On Monday, the videos we watched
tied really well into the course’s teachings. I thought it resembled how writers
have different perspectives on the same topic and use particular moves to fit
their purpose. Unlike writers, I felt like the artists painted the way they did
for the sake of themselves. Since they are artists, they stuck closer to
self-expression instead of appropriating their work to a specific audience. Not
to say that writers aren’t artists, it just seems like writers have more
constraints in the art of rhetoric to clearly send their message to their
targeted audience. On the other hand, the painters didn’t seem to have a
targeted audience and had more freedom with showing their own style. I still
thought the video was relevant to the class though since it’s a good example of
how a topic can be seen in multiple angles. Rooted from that one ordinary tree,
four distinct trees sprouted.
When Zack showed us examples of
past WP3’s, I think what confused people the most is that their scholarly
articles didn’t revolve on the topic of writing. I think the issue of how to
use the content of the articles troubled some people, including me, because the
topic of writing is not structured like a story such as the feud between Russia
and America. Personally, a story is what I first think of when transforming a
genre so I just have to break out of that mindset. Having my first topic
choices taken actually helped since the pressure of picking a new one sparked
new ideas that diverged from the “story” model. It is reassuring when Zack said
to not think about it too much. Apparently there’s more freedom to WP3 than WP2
so I’ll go ahead and trust that. It is true that writing about writing will
help us understand the topic better.
Medina,
ReplyDeleteI’m a big fan of your ideas here. I never would’ve thought of restaurant menus as a way to bring threshold concepts (TCs) to life, but the way you’ve laid it out and the REASONS you have for doing so make sense to me. The difficulty, I think, is making those reasons apparent within the menu itself. In other words, I don’t want you to (and I don’t think you would) show me an IHOP menu and say “here ya go—threshold concepts!” So how can you bring that “new way of seeing” that TCs afford into a menu? How could a menu represent the “portal”-like qualities that Meyer and Land claim TCs possess? And, on top of that, how can you rhetorically situate the menu in a real world kind of way? This is challenging, for sure, but you can do it.
The Pokemon-y idea sounds killer. The protagonist who comes to a new way of seeing in his/her adventures is a pretty close fit for this concept. Now, how will you try to align the plot of the story with content/research embedded within the scholarly piece? So again: think hard about making deliberate transformations without going too far off into a “menu for menu’s sake” or “Pokemon story for its own sake” kind of route. Have a specific reason(s) for everything you’re doing here. (One other side note: I'd like into finding some websites that might help you to illustrate/animate the story. Might save you some work.)
Nice job!
Z