Writing: The Affordances and Constraints of Video

What can you, as a student in this course, do in working with video that you can’t do in a written text? Conversely, what kinds of things is it hard to do with video that you can do more readily in writing? Affordances and constraints. Video and print. I’d like you to think about the relationship between these two modalities using the Concepts in 60 videos posted to this site.

Let me make an arbitrary rule: You should refer in your post to at least three Concept in 60 videos. Your goal should not be to evaluate these pieces, to say what you especially liked or didn’t, but to note what the medium of video seems to encourage authors to do and what it seems to constrain them from doing.

Deadline: Thurs, 3/23, 10:00 am. I’m eager to read your thoughts on this issue!

Writing: First Response to boyd

At this point you know the drill. Your task is to compose a post of about 400 words in to the first half of  danah boyd’s It’s Complicated. As usual, please try to anchor what you have to say in a specific moment in boyd’s text. I’d also encourage you to note any points of connection or contrast with Carr that strike you as interesting or important. But, as always, the form and direction of your piece is up to you.

Well, except for one thing: In this post I’d like you to make use somehow of audio. Exactly how, I leave to you. You may decide to embed an audio file in your writing. Or you may decide to present your writing as an audio text—something to be listened to rather than read. The issue I hope to raise is what else changes when we are asked as readers to switch modalities, to process text through our ears rather than eyes.

Let me offer an example from a version of this course that I taught in Spring 2013 at Duke University. I’m cheating here a little, since the author, Leslie Hillman, makes use of both video and audio, But as she is writing in response to The Shallows, I thought it might be interesting to consider a moment when one of his Carr’s readers literally talks rather than writes back to him. Here is Leslie’s piece, “I’m Trapped in a Paper Case of Emotion” (2013).

Once again I will also ask you to read and comment on the responses posted by your group members. The deadline for your post is 10:00 AM on Thurs, 3/02. The deadline for your comments is the start of class on Fri, 3/03.

I look forward to reading—and listening to—your work!