My Pedagogy Poster on “Writing the Brain” at Assessing Multimodality Symposium.
Today, the Georgia Tech Writing and Communication Program and Bedford St. Martins hosted a symposium on Assessing Multimodality: Navigating the Digital Turn. I co-presented a workshop with Mirja Lobnik on Multimodality and Perception and I presented a poster during one of the day’s sessions. Many of us were tweeting our experiences at the symposium today, too. Click through the Storify embed below to virtually experience the symposium 140 characters at a time.
This morning, Mirja Lobnik and I will be co-hosting a workshop on “Multimodality and Perception: A Multi-Sensory Approach to Teaching Rhetorical Skills” at the Assessing Multimodality: Navigating the Digital Turn Symposium co-hosted by Georgia Tech’s Writing and Communication Program and Bedford St. Martin’s. Our workshop is about multisensory perception, multimodal composition, and cognition:
Associated with the use of various media to create cohesive rhetorical artifacts and the neurology of the ways humans process information through different sensory channels, multimodality has gained considerable ground in the composition classroom. Insofar as multimodal pedagogies emphasize the role of students as active, resourceful, and creative meaning-makers, it tends to enhance student engagement and, by extension, the teaching of composition and rhetorical skills. Focusing on sensory details of embodied, lived experience, this workshop centers on teaching that engages students both in mind and body. This approach not only promotes the students’ creation of multimodal artifacts but also encourages students to explore and critically reflect on personal experiences. Specifically, Lobnik focuses on aural composing modalities, including speech, music, and sound, and assignments that highlight sound as a rhetorical and creative resource: a transcription, audio essay, and a video. Ellis discusses cognition, metacognition, and curation and an assignment that integrates Twitter, Storify, ComicLife, and the written essay.
If you get to attend our workshop or the symposium’s other great sessions, please tweet using the hashtag: #AMsymposium.
On Monday, April 1, Minister Faust, the Canadian science fiction writer, delivered a presentation and performed readings from his published fiction to a full audience in Georgia Tech Library’s Ferst Room. His visit to Georgia Tech was part of the School of Literature, Media, and Communication’s Distinguished Speaker Series. There were also three nearby high school classes in attendance through telepresence technology.
Minister Faust began with a presentation titled, “Afrofuturism, E-Town, Imhotep-Hop and Me.” In this presentation, he sketched Canada’s historical, cultural, and political landscape, followed with background on his hometown, Edmonton and the neighborhood that he calls “Kush,” and concluded with an overview of Afrofuturism and his unique approach to storytelling that he calls, “Imhotep-Hop.”
Minister Faust reads to his audience.
Imhotep-Hop builds on the science fiction genealogy of cyberpunk > steampunk > Afrofuturism > steamfunk. Like those inventive subgenres, it is a kind of culture jamming. Like its namesake, it is grounded in intellectualism and the desire for gaining and sharing knowledge. However, Minister Faust recognizes that fiction must be entertaining. He uses allegory and humor to convey interesting and engaging stories about serious matters. Perhaps most importantly, Imhotep-hop indicates the past (ancient African stories and mythologies, presented as allegory) and present (the here-and-now) while pointing toward the future.
This is the second time that I have had the pleasure and honor of attending a reading by Minister Faust. The first time that I met him was at the 2012 Science Fiction Research Association Conference in Detroit. His reading there, like this one at Georgia Tech, was electric! Instead of simply reading from his novels as a speaker and author, Minister Faust performs his characters. His face, hands, and arms form an orchestra with his talented and powerful voice to convey urgency and surprise, excitement and peace, hostility and love. As he reads a scene to the audience, you are drawn into the story as much if not more so than a Console Cowboy sucked into the other worldly expanse of William Gibson’s cyberspace. Good storytelling, like that performed by Minister Faust, is a far more satisfying virtual reality than any generated in the Crytek or Unreal engines.
Minister Faust presenting.
Dr. Lisa Yaszek scheduled Monday’s reading to accommodate one of my ENGL1101 classes. As a former Tech undergraduate, I understand how vitally important it is to students’ personal development and enrichment by attending special events and presentations. Some of my fondest memories of my Tech years include meeting Stephen Wolfram and watching Honda’s Asimo robot in person (twice). Furthermore, one of these meetings–spending the day with science fiction writer Kathleen Ann Goonan changed the direction of my life forever. At the end of that day, I told Dr. Yaszek that I had made up my mind to study science fiction professionally–and I did!
Minister Faust presenting.
My students from that class and my other two sections were in attendance. Several of my students asked Minister Faust probing and insightful questions about the creative process, the relationship between writing and improving one’s mood, and the influence of his cultural experience on his personal writing style.
Minister Faust presenting.
Building on Dr. Laura Otis’s previous Distinguished Speaker Series talk [which I wrote about here], I asked Minister Faust, what kind of conscious thinking does he do as he writes (e.g., verbally, visually, haptically, aurally, etc)? I was very happy to learn that he thinks multimodally depending on the content of a scene or the direction from which he comes when building his stories (verbally first sometimes, visually first at others, or aurally/musically for others). Ultimately, his thinking in different modes is expressed verbally in writing.
Minister Faust presenting.
He also gave a second reading on the morning of Tuesday, April 2. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend. However, I am eager to find out which of my students went to that reading!
Me and Minister Faust.
In addition to visiting Minister Faust’s official website to purchase his books directly from the author at a discount, you can purchase his books in print from Amazon here or in Kindle ebook format here.
I also highly recommend that you watch his TEDxEdmonton talk here and this interview featuring him talking about the fiction of Philip K. Dick in three parts here, here, and here .
Minister Faust is doing very important work through his writing. It is entertaining and educational; It is lighthearted and serious. I believe that it will be read and remembered in the SF pantheon. I am happy and thankful that he shared some of that work with the Georgia Tech community.
Dr. Laura Otis presenting in GT Library’s Ferst Room.
Today, Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Media, and Communication invited Emory University’s Dr. Laura Otis to give a presentation in the Library’s Ferst Room. Dr. Otis’ presentation was titled, “The Surprising Antics of Other People’s Minds” [read the abstract here].
In Dr. Otis’ work, she aims to show with data that she has collected from interviews with an admittedly small number of English-speaking people from the United States that:
1) visual thinking and verbal thinking are not opposites and they cannot be separated,” 2) there is no such thing as a visual thinking type or a verbal thinking type–every mind is unique, and 3) visual and verbal inclinations are not destinies. Anyone can develop visual or verbal skills with practice.
She also offered two suggestions for literary studies:
1) refer to visual imagery in readings, because this might help include more students who may feel excluded by verbal readings, and 2) take reader’s visual imagery seriously, because this might help reconnect the reader to creative writing as co-creator of its imagery.
You can download my handwritten notes on Dr. Otis’ talk and the Q&A session from the event as a PDF from here.
I enjoyed Dr. Otis’ presentation, and it provided me with a new insight into something that I had already read and thought about but in a more biological sense: we each think differently, because our brains are wired differently. Our experience of the world and life, which includes our biology, environment, and culture, leaves its indelible trace on our brain’s physical wiring. As we live, our brains wire themselves to accommodate new memories, abilities, and ways of thinking. It makes sense that all of these experiences would shape our thinking, but more importantly, we can exert our own conscious control over our thinking by adopting reflective practices and training/practice to improve abilities that we already have to greater or lesser degrees.
This morning, Georgia Tech’s Center for the Enhancement of Learning (CETL) hosted the annual Celebrating Teaching Day.
We began with a poster session that showcased pedagogies and assignments from across campus.
A number of Brittain Fellows had their posters on display and we were there in force to talk about our teaching of communication as rhetorical and multimodal (WOVEN = written, oral, visual, electronic, and nonverbal). I presented my poster on, “Writing the Brain: Composition and Neuroscience” [you may view it here–with thanks to my student Jinming Hu for giving me permission to share his work from class].
Fellow Britts: Olga Menagarishvili, Mollie Barnes, Emily Kane, and Iuliu Ratiu
We were able to share teaching ideas and techniques with others from the Georgia Tech community.
Emily Kane explaining her assignments.
The poster session was very well attended by people from across campus. The posters demonstrated the innovative teaching taking place at Georgia Tech.
Lots of visitors and lots of posters at Celebrating Teaching Day, 2013.
After the poster session, we were treated to lunch, an awards ceremony, remarks by President Bud Petersen, and finally, a presentation by Dr. Derek Bruff of Vanderbilt University on “Social Pedagogies.”
