Sirc “Box Logic” from Writing New Media

I think Geoffrey Sirc’s “Box Logic” from Writing New Media was an excellent follow up reading to Jody Shipka’s Toward A Composition Made Whole from last week. Sirc’s chapter, just as Shipka’s text, provides readers with an explanation for the need to move toward new media composition, and it supports that claim with example-based activities. Sirc informs readers of his vulnerability with the chapter’s content in a confession in the first line of text: “Let me confess: it has been a frustrating last several years for me in my writing courses” (111).  As a reader, I became immediately engaged with what would be an insightful chapter; the author provided me with a sense of his experience with the topic and, therefore, credibility in those first few words.

Sirc introduces the analogy of “text as box=author as collector.” With it he provides a great deal of background information on historical collections and authors of creativity and then arrives at his own primary goal: “to show my students how their compositional future is assured if they can take an art stance to the everyday, suffusing the materiality of daily life with an aesthetic” (117). As a student reading these words (much the same as when reading Shipka’s), I was thankful. Yes! I thought to myself, this is where we find not only a connection and appreciation for art—however we may define that—but also a passion that can be triggered in the classroom by outside factors. Sirc talks about the need for “lived texts of desire” and his words are relieving; just as Shipka, he sees the revamping that so desperately begs to take place in the classroom.

I wonder: what is the real issue? I know that is a vague question, so let me attempt to deconstruct it with some additional questions. Why is this debate (traditional vs. modern, old vs. new, written, linear vs. multimodal text) such a great issue? Why can’t we (the collective academia) move with the times? If multimodality, technology, and the Internet are dominating in industry as well as in other fields of academia, why should English be left behind? Change is good, right? After all, technical communication underwent something similar. Isn’t there a way to remember the past and incorporate those “traditional” teachings into today’s lectures and meetings, yet still provide the revamped structure that today’s world and its entering college students nearly demand? The answer is a clear yes, because we are, in some sense, making moves toward this new curriculum; it is seen in works such as those we have read and heard about in references. Thus, if Sirc and Shipka—and I assume many other authors, teachers of writing—can provide the field with connections, claims, and criticisms for a re-tweaking, restructuring of writing in classroom, then what larger force is preventing us from doing so? I understand it is a more complicated feat than my simple-minded questions posed here reflect, but it seems like we are already so close to making it happen. What’s the holdup?

Sirc discusses his curriculum structure in latter pages of the chapter: “So the two basic skills I focus my course around are practicing search strategies and annotating material…it’s turning the internet into a virtual arcade…” (122). Sirc is clearly bridging the oppositions mentioned above, providing students with the ultimate experience. As a student participating and being educated in this particular curriculum, I would find these skills to not only be ones of great interest, but also ones of the utmost value post-course completion and post-graduation. Research and note-taking skills are ones that can be transferable to other classrooms as well as the workplace. Sirc’s later activities provide examples of how he teaches these traditional, expected skills in combination with the new media approach he advocates.

In Activity 1, A Basic Box, Sirc outlines appropriate steps for allowing the student to become “a mixer or DJ, practicing the key compositional arts of selection, arrangement, and expression” (129). This “simple lesson in juxtaposition” is one I have partially experienced. In last semester’s ENGL 852: Rhetoric and Professional Communication course, I took a similar approach to the final multimodal project. I juxtaposed excerpts from past president’s speeches (e.g., Kennedy, Lincoln, Bush) with those of college football coaches. I compared the rhetorics of both—president vs. coach—by using various forms of media, including written transcriptions as well as audio and visual recordings. Juxtaposing these snippets allowed me to practice using electronic technology in combination with historical, traditional text.

I want to touch briefly on something Sirc mentions on page 127. He writes: “The ‘questions for further discussion’ those reader-textbooks ask about their permanent-collection articles are designed to make the work come alive for students, to make them learn to savor it the way we in academia (supposedly) do, to make the work’s discursive field viral, recombinant” (emphasis added). I argue that these questions actually fail to do this. I have yet to feel inspired or “alive” when working within the limits of the traditional print text; in my experience, rarely have these questions pushed me outside the confines of the text toward other media. I agree that we “have not learned from the work done,” but I question how we will learn. With this, I argue again for the incorporation of Lunsford et al.’s Everyone’s An Author for ENGL 103.

Jody Shipka, Toward A Composition Made Whole

Jody Shipka provides readers a refreshing text with her 2011 Toward A Composition Made Whole. I found myself incredibly engaged throughout the entire text, and I related to several of the concepts and student experiences she addressed. For this blog entry, I would like to move through the text, chapter by chapter, and discuss some of the elements I found particularly relevant to my own experiences as well as those I feel our class might take into consideration as we prepare to teach ENGL 103 in the upcoming academic year.

In the introduction (page 6), Shipka immediately greets readers with a question Yancy poses: “Don’t you wish that the energy and motivation that students bring to some of these other genres they would bring to our assignments?” (298) Upon readings these words, I felt they advocated for the incorporation of Lunsford’s et al. Everyone’s An Author into next year’s ENGL 103 curriculum. Together, Megan, Catherine and I highlighted the diversity—in academic fields as well as in personality, ethnicity, gender, etc.—of entering freshmen and how Lunsford’s text aims to face these differences in a welcoming light by providing materials across multiple genres. Rather than deter students from ENGL 103, the text will unite them under the umbrella of composition and illustrate how the composing process can (and is) applicable across all genres. Everyone’s An Author takes to its advantage students’ use of technology and “new media” and will, therefore, excite, motivate students, and provide them with the means and lessons for incorporating their preexisting knowledge and interest in these areas to those that exist within the classroom. Yancy’s posed question above works hand-in-hand with the aims of this particular text. Shipka’s entire introduction, and I might even argue entire book, should be taken into account when the ENGL 103 committee makes a decision regarding the new text.

I related to the concept Shipka addresses in chapter one pertaining to the communication approach vs. English approach to an introductory course. My freshman year at Virginia Tech, a great number of majors (e.g., business, mathematics, and some sciences) were given the option of enrolling in the traditional freshman English course (equivalent to Clemson’s ENGL 103) or taking the communication approach to this course, a course labeled “Communication Skills.” While I was a communication major and was not given the option, many of my fellow business-major classmates jumped for joy at the option and enrolled in Comm. Skills rather than the ENGL counter. The students cited the negative connotation and their fear for the freshman English course, and stated they would have done anything to avoid taking that course. Their experience in Comm. Skills was somewhat reflective of what Shipka discusses in this chapter: “A communications approach to freshman English, by contrast, grounded in social scientific theories of discourse, would underscore for students the connection between the social and personal dimensions of communicative practice… A communications approach to the first-year course would examine how writing relates to other modes and media of communication” (25-26). My fellow classmates completed Comm. Skills with a newfound appreciation for the composing process, as the structure of this course provided them with reason to believe in and of its values to infinite genres. Students learned how to “’appreciate language as a living, ever changing medium used by all kinds of people in all kinds of situation[s] and in all kinds of ways’” (26). My experience with the situation confirms the thoughts recorded in this chapter.

Chapter two introduces another familiar concept yet one we are not likely to pay too much attention to until it is mentioned: “Thus, as one cultural tool is phased out or replaced by another, we are more easily able to discern the limitations of what had been formerly in place” (47). Wertsch’s quote provides additional insight to this concept of reflection. We see this idea ever so often with technology. We can no longer count the number of editions there are with Apple products—MacBookPro, iPhone, and iPad—and there are improvements and new devices issued just months apart from one another. It is interesting to see this concept paralleled to the classroom and the composing process. I also connected with a final point in this chapter, that when Shipka discusses our reliance on technologies. She writes: “One way taken-for-granted technologies are rendered visible is through breakdowns or disruptions…we come to depend on things remaining invisible, remaining in pace, and working efficiently. That is, we count on things working in the specific ways we have become accustomed to” (55). This idea is reflective elsewhere as well. For example, during one stormy evening last summer, my older brother and I (both of whom I like to think have intelligence and common sense) were perplexed when the electricity went out in our home. We forgot how reliant we were on certain amenities: TV, Internet, and even our landline house phone. Although the electricity in itself was not a technology, it was a means through which provided us with the affordance to use technology. Once again, we can see how the concepts Shipka discusses in relation to the composing process and educating students in the classroom carries over to outside realms.

I reflected on a previous class assignment, the composing process paper, when reading through most of chapter three (my favorite chapter by far). Shipka provides fabulous examples ranging from a wide variety of topics. My younger sister, a ballerina, actually completed a similar assignment to that which Muffie did—I see a great deal of comparisons between the two projects (Muffie’s and my sister’s) as well as similarities in their thoughts of freshman English pre- and post- enrollment.

I could not agree more with the themes introduced in chapter four. Shipka writes of the importance of providing student writers with choices, options to pursue in their works, and she discusses the added responsibility that comes along with this option. Shipka writes: “Instead of providing students with opportunities to explore the communicative potentials of new (or older) media in a context where the instructor decides what the final product will be, the framework requires students to assume responsibility for determining the purposes, potentials, and contexts of their work” (88). I reflect on my own experiences during my undergraduate composition courses—while I too was often frustrated by the challenge and the lack of terms or boundaries on assignments, the end result and the gained skills made that frustration worthwhile. I currently witness what Shipka describes; as a part of my assistantship with the Pearce Center for Professional Communication, I work with an ENGL H 314 class. Students in the course were recently assigned project teams and given the task of proposing a new component to the Pearce Center web resources initiative. Student groups were given few instructions, but they were told their final deliverable must be multimodal. From Shipka’s text, we learn this word has multiple definitions in various settings and is determined by different audiences. The students in the course currently face the challenge of proposing a deliverable that falls within an endless array of options. In chapter four of the text, Shipka advocates this “decision-making situation” and discusses the student/writer role of 1) identifying, 2) defining, and 3) solving.

Chapter five prompted me to look ahead to the final portfolios MAPC students will create and defend. Shipka writes of the reflective process and states: “Proponents of reflective or process writings have argued that students who are required to reflect on and then justify the choices they have made and the rhetorical strategies they have employed in a piece of writing are likely to…” (115). The bulleted list that follows confirms MAPC students’ need to reflect when defending the portfolio; the thoughts communicated in this chapter support the final project curriculum and goals, and from this chapter I gain the value of this task in advance.

I enjoy that the conclusion rightfully includes sentences regarding what we need to continue to do, encourage both others and ourselves to do, etc. Shipka constantly reminds readers that she is not downgrading or dismissing the traditional, linear and largely alphabetic text, but is in fact providing us with ways in which it can and should be incorporated. Overall, I found Toward A Composition Made Whole a rather insightful, enjoyable read, and I look forward to classroom discussion and conversation with Shipka on Wednesday.