Let me start with a statement: I love visual rhetoric. I love the power of images, the subtle influence of color, font, etc. It rocks. I use it in my classes, emphasizing what color can to to an image. What a smile can do. How we look at an image and, because of our cultural understanding of what we perceive to be the message of that image, feel something. It’s so cool.
In “Teaching and Learning Visual Rhetoric” (TWWC), Hocks writes: “The combination of learning how to look, experimenting, getting feedback from technologies, interacting with audiences, and having the tools for revision taught me something–to construct visual meanings and compositions with confidence. This is what good learning practices are supposed to do–engage us in an exploratory process that allows us to experiment” (202). Hocks then takes her experience and, making it relevant to teachers especially, shows how to use it in the classroom. Cool.
I hadn’t thought of the reflexivity promoted in digital cameras. of visual displays as constituting a language (203); however, that’s exactly what I teach my students, though framed as meaning making as a socially constructed act.
When Hocks talks about visual compositons as “balance, hue, saturation, texture, and scale” (203), the first thought that popped into my mind was white space. White space, black text, and Times New Roman 12 point font–the limits placed on students in traditional text production, though white space is much more.
Breaking through the distinctions between “visual culture” and ”print culture” –the
“modernist” “binary” thinking that prompted a discussion in 602 a year ago about how students should include a copy of a paper that was free of visual rhetoric if they wanted to also include one with it, since some second graders of portfolios would prefer it that way–seems so needed right now.
“Visual rhetoric, like verbal rhetoric, is a system of ongoing dialogue among rhetors, audiences, and dynamic contexts,” focusing “on the multiple modalities and contexts of meaning” (204) seems as if it should be more than needed; it perhaps should be demanded.
The conference I presented at two days ago went into great detail about the Future of English Studies. Many forms, often in conflict with one another, were presented and discussed, debated even (it was such fun!), but visual components weren’t discussed at all. They weren’t even mentioned. Why? If visual and electronic cultures helps students engage in “critical dialogue with other students, with the teacher, and with like-minded foks in cyber-space” (204-205), doesn’t it behoove us to consider how to integrate both technology and visual rhetoric into the composition classroom?
I couldn’t help but think of on-line scrapbooking, of face-book and myspace, of you-tube, of the many ways students can create their identities (Second Life anyone?). Isn’t the rhetoric found there worth exploring and integrating into the class? My students love communicating through face-book. I’ve found they respond quicker to emails sent via face-book than via blackboard announcements or through their university email. They’ve told me they prefer face-book b/c it keeps everything they do all the time in one place. It makes homework easier b/c it doesn’t feel like homework. What can be done then with visual rhetoric that makes it feel like something they can and should use professionally? As students in a myriad of courses?
I can’t help but imagine that teaching them reflection, audience awareness, and critical analysis would be easier if visual rhetoric was at the core. What a great way to experience a concept and actually remember it!?!
Hocks explains that digital environments can be used to “teach students to look critically and reflexively at media forms and to conceive of themselves as designers of their own histories and cultures. This kind of approach to pedagogy both acknowledges the fundamental role that technologies play in our understanding of critical literacy and drives the use of new communication technologies toward student-centered learning goals” (205).
Teach students to “think outside the box and also about the box” (205).
As I construct my pedagogy, I embrace critical pedagogy, am incorporating pedagogies of sustainability, and feel technology and the various forms it takes are skill sets I must acquire if I am to use all available means to teach in ways that promote active learning, fostering critical thinking, that is relevant to my students’ lives.
October 26, 2007 at 1:35 am |
Hey Abbey: I’m so impressed with your blog post on visual rhetoric. I agree that we shouldn’t think of the inclusion of images as something that takes away from the print argument, which is what the 602 example seems to imply. So the thing to think about is what does it mean to embrace critical pedagogy, active learning, critical thinking. What does that look like in a techno-centered environment in terms of assignments, invention activities, and like. Keep on going…you rock!