But traditional writing assignments can be adapted to new media ones. In this post I’ll share some guidelines for how to adapt assignments, an example of how I adapted an assignment, and some of the work my students produced.

From wordle.net

Guidelines for adapting a traditional writing assignment to a new media form:

1. Figure out what the learning objective of the original assignment is. Make sure that objective will still be fulfilled even as you transfer the assignment to a new media approach.
2. Brainstorm new media approaches that may help meet this objective–perhaps better than the original assignment.
3. Choose one of the new media approaches and revise the original assignment sheet, paying particular attention to the new media genre attributes and to the advantages of new media.
4. Adapt your lesson plans to allow for time to teach new media principles.
5. Once the students have completed the assignment, evaluate it and be willing to make changes the next go round.

An Example: from Rhetorical Analysis to Blog Post

Part of the curriculum for the class I teach–a university freshman writing course, includes a rhetorical analysis. 4-6 pages analyzing the audience, intent, and rhetorical techniques of an article.

Instead of using an article from a reader, I gave my students a list of twenty online texts that they could choose from. They could also approve their own text with me–though only 1 student choose to do so. The students still were tasked with analyzing the audience, intent, and rhetorical techniques, but for the rhetorical techniques they were expected to also consider visuals, web layout, or new media aspects of the text.

Rather than just typing it up and turning it in to me in MLA format, the students turned in the final rhetorical analysis as a blog post–with blog formatting, an awareness of online readers, and at least 1 visual or graphic.

The problem with transferring this assignment online is that blog posts are typically short–and to meet university curriculum requirements, I had to have my students turn in 1200-2000 words for this assignment. A few students managed to pull it off as an engaging, long blog post–others still did a good job, but it felt rather long on the web. Next semester I may do something suggested by James Goldberg, one of my fellow teachers, and do what he did for this assignment–had the students post several blog posts, all analyzing the same text, that hyperlink to each other and each focus on a particular aspect.

For some of the students, publishing it as a blog and then trying to get readers felt rather arbitrary–in part because they largely just wrote a traditional rhetorical analysis and posted it online. The students that really took advantage of the blog genre were much happier with sharing their posts on blog form.

I allowed students to turn in the final blog post either on the class blog or on their own blogs.

Will I make changes next semester? Certainly. But I was quite happy with the results.

From My Students: New Media Rhetorical Analyses

I gave the best grade average that I’ve ever given on the rhetorical analysis assignment–my students really did good work. Here I’ll highlight just a few of my students that in one way or another, did awesome things with new media.

1. Josh’s “The Onion Makes Me Shed Tears…of LAUGHTER!”

Engaging voice, hypertextual (with great use of hyperlinks and visual cultural allusions), and a great mixture of fonts, font size, bullet points and other methods of emphasis, and playing with location on the screen. This felt like something that could be posted on a blog with regular readers, something that could help get a following online. Plus it was an insightful, in-depth analysis.

This also had multiple comments from people that Josh doesn’t know. For example, one commenter wrote, “Very Clever, witty. Overall really enjoyed it. I’ve never read the site before and you’ve got me hooked. You seem to be a scholar keep it up.”

2.  Jessie’s “Cinnamon Rolls 101, Broken Down”

Matching form meets content–since she was analyzing a blog recipe site, Jessie framed her analysis as a recipe. Great use of engaging visuals that help us see what she’s analyzing. Once again, great analysis.

3. Maressa’s “Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty” and Charlee’s “Rewriting Beauty”

Both Maressa and Charlee analyzed aspects of the Dove website. Maressa spent a lot of time analyzing the use of the color blue in the campaign–so every time she used the word beauty in her analysis, she made it blue. Charlee used a parallel technique, putting key quotes in color, and bolding a few key uses of the word beauty. Both girls used images strategically.

4. Emily’s “There’s Hope”

Emily posted on her own personal blog–the tone she used for this post matches the tone she’s established for her blog.

5. Zach’s “Looking Closely at Obama’s Health Care Reform”

Zach decided that his tone most closely matched that of news bloggers, and so styled his post like that of a news blog columnist, choosing for him image a reporter-like image of himself.

6. Kendrick’s “Making the IOC a Laughing Matter”

Kendrick manipulated images from his source to combine them with quotes from the article he was analyzing and strategically placed them throughout his analysis.

I went the old school method and we brainstormed some aspects of blogs on the whiteboard. Here’s a bit of what we came up with…some of them overlap, some may be central to blogging and other peripheral, but they give a sense of some of the rhetoric of blogs. Special thanks to James Goldberg, Jeff Swift, and Gideon Burton for their thoughts.

The rhetoric of blogs:

Collaboration and interaction — in most blog platforms, comments are the norm, and it takes effort to remove them. Collaboration–developing ideas through discourse and discussion–is facilitated by these comments. Blogs admit that any communication is speaking to an audience, and interaction with that audience is encouraged. Many of the best blogs are conversational.

Visual formatting and emphasis — the visual design, the form, is an intrinsic part of the message. We even like the academic blogs that we read to be visually appealing, to have pictures and headings, to engage with us on a formal level. (Note to self: this is something I need to work on. I have only one picture in this post and bolds and italics are only marginally cool/effective.)

Length — while not nearly as short as microblogging and facebook updates, most blogs are not a long form. Often the entire post will fit on one screen, or with just a small scroll. In blogs we’re given palatable pieces of thought.

Personal nature — while there’s many genres (journals, political, satirical, academic, etc.) blogs tend to be a rather personal form of writing. We want to see the man behind the curtain, and for him to talk directly to us. Further, what you say matters and accumulates over time, helping to define your individual identity.

Conflation of author and audience — No longer is the ability to publish held only by large corporations or those with financial backing. The roles of author and audience are conflated, and we slip between them constantly.

Hyperlinks and connections — like many other types of new media, blogs take advantage of the ability to link and make connections between things.

Unpolished/in process thought – blogs celebrate unpolished thought, which sometimes can be a bad thing. But this can also be the blog’s greatest strength: we don’t have to polish something to see how an audience reacts, we don’t have to set our ideas in stone to have them worth sharing, and we become more willing to adapt our position and engage in true discourse when we recognize that the form is not about creating a permanent manifesto. To use Gideon Burton’s term, versioning is not only accepted, but encouraged.

Public spheres — blogs are one form that allow us to become involved and make a contribution in the issues that matter to our communities. By having a public blog, you join the conversations going on that determine the rules of the world we live in.

Literacy — Like with all aspects of literacy, there should be both consumption and production. Because of their accessibility, it’s quite simple to become thoughtful consumers and producers of texts.

How I use blogs in the first year composition/writing classroom:

I post class blog assignments online; students write blog posts 1-3 times a week.

Blog posts allow students to find rhetorical examples, develop their writing with the help of their peers and an audience, publish their writing, and reflect on the writing process.

Students engage in dialogue through commenting on each other’s posts and responding to those comments.

Every semester some of the specifics of what I do with blogs in the classroom change, but overall I’ve received positive feedback and more positive feedback (it still seems that students got things out of it even if they weren’t thrilled). Further, I’ve seen my students’ writing improve by leaps and bounds.

Further reading– Check out my recent article in the Locutorium journal: Opinion Editorials, New Media, and Participation in Real Public Discourse.

Five dos and don’ts fresh from the classroom:

1. DO introduce your students to new technology in the classroom setting.

If you want to incorporate new media in the classroom, don’t just expect that all of your students will be able to set up the proper accounts, get on the class blog, figure out where the “new post” button is, etc. on their own.  Any classroom–even the college classroom–will have a wide variety of students, some who have had less experience with new media technologies.  Don’t let the digital divide put students behind from day one by being there when your students are learning new technologies.

Now that my students have posted their first blog post while in class, they’re no longer intimidated by the blog post that’s due for homework tomorrow.  They know the technology, and can now focus on their writing.

2. DON’T try to have all your students get new online accounts from the same IP address on the same day.

Two programs we use in my classroom are Blogger and Google Documents.  Both require a Google account.  About half my students had Google accounts already, and I falsely assumed that the rest of my students would be able to get Google accounts while we were working in the computer classroom. After all, it worked last semester.  The problem we ran into was that the computer lab uses one ip address, and with so many people trying to get a Google account from the same ip address, google marked the ip address as spam.  As a result, two of my students still don’t have google accounts, though hopefully by Wednesday that problem will be resolved.

Next time I’m emailing my students a week before classes start and asking them to get a Google account before the first day of class.

3. DO design the first day’s new media activity so that those who were quickly able to set up their accounts don’t get bored.

While it took some of my students 20 minutes to set up their accounts, some students were done in 2.  Luckily, the activity was for them to create a blog post and then post comments on other people’s posts.  Those that were able to set up their accounts quickly were able to read and comment on a larger number of posts, and didn’t have to sit there twiddling their thumbs.

4. DON’T plan too much for days that you’re introducing students to new technologies.

My goal for the computer classroom was to have my students 1. create their accounts; 2. post their first blog post, a one paragraph description of their writing process; 3. comment on other’s blog posts; and 4. turn in a Google Document describing their course goals.

I quickly realized that some of my students would not even get to the third task.  I decided not even to introduce the fourth task, because it required a separate technology and I wanted my students to spend enough time writing to produce quality blog posts and comments.  Google Docs will just have to wait.

5. DO interact with your students and their new media writing on a regular basis.

This is something I’m trying to be better at this semester.  You show value to new media writing by interacting with it, participating in it, not just by giving students a grade.  So while I won’t be able to comment on every single blog post my students write (each of my students writes 3 a week) I should comment at least as many times as I’m requiring my students to comment.  If I expect my students to have an online conversation then I should be there for it.  Yesterday, whenever students didn’t need my help, I tried to comment on their blogs.  In my 5 to 10 minutes of downtime, I was able to comment on at least 3 people’s posts, adding my own thoughts.

My goal is to be a mentor to my students, a teaching collaborator, and interacting with my students and their new media writing is key to acheiving that goal.

What other dos and don’ts have you picked up from using new media in your classroom?  I’d love to hear your insights and ideas.

On the Media recently interviewed Sasha Frere Jones (who writes for the New Yorker) in a piece called Talking Tween.  Brooke Gladstone mentioned that Sasha’s writing style–and even approach–for the New Yorker is extremely different than the way he writes on Twitter.

Sasha explained that if he writes the same way for all these different venues, “I’m not going to get anywhere with my writing.”

This is a great lesson for teachers planning on using new media technology in the classroom, who give new media writing assignments to their students.  You may be justified in demanding basic capitalization conventions (as I do for most new media assignments), but you’re not benefiting your students if you’re not allowing the medium to change both the students and their writing.

Sasha explains his attentiveness to genre: “The only way I’m able to figure out what they [new media technologies] do is by using them. The Web uses links intensely, which you can’t do in print. You’ve got images. Twitter has this built in limit, which affects the voice in an interesting way. Why not take it for a spin?”

The key is to use new media genres for what they do best.  To use a preschool metaphor, don’t try to force a square block (a traditional assignment) into a circular hole.

There is nothing inherently magical or perfect about the college essay form.  Because while I grade college essays, unlike new media genres, I wouldn’t read them in my spare time.  In his book The Rhetoric of Cool, Jeff Rice also points out that there is nothing special–or intrinsically more persuasive–about having a thesis-driven argument. Spend just a few minutes reading new media writing, and this will become obvious.

New media technology offers new potential for what writing can do.  New media writing is no longer limited to words on a page–video, pictures, audio, and interactivity are now a part of the writing that happens in all workplaces and academic disciplines.

In his interview, Sasha Frere Jones explained, “If I’m not letting the technology take me somewhere, then why am I using it?”

A fair question, that all of us should ask ourselves.  Don’t make your students write new media in the same way they wrote old media.  But don’t let new media just affect your students. Let new media technology change both you and your writing.

Yet teachers are still needed.  One key area that students need to be guided in is new media literacy, being taught to consciously think about and critically reflect on how they interact with new media.  Students can then be taught to apply this critical reflection to their own new media writing.

This post will give an example of how an interactive web space (the Star Trek website) can be analyzed using a theoretical, reflective approach to new media (Margaret Mackey’s theories of play) and then used to encourage students in developing their own new media writing.

You don’t have to be a Trekkie to appreciate the Star Trek website and its web 2.0 savvy.  Equipped with an RSS feed, click-to-play soundtrack from the film to accompany your website exploration, a number of clips from the film, and constant interactivity, the Star Trek website invites you to become part of the Star Trek world.

Margaret Mackey provides a useful lens to explore how users interact with new media texts like the Star Trek website.  In her book Literacies Across Media: Playing the Text, Mackey explores various definitions of the term play (in the spirit of Raymond Williams’ Keywords), giving eight categories for how we “play the text.”  Four of these categories are particularly relevant to analyzing the Star Trek website.

1. Playing as pretending or imagining

Margaret Mackey writes, “How do we learn about stepping into a world with an imaginary and still-open future? How do we learn to apply this switch to a new text, or a new format?” (166).

The Star Trek website equips us with all the tools we need to enter the website world. For those without past Star Trek exposure, there is an “About” page with story background and a basic synopsis.

Yet the Star Trek website also invites pretending and imagining from those familiar with the Star Trek world. The “panoramas” and the character and place dossiers are visually attractive and interactive, both inviting and teaching the user to pretend or imagine specifically in the web sphere in addition to the film sphere and TV sphere.

Imagining in the website allows us to explore a “still-open future” an online Star Trek world in which we can determine the possibilities and how we interact with all that is before us.

2. Playing as engaging with the rules of the game

Not only does the Star Trek website invite us to imagine, it quickly teaches the “rules” of online interaction in this space, both what is and is not possible, and what is and is not permissible, just as certain things are possible and permissible when you play a game of baseball.

One of the major “rules of the game” of the Star Trek website is that we are meant to have a dual level of awareness, a dual level of interaction.  Right next to the “dossiers” of major characters and places-presented as if dossiers from the fictional world-are “production notes” which include filmmaker thoughts on casting, filming certain scenes.  We are supposed to engage with the characters on a deepness comparable to engaging with real life stories, and yet we are supposed to know all the time that this is just a movie, and a movie’s website.

3. Playing as performing

When we perform, we are not only pretending in order to interpret the text. We become involved on a very physical and emotional level in our engagement, in our “play” as we act out various roles.

The games page is an obvious example of physical performance; for example, as you play “Race to Destiny” your body has physical reactions—movement, muscle tension, etc.—in response to things encountered on the digital racecourse.

The site offers opportunities to perform Star Trek identities offsite, providing downloadable user icons. By blogging with a picture of James Kirk or Uhura as your icon, you are performing (and creating) a different identity emotionally (for both you and those you interact with) than if you used your own picture.

4. Playing as fooling around

The Star Trek website allows you to “fool around” or in other words, to experiment with possibilities.  By clicking on different ship hallways or using the “Navigate” menu we explore the movie website world at our own pace, in our own order, testing and trying the different functions to see what interests and engages us without being constrained by a set or pre-planned arrangement.  There is no easy beginning-middle-end “reading” method like with a traditional print texts, and being able to explore without these traditional constraints gives our mind new options, new possibilities, helping us think in original ways and make new connections.

Classroom Application:

Applying a complex theory like Margaret Mackey’s to something students already engage with (like the Star Trek website) helps them understand the theories surrounding new media and also to think critically about the online processes they engage with on a daily basis.

As always, the next step is to help students apply it to their own “online writing,” their own writing creations.  In a new media project I might assign a written reflection, worth 25 of the 100 points, in which the students address the following (based off of Mackey’s categories):

• New types of online texts teach you how to actively play and pretend in their worlds. What in your text invites users familiar and unfamiliar with its elements to participate, play, and “pretend”?
• All texts have rules. What are the rules of your text that an audience would have to engage with to have a successful experience with your text? How will they know what these rules are without them being explicitly stated?
• Performance creates an added level of participation on the part of your reader. What opportunities do your readers have to perform, to participate either in different physical or emotional roles, with your text?
• Some of the best online texts allow the viewer to choose how they will explore or “read” the text, allowing them to make decisions and create new meaning. What about the design of your text/project gives choices to your viewers? How might they create new meaning through your text?

Some of these may seem intuitive to your students-if they’ve created a video to upload on youtube, then the rules of the texts will have been acquired by their viewers spending time on youtube watching other videos.  Yet whether the explanations are obvious or not, reflection helps them to think critically, and create better material in the future.

In and of themselves, Margaret Mackey’s theories are unhelpful to students.  Yet if students are shown how the theory works in action, and then are invited to apply it to their own work, they will not only learn a lot about what makes good new media writing, but they will also become critically-thinking new media writers.

What is new media?  And how should new media be used in the classroom?  I’d love to hear your thoughts on these important questions, and on the video.

For a transcript of the video click here.

Who is the student of new media? A student is someone who is learning, often in a serious, focused (and institutionalized) way.  Anyone who uses new media is a student of new media–partly because its ever-developing nature requires constant learning.  Just as being able to speak English does not make you literate, being able to use new media does not make you literate.  The true student of new media doesn’t just consume new media–they also write and create new media.

Who is the teacher of new media? Traditional education is beginning to teach new media, from the college classroom all the way down to elementary school.  As a result, teachers from diverse fields (English, Mathematics, Physics, History, etc.) are also having to be teachers of new media.  But traditional teachers, while important, are not the only teachers of new media.  Teenagers are often new media teachers, helping their parents perform necessary web functions.  Friends help each other create new media, and teach each other the “rules” or protocol of social media web sites.  And anyone who does something original with new media teaches other creators additional ways that new media can and should be used.

In the world of new media, we are all students and teachers. All of us can become more literate, conscious, and active users of new media.  That’s what New Media Classroom–both the blog and the website–are all about.

Do you have thoughts on what should be on the new media classroom?  Suggestions for improvement?  A resource you’d like me to review or to put on the “New Media Resources” page?  Just let me know.