The reading, Between Modes: Assessing Student New Media Compositions, emphasized on the conflict between the ability of educators to assess the written work of students in the traditional manner (i.e. the quality of the written work itself) and assessing the overall "media composition" (the writing combined with multimedia from it is combined with). I think this reflects something that Izzy said during the last class, that over time teachers priorities change from the particulars within a written work, and look more at whether the student communicated a coherent message. I think that this is the same for new writings within a multimedia context. As new media (such as video, flash pictures, etc,) enhances the ability of the author to communicate to the reader educators will not concern themselves as much with assessing the mechanics of the writing itself (such as with grammer).
Do you think that this will cause writing quality to degrade within society as a whole?
Aaron
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10 years ago
Personally, I don't agree with the idea that teachers will just give up on the technical aspects of writing over time. Do you remember six traits writing from middle/high school? Basically this approach to writing and grading writing addresses six equally important aspects: ideas, organization, voice, sentence fluency, word choice, and conventions. Without proper conventions, sentence fluency and organization of a paper, the students ideas can't come across.
ReplyDeleteI admit, I see the shift from writing a coherent, cohesive, compelling essay or paper to making some kind of high-tech "collage" of ideas rather aggravating. I do not doubt that the fundamentals of written communication will endure, however. The criteria for successful communication will change, as addressed in "Between Modes." Traditional writing will always have its place, though that place may grow smaller if it falls out of vogue in schools.
ReplyDeleteHey Aaron,
ReplyDeleteI think you'll really enjoy this article:
http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1641/0006-3568(2001)051%5B0475%3ADEJTFM%5D2.0.CO%3B2?cookieSet=1