Response to "Understanding Visual Rhetoric..."

I wasn't crazy about this article. It seems like a lot of fancy language to say some very basic things, and the previous two articles we've read on a similar topic (incorporating technology into the classroom) offered me more as far as useful information.

While reading this article, I kept thinking about this:
Last week I tutored another student in the Writing Center who barely knew how to use her e-mail account. I had to show her how to attach documents and save files, in addition to using the library databases. This is not an uncommon occurrence, and it's really started to worry me. Most of these students are young, 18-20, and I wonder how they've gotten to this point knowing so little. Didn't they have computer classes in high school? Don't they have computers at home? It's also not uncommon to work with students who bring in their own laptops who don't know how to cut and paste and do other very basic things. How is this possible? I don't really know. All I know is that having students design websites is probably out of the range of many of them. It's also out of my range. Of course, this is also what makes it a great idea. The best way to learn how to do something, of course, is by doing it.

I think I'll bring my students back into the Writing Studio before this semester is over. I'm not sure what I'll have them do, but I want to make sure that none of my students are the ones coming into the Writing Center without basic computer skills.

I liked the examples the Hocks used, particularly "The Ballad of the Internet Nutball," which was the first hypertextual dissertation accepted by Rensselear Polytechnic University. It's pretty awesome that the author, Christine Boese, has been updating it since 1998. I also really like the idea of taking a show like Xena and making it literary--analyzing episodes, etc. A lot of academics are kind of snobby about this sort of thing. I think it's great.