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Section IV,
"Teaching and Learning New Media,"
opens with pieces from
Sibylle Gruber ("The Language of Web Texts: Teaching Rhetorical Analysis of
Web Material Through Scaffolding") and Carolyn Handa. In "Teaching with the
World Wide Web: Transforming Theory, Pedagogy, and Practice," Handa warns us
that "Using the Web just for the sake of using it without being able to
articulate to students what pedagogical and course purposes the use
serves...could prove confusing to students, if not counterproductive to the
course's goals in the end" (166). With this warning as a starting point,
Handa launches into web-based pedagogy, issues surrounding collaboration,
and she highlights a series of existing resources.
Toward issues surrounding visual rhetoric, Anne Frances Wysocki's "With Eyes that Think, and Compose, and Think: On Visual Rhetoric" offers a definition of visual rhetoric and she explicates reasons why we must consider visual rhetoric with we think about teaching writing with computers. Her focus: "I am arguing...that learning to analyze and compose rhetorically effective visual communication is not (simply) a matter of working only with whatever it is we have named 'images.' Effective visual rhetoric requires trying to understand and work with (or sometimes against) the expectations and assumptions and values of one's audience concerning ALL the visual aspects of a text" (182-3). A significant portion of this chapter addresses a single question: How can we go about incorporating the study and use of visual rhetoric in writing classes? Wysocki's piece is a nice companion to the follow-up chapter, Mary Hocks' "Teaching and Learning Visual Rhetoric." Both chapters are wise choices for inclusion by our editors. They round out the collection and reveal one of the most significant areas of research (and practice) - visual rhetoric and visual literacy - as teachers and students alike may move from reading/analyzing visual texts to writing/persuading via those same texts. |