Response to Selfe

I liked Selfe’s chapter. I think the activities she proposes are well designed and are consistent with what she proposes regarding implementing new media texts in the classroom. I think that it is true that teachers resist working with new media texts in part because of the lack of knowledge and analytical apparatuses. On the other hand, I also think that we must acknowledge that new media is just emerging and that especially in the academic environment, it has less status that printed media. We were discussing this in class a couple of weeks ago, when talking about getting published and how publishing in an online journal has less value than publishing in a printed journal. I was also thinking about how, for example, the journal “Computers and composition” is different online and in print. Why is this? Well, in my opinion this is due to the fact that the academic environment in general keeps on endorsing more printed media than online texts. This also influences what we teach. I think that in the educational field there is always a kind of anachronism with what is included in the curriculum and it takes some time for new knowledge to be included in the curriculum. I definitively agree that visual literacy should be taken more seriously in school settings given the prominent place that is gaining in our world. In this, I agree with the new London group and I advocate for “literacies” instead of “literacy” and for a definition of “composition” broader than the alphabetic one. On the other hand, I do feel that in many ways I am illiterate and I lack the analytical apparatus and knowledge to better understand the visual. I think that teachers exploring together with students these issues in the classroom could be a good start point. But on the other hand, I would also love to see that in teacher education this gains a more prominent place. This is: yeah, the ballerina shoes are cute but the rationale behind them is awesome! Why people keep on looking to the “cute”?