Flash Fellowships give staffers and assistant instructors in the DWRL the time, techniques, and technical resources they need to accomplish projects related to their own research and scholarship. Assistant instructors and staffers fill out a form that helps them articulate their project’s theoretical and pedagogical rationale, and think through any resources that they’ll need to complete the project. The submission goes to a committee that gives the applicants feedback on their project and, if granted, provides the requested resources. The …
Flash Fellowships Preview: Gathering
Flash Fellowships give staffers and assistant instructors in the DWRL the time, techniques, and technical resources they need to accomplish projects related to their own research and scholarship. Assistant instructors and staffers fill out a form that helps them articulate their project’s theoretical and pedagogical rationale, and think through any resources that they’ll need to complete the project. The submission goes to a committee that gives the applicants feedback on their project and, if granted, provides the requested resources. The …
Flash Fellowships Preview: Building
Flash Fellowships give staffers and assistant instructors in the DWRL the time, techniques, and technical resources they need to accomplish projects related to their own research and scholarship. Assistant instructors and staffers fill out a form that helps them articulate their project’s theoretical and pedagogical rationale, and think through any resources that they’ll need to complete the project. The submission goes to a committee that gives the applicants feedback on their project and, if granted, provides the requested resources.The following …
Archives Re-Imagined
As the lab has grown older and alongside the constant flux of new staff members, archiving has taken a more central role in both our day-to-day and long-term thinking and practice. Archival theories and practices have long been central to scholarship on rhetorical history. With the emergence of technologies in digital archiving, however, and as rhetorical scholars have become involved in the construction of digital archives and exhibits, we increasingly recognize archives themselves as rhetorical entities. Staff members working in …
Play
Throughout the long history of the lab, play has been one of our central recurring areas of interest. In the lab’s current manifestation our focus has turned specifically toward digital games. Digital games are always laden with values: they make assumptions about players’ bodies and beliefs as well as race, gender, class, sexuality, and ability. Games invite their players to identify with these assumptions in order to succeed. But players can also resist a game’s procedural rhetorics, sometimes learning more …
Lesson Plan: Narrative Numbers
By Sierra Mendez & Sarah Welsh Maybe we can begin by blaming Plato for his view that math, specifically geometry, was the one perfect truth in the world–a belief systematically strengthened by science’s insistent reliance on empirical, numerical data as “truth.” These notions have been adopted into the public conscious, leaving people with the tendency to treat quantitative evidence as unquestionable facts that are above argument. Most students tend to say things like “numbers speak for themselves” when instead they …
Lesson Plan: Photography, Photoshop, and Visual Rhetoric
By Sierra Mendez & Sarah Welsh This data visualization lesson plan focuses on image manipulation across a variety of sources. It matters to us and to the classroom because 21st century forms of media and knowledge dissemination demand that we be able to interpret and utilize visual forms of information. Photos are a key component of modern data visualization whether they make up the data itself or are integrated into an infographic. An acknowledgement and understanding of how photos are …
(Re)visualizing Data
Team Data Visualization is proud to present a new set of lesson plans that we’ve designed to be as cohesive as the first. With a little planning, anyone can share a data visualization lesson plan with their students. Sarah Welsh and Sierra Mendez collaborated on two lesson plans. The first takes inspiration from Dr. Johanna Wolfe and her work on rhetorical numbers to help students think about the often mistaken view that numbers always equal fact. The second provides a meditation on rhetorical …
Teaching Wearables and Metadata: An Introduction
This semester, Team Wearables is committed to providing faculty interested in digital rhetoric and pedagogy with lesson plans that get at the heart of academic issues surrounding the proliferation of wearable devices. Our first set of lessons this semester focuses on one particularly salient issue concerning the examination of wearable technology today: metadata. Metadata isn’t a recent phenomenon. The Dewey Decimal System creates metadata so that the books, journals, and periodicals we need are easier to find in our libraries. …
Visualizing Data with Google Maps
Visualization: Sierra Mendez. Text: Amy Tuttle. It’s hard to believe that at one time, map ownership was a privilege reserved for the wealthiest members of a society. But thanks to modern surveying techniques and satellite systems, highly precise maps are widely available on the internet. As a result of this ubiquity, maps have become absolutely critical in many fields of human endeavor. With a few clicks of a mouse, Google Maps will allow you to explore the earth, the moon, …