Seriously? Non-textual communication in the writing classroom?

I have always approached non-textual communication as simply non-verbal communication, e.g., body language, a conveyance of emotions, hormonal exchanges, and thoughts shared within the shared collective. maybe non-textual communication can be a "spring-board" of sorts to jump-start your writing, but is it actually writing? What role does this play in the writing classroom?

It seems it does play a role. Or rather, it can play a role in the writing classroom.

My making students consumers and then producers of texts or videos (and videos is key here because then we are applying a quantifiable visual context to our writing) students can learn to analyze images, videos, sound with the same critical eye that they would normally be expected to apply to the reading of a text.

This process is outlined beautifully in the following website.

Kairos: 8.1

One particularly effective method outlined in the following website is the asking of students to analyze a story by interpreting scenes in video and in still photographic images.

The argument is in the writing about narrative, or writing about literary studies, that that analysis of images and video will transfer to actual writing... Hmmmm..

This would seem to me to be a really incredible attempt at having students think in terms of scene. I know that in the teaching of creative writing, students are taught to write in scene and exposition. And as far as I know, students--MFA creative writing students--often favor one over the other: the fast paced action thriller, or the meta-cognitive peripatetic novel about a man who can ramble for a hundred pages about the shape of his hand. MFA students are taught to understand and recognize the differences between the two, but even so, they are often reluctant to listen. Many of the successful writers I know are able to watch movies and videos and extract scene and narrative in ways that pure readers cannot. (Even if they won't admit it.) But even after the student loan debt, countless rejections, students still cannot bring themselves to effectively implement "good" storytelling skills.

Imagine the basic writer...

"Come up with a non-textual argument." <-This stuff is incredible...

"Produce a product with a 'significant' message..."

Are students able to produce videos that can be quantified the way an essay or a paper can be? This is a crucial question, one that I had to ask myself during a class I taught in a Learning Community. Students in their English 101 course did not write a final research paper and instead drafted and completed a five-minute podcast/video. Was the work equivalent to writing, drafting and researching a research paper?

I think instead of looking at the final product (most of these videos were outstanding). It's important to look at how these students  did in their other classes. If students, especially at my institution, were allowed to produce videos in all of their classes, rather than write research papers, then this would mean that students would be invariably producing better videos throughout their years as undergraduates. However, if they were only given the opportunity to produce these videos during their first semester in college and were never asked to do so again, and rather, lacked the skills their peers (in later classes) developed in their "typical" English 101 classes, did the video process, the revisions, editing, producing and publishing, really help these students develop solid academic skills?

My students need to get all A's in order to compete against students from private schools...

But oh what they could produce if they were allowed to build upon production in the classroom. Isn't production a tenet of our "open" and "democratic" society?

Mackenzie Wark /  Gamer Theory 2.0 / Version 2.0

via Basally Writing