's World was kind of the first place.
And then YouTube came along, and I noticed that as the Winnebago Man clip
became more accessible, it started to get quoted more and more.
So I remember seeing it in "Spongebob Squarepants," and there was a Ben Affleck movie--
and Christmas film called "Four Christmases"--where there's a line quoted from it.
Voiceover: Now all these episodes can be yours for free. All you have to do is look up the podcast on iTunes
or the Zeugma website. These free downloads include every one of Zeugma's memorable guest stars.
Roberts-Miller: One of the things that can be really helpful in getting over procrastination
is to procrastinate the shame and to procrastinate the angst.
Brown: Rhetoric and writing are about, you know, expression, argument, the available means of persuasion--
and those are not controversial claims--and to claim that this one medium
that happens to be the one that has been dominant for the recent past,
it's an arbitrary choice. So in terms of writing, I want students to see that as well:
that the choice of medium is a rhetorical choice. It's enabling and constraining certain kinds of expression.
Yancey: When we think about the full composing process, at least in school contexts,
we often think in terms of students writing lots of drafts
on whatever technology that they're using,
and that they're submitted or that they're published, but we don't actually engage them, in fact,
in the production process of getting something published.
Voiceover: And, of course, you can relive your favorite moments with the Zeugma team.
Uzendoski: Hi, this is Andrew Uzendoski. We are going to talk about procrastination from a different perspective.
Bohmann: Well, funny you should ask that, because there is in fact no German word for it.
Detweiler: I really, really enjoy the TV show "Pretty Little Liars."
Herbly: Cat consultant! Gulesserian: Hey, I'm Lisa Gulessarian.
Roberts: Hi, I'm Michael Roberts. Voiceover: Since it first hit the airwaves,
Zeugma has been downloaded in 34 states and 20 countries. With over 850 total downloads, now is your chance to become part of that fanbase
and push Zeugma beyond the 1,000 mark. And for those listeners who download now,
keep an eye out for special bonus features, like the podcasting group's video coverage of the 2013 DWRL Speaker Series,
featuring a talk by University of California-Santa Barbara's Rita Raley.
[music fades out] Raley: Tactical media is speculative
in that it does not predict, prescribe, or program future outcomes.
It rather activates, sets into motion, unsettles the status quo. [upbeat electronic music fades in]
Voiceover: And coming soon, two all-new episodes of Zeugma! "Multimediating" will feature an interview
with Rita Raley and various strategies for incorporating technology into rhetoric classrooms.
"Eating" will feature interviews with food writers and scholars.
So don't wait another day: Visit the Zeugma website, the iTunes store,
or Liberated Syndication to get the first season of Zeugma now.
And follow the podcast's Twitter handle or like Zeugma on Facebook to get even more updates. Act now--this free offer is only valid until, well,
until iTunes stops working or the Zeugma site crashes. So hopefully for a very long time.
But why not act now, before you forget?
[music fades in louder]
[music fades out]
Mazique: I really enjoyed that last piece.
Thank you for coming to hear our story about our year with TheJUMP.
This marks the first year TheJUMP has been a group on its own within the DWRL.
Throughout this year, we've worked closely with Justin Hodgson,
the founding editor. We've also worked closely with Megan Gianfagna
in the fall while undergoing a transition. And, of course,
we couldn't put out an issue without our own wonderful editorial collective,
several of which are also staff in the DWRL. This image is from one of our editorial members,
Anthony Collamati, so credits go to him.
As first-time editors of the new site, we've been adding to the manual that Mike Widner,
who designed the site on Drupal, created for the new editors.
We hope to ease the process for future editors.
With all the managerial work that goes on behind the scenes as we build an issue,
we eventually arrived at this final product
of our fall 2012 issue called "Digital Boundaries."
We had fun making the introduction to the fall issue. It only took us about, what, four takes?
We couldn't have done it without the lab's equipment
and the assistance of Justin and Will Burdette, so thanks to both.
An entire class of students from Michigan Technological University
collaborated on this digital media proliferation website.
The two responses for this project had widely different takes.
Dr. Booher addressed pedagogical challenges,
while Dr. Woodworth detailed her personal experience
navigating this map. The theme of the issue, "Digital Boundaries,"
had at its center the map,
but it also looks at the boundaries in the sense of limitations, and whether these limitations or boundaries are necessary.
We see this with the multimedia re-presentation of Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour,"
and with the remix that argues against a copyright law
that would impose restrictions on the ways that we use the Internet.
Earlier this spring, Steven and I led a workshop
on creating multimedia assignments,
presenting TheJUMP not only as a publication venue for these wonderful undergraduate student projects,
but also as a pedagogical resource for instructors who teach rhetoric
or design multimedia assignments.
One way that TheJUMP functions as a pedagogical resource is in the bridging of gaps between the undergraduate students
and rhetorical scholars and instructors.
Here we have a multimedia response from our very own Cate Blouke,
who also wrote an illuminating description of her response to the re-presentation of "The Story of an Hour."
Another multimedia response is a response to the digital media proliferation map.
This is also a response to which Steven and I
entered alt descriptions so that users who access the PowerPoint via a screen reader
would have an idea of each image's purpose.
In addition to ensuring that responses are accessible, we also ask for accessibility materials for each student project.
In most cases, the materials require further editing. So, for example,
we had an hour-long audio description of the map that we edited into time zones by separate files.
We also often have to separate transcripts of auditory information
from descriptive work and additional information. And on the advice of our accessibility specialist Stephanie Rosen,
the remix video here
included all four possibilities for accessibility, ranging from preferred multimedia forms to its typewritten versions.
LeMieux: Our commitment to accessibility will continue in our upcoming spring issue, "Re-Interpretations and Re-Inventions."
"Gorgias Revisted" by Timothy Simmons revisits Plato's dialogue "Gorgias"
through a video remix that pulls from the work of Will Ferrell--now playing Socrates--
and John C. Reilly as a picked-upon Gorgias. Throughout the piece,
he draws our attention toward the emotional impact that these discussions might have had on their participants. [crowd chuckles]
We're especially excited to present TheJUMP's first video game.
"Facechange" was created in our very own Scott Nelson's class, Writing in Digital Environments.
As players move through the game, they're confronted with familiar elements--money and time and Facebook likes--
that help advance an argument about Facebook slacktivism and social change
through visual, aural, and procedural rhetorics.
We're also going to be showcasing Jennifer Gilmore's video project, "Closed Books."
In this silent and emotionally intense video, the author begins to explore the trauma of *** abuse.
As one reviewer noted,
"I very much felt like I was a book being forced open--not because I had any similar kind of experience,
but because I was forced to see this terrible thing happen to someone I had begun to care about. Very powerful."
"Yellow Wallpaper" is an animation project
submitted by UT student Nidhi Reddy. This richly multimodal piece
explores the various themes within the story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
by recreating its eerie, discomforting atmosphere. She'll be presenting the video at several film festivals;
we excited about getting this project up on TheJUMP.
As we close out our year on TheJUMP, Rachel and I have turned our attention toward a "CMFP"
for a forthcoming special issue.
Our call is for projects that use remediation as a starting point for critical engagement for a given text. With the call,
we hope to persuade professors to insert remediation into their standard assignments as a multimedia option.
There's often the sense that multimedia work becomes an end to itself,
but in this special issue we want to highlight just how versatile a practice like remediation can be.
In the call, we're asking for work from both rhetoric and literature classes,
and we hope to show that in both remediation can work as just one possible way of creating arguments.
TheJUMP, as you all know, is focused on undergraduate projects,
and outside of the issues we publish, there aren't too many hints of what we've actually been doing all year long.
We figured it might be nice to show off some of the behind-the-scenes work that's been going on.
We spent quite a bit of time working within the new JUMP website.
Now all of the elements that we work with in TheJUMP are housed
under the same roof. Special thanks to Hampton for his assistance this year.
The CAPTCHA he added has been a life saver. Most of our time, of course, is spent on email.
Even with the benefits of the new site, we're in constant contact with the members from our editorial collective
about the reviews and responses, and with our undergraduate submitters about their work.
Lately, a lot of our time has been spent writing the CFMP together, and shared GoogleDocs have been essential.
The wiki zoomed by real fast, but it and our meeting minutes
and Rachel's organized task lists have been essential.
Working on a journal seems like a constant fight against encroaching chaos;
we spend a fair amount of time with a collection of spreadsheets that make sure everything is in line and on time. Thank you so much,
and keep your eyes peeled for our spring issue. [applause]
Odom: Hi! We are the gaming pedagogy/ebooks group,
and our mission really changed from the fall semester to the spring semester.
In the fall semester, the group members did some research and archival work
with gaming pedagogy in general
as a scholarly field,
and the history of games at UT in the DWRL.
We were looking at trying to think of a way to archive
and present information about gaming pedagogy and DWRL games in an ebook form,
so in the spring, we shifted towards working on ebooks
and figuring out how to decide what kind of format to use when creating an ebook
and how to actually go about doing it. So this semester,
we created two versions of one ebook
that are about the possibilities of ebooks for DWRL project groups.
The first version we created was using iBooks,
which is a Mac program.
And I was able to work with this program because my personal laptop has the operating system
that's new enough to run the program, but one limitation of iBooks Author
is that you have to have one of the newer operating systems.
So this is a proof version--
it looks like the real version--of the iBook we created.
It's called "Ebooks in the DWRL."
It has two sections.
One has several sections
containing our suggestions for how ebooks could be used
by each of your project groups,
and it has some multimedia features that I'll just briefly show you.
So there are two sections for each project group.
One is the possibilities that ebooks hold for each group, and then the next section is
an example of what that might look like. So for Viz.,
we have an example Viz. post--this one is by Laura Thain--
and it's really easy to just put this text into the program, iBooks Author makes it look pretty,
and you can just drag-and-drop the images.
With Currents and TheJUMP, we put in
a student video project. [clip from project plays]
Voiceover #1: 978! Voiceover #2: The bill is S-period-nine-seven-eight. Voiceover #3: S nine hundred and seventy-eight.
[clip ends] Odom: For the A/V recording group,
we put in just a sample of a Zeugma episode.
[Zeugma theme plays]
We also thought a transcript of the episode could be a natural accompaniment to the audio.
And we embedded parts of "Rhetorical Peaks,"
which is one of the games that came out of the DWRL.
which is one of the games that came out of the DWRL. ["Rhetorical Peaks" theme plays]
So this program is very easy to use and makes things look pretty,
but definitely has limitations, as Jenny will be talking about in just a second.
Howell: Okay. So yes,
the limitation is the accessibility
because the iBook can only be used on Apple devices: iPads, Macs, et cetera.
So to test the accessibility of ebooks, we decided to create an epub that emulated as much as we could
what we created with the fancy iBooks Author.
So just a little about epubs in case you're not familiar with this file format:
It's basically a compiled website built around a single stream of text.
Like PDFs, epubs can be viewed on virtually any device
because it's on a proprietary file type. But unlike PDFs,
they actually adopt their layout to whatever device views them, sort of like a mobile website
is adapted to a iPhone rather than to a computer.
Oh, and I should say that I'm speaking for Cole Wehrle, who adapted the entire thing into an epub format,
but who's not here today. So don't ask questions. [audience laughs]
So to make the conversion, he created a template in Adobe InDesign,
which is a difficult program to work with.
So he basically created a simple template that mirrored the types of styles,
the hierarchy of styles that we created in the iBook,
and then he just sort of plugged in text, and he also created a special formatting for images,
and he never found a way to successfully--
I don't know if he was ever able to successfully input videos into the epub format.
But the images worked, and he was able to test them on a variety of web browsers
and also to put them on a bunch of different mobile devices
like an Android and a Kindle. I think that's it!
Gerdes: So if you want to see how our iBook looks as an epub, or as a PDF
or other types of file versions on other tablets than an iPad, you can come by Diane's office afterwards.
We'll set up our open house with about seven different tablets
that I've been carting around to get these all on there.
But I wanted to spend a little bit of time telling you guys about what's in our white paper and what our recommendations are for the groups.
So I'll just kind of summarize our ideas.
As far as Currents and TheJUMP, as well as Viz., one main idea we had was
edited collections that could either collect several Viz. posts or
an issue of either journal, or they could cluster around a kind of
theme or even "best of" certain posts on Viz.,
as well as from Blogging Pedagogy and the lesson plans website.
So we could use ebooks to promote those different projects in a lot of different ways.
We also thought you could put together course texts--especially with Viz. articles
if you were teaching on either something that Viz. has published a theme on,
or if you're teaching about visual rhetoric, it would be an easy way to collate certain
posts that you wanted to use in your class. For the podcast group,
we thought of using the sort of "box set" model
that you kind of got a sense of in Eric's video,
where you could include extended material, like the entire transcript of a podcast as well as
unedited interviews or supplementary material
to go along with the podcast. This could be issued as an ebook.
For the games group, we actually spent most of our last semester
thinking about how you could archive material, like the "Rhetorical Peaks" example,
on past games that the DWRL has produced,
or that you could even use an iBook or an ebook
to put together an article for an online journal like Kairos--
the way that the Battle Lines group did last semester--as a website.
So you could have that as a downloadable ebook as well.
One final thought that we had as well--or two, I guess--for the other projects that the lab puts together:
The Speaker Series could be presented in an ebook as a kind of recap, including video
as well as a transcript and other supplementary materials. Maybe even blog posts
or responses to the Speaker Series event.
And you could use ebooks to archive the DWRL handbook as it changes from version to version.
So more details about that will be in the white paper,
which you'll be able to get from the lab's website sometime this summer.
Thanks! [applause]
Schneider: This year, the visual rhetoric group's mission
could be best summed up by the word "development."
We sought this year to develop rich and textured conversations on our blog, Viz.,
strong and vibrant networks within the DWRL and the larger University of Texas community,
and involved and engaged audiences. We had a number of themes and conversations that evolved over the year
through the excellent blogging of our group members: Jay, Katherine, Laura, Todd,
Chris, and Jim, some of whom are not here today, but I'd like to thank them all for their great work.
While each person developed their own questions and concerns,
there were many topics that returned again and again. I'll now try to contain myself to just a few
highlights from the myriad posts this year, but you'll have to forgive me if I go too long.
As this was an election year,
our writers found ample material for analysis in the Obama and Romney campaigns.
Our writers examined various topics including Romney's enthymemes,
the candidates' use of wristbands and stagecraft,
and even how facial expressions and physiognomy play into rhetorical situations.
Writers like Chris, Laura, and Jay all considered how visual representations of data--
like word clouds and graphs--affect our analysis of presidential rhetoric and political divisiveness.
Jay's post in particular, which measures how frequently words like "climate change" and "hope" were used
in various political conventions, helps readers see the persuasive possibilities
in visual argumentation.
Other posts that dealt with maps, graphs, and lines included Laura's lengthy work on the secret history of lines,
which connected the divides of red states and blue states to those of north and south,
as represented in Colin Stearns' photographs of the Mason-Dixon Line.
And she's been invited to contribute to his own publication of these photographs for a press, so that's very exciting.
Jay also constructed a series on architecture,
not only considering how artists like Arnold Newman photographed architects,
but also architectural design's impact on community development, as we're experiencing here in Austin.
Viz. remained topical
with a series of kairotic posts around major holidays and events, many done by Katherine.
Her writing this year took us from seeing hipster fashions as Halloween costumes,
through representations of family on Christmas cards, to the visual poetics of Valentine's Day.
However, Viz. would not be Viz.--at least under my watch--
without pop-culture blogging. Katherine's two posts covering descriptions of clothing
in Brad Paisley's recent song "Accidental Racist" were some of the blog's most popular posts this year,
as was Laura's discussion of camp in Quentin Tarantino's film "Django Unchained."
Our group members have also delved deeply
into Web 2.0 phenomena like Twitter posts, GIFs, and other visual memes.
Whereas Jay explored the emotional power of Matt Holliday's slide into second base,
and I wrote about political satire on Tumblr and Twitter,
Laura discussed how GIFs relate to silent film.
Finally, our writers did not neglect to discuss pedagogy amidst all this.
Jim in particular offered several thoughtful posts on his classroom experiences:
one that details using the Firefox add-on Collusion to teach "The Filter Bubble"--
this year's first-year forum text--
a second post that showed readers David McCandless's website "Rhetological Fallacies,"
which includes a bingo board for students to learn about rhetorical fallacies.
In order to develop networks within the larger UT community, we reached out to other groups,
putting their work under under our critical lens. Primarily, this involved our ongoing collaboration with the Harry Ransom Center,
which we continued with a week-long series on the Norman Bel Geddes exhibit
and, right now, the Arnold Newman exhibit.
Yet we also explored the Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies' program on the fate of the book,
visited the Harry Ransom Center's annual Flair symposium, and experienced the Blanton museum and South By Southwest.
We also covered the work of other DWRL groups, as when I discussed the Zeugma's podcast's first episode on reading
to untangle Pride and Prejudice's visual afterlives.
Our greatest interaction with the DWRL, however,
occurred when we held our April workshop on incorporating cameras into the classroom,
led by group members Laura, Jay, and Katherine.
This workshop incorporated Laura's rich overview of the DWRL's many cameras
alongside an explanation of their different capacities and classroom applications--and this is her Prezi here.
Jay and Katherine also discussed how Viz. itself
provides material for classroom instructors, including examples for teaching the differences
between objective and subjective claims, as well as helping students recognize tone
for both rhetorical and literary analysis. And she's encapsulated all these
on the lesson plans website, which you should totally check out if you haven't yet.
Finally, part of what we endeavored to do this year
was to continue developing the Viz. audience. Between September 1st and today,
according to our Google analytics, Viz. had almost 91,000 unique visitors
whose average engagement with the website was almost a minute long.
We've also built audiences through Facebook and Twitter,
allowing engaged users to read our posts and to share them with others. And so some of the posts
have been able to be seen by numerous hundreds of people.
In conclusion, the visual rhetoric group developed textured analyses of multimodal texts,
constructed alliances amongst the UT community, and created resources for various audiences.
Having seen and heard the presentations today,
I of course look forward not only to seeing what the rest of the groups will do next year, but what the visual rhetoric group will do to build on this one.
Thank you very much. [applause]
Burdette: Can you believe that? We did that whole thing in less than an hour. So everybody give yourself a round of applause. [applause]
Davis: And your first response was, "Is that it?"
Burdette: [chuckling] I just meant, did everybody go.
I can't believe how much technology you guys were able to cram into
less than an hour. But please do come down the hall, join us for open house,
some snacks, and--again--let's give everybody a round of applause.
[applause, music fades in]
[music fades out]