This semester I am teaching a new class, which is taking a lot of prep time. The class is called Reading Media Critically. I am using the text book Rhetoric in Popular Culture by Barry Brummett. I am very pleased with the textbook because it allows me to add on even more information and ideas. Brummett gives me a great starting point and the students some solid theoretical background to start criticizing the media. Of course I add such readings as Plato’s The Republic and neat journal articles that apply theories that Brummett uses.

The first chapter was all about signs and learning to read them in the media. So, after my students read chapter 1, I had them watch the Job Switch episode from I Love Lucy to find cultural signs on how the media viewed gender issues in the 1950′s. I want students to understand that cultural meanings are reinforced through the media and that the media is powerful. Just as Gorgias said in The Encomium of Helen–”Words are a powerful lord”–I think the media is our modern day powerhouse of persuasion!

The class is fun and it’s challenging to find new and innovative media to show. I’m very excited to teach it and it’s definitely fits my research interests to a capital T.  I want my students to walk away looking at the media deeper than what they are now.

As for assignments for this class: A class blog that will put theory into practice (20 posts for the semester) and a 10 page research paper that will allow students to pick a media artifact and apply a theoretical approach to watching, listening, etc the artifact. So, not only are we going to learn media criticism, but we’re also going to learn good ol’ fashioned research–which I LOVE to do myself!

On April 8, 2010, I attended the Southern States Communication Association’s Conference. I presented over How to Use Blogging in Communication Education. Here are the highlights of what I discussed.

I use the blog to teach Web Writing because it takes away the design issue. My students still need to use design, but that is another class. What they do need to learn is how to connect to the audience. All semester my students have kept a blog of their choice. They had to pick a relevant topic and create content for their blog.

Cons

• Students didn’t pick topics that they could write 25 posts over. Instead, students topics that sounded easy to them instead of them picking a topic they were passionate about.
• Students didn’t write regularly, instead they ended up having 7-10 posts by April. Now, they have to figure out how to write 25 quality blog posts in 2 weeks.

Pros

• I have students who WANT to continue writing their blog
• I have students who were creative with content and were excited about their topics.
• Students’ writing improved over time if they wrote regularly.

What would I do differently, I would make sure students wrote 3-4 posts a week. If they achieved their goal, I would reward them with weekly points just for writing. Students need an incentive to write. Most of the class time was for writing. I was disappointed in how my class handled workshop days. Writing in class is an opportunity for me to look at their work. No one took me up on my offer to help and to read. They did not seem to “get” that this is their GRADE for the semester even though I repeated this twice a week and told them what I expected. In fact, I gave them an outline for the project at the beginning of the semester that showed the rubric and went over good and bad blogs. I would give them a pep talk about content and audience. It just doesn’t click with these students who do not have an interest in writing.

As for my Introduction to Computer-Mediated Class, I have them blog reading responses. The blog is their domain to discuss the issues of CMC. I will grade to see if they have the proper number of posts and have met the guidelines. I find that this space can help them with their research papers.

Overall, I have no sympathy for my students who can’t keep up. The project is laid out in the syllabus and I state in my syllabus one must know and learn the technology to do the project. I will help my students in any way possible. Their excuse that they have nothing ELSE to write about just means they are not trying HARD enough to come up with content. My Web Writing class is an upper level writing course. Unfortunately, students who take my class are not given enough papers to hone their critical analysis skills.

What students think:

I asked my CMC class what they thought about using blogs in education. Here are some thoughts:

1. Blogs are unlike essays even though I make the same guidelines.

2. The Internet is their personal space and they do not like to overlap their space with school work.

3. Blogs enhance bad writing skills.

4. Blogs are too informal–even though I ask them to use an extra article.

5. Students feel vulnerable sharing their ideas with others rather than with just the professor.

Last week I sat down with students to discuss their opinions on using Twitter in classes. What are the students thoughts and how would they like to use Twitter? This video is about 10:50 minutes and highlights some important observations by students.

Recently, as I finish my PhD, I’ve been trying to define my scholarly ambitions. I have many, but I tend to see myself as a media studies scholar who looks at the media through a critical rhetorical lens. I love the media and I love to show how it’s changed. I like to show the communication process and how the audience is participating more than ever before. The cool thing is that the media is participating back.

My background is broadcast news. I’ve always loved watching the news, I love reading the news, I love participating in news. I also love studying what audiences’s share. The future is news aggregators and how the news becomes consumer news and more personal because a person can add various feeds from various Web sites to their Google Reader and other various RSS feeds.  We now pick and choose where we want our news to come from–we just don’t have to rely on the evening paper and only one viewpoint–we have multiple voices. But, are there too MANY voices?  Like I say, it’s no different than the 17th and 18th century coffeehouses that Samuel Peyps frequented in London to gather all the information to include in his now famous diary, which by the way is a blog. Sometimes we have to go back to the fundamentals of communication to look at where we are now.

Since I have written my dissertation, I found a new love for writing about campaign communications. Technology has changed the way we see candidates. Transforming leaders help form public opinion through new technology be it print, radio, television or the Internet. Candidates are reaching out to citizens in new and innovative ways. Who knew we would find out the vice president choice at the same time the media did because of Twitter and text messages? Instant information is only going to prevail to help form public opinion and play a major key role in campaign 2012. The iPad, iPhone, and other new personal technology will allow us to be connected in trains, planes, and automobiles and probably in submarines!

So, Media Studies scholar is the best definition that I can find for myself. I’ve done the journalism thing in real life, I’ve studied it as a graduate student, I then learned how to rhetorically analyze the media to make sense out of what is happening with new media. I love rhetorical analysis and how it brings forth the changes in the communication process. It’s cool that my job is to look at media with a critical eye so we can all understand the communication process better.

I encourage all scholars to define their scholarly passions and define yourself and never apologize for your true scholarly ambitions.

I am challenging my class to collaborate on Google docs to write an essay about how the Internet tells a current event story such as the Chile Earthquake.

This assignment enhances our chapter out of Jenkins book Convergence Culture: Photoshop for Democracy.

This week you do not have to do an individual blog post. Instead, you will break up into groups and explore a current events topic assigned by me. You will analyze how the people used the Internet to disseminate information.

Critically analyze how social media plays a role in your topic as Jenkins did for the chapter Photoshop Democracy.

1. How are citizens participating in these stories?

2. What  information did you find?

3. What social media sites did you find with the most useful information? Did you find the information credible?

4. Discuss the pros and cons to citizen media vs. traditional media such as broadcast news and newspapers.

5. Overall, how do you as a group feel that this current event is represented in a collective knowledge environment. Does the information get misconstrued, or more clear?

Hints: what are the search hastags in Twitter? What links are other people providing?

Overall, critically analyze the type of information you are finding and what types of Internet sites people are using to find information. Did you find Twitter to be more useful for up-to-date information than MSNBC.com or did you find that Twitter was useless.

This Friday my panel and I missed the Federation Rhetoric Symposium hosted by  Texas Woman’s University’s English Speech & Foreign Languages. Each year  either Texas A&M Commerce or Texas Woman’s University hosts the event. This year’s speaker was going to be Patricia Bizzell. But, unfortunately, my friends and I live too far to have chanced driving in such a snowy and icy mess, especially when my BFF, colleague, and  fellow presenter, Carie Lambert’s hill was a sheet of ice in McKinney. Denton is further north of McKinney so we decided the roads were not safe. In fact, one of my panelists had a tree fall on her car. In any event, we missed meeting Dr. Bizzell.

I have learned a lot because of Dr. Bizzell. Her book, The Rhetorical Tradition that she co-authored with Bruce Herzberg was used in my first History of Rhetoric class. I was hoping for a signed book because that book helped me understand the origins and practice of rhetoric. So, thank you Dr. Bizzell. I was hoping for a picture of you and I to put with Dr. Thomas Sloan in my office. I’m in the beginning of making a hall of fame wall. So far, I’m failing.

My colleagues and I prepared a roundtable discussion over Rhetoric and Technology. My part was going to be about politics online with an emphasis on the 2008 Presidential Campaign. Here are the points I was going to go over that I discovered in my dissertation.

• •Elections are important because they allow us freedom to actively participate in selecting our leaders. They are the core of democracy. Nowhere in the world are more people more freely engaged in active, responsible participation in the choice of leadership than in the United States (Trent and Friedenberg 3).
• •Ethos: –Candidates’ used exemplum-example
  –Obama found his weakness—his lack of experience—and countered that information by posting endorsements to show voters those credible politicians and organizations support him as president.
• •Pathos:
  –Of the three presidential candidates, Obama best succeeded in creating emotional connections with his audience. Obama created a dialogical interaction. Obama urged readers to make phone calls, attend events, and to donate money.
  –Clinton and McCain failed to create emotional connections with their blog readers. –Used Visuals
• •Logos:
  –Blogs allow for candidates to recap and summarize days events.
  –Posted times for events
  –Blogs allowed candidates to refute claims made during the Presidential debates.

In conclusion:

• •The 2008 Presidential Campaign set the standard for future online campaigns.
• •Obama took advantage of the immediacy that the Internet provides to create a venue for an online audience who relies heavily on receiving information via the Internet.
• •Clinton did not provide enough posts throughout the day. She hid her endorsements and did not highlight her volunteers. She also was not aggressive enough in dispelling Obama’s accusations.
• •McCain’s blog failed to update, emote, and build his credibility.

Of course I was going to be witty and funny while presenting… but as always, the best laid plans are never that well planned.

A new research study finds watching Oprah can make you a better person.

Why Watching Oprah makes you a better person

The warm and fuzzy feelings you may experience after watching others perform virtuous deeds may in turn lead you to act altruistically as well, according to a new study based on the results of two separate experiments.

Among the findings: People who watch inspirational clips from the Oprah Winfrey Show are more likely to commit to helping others, and spend more time doing a “good deed.”

However, since the study was based on a small number of participants who were all female, more research is needed to back up the findings.

I wonder if this same study watched clips of regular people volunteering, minus Oprah, if the results would be the same?  Overall, good for Oprah if she can motivate people to become a better person.

One of my Introduction to Computer-Mediated Communications assignments is to discuss their digital presence. The assignment is:

Write a 2-3 page essay over your web presence. How represented are you in the digital world compared to your offline world? How much time do you spend online? What type of Web sites do you frequently use? What type of mobile phone do you use? Do you text or talk on the phone? How do you use the Web, entertainment, socialize or to professionally network? If I Googled you, what would I find? Would an employer hire you? Explore your digital presence and write an essay discussing who you are in the online world.

Of course I have other criteria, but the main goal is to allow students to reflect on how they use digital media. Students need to realize what they post online is more public than what they think. Students could post the wrong photo online to one day find that one photo hindered him/her from being hired at their dream job. This assignment helps students critically analyze their digital lives as well as reflect on why they spend so much time in the digital world, especially with iPhones, social networking sites, etc. But, if an employee Googled these students, would they be hired or would they be passed over because of their tarnished digital footprint.  I can’t wait to read their essays next week!

The process of the dissertation is daunting. You first write a proposal and try to believe that is exactly the way your dissertation will turn out. Then once you start, you realize the dissertation is taking on a life of it’s own, especially your life. The process brings out the sweat and tears–probably more tears than sweat. It’s a process where you feel like screaming most days and feel accomplished on the other days. The dissertation is not an easy task and many people may call your work B.S.(yes, I was told by someone that all dissertations are BS because that is what the Ph.D meant. I was told it was worthless and so was my degree.), but that is the ignorance and jealousy of people who don’t understand fully what you’re trying to accomplish, which makes it that much harder to accomplish your goal.

Writing a disseratation made me stronger in knowing that what I’m doing will make a difference and will be a contribution to the political, media, and rhetorical world. I do not have  to please everyone. I only have to write this dissertation for myself and to achieve my goals. The dissertation could be a metaphor for life. You create it, you see it grow, you then let it go–and yet are proud of it no matter what.

You also learn who your true friends are while writing the dissertation. The ones that bolt once you start talking about the dissertation are not your friends. The friends who call you and tell you can do it and love you when you’re grumpy because the paper is not going the way it should–keep those. Family members are the most troublesome–those are the people who should keep saying you can do it! But, unfortunately, they are not.

The one aspect to writing a dissertation is using the paper to make a significant contribution to your area of interest. My doctorate degree will be in rhetoric, but my passion is in media. Now people can contribute to the media and create their own words of wisdom on a subject of their choice. Just imagine 20 years ago, we did not have a say in the political world. Yes, we voted, but we can now directly connect to candidates, the media, and gain access to people like never before–all because of emerging media. My dissertation shows how language can create a closer bond between candidate and voter. I can’t wait to turn the final version in and see what I created grow into more research projects for myself and others–and that is something to be proud of.

In my past experiences, students find it hard to write in the inverted pyramid style.

The journalistic way of writing is hard because it does away with the traditional 5 paragraph formula they’ve been taught since high school. Today, I am making them write a letter about a class they like or dislike. They need to provide me details about this class. Then I will go over the inverted pyramid style way of writing. And, then… make them write their letters over using the inverted pyramid style.

The inverted pyramid style of writing allows for students to learn a more professional writing style. This style makes them think about what IS the most important. We will see how well my students do with this new way of writing this semester. We have all semester to practice.