Working with the Students

            One of the major things I have learned that I hope to continue working with students is to effectively design an argument. Students will have ideas that they love and believe everyone should agree with but that does mean that they have figured out how to properly articulate these ideas. Throughout the semester they are likely to improve their writing but hopefully they will learn to create and develop arguments as well. Few students have already done this before but they will almost certainly be asked to do so again.
            One way I hope to help them accomplish this would be through in class discussion. Forms of contact zones work well for this idea.  While it may be taboo to discuss current events in certain instances, I feel at least trying to have a constructive class criticism can be helpful. While students most likely cannot successfully persuade other students to their side of an argument, they can still continue to develop their reasons for their decisions. I will not tolerate putting another student down, calling them names in a derogatory or inappropriate way or taking away their voice in some way or form. But, I think as long as the discussions stay productive, I think they can be really helpful for students. Particularly if I or other students try to poke holes in a positive way.
            Another instance would be to bring in examples for the class to discuss. This construction revision is something that can be extremely helpful. Using either my own or former students that are no long taking the class' work would allow them to learn by a different form of discussion what does and doesn't work in writing. Many of them have made the same mistakes throughout the semester on the assignments. Helping them by running through these mistakes and showing them in works will, hopefully, connect it to their own writing. This will help them to focus on fixing the mistakes that have already occurred in their writing. Once they receive a paper or grade that shows they have fixed these initial issues. Then with that feedback, they can continue to begin looking for other areas to improve. This cycle can continue and hopefully improve their arguments overall.
           Finally, introducing aspects of social media into my work can help to connect to why the classes are so important. This flows well into the study of Andragogy we have done this semester. Many students, especially incoming freshman, severely lack understanding of why writing well is so important. Hopefully by showing them both comical and serious posts on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. can help to discuss whether or not people are effective. The ideas can also slide into, would you want to hire or work with someone who writes like this. If students can see how important the writing is in their everyday life, Hopefully they will want to begin to understand how to improve their writing.
            Overall, the different ideas addressed here will help to encourage students to not only believe ideas but encourage them to learn how to defend them. With that knowledge they will also be able to, hopefully, look at other arguments, learn to judge the arguments, agree or disagree. and understand why they feel this way.

Visual Rhetoric

        Society today is becoming more visually inclined. I was standing in Barnes & Noble yesterday and looking at some of the books on one of their specialty tables. The table next to it had a number of copies of 50 shades of gray with different covers. A pair of women a few years older than myself walked up to the table to look at the book. One of the girls picked up a copy and began to examine it. The other remarked that she hadn't seen the movie and upon seeing how long the book is remarked, "Oh, I could never get through that, I'll just see the movie instead." At 514 pages it is considered a long novel by most accounts, but it is still shorter than four of the seven Harry Potter novels.

       Yet, people will almost universally see the movie before they read the book. It takes 2-3 hours to watch the movie and significantly more, depending on how fast you read, to finish an entire book. Many people would rather free up their time for other activities. In this way, I think we should be studying visual rhetoric more. We should attempt to find ways to integrate video and pictures into a classroom setting more successfully. Students are told that PowerPoint presentations should be used as a supplement to your presentation and that you should not read off of your presentation. The problem with this is that we do not teach them how to go about doing this successfully.

      It's a weird place to look but the sports community actually has a good idea for what to do here. Most football programs have gone to what is known as the "no-huddle" offense. In this scenario, the offense and defense never get together and say the play call, instead the teams look to their sidelines to get the play relayed to them from the coaches directly. The school in question I am thinking of is Oregon a few years ago:



Here is just one example. The sign here tells different members of the offense what to do for the given play. The players see the images and are able to make the connections. Secrecy in play calling means that the viewer and the opposing defense has no idea what these mean though.

     What I am trying to get at is that these same visual cues can be used in a PowerPoint. Students can choose pictures that remind us of what they are talking about and these can then be used to remind them of where they are going and what they are supposed to be talking about. The visual cues should be things that need to be discussed or short one to two word phrases. I feel that your audience should not be able to read your paper or even your main points. In order to learn about the topic at hand, the students should be engaged in listening to what you have to say about the topics.

       Hopefully, with practice, students can learn how to effectively communicate their argument orally with using the PowerPoint as a means to help supplement their argument.