It’s easy to consider digital rhetoric and writing in terms of always-advancing computer technologies. This isn’t inaccurate, and keeping our fingers on the pulse regarding the rhetorical affordances of new software makes for innovative digital writing, research, and pedagogy. At the same time, however, it’s helpful to remember that digital...
Under the Overpass
Growing up in the suburbs of Houston, I didn’t really encounter a lot of people who were homeless. After moving to Austin to begin my academic studies, I became much more exposed to this section of the community’s demographic. It’s almost impossible to walk around without passing by someone who...
Accessible Data Visualizations
Are you reading this blog post from computer screen or an screen reader? Did you need to adjust the font or text size, screen brightness, or filter the interface through a browser extension or rely on an app like Accessibility to access this information? In her entry on "Access" in Keywords...
When Data Visualization Goes Wrong and Numbers Mislead
Source image: The Most Misleading Charts of 2015 Fixed on Quartz To some students and readers, one of the rhetorical effects of data visualization is that the mere presence of a pie chart, graph, or timeline on a page confers “legitimacy” to an argument. At worse, this gesture attempts to...
Managing Attention in the Classroom with Distraction
Two of the more ubiquitous problems instructors face today are, on the one hand, the pervasive distraction of smartphones, and on the other hand, the inability to gauge a student's comprehension of classroom material in the moment. Although the latter issue long precedes the emergence of the former, these are...
Machine as Organism: Technology, Biology, and Collective
The constant increases in technological capacity, prevalence of automation and machine assistance, and the advancement of bio-tech, artificial intelligence, and medical technologies, expedite the tendency to view the issue of human subjectivity through a dichotomy of man/machine. This framing pre-inscribes a frictional relationship between man and machine, as if machines...
Workshop Recap: Overdubbing Audio
The DWRL's new recording room saw its first action in the Overdubbing Audio Workshop held this past Friday. Will Burdette was at the helm, and he began by instructing participants on both audio recording equipment and strategies, with particular focus on recording in studio environments. He then provided those present...
Visualizing Data with Google Maps
[cs_content][cs_section parallax="false" style="margin: 0px;padding: 45px 0px;"][cs_row inner_container="true" marginless_columns="false" style="margin: 0px auto;padding: 0px;"][cs_column fade="false" fade_animation="in" fade_animation_offset="45px" fade_duration="750" type="1/1" style="padding: 0px;"][cs_text class="cs-ta-center"]Visualization: Sierra Mendez. Text: Amy Tuttle.[/cs_text][cs_text]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...
Cool Tools: Tableau
Last Friday, the DWRL hosted another workshop in preparation for the digitally accessible map we plan to create for our diverse student body. In conjunction with a discussion of collecting and analyzing data, Amy Tuttle provided an excellent lesson on Tableau, an online service that allows users to re-present data...
Affectively Interactive
One of my favorite data visualizations concerns the Beatles. Created by Adam McCann from Dueling Data, the graphic, amongst other things, lets the user hover their computer cursor over illustrations of band members to see how many hit songs those members have written and when. I find the visualization memorable,...