To say that our in-class discussion was a spoiler is an understatement. I never put much thought into the presentation of my written work before. I was given a written assignment, high school/College, and the first thing I thought of was and still is not the formatting of my paper or how my article looks, I thought about how long can I put off doing this assignment so I can fit in many much-needed naps. After reading and discussing these two articles, however, I feel things are-a-changin’.
An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal Composing
This article was pretty straightforward explaining what it means to go about multimodal composing. While I read this article by Melanie Gagich, I couldn’t help but think about the lessons and slides that I create for my kids. As I go through college, and the classes I have taken on education, I try to implement those tips and tricks into my teaching sessions. This article in particular made me reassess the slides that I give to my students. I found that having different backgrounds keeps them somewhat engaged, so I go online and I try to find Slide samples with eye-catching patterns/designs. Once I have the samples any information I insert onto the slides, whether it be videos, pictures, or written words, I try to center them as much as possible. As far as designing my work goes, that is as far as I go.
Another point that the Gagich article makes that I was not aware that I did was the amount of multimodal composing I did for my lessons. As I said before, I use google slides for my presentations, and I am not going to lie, the main reason I use the slides is so that the kids can read off the screen as opposed to having 20,000 different bible translations. I didn’t realize that I used almost all the strategies when it comes to teaching but in terms of my writing, linguistic and maybe visual come to mind. I hesitate in saying visual mostly because of the in-class discussion on how we were taught 12-point font, times new roman, double-spaced, or die. That format is a habit that I am afraid is hard to kill.
Beyond Black on White: Document Design and Formatting in the Writing Classroom
In Michael J. Klein & Kristi L. Shackelford’s article, we get introduced to the CRAP model, which made me giggle like a 12-year-old boy and make jokes like a 50-year-old man. Similar to how text and images work together, the four essential design components of contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity work together to give a design power. Due to their interdependence, it can be challenging to distinguish between these ideas. The visual disparities between components on a page are referred to as contrast. These subtle differences call attention to various parts of a page and emphasize the importance of the particular components. In repetition, several elements that represent similar concepts or are connected in some way are visually grouped together using consistency. The placing of items on a page is referred to as alignment in design. The gathering of items that are close to one another is referred to as proximity. After learning all of this, I can definitely say it influenced my most recent slides.
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