Texts That Challenge Convention

Texts That Challenge Convention
Sipai Klein, Amanda Madden, Jennifer Orth-Veillon, Britta Spann

At Georgia Tech, Brittain Fellows are expected to live and teach by the latest technological advances. This would seem to suggest not only teaching what we call “non-conventional texts” such as games, websites, film, and social media, but also asking our students to create them. However, this poses the question: are we creating an artificial dichotomy between the conventional and the non-conventional? In this D-Ped session, we will take a look at how we define a “text” in the multimodal classroom. Specifically, we will put into question where our texts, from the standard argumentative essay to videogames, fall on the spectrum of tradition and innovation.  Our conversation will take place in four acts:

Part One: Non-conventional Conventional Texts
Read this following article: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0BxY5W1_oqggwOTQ1ZjNkODMtZmUyMS00YjNhLThkOGUtY2JjMWJlMjgwZjRm&hl=en_US

Part Two: Teaching WOVEN Website as Literary Text
Explore this site:  www.360degrees.org
Watch this video from 6:00min to 20:00min:
http://fora.tv/2009/05/04/Animating_Human_Rights_Games_Animation_and_Multimedia

Part Three: The Future is Now
Watch this brief video: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/learning/schools/the-tech-fix.html

Part Four: Non-game Scholars Teaching Games
Read the following blog entries:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/games-in-the-classroom-part-1/35596
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/games-in-the-classroom-part-2/36075
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/games-in-the-classroom-part-3/36217
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/games-in-the-classroom-part-4/36294

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Sipai Klein

About Sipai Klein

I teach courses in document design, technical, scientific, professional, and intercultural communication. I completed my PhD at New Mexico State University. My dissertation examined the multimodal composition process of three experienced teachers who spent a semester designing instructional videos to be delivered online to students. In this study, I investigated the writing decisions these teachers made as they transitioned from delivering course material in print-based format to those that are multimodal. My current research interests include new media in the workplace, intercultural document design, and rhetorical theory of contemporary communication practices.
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