visual rhetoric
March of Time Newsreels in the Classroom
Friday, August 27th, 2010 | American Lit, Bedford Bits, classroom activity, visual rhetoric | No Comments
Back in the days before 24-hour news networks, people went to their local movie theaters to see what was going on in the world.
The March of Time, perhaps the most well-known producer of these videos, distributed documentaries that covered everything from American culture and lifestyles, to business and industry, to the nation at war.
To celebrate the 75th anniversary of this precursor to breaking news videos on YouTube, the Museum of Modern Art has a special film exhibition, running September 1 through September 10. Turner Classic Movies has posted background information on The March of Time and will show five of the newsreels on September 5th.
Luckily, highlights from the collection of historical videos are also available online from HBO Archives. Note that a free site login is required to view the videos. Additional materials are also available from the March of Time’s Facebook page.
The newsreels and documentaries on the HBO site include historical events, cultural happenings, and biographical profiles. The videos provide a wonderful snapshot of life in America and around the world.
I first wrote about the March of Time collection on Bedford Bits last summer. You can check my blog entry Use Newsreel Videos for Background and Analysis there for specific ideas.
One of my favorite possibilities for class discussion this fall is the Oil and Men video, which offers a profile of Standard Oil of Indiana from 1951. What a great pairing that 30 minute video would make for videos and news stories on BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Here are some others you may want to spend some time with:
- Basic English 1, with text by I. A. Richards, is quite odd, though perhaps not the best “teaching picture.” There’s also a Basic English 2 if you survive the first video.
- Tobaccoland, USA might pair nicely with an analysis of cigarette advertisements and anti-smoking commercials.
- Leadbelly is a short biopic on the famous musician, which might be compared to profiles on celebrities shown on TV or in magazines like People.
- Wit and Humor is a dramatization of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment.”
It’s unfortunate that HBO has left the running clock on the videos, but it’s still a handy collection with limitless possibilities for the classroom.
BP’s Unintended Lesson on Visual Rhetoric
Monday, August 2nd, 2010 | classroom activity, professional communications, visual rhetoric | No Comments
It’s politically correct to be disappointed with BP and their little oil well problem in the Gulf. But how can I be angry when they provide me with such wonderful gifts?
First, BP America digitally enhanced some of their oil spill clean-up photos. The images are great for pointing out the sloppiness of the Photoshop work and, more importantly, discussing the ethical issues related to tampering with the images. Be sure to look at the face-saving explanation BP has posted with the BP Altered Images Flickr set. Any class exploring visual rhetoric should spend time with these photos. So a big thank you to BP for classroom material.
But that’s not all. Next, the folks over at Wired took the faked BP images and challenged readers to create their own digitally altered photos. The results are marvelous. Everything from Godzilla to Rick Astley is out there in the Gulf causing mayhem.
The submission showing pop culture images on the different monitors is probably my favorite:
How could you NOT like an image that includes Max Headroom, War Games, Star Trek, Poltergeist, and The Matrix?
As part of a visual rhetoric lesson plan, the Wired challenge images open up the topic of satire and parody. Students can discuss how the different images critique the way BP has handled the oil spill—both in its actual clean-up and in the images they have shared with the public.
So politically correct or not, I’m a little thankful to BP America for providing me with the materials for a timely lesson on an important topic.
Résumés That Stand Out the Right Way
Sunday, June 27th, 2010 | classroom activity, professional communications, visual rhetoric | No Comments
There are right ways to dress for a job interview. Sure, you want to stand out to an extent. You don’t want to blend into the sea of suits that march before the hiring committee. But, um, you don’t want to stand out for the wrong reasons. Probably shouldn’t wear a catwoman costume to an interview for at an engineering firm.
The same advice applies to résumés. When I talk about résumés with students, I do encourage them to do things that will make themselves stand out a little.
Traditional résumés can get very boring when you’re reading through a stack of 20 or 30 of them. If students can make themselves stand out, they have a better chance of being noticed—and we all know that being noticed can lead to getting that job.
It’s just as important, though, to talk about how audience comes into play in preparing résumés. You can teach this lesson quickly and clearly with the Dzine blog collection of “27 Examples of Impressive Resume(CV) Designs,” which my friend @Alliegator8u found and shared.
- Go over résumés as you normally would, exploring more traditional examples in your text or online.
- Share the DZine collection of résumés with students and encourage general feedback and discussion. You can click on the résumés to see larger versions.
- Once general discussion dies down, ask students to think about the jobs that they would apply for themselves. You might group students with like career goals for this project. Have students brainstorm some details about the positions and companies they will send resumes to. Emphasize that students are effectively completing an audience analysis for these companies.
- Return to the DZine collection of résumés. With their audience analysis in mind, ask students to identify which of the résumés might stand out and still fit with the needs and expectations of the audience companies. Encourage students to read through the comments on the page for some interesting discussion as well.
It’s likely that some of the more intriguing DZine résumés will be inappropriate. While they are clever and eye-catching, most of the résumés are suited only for edgier graphic design positions and companies.
I don’t think I’d encourage MrSunnyBlack or Sofiane42 to send those résumés to a conservative company. But Kenji2030 and Kamilmytnik might have a reasonable mix of traditional elements and “wow” design that would let their résumés stand out without ending up in the decline pile. As the résumés should make clear to students, it’s all a matter of the audience the résumés are presented to.
Text + Image = Tagxedo: The Next Generation of Word Cloud Fun
Saturday, June 19th, 2010 | classroom activity, visual rhetoric | No Comments
I’ve been a Wordle addict for a while. The online tool takes any text and creates a cloud of the words based on their frequency. It makes for some fun analysis activities that goes beyond the norm in the classroom.
When Obama was sworn in, Wordle addicts like me used the tool to analyze the inaugural address and to look back at the speeches of previous presidents. I even used Wordle to explore Elizabeth Alexander’s inaugural poem.
Now this word cloud-driven analysis is ready to move to the next level with Tagxedo. Highlighted Friday as Jane‘s Pick of the Day, Tagxedo shapes your cloud of words into an image. To demonstrate, I used the text of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 and had Tagxedo arrange the words into a heart. Cute, no?
Tagxedo allows you to choose one of 42 included image shapes or upload your own image. Settings allow you to customize the colors, contrast, and other features of the resulting word cloud.
You an also exclude words, and customize the way that the text is handled (e.g., include or exclude numbers or punctuation). Like Wordle, Tagxedo allows you to save the resulting word clouds. You can place the image in the Tagxedo Gallery, create an embedded version you can use elsewhere, or simply save the image as a JPG or PNG.
The possible downside: The tool uses Microsoft’s Silverlight. I didn’t have Silverlight installed, and it managed to crash my machine once the installation completed and I tried to refresh the Tagxedo page. If you allow for that possible bump and can get Silverlight installed, however, you’ll have another option for playing with word clouds in the classroom.
The benefit of Tagxedo in the classroom is its stronger connection to visual rhetoric. Word clouds emphasize the words that are used most frequently in a text. Taken out of their context, key words stand out and readers can think about how they may work as symbols, establish a mood, or build an image.
Tagxedo word clouds allow students to pair that kind of textual analysis with an image that extends the emphasis the words communicate. Consider the image on the left. I took the text of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat.” Click on the cat image to see a larger version. If you have Silverlight installed, you can go to the Tagxedo site to see the Silverlight version, which enlarges the words in the image when you mouse over them.
To make the image, I had Tagxedo focus on the top 150 words. I chose the cat shape, which is one of Tagxedo’s included images, and then I changed the colors to get the strong contrast I wanted. I love the way this cat image includes the words cat, wall, myself, and animal in the center of the image, and the stark black and white contrast makes the cat image really stand out.
Now imagine students applying this same tool to texts you explore in class. The process is fairly simple:
- Choose a text. You might have students analyze a full chapter of a work, a short story, several poems by a single poet, or an essay. The text might come from an author in their textbooks or it could be their own work. Project Gutenberg can make the process for many out of copyright text as simple as copy and paste.
The Tagxedo developers also have the ability to point to an HTML page and are working on the capability to use a Twitter feed or search results.
- Choose an image. There are 42 images included in Tagxedo. Students can also use their own images. Designs with a clear two-color appearance will work best. Simpler designs probably work best. A detailed image of a colorful garden is not going to work as well picture of a single flower.
- Enter the information in Tagxedo. Use the various tools in the left panel to customize the results. Make sure students know how to save the image so that they can share it with the class or turn it in.
Simple and fun, Tagxedo takes word clouds beyond simple rectangles and asks students to do a bit more critical thinking than Wordle word clouds do. There’s still a place for Wordle in the classroom, but Tagxedo adds another level to the designs that deepen students’ critical thinking—and can create some nice posters for the class bulletin boards and websites!
Piecing Together the Copyright Puzzle
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 | NCTE Inbox, classroom activity, composition, social media, visual rhetoric | No Comments
Figuring out copyright can be like piecing together a puzzle. You have a good idea how it’s supposed to work in the end, but all the little pieces can be confusing to piece together.
I’ve posted links to 15 sites on copyright and fair use that will help you move from scattered pieces to a full picture in this week’s NCTE Inbox Blog.
[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo of copyright symbol by Horia Varlan]
Research in Composition: 9 More Must-See Summer Texts
Friday, May 21st, 2010 | Education, composition, visual rhetoric | No Comments
You know how you feel when you turn something in just by the deadline, and then a few hours later find something else you wish you could have included? That’s how I feel this week.
Just after I published this week’s Inbox blog on
10 Things You’ll Want To Read This Summer, Risa Gorelick-Ollom announced that the Research Network Forum (RNF) eLectures from CCCC 2010 are online. Once you click the eLectures link, scroll down toward the end of the page for access to all of these great audio texts:
- “Research in Composition is practical…” by Beth Hewett
- “Research in Composition is collaborative…” by Frank P. Gaughan
- “Research in Composition is plastic, moveable, and fluid…” by Ethna D. Lay
- “Research in Composition…and the larger universe of research.” by Norbert Elliott
- “Research in Composition pushes the envelope…” by Risa Gorelick and Lisa DeTora
- “Connecting Composition Research to Community Politics….and still getting tenure.” by Stephen J. Parks
- “Research in Composition…and Writing Centers.” by Michael A. Pemberton
- “Research in Composition is rigorous and rhetorical…” by Rebecca J. Rickly
- “Research in Composition…and computers.” by Janice Walker
Why do you have to scroll down to get to these important recordings? The page Gorelick-Ollom shared is more than just the RNF eLectures. In fact, there are currently 34 eLectures, beginning with Lester Faigley on “Rethinking Writing” from 2007. You’ll find recordings on inquiry, ePortfolios, assessment, service learning, revision, webzines, pop culture, and much more.
If you have some spare time this summer, you definitely want to spend part of it with the RNF eLectures and these other resources presented courtesy of Pearson Composition Professional Development. Oh, and if that’s not incentive enough, Gorelick-Ollom promises us that that the plenary videos from RNF 2010 will be online later next month.
Designing an Image to Represent a Character
Thursday, May 20th, 2010 | Literature, classroom activity, lesson plan, visual rhetoric | No Comments
Tara Seale posted details on a fun visual rhetoric and writing activity she recently used with students on the NCTE Secondary Section Blog. The activity, inspired by a similar task described by Shelbie Witte, asks students to design and explain a tattoo for a character from Romeo and Juliet. The blog entry includes links to the assignment sheet, the rubric, a sample essay, and a number of sample tattoo designs.
Connecting to Other Literary Tattoos
The assignment can be easily linked to one of the Literary Lists of “Ten Best” from the UK newspaper The Guardian, which I wrote about earlier this month.
Share Ten of the best tattoos in literature with students, or a few of the items listed in The Guardian article with students to get them warmed up. They may know of other literary tattoos to add to the list. This evening, I happened to remember Tennessee Williams’ The Rose Tattoo. Surely that’s a worthy patch of ink to add.
Other Assignment Possibilities
Naturally, the assignment could be completed for any work of literature. No reason you have to stick to Romeo and Juliet. Nor do you have to stick with characters from a work of literature. What about tattoos for some of the authors you’ve read in class?
If tattoo design isn’t appropriate for the students you teach, just modify the activity. Witte‘s original activity described the tattoos as a mind of modern family crest. Just have students design crests if tattoos would cause uncomfortable conversations with family or administrators.
If you still want the modern-day edge to the activity, have students design a personal logo or icon for a character. Ask students to think of the kind of image someone might post in place of a photo on a Facebook profile or a similar website.
In terms of publication, you can follow Seale‘s technique and have students submit images and an essay, but if you have the resources available, you can try a more technological bent:
- Students might create Powerpoint presentations that layer the different portions of the image together and include text or audio explanations of the items. For instance, for the image in the photo above, the presentation might start with the basic outline of the heart, then shade red, add the flame, and finally add the dagger—each on a separate slide.
- Using basic mouseover Javascript and pop-ups, students might make a webpage which features the image and explains the reason behind different aspects of the design when the viewer drags the mouse over them.
- Use an image maps with alt text, but the length of students’ explanations would be quite limited. Javascript pop-ups would give them more room.
- Publish the designs on Flickr and have students use the “Add Note” feature to identify specific portions of the image and then include related explanations.
No matter what option you choose, the assignment pairs visual aspects with critical thinking and communication. It’s a fun activity that can be used with students from kindergarten to college. Just adjust the requirements to fit students’ abilities and the pedagogical goals of the class.
Bits Post: Getting Beyond Words in Visual Analysis
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 | Bedford Bits, classroom activity, visual rhetoric | No Comments
Take a poster into the classroom, and what will students see when you ask them to analyze the message? Most of the time they zoom in on whatever words are included. They may later come back to other aspects of the poster, but the words color what they see. Here’s an easy technique to emphasize the other aspects of these visual messages.
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Literacy and Education in the News
- I’ll Google It!: How Collective Wisdom in Search Engines Alters the Rhetorical Canons « Present Tense: 1.1: http://hoki.es/c5Gch3
- Cooking Codes: Cookbook Discourses as Women’s Rhetorical Practices « Present Tense 1.1: http://hoki.es/9zd2W3
- Momma’s Memories and the New Equality « Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society 1.1: http://hoki.es/bcpQ3T
- Turning Composition toward Sovereignty « Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society 1.1: http://hoki.es/dyp4cg
- For Emily Dickinson Superfans Only | WBUR and NPR - On Point with Tom Ashbrook http://hoki.es/90CtmB
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