My reflections and thoughts from the course (including readings and other projects) are focused on the following:
Newer View for the Technological Shift
The course readings tell us the fact that human have repeatedly criticized and questioned newer technologies whenever a technological shift has occurred. The ignorance of upcoming paradigm shifts cause the fear and denial when there are changes to be faced. In a sense, tracing the history of text technologies gave me a view that will enable me to analyze more objectively when I face drastic technological changes in the future.
Meaning Making and Literacy
The research projects and final projects from classes taught me various modes and technologies: as different technology and modes have different affordance, accordingly, their process representing meaning is different. I become anxious when the students think meanings are in their electronic dictionaries or just something to look up on the Internet. When we express ideas in images and movies, we are consciously or unconsciously interpreting meanings through a certain grammar and understanding. We cannot lookup those meanings in dictionaries, because the meanings are not concrete, and requires our interpretation. I have read about multiliteracy in previous courses, but I felt for the first time, I understand what “meaning making” is about.
Animated Texts and Digital Effects
Now that texts themselves have changed as as our colleague’s project suggested in “Dynamic Text Presentations”. Digital effects animate texts in the form of movies and images, and that creates additional meanings in the texts and the words themselves. These digital effects should work in their own grammar, but we have not studied enough on the grammar of digital effects on texts. If I could continue this course, I am interested in exploring this area.
