Multiliteracies in ELA Classrooms

‘fastkapital’

The poster “slworking2” dubbed this photo “Conference call flow in vacation mode at the office”, one of his series entitled “Hard(ly) at work”. I posted this as a play on the idea of “fastcapitalism” from this week’s reading and Marx’s idea of “gegensätzliche Bewegung” (structural contradictions) from his critique of capitalist economics, “Das Kapital”. The new workplace attitude embodied by the photo is what I want to draw attention to, in particular the new corporate subculture of informality, said by the authors of the article to be partly a result of “flattened hierarchies”, which presupposes a shared cultural context, expertise and register. If you notice the details, from the man’s posture to the clothing/footwear to the nerd-hipster wit displayed around the cubicle, it’s not hard to feel somewhat estranged. The authors of the article suggest that the diversity and democracy (and other such buzzwords) that technology is said to enable, masks the counter-intuitive potential that the very informality that arises becomes even more “rigorously exclusive” than the old paradigm. Personally, I don’t know any programming languages or play video games or spend much time on the Internet, except when I’m doing research, so for me the Silicon Valley discourse one finds in movies like “The Social Network” seems much like the discourse of Wall Street or any other corporate discourse, in that it is meant to mark its adherents out from the rest.

As for myself, I shared in class last time the fact I’ve been busy writing screenplays since I graduated in 1995, and teaching literary analysis and essay writing to high school kids to pay my rent and food, only to realize I actually prefer teaching. So once I graduate from the program, I would like to teach obviously… I’m just not sure yet in what context. I don’t think the private system is for me anymore, although I have my reservations about the public system as well.

As far as the course goes, so far I am very happy to report that I know next to nothing about multiliteracies, and if the first reading and syllabus are anything to go by, I am excited by the prospect of what’s to come!

Welcome!

Welcome to LLED 368, Multiliteracies in English Language Arts Classrooms. You’ll find information about the course, as well as a link to the course syllabus, under the “About” tab. We’ll be using this weblog as a multimodal writing space throughout the term.

I’d like you to take a few minutes to introduce yourself, contemplate some of the key issues of the course, and get oriented to the writing space by completing the following activity:

Step 1: Find an Image
This course encourages you to think about the many different ways in which individuals engage with and produce knowledge. Read the course description and contemplate how shifts in communication technologies may have modified and extended practices of teaching — particularly the teaching of language and literature — through the past century. Find an image that you feel speaks to one or more of the issues alluded to in the course syllabus or in the introductory readings (see the schedule tab). Anything to do with text, communications technologies, literacy, reading, writing, print, media or the intersection of these things would do just fine! To find an image, go to the Commons or Creative Commons areas of Flickr and do a search using the appropriate search box for the collection you are searching. (If you “right click” on links you can open them in a new tab, which means you won’t lose this page.) Don’t spend too much time wandering in the Commons: it can be an amazing place in which to get lost!

Step 2 – Share the Image in a Blog Posting
Click on the thumbnail image of the picture that you like from amongst the ones that come up in your search. Once the page for that image loads, look for the “Share” button just above the image. You will be given a few options on how to share the image. For this exercise, select “Grab the HTML/BBCode”. You should then see a text box with some formatted HTML. (You want the HTML, not the “BBCode”.) You can copy that code to your computer’s clipboard now, or leave that browser window open, while you log in to the blog authoring space in another window.

Step 3 – Post to the Community Weblog
Select the “Add New Post” link from the appropriate menu.
IMPORTANT: At the top right of the post text area, there are two tabs that select your authoring mode – “Visual” or “HTML”. For this exercise, select “HTML”.
Paste the “Share” HTML code from the image you selected on Flickr into the post text area. And write at least two paragraphs to provide an explanation as to why you choose the image as well as some details about yourself and your interest in the course.

Step 4: Publish!
When you are ready to share what you have put together, select the “Introductions” category from the menu to the right of the post area, and hit the blue “Publish” button (also on the right side of the editing screen). After you publish your posting, you will see a link that allows you to visit the posting you just created, so click on that link or go directly to: https://blogs.ubc.ca/lled368 . Take some time to read through the entries made by the various students in the course, and feel free to leave comments.