maintaining design Journals
Here, in this lesson excerpt, you can see the presentation elements on the board and listen to how I addressed the concept of the Design Journal as part of the students’ multimodal composing process. Although this was not the very first-time students heard about the journal, as they had attempted the 1st entry over the weekend prior, I gave another opportunity to work on their entry. Hopefully, it would limit misunderstanding and anxiety going forward.
I’m trying to show you there’s variations, everybody thinks differently.
transcript
0:00 I’m gonna look at the Design Journals, I know that I um did this very very quickly um on Thursday but I think that we should look at these um this again, you could keep them.
0:16 I haven’t seen anybody’s room like what is this, like I looked at them, I didn’t comment on all of them because they were due by class today, so I started looking everybody that had something in by 1030 last night, I looked through it, I don’t see anything that’s problematic yet, so don’t worry.
0:33 Umm but you could literally, quite literally um keep a spiral bound notebook where you’re writing, you’re using post-its, you’re clipping from magazines, pulling from artwork or anything else you see that’s inspirational on the internet.
0:49 internet. and printing it out, um sketching it, drawing it, um you could just compile in a spiral bound notebook and as you create each journal entry you can take a picture of this and just attach it in your assignment submission.
1:02 meaning I don’t need this physical spiral bound notebook. I just- You need a picture of the pages for that design journal entry.
1:07 Does that make sense? Okay. So that’s one option. Um another thing is I told you notion seems to be a kind of a cool place to create.
1:18 Um you can get a free trial and you can create kind of like an online spiral notebook where it just creates pages for you and you can use graphics that are built in here.
1:28 That’s another way you can do it and again screenshot and upload or share the link with me. Could do that too.
1:36 Um but again Bye! This is for you to decide. I’m gonna show you a student. I have an example. Umm I do have an example.
1:52 This student Ahhh. He’s actually been creating like pages like this. Where um she is she’s in another section. She is working through um ideas about what she wants to work on.
2:09 And other things she’s read that are related and she’s like pulling excerpts and she’s kind of creating these like artistic collages.
2:17 But that’s, again that’s just one way you can do it. I have literally seen journal entries from people that are just a hundred words.
2:24 A little paragraph because they aren’t. I’m not what to do yet. Okay? And that’s fine too because remember every entry has to have a hundred words somehow.
2:32 She’s getting her words from multiple places and collaging them all on. But some people are literally just sitting and writing out a hundred words to explain it to me.
2:39 And that’s okay too. Okay? Okay? I just, I’m trying to show you there’s variations everybody thinks differently. And that’s okay with me.
2:46 I haven’t had anybody do it yet. But technically the first journal entry could have been spoken. You could have just recorded yourself and sent me the audio file.
getting started with design journals that
focus on the rhetorical situation
Here, in this lesson excerpt, I encouraged students to frame their work in the Design Journals based on the rhetorical situation for their project. Instead of trying to adhere to a set of assumptions about what the instructor expects their writing to do, especially in the context of standard conventions and grammar, that instead students should follow their natural inclination to communicate their ideas with intended purpose.
…it should really come down to the triangle, and what do we say are the points on the triangle?
transcript
0:00 So, how did you feel? And why do you think you felt that way, or what were the complications this week at making this design journal?
0:07 Talk to me about it, yeah. Um, knowing myself. Knowing yourself? What do you mean? Like knowing what I might want and what I might not want.
0:18 So, what I chose was, I chose the indecisive method. So, it’ll look like it’s everywhere, but really it’s in one place, if that makes sense.
0:29 Yeah, like trying to just figure out the organization you need? Okay, fair. Alright, because it’s not like a traditional assignment or a paper, right?
0:38 Okay, what else was a problem? What else did you struggle with? And I got a lot of emails, so I can share what everybody struggled with, but I want to talk about it in class.
0:49 What were you thinking or what made you really nervous before you hit the submit button? Yeah. Introduction to college writing, so am I doing this to the level it needs to be?
1:27 What did I say last week about what’s so interesting about the way we talk and the way that we use language?
1:33 Everyone has their own unique style, so there’s no, there’s no perfect way to talk or perfect way to write. Right.
1:42 Exactly, so you’ve been kind of preconditioned to believe that, you’ve been trained that way in your elementary school, middle schools, high schools, you’ve been trained to think that there is a certain level of writing that’s considered academic or sophisticated, or that you have to write on the SAT
2:02 or the ACT, or your college apps, right, but if you, if you’ve been kind of watching the trends on what’s happening with some of that types of, those types of writing, is they’re shifting, and they’re changing, and what the application essays used to look like are very different from what they look
2:19 like now. They’re encouraging students to really be creative with them, and show their unique side, and show what, show their like, their way of languaging, and that’s more accepted than it should be.
2:31 So, to go back to what you were saying, it is gonna feel really weird, because I’m giving you full autonomy to do what you need to do, and we’ll see where you need to best take that.
2:45 Um, instead of giving you this formula, this essay, and saying, you’re gonna have an intro paragraph, these body paragraphs, and this conclusion, and if this is your topic, this is how to nail it down, it’s a mathematical formula.
2:57 And I think that we can all rise to that occasion, and we can do that, maybe some of us a little more stronger than others.
3:04 But I don’t really know that that’s teaching us what we need to be taught. I think what we need to be doing is thinking about, um, what’s a natural way for us to try and communicate based on who our audience is, and what our purpose is, going back to that triangle.
3:22 Okay, so. So when I talk about what’s foundational to this class, and I’m saying, you know, why not, I’m not, but a lot of instructors will tell you, it’s college writing, it’s learning how to write those essays across the board for when you’re in these other classes, how to do that, but I think that
3:38 we need to take one more step back, and it’s like, nope, it should really come down to the triangle, and what do we say are the points on the triangle?
3:46 It doesn’t matter which one’s which. I’m sorry? Yup, we could do it from the appeals, ethos, pathos, logos, and I said, these triangles are kind of one and the same, what’s another way of looking at these?
3:59 What’s the other set of situations? Yeah? It is credibility, so it’s your speaker, are they reliable, right? Should you trust them?
4:10 And then what about I’m Okay, this is your topic, or your context, like the what, right? I’m talking about something.
4:23 But somebody’s talking about something, yes, the consumer, um, the consumer, your audience, and it’s kind of that like response, like you’re saying, how do they feel about it?
4:36 For sure, response of these. So, again, if you bring it all the way back to this, the rhetoric of how we communicate, what we’re doing, kind of opens that up, and that’s what makes us feel really uneasy.
4:57 So, we’ll Again, if you read the assignment description for your first project, and in getting your design journal number one together, those would have been good places to start.
5:12 You know, what do you want to talk about, which is kind of what I kept pressing since last Thursday. What do you, what are you compelled to talk about?
5:22 Meaning, if you’re sitting around with friends, and I said this, and if you’re sitting around with friends, what are you talking about?
5:27 If you’re getting social media, what threads or posts are you looking at, or what are you going through, what are you like compelled to respond to, or what gets you like going, or like pissed off, or upset.
5:38 Um, or what do you like? You know, like yeah, I totally agree with that. Um, what about like, I said, some of you in the announcement yesterday went, like, hey, don’t panic, go listen to some music.
5:49 Is there a particular music artist that you like? Is there a song you like? Why do you think you like that song?
5:54 What do you connect with? Um, is there a show you like? Is there something the show takes up as a theme?
6:01 Any of these things are fair game. So, again, starting with what you want to talk about is okay, but you can also figure out who you want to talk to.
6:13 I think for our purposes, it should just be this class, like this demographic of students. You know, first-year students, we’re all, we’re all similar in whatever ways.
6:23 We’re different, but we’re similar in ways. Okay? So let’s make, make the class our audience, but we’re similar, but we’re different in that our political views may differ, our social views and our positions on social issues may differ, our family situations, our backgrounds.
6:39 So even though you’re talking to this group, it’s gonna vary. People might not always agree, right? So you gotta figure that out how you want to present material to people that might not be exactly like you, okay?