Writing New Media - For the Feb 8 Post

The pieces found within WNM were also interesting and instead of rambling on my blog, I'll focus on one point that really bothered me about the whole piece. The second chapter that discusses David's story makes the argument that perhaps David failed because the classes he was taking did not address "new media literacies" which he was skilled in and that the only addressed traditional literacies. Okay...if you are taking an English class and you are unable to form coherent arguments and take a rhetorical stance on a topic and prove it then yes...you are ultimately going to fail that class. The classes that David did not succeed in I'm going to assume were classes that focused on traditional literacies. Should these classes address new media? NO! If you want a class to address new media, take a class on new media; don't expect the current traditional literacy classes to teach it. It would be the same situation if I were to walk into my English 100 class and expect that my skills in web design would get me through. No, the primarily objective of an English 100 class is not to teach web design but composition, and for me to expect to be taught web design or expect to pass that class will no comprehension of composition would be foolish. This gets to another interesting point...who defines what is considered "composition?" The way I interpret composition would be the creation of written texts. Now, that's not to say that other mediums cannot be considered to have "composition pieces" integrated in them. However, in the case of this class, composition was intepreted in a traditional sense.

Another point that came up during my reading of chapter 1 of WNM (and was also brought up in class) was the idea that Wysocki discusses all the reasons why teachers need to implement "new media studies" into the classroom. I'm not saying that "new media" is a concept that has no place in academics. I think new media will enable students to get a "richer" picture of the material they are learning due to the enhancements (i.e. photographs, video clips, audio files, etc) that they afford over traditional textbook learning. However, one very important thing to look at is the actual chapter/book itself. This book that so heavily advocates new media and all of its benefits is produced in a traditional manner itself. Why? It seems to me that the majority of academic settings consider "new media" to not have equal merit to a traditional text. For most of the academic community, if you want a point to be taken "seriously" (and I use this word in referring to the ideas of tenure, authority, etc) you need to publish in traditional text. Take this text for example. I think I would be able to get more out of it if it was in fact an online text based form. If there were various hyperlinks and different media (photos, videos, etc) used, I think that my understanding of this text would have been greater; however, would the text have had as much authority...?