The
audience for my texts is first-year composition students. They are primarily African American and Latino
students who live in Brooklyn. Most of
them use mobile phones to access the Internet and even to write their formal
essays and drafts. Instead of taking notes like college students from my
generation, some of them use their phones to take pictures of presentations in
class and to document anything that I have written on the white board.
I used a Prezi and a
PowerPoint to introduce chapter one of the novel, "Invisible Man. My purpose for using these platforms was to
use them as instructional tools to provide information about different forms of
literary criticism, as well as, to give a lesson on how to write thesis
statements and topic sentences.
For
the Prezi, I used a background image of a faceless individual in a white
hoodie. The style of the Prezi kept the
background image and the emotional impact of this visual metaphor front and
center throughout the presentation. In hindsight,
I now see that I was using this visual metaphor to invite the audience into the
presentation. Considering the history of people of color and my audience, this
visual metaphor invoked strong feelings (pathos) for many of them. In this sense, I think the Prezi worked well
for this kind of presentation because it “invited readers to think beyond the
familiar linear structure” of a traditional power point and to take a “kind of
interactive and reflective stance” (Hocks 636) on the visual image.
In some ways, I think
the powerful visual metaphor influenced the text in the Prezi. The movement of the Prezi helped integrate
the text and the visual metaphor effectively by “encouraging readers to be
aware of their own hybrid identities” (643).
The existential theme of the “Invisible Man” and the narrator’s
conflicted identity is an example of the hybridity of this visual and verbal
representation in the Prezi.
Yet, the PowerPoint
presentation was more transparent than the Prezi because it is more “familiar and
clear to readers” (Hocks 636). Unfortunately,
most students are familiar with this kind of discourse and available designs in
educational institutions. PowerPoint is more traditional. It is institutional, and it represents the
interests of educators who are comfortable with passive audiences and
uncomfortable with the text/media dichotomy. My Prezi was not as
transparent.
Here, I agree with
Stroupe’s argument that “formal composing or reading process can create more critical
forms of consciousness,” (Stroupe 609) but first educators have to be open to
it. I was concerned that all the “bells
and whistles” in my prezi would detract from the quality of my lesson
plan.
