Brian Huot and Cindy were the next speakers of the day. They spoke about Assessing Digital and Multimodal Texts.

Wow! Already I’m thinking Huot is a good speaker. He is moving throughout the room and making eye contact with everyone. Cool!

They began with a 5-minute activity where they asked us to write for a while about our assessment practices.

Brian Huot suggested that if there was an assignment that we hated responding to, then maybe we should think about not giving that assignment again.

Cindy started a talk about multimodal peer reviews. She gave us a handout, “Studio Review Session,”(it’s accessible online via the above link) that she uses. Depending on time, she asks students to review each other’s work a couple of times before it is turned in as a final project. Plus, it sounded like they do studio review in class periodically.

Cindy also passed out an “Audio Autobiograpy: Sound and Literacy” assignment that she uses.

Brian and Cindy both also suggested that it would be good to come up with grading criteria with students. See Cindy’s Grading Sheet that has space for criteria and comments.

Cindy also said that we would probably come up with different criteria now than on the first day because we have learned how difficult and long the production process is with digital media. How very true this is!!

They played an audio clip. In a regular class, she would play it twice. Once to let students listen and another to enable listening and taking notes.

From class discussion, the criteria we suggested for an audio autobiography:

theme
–an introduction that situates the piece (say with b-roll audio)
–a clear controlling idea by the end of the tape
–selection of content
–my life within the context of something bigger than me

technical aspects
–editing of interviews
–repetition
–sound quality
–layering without interference

total effect

creativity
–there was some discussion about how creativity has been absent from composition. Cindy says, “WHY? That’s the saddest thing ever!!”
–Gail Hawisher said how business is now asking people to be more creative and perhaps b/c of the connection to business, we shy away from acknowledging its importance.

coherence
–repetition
–arrangement
–relationship between the sound tracts

audience appropriateness
Gail asked, what genre are we talking about? We need to be clear about what we’re talking about. Are the examples we use in class “NPR examples” or something more “postmodern?”

historical context

———-
Next, we talked about an assignment that Pam Takayoshi uses. Pam gave students the option of completing the assignment in another modality.

Cindy suggested that a video project like the one we watched in class could be an alternative to the standard research paper because students have to do just as much work and research to complete.

Mary Hocks asked about addressing goals and outcomes that are predefined for us.

Brian Huot responded that he has found less resistance in other disciplines, but still found some in English. However, NCTE has a statement on multimodality that we could use.

Cindy suggested that the GER criteria could transfer to multimodal assignments.

Scott suggested that teacher evaluation forms would need to be updated to account for multimodal assignments. Scott said that he has seen engagement in students’ evaluations where they’re using what they learned outside of the classroom and they’re making “REAL” comments versus “she is nice.”

That’s it for now. Wow. We accomplished a lot this morning.