After my graduation from Marshall University in 2004 I sat back, breathed a sigh of relief and quoted Elliot, “Well that’s over and I’m glad its done.” I joined the military, a big mistake, and volunteered to train new recruits preparing them for boot-camp, not a mistake. I found that I was much better at training these young soldiers in maneuvers, first-aid, the pomp, circumstance and BS of the army than I was at following others into it. When teaching, I came alive. I was always looking for new things to incorporate, new ways to keep their attention. When these young soldiers got bored with conducting the same drills outside, I taught them military history and showed how the same tactics we were rehearsing outside have been used for centuries. I would use clips from their favorite movies to illustrate my points and they got it. I love that feeling, when you’re teaching something and you see the light go on, they GET it.
My teaching pedagogy has been informed by reading approaches to teaching visual literacy as well as my own experiences teaching. In the end, there is no one pedagogy that serves all situations or, more importantly, all students. What I have found is that every topic in a classroom will need to be approached a few times and from different pedagogical perspectives. One philosophy that I have found most useful in its versatility is Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences and the Point of Entry Approach adapted from project MUSE (Museums Uniting with Schools in Education). In this approach, there are 5 points of entry: Aesthetic, Narrative, Logical/Quantitative, Foundational, and Experiential. I believe any rhet/comp topic, but especially visual literacy/rhetoric, can be explained through these windows and that in any classroom, there will be students that gravitate toward each of these points of entry.
I want to teach new media, the convergence of art and text in technology. As online applications become more pervasive, what will happen to the written word? Many people fear the extinction of newspapers and books. I don’t think that is the direction we are heading. If anything, the explosion of online news in the form of blogs, webzines, or online news papers will make the same information more accessible and allow better writing and better coverage of the world’s events. As digital books become more popular because of the Kindle and Sony E-reader, it could become easier for new writers to publish works. That being said, people are less likely to slog through pages of text on their ever shrinking digital devices. This makes the artistic layout and design of the text so much more important. In a time when anyone with internet access can host a blog, publish a book, or create a website, the need to write well and understand the trends of how to present that text visually becomes more important.
As a writer with extensive knowledge in web design, I bring a technological approach emphasizing visual rhetoric to the English department. I want to explore ways of bringing the cutting edge of multimedia design with online application and digital video into the study of rhetoric and composition. By embracing social networks like Facebook and the blogosphere, I want to examine how they are affecting writers today as well as how technology has shaped writers in the past. From the earliest times, we have used writing to ask questions and explore possibilities. Our technology has grown and I want to explore how writing has evolved with it and where we can take it in the future.