Pictures from the Symposium, March 27, 2013

Sample Remix Assignment

Thank you to Ashly Bender from the University of Louisville for sharing these remix assignments. Ashly may be contacted at albend02@exchange.louisville.edu.

Overview:

The Digital Project

This assignment asks you take any of your previous written assignments in this course and create a digital remix of that assignment. This digital remix should not attempt to create a multimodal version of your entire paper. Instead imagine the digital remix as highlighting one aspect of your paper. The format of this digital remix is up to you, but you must approve your plan with me first. If the digital remix is not static, it should be no longer than 3 minutes. The list below offers some suggestions, but the list is not comprehensive:

·         Create an a commercial or an ad campaign for the product in A1 (static or video)

·         Create a trailer that previews your paper

·         Create a public service announcement based on your topic for a specific audience

The Digital Media Suite located in Ekstrom library offers tutoring and assistance in creating digital products. You can visit their site for more information at http://louisville.edu/digitalmediasuite/. There are also many programs and tutorials available for free online. I strongly encourage you to start early.

The Written Project

In conjunction with the digital version, this paper asks that you submit an explanation and justification of the choices you made in your digital remix. In this paper you should consider the following questions as well as any information you deem relevant:

·         What is the purpose or aim of the digital project? Explain the relevance of specific elements of the project or choices that you made.

·         How is the digital project related the original print project?

·         Why is the format or genre you chose most appropriate for the digital remix’s goal?

·         In what ways did you engage the explicit and implicit rules around copyright and use in making this digital remix?

·         In what ways are traditional writing and digital composing becoming inter-related as multimodal remixing becomes more common? What do you believe the role of multimodal projects is in the university and in the business world?

The Presentation

During the last days of class, you will present your digital remix project to the class. These presentations will be fairly informal but I ask that you come prepared to show your digital product and discuss your aims and experience with the project.

Requirements and Evaluation Criteria:

As usual, the assignment will be held to the requirements on this sheet plus relevant stylistic and composing characteristics discussed during this unit.

Your digital project should

·         Demonstrate concerted effort to create a finished and smooth piece

·         Be no longer than 3 minutes and not less than 1 minute, if a video or an audio recording

·         Have material for at least 3 different audiences or perspectives, if static

o   Ex: 3 different print ads for one product that target 3 specific target audiences

o   Ex: 3 different sets of memes about the same topic

·         Remix an idea from a previous paper

Your justification paper should

·         Be about 5 double spaced pages in Times New Roman font, 12 pt.

·         Fully address all questions above

Open-Source Software for Various Remix Projects

Special thanks to Ashly Bender for this list! Copy the links below into your browser's search engine or menu bar.

Comic strips: http://stripgenerator.com/

Animated cartoons: http://goanimate.com/

Screen capturing: http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html

Remixing music: http://mixblendr.com/

Video editing: http://www.openmovieeditor.org/

Animated presentations: http://prezi.com/

Audio podcasts: http://podcastgen.sourceforge.net/

Machinima: http://www.moviesandbox.net/

Image editing: http://www.gimpshop.com/

Remix as Parody: Taylor Swift Meets TV's BREAKING BAD

Remixing the Horror Film Genre with THE SHINING

Remixing Hitler and Composition Studies

Details about the Symposium Event March 27

The 2013 Symposium on Student Writing

The Art of Remix

March 27, 2013

11:00am - 2:00pm

We live in a world of remix, a world where texts, sounds, images, and ideas are created and recreated, mixed and remixed, so that they can be seen and understood in new forms, new places, and new directions. In writing, the idea of remix is at the heart of the revision process because to remix something is to encourage writers and readers alike to re-see it. 

In the 2013 Symposium on Student Writing, we want to showcase remix as an important and viable way to understand not only the revision process but also the importance of the rhetorical choices writers need to make when trying to convey any message (in any form) to an audience. Thus, we are calling for student presentations from writing classes across the university that illustrate the various forms remix can take in student writing and the skills students use and learn when remixing their written work. Through these presentations, we will showcase the important place remix holds in writing courses across the curriculum and the complex rhetorical skills that are exercised through the act of re-envisioning a piece of written work.

Presentations for the symposium may take the form of videos, podcasts, posters, PowerPoint and Prezi presentations, songs, or any other format that lends itself to illustrating the art of remix.

Sample Projects

Examples of projects that meet the symposium theme include presentations that:

§  Highlight and comment upon the changes writers made in moving from their original written piece to a remixed product.  Such presentations could focus on the way that the writer’s growing understanding of genre conventions or audience influenced the remix. 

§  Illustrate how the elements of reasoning or intellectual standards of critical thinking influenced a writer’s remix choices.

§  Make visible the social dimensions of remixing by emphasizing the roles that other individuals—including peer commentators, instructors, other authors the writer has cited, other audiences—have played in shaping the design of the project.

§  Reflect on the design choices that writers made as they “translated” a project from one medium to another or reinterpreted the same content for different audiences.  For instance, a project might highlight the design choices made as a traditional print text was translated into a website or a multimodal composition.