New Media

Cynthia L. Selfe’s main argument in Students Who Teach Us: A Case Study of a New Media Text Designer is that instructors of composition should focus their efforts and energy a bit more in trying to teach new media texts and sources and later incorporate them in their classrooms as a method of introducing fresh new literacies to their students. To further her argument, Selfe introduces a case study of a former student, David in an effort to “help us understand how such texts are changing our understanding of what it means to be literate in the twenty-first century and help us understand our own role in relation to change” (44).

In her case study, Selfe gives us a trio of lessons on literacy, pertinent to David’s case that helps the reader understand the necessary steps to integrate new media literacies into the classroom.

Lesson 1: new forms of literacy don’t accumulate. Rather, they have life spans. In different social contexts – different portions of the larger cultural ecology – they emerge, accumulate and sometimes compete with pre-existing forms of literacy…and they also sometimes fade or disappear. We need to understand the effects that such contested landscapes have student working in specific English composition programs.

Lesson 2: In a postmodern world, new media literacies may play an important role in identity formation, the exercise of power, and the negotiation of new media social codes.

Lesson 3: To make it possible for students to practice, value, and understand a full range of literacies—emerging, competing, and fading—English composition teachers have got to be willing to expand their own understanding of compositing beyond conventional bounds of the alphabetic.  And we have to do so quickly or risk having composition studies become increasing irrelevant.

The second lesson caught my eye. When Selfe is discussing how new media literacies carry heavy influence when dealing with identity formation, social codes, and power, Selfe recognizes that these new media forms can open the doors for opportunities for new connections. However, these new connections can also lead the way for separation, disintegration, and marginalization of previously established mediums.

In Johndan Johnson-Eilola’s The Database and the Essay: Understanding Composition as Articulation, Johnson-Eilola starts off by considering the different ways of trying to understand text and literacy by searching for the source of the tension between the old philosophy of text based learning and the new, progressive new medium of digital media.

Johnson-Eilola asks the question: “Where does writing come from?” and in answering it, he offers his explanation in two theories (Symbolic-Analytic and Articulation).  I believe that when explaining the Symbolic-Analytic theory, the author is trying to say that writing works have the power to comprehend its author and his/her intended technology medium. Johnson-Eilola believes that sole proprietorship of work is the key to literacy. However, I believe that he doesn’t believe that sole ownership of work will be the foundation of writing going forward. When discussing his articulation theory, he frames it as an idea that thought functions exactly like language, being built across all walks of life by numerous people with the context of that language changing accordingly. The author affirms that meaning is derived from context, not by standard communication.

Johnson-Eilola also raises the queston of adequate citation on the web that drew direct parallels to the discussion we had on the first day of class regarding the wide availability of HTML coding for the mass replication of websites. Taking the HTML code of websites and reproducing them as your own is a very common practice. Johnson-Eilola thinks that linking on the web and the content being linked is purely an economic practice while citation for the purpose of academic is not.