There are two key points I’d like to highlight this week. First, after reading Jeremy’s comment to a blog post, I better understood the link between post humanism and education. I created an image for what I call the superphone, a comment and a personal reminder on on how the learning process is influenced not just by humans but by non-humans, by objects, like technology for instance.

This week also, I tried to engage more deeply with the Stewart (2013) reading by creating visual notes. Creating notes this way helps me practice multimodal skills, not just its production but also its thesis — a key question for me is how to use those multimodal skills to create a work that is scholarly.

Drawing notes helps me pay attention to what I am reading. The limited space in an image forces to weigh parts of the text, so I can better illustrate (or better yet, better interpret) the text, even though the notes are still at this stage heavy with phrases copied from the text. Nevertheless, drawing helps me engage with the structure of the text, the development of its thesis. I think this is an important criteria for making a multimodal work scholarly. Other closely related criteria that resonate with me are persuasiveness and coherence. When I think of persuasiveness I think of the multimodal skills to make emotional appeals, for example, through cinematic background music, through closeups. I also think about how certain design conventions communicate an informal or formal tone, or how the use of color and typography is a conscious way of engaging with the audience.
Coherence is interesting because the non-linear nature of digital suggests that coherence might need to be reexamined. Its linked nature as well blurs the boundaries of authorship. I am thankful to Sian for raising these points in a response to a question I emailed.

To conclude this post, it is interesting also how I am able to create the sketch notes with an iPad app. This is an another example of how an object can influence the learning process. The design and features of the app and the physical characteristics of the iPad itself affect how I improve multimodal skills.