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Jerry Pinkham
English Department faculty, College of Lake County
Course
Composition II , ENG 122, 3 semester hours
Composition II, ENG 122, is designed to further the work begun in Composition I
by giving students more experience as writers and readers with various purposes
in different contexts. Students write analytical, research, and other advanced
papers based on a variety of topical and literary sources.
Prerequisite: ENG 121
Description
The word epiphany is sometimes overused, but this is a situation that merits its use-producing
multimedia term "papers" is the next evolutionary step in teaching students how to better and more
fully communicate what they know and what they're learning to the outside world. We need to realize
that "composition"has now taken on a whole new communicative dimension. We still say
"Write a paper about _______,"but computers, the Internet, and multimedia techniques demand
of us a new verb, a new noun, and a whole set of new communication. This module gives a glimpse
of an emerging set of communication possibilities‹tools and techniques already available but still
not widely in use by teachers because they're unfamiliar with, or reluctant to accept, multimedia
communication effects, and by students simply because we still ask them to communicate the same
way people have done for the last 400 years.
Text-only term papers are dead. Sure, our desks are still topped with lots of black and white
8 1ˇ2 x 11 text-only ghosts, but they are a deceased species nonetheless. In contrast, many of today's
students already have enough tech savvy to write and produce text-based papers that also include such
things as colored text, highlighting, and word art; photographs and drawings; sound, speech, or music
files; animation and video clips; Internet links; and a wide range of embedded links to other program
data as might be produced in PowerPoint slides, Excel spreadsheets, Access
databases, and so on. And that's just the first wave of multimedia effects students are now capable of
incorporating into their "papers."Other effects, even more captivating and expressive, are already at
the tip of their fingers.
Most composition teachers, by contrast, are playing catch up. As a group largely raised on the keys of
Remington typewriters, we need to rethink the boundary elements that constitute modern "writing."
For starters, we need to accept multimedia as a new partner in today's communication genre, a full and
integral part of an emerging communication medium reality. Before we can do that, however, we need to
fully learn for ourselves both the process and potential of multimedia embedding in order to lead and
guide our students.
As composition teachers, we need to expand our role to include more communication skills than words
alone bring to a paper. The new reality is that many of our students would now routinely expect to use
multimedia tools to communicate with others. To that end, this module demonstrates just a few of the
possibilities for multimedia term papers as shown in the two accompanying samples for this module.
One "paper" demonstrates how to incorporate multimedia through traditional word processing, while the
other "paper" illustrates a Web-based approach to a communication "package."
The formulae for teaching how to produce multimedia-based papers is simultaneously simple and complex.
It's simple in the sense of this basic truth: The more multimedia skills you possess, the more effects
you can incorporate into your "paper." The complexity, of course, is in both acquiring and becoming
proficient in those multimedia and embedding skills.
Many of today's students (no big surprise) are ahead of us, already on their way to becoming a new type
of communicator we might easily call a "GutenSpielGates² - a combination Johann Gutenberg, Steven
Spielberg, and Bill Gates all morphed into one 21st century communication craftsperson. Naturally,
we'll always need to teach them the "Hemingway" parts of communication, but now we need to begin
incorporating that "GutenSpielGates" factor as well. Because if not us, then who?
Transferability
The value of inserting pictures, sounds, illustrations, video clips, and Internet links into a "paper"
in order to enhance its expository and descriptive mission should be self-evident. As such, every
academic discipline and grade level could-and should-welcome the concept of incorporating multimedia
as an expected and valued element of a student's creative communication message ("paper"). Naturally,
the higher the student grade level and/or computer expertise, the more sophisticated work one would
expect. Yet to be fully transferable in as a concept, teachers must first transfer out any prejudices
against nontraditional "paper" presentations. We must be willing to accept not only the concept of
multimedia presentations, but also to encourage and, at times, even require it from our students.
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