In-class Discussion on Shipka

Question on Shipka:

After reading/watching Shipka’s text, do you feel that her assignments foster notions of functional, critical, and rhetorical literacy as outlined by Selber?

Answer #1

Shipka’s assignments were open ended but she did provide lots of instruction and examples of what the assignments might look like. While the students didn’t necessarily use technology , many rhetorical skills were needed to figure out the purpose of the “writing” and the modes in which the writing might appear. Selber would applaud her methods.

Answer #2

I was a little confused by some of Shipka’s assignments. In the beginning of her text I liked the discussion about open ended assignments and forcing her students to think creatively. However, I am not all to sure exactly what was going on with some of those assignments. I think there was definitely a lot of critical thinking involved in these assignments, as she notes when discussing students frustrations, but I think Selber would agree with her approach. They assignments worked on the multiple levels Selber talks about.

My Response to the Answers

I suppose I just need a little more background on what Shipka did leading up to the assignments. Did she talk to students about the purpose/use of certain technologies in certain rhetorical situations? Was there any kind of gradual transition the students previous experiences with alphabetic texts to multimodal projects? For the first question I would say yes, to the second, no. It seems like Shipka was banking on the fact that students wouldn’t be comfortable, wouldn’t necessarily know what to do with the assignment, and out of that chaos there would be excellent projects drawing upon the strength of the students.