Multimodality

Jones and Hafner’ description of video logs made me wonder if we should have tried that in this class. If you’re like me, you probably would have written yourself a script and then read it to the video camera. And I can’t really think of a good reason to include it in class except that it would be fun to experiment. One of the objectives of the class is to learn unfamiliar technology, but we are already learning so much software, I wasn’t sure we could handle any more in a 16 week semester. What do you think? Would it have been fun to try?

I also thought of the journal I edit (Programmatic Perspectives, cptsc.org/pp/). In the beginning, we had wanted it to be interactive. I imagined that next to the PDF link to an article there would be a link to a blog in which people could comment on the content of the article. This would be equivalent to Commentary sections in printed journals. We did this for the first two issues, but no one commented. The world of academia moves slowly. I also envisioned a more multimodal publication system such as video clips in which the author is commenting on an aspect of the article. Or audio clips of the author reading or comment on something in the article. This would be especially striking with editorials, which are all opinion with some citations. I had also hoped to add a section to the journal where we would interview prominent people in the field and include their real voice in audio clips or even video clips from the interview. But we ran out of time and have not yet been able to publish the interview. What I was imagining overall was something like downloading a magazine on your iPad: the article would be the same as the print article but would include the video/audio clips as extras.

I’m stepping down as editor after this year, so it will be up to the new editors whether they want to change the existing format or not. Journal should go through transitions like this. New editors should re-envision the journal and its objective. It’s good for it.