The other day I tried to create a blog. On Blogger, they have templates that makes set up easy, or so I thought. As I cycled through the drop down menu and the virtual paint swatches, I began to overreact. I started to wonder what the colors I was choosing were saying about me. I started to feel like the template was limiting my creativity because I wanted one line of text to go underneath another and it was not working out. After first backscaping to the custom mode and then going back to template after I realized that the customization was just a more confusing version of the template, I compromised my vision. It wasn't what I wanted, but it was functional. Then, I saw an option to add a picture at the top, so I selected a picture and dropped it into the upload box, and walla...the picture ate my whole header. According to Wysocki, my blog would not qualify as a "new media text" because I failed to grasp "the range of materialities of texts and...highlight the materiality." I don't know if I want to call my blog "old media" because I think Wysocki definition of new media is actually the definition of self-reflexive media which is not limited to post-modernity or even modernity and is probably simply a characteristic of writing (and other stuff) that can be played up or down. So, if it is a characteristic of writing why don't I oppose Wysocki's definition as just overwritten nonsense? Because Wysocki's new media requires awareness out of its composers. In other words, though my half finished blog clearly points at its own materiality, because I naively thought that my vision could be imaged on the screen without having learned about my medium, I am not one of the composers of which the editor speaks.
Questions: How much do you need to know? Is this blog post new-media in a way that my blog was not?
Anxiety about the learning curve that new technologies will present me and my students makes me have second thoughts about my idea for the multi-modal project. I am inspired by several educators who I think are creating "new media texts." Popular Youtubers like Vihart and Ze Frank are using the new thingness of online video to create fascinating educational content at the same time that educational TV seems to be really focusing there efforts on making fun of Southerns and other country Others. I would like my students to work together to create an online video that tropes off of these videos, but I really have no idea how to do this myself. Part of me wants to try and learn together, and the other part of me knows that there is a good chance that people are just going to get frustrated and I will fall flat on my face. What do you nu-meteors think? Can you teach new-media if your not a new-media expert?
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