Dr. Harrington’s Blog

This week’s reading is a trio: two on-line pieces (by Wysocki and Boese) and a print article by Mary Hocks.  Hocks’ piece discusses the two online pieces in terms of visual rhetoric.  Read through Hocks to get a sense of the framework she proposes, and then look to the online pieces to experience the rhetoric–and then develop your own response to, and theory of, the visual.

Hocks begins from the assumption the “new technologies simply require new definitions of what we consider writing” (630).   She calls what new media develops “hybrid forms,” blending word and image.  At the bottom of 631 she previews her own structure: she first analyzes two pieces, and then turns to discussing how teachers can teach visual rhetoric.

Important terms appear on 632, her three-pronged frame for understanding how digital rhetoric works (audience stance, transparency, and hybridty).   Focus your attention on this middle part of the article–read through it first to Hocks’ reading of the online pieces, and then turn to the pieces themselves to see what you think.

Come back to Hocks’ ending section (644 ff.) to see the implications for teaching.

Ryan, Becky, and Alan can share with us some more of Wysocki’s approaches to teaching through the reading they’ve done in Writing New Media.  So I hope the W510 students will be asking themselves “how does teaching change with new media in mind” as they prepare for class this week.  I’ll ask them to start off class discussion with some thoughts from their own reading.

But all of us should be asking, “what’s it like to read hybrid forms? what demands do they make on writers and readers?”  Use your blogs to explore the role of hybrid texts in your life, and to explore what visual rhetoric means in your literate life.

And enjoy the browsing of these hybrid texts.  It’s a great week for the Xena fans amongst us!