Check out this blurb which is a blend of an NPR interview with DJ Spooky, who was one of our Forum speakers this fall, and our own professor of Africana Studies, Charles Peterson (CP).
The blended blurb:
CP agreed to work with us in instructional technology to produce something on DJ Spooky when we realized he had not gotten permission to podcast or otherwise broadcast his COW Forum as we typically do [see our podcast blog]. So CP sat down in our recording booth in Taylor 205 and in a sort of modern day call and response session, listened to the NPR interview and recorded his response to it.
This is an especially interesting “text” b/c it troubles the idea of authorship via content AND form—i.e. CP is encouraging us to think about Spooky’s message of the rich possibles of interpretation even as CP himself is part of producing a text that has no clear author. Is the author Spooky? CP? Liane Hansen of NPR? Me—b/c I decided where to digitally interject CP in the NPR interview—mostly I based this on where I thought CP wanted it but I also freely edited out CP at times? Our i.t. intern, Joe Benfield, b/c he carried out the final digital editing? Or…???
What does this mean for pedagogy—especially the sorts of texts we ask students to produce? Is this a novel form of writing brought to us by digital technology or is it plagiarism thinly masked…or something else altogether?
Our fab intern, Joe, found “the machine is us/ing us”
on YouTube and suggests it has something smart to say about this (and I agree).
What does it suggest about our practices/policies for podcasting our Forum speakers? If Spooky’s Forum had been podcast we likely would not have produced our own DJ Spooky/Rebirth of a Nation commentary but does this mean we are now bound to ensure each speaker is profiled? After all, COW via the efforts of Jon Breitenbucher and i.t. is registered on iTunes and we do hear from folks around the world about our podcast/podcast blog. This was worrisome to me—i.e. that Spooky would be absent from the page and was my impetus for asking CP to help out (well…that and I wasn’t sure too many folks, myself included, really “got” what Spooky was about).
I do know that this points out some serious issues around technology and the COW curriculum. Should faculty want to grapple more with these issues by, for example, assigning the production of such a digital text to students there will be trouble…
- getting the equipment into the hands of students (b/c we just don’t have it or have much of it)
- training the students on the tech (b/c we are a tiny tiny little dept!)
- exercising good bibliographic skills (what is clearly illegal vs. what is fuzzily legal?)
- providing meaningful feedback to students during production (this and the next point on assessment might give Bill Macauley et al in the writing center some fits! I mean…think about even the method of feedback—will it be traditional text or will instructors find themselves over here in the recording booth…?)
- assessing the product
- presenting student work (can we post their digitally sophisticated texts worry free or will the fuzzily legal inhibit this?)
Post a Comment