Palmeri Ch. 1 & 2
I think one of the notable take-aways from these chapters is that a pedagogy privileging the alphabetic medium over other modes ultimately restricts us on many fronts. Chapter 1 demonstrates how it restricts our understanding of revision and/or the necessary "process" of creating. Engaging in multimodal writing enlarges and enhances one's understanding of the revision stage; namely, students move from considering it merely "deleting unnecessary words or choosing better words" to "a broader conception of revision as a process of reordering, adding to, and transforming ideas" (35). Furthermore, writing restricted to alphabetic text excludes the "richly complex mental imagery" so inherently a part of our thinking (34). To assign multimodal writing is not only liberating for the "multimodality of the mind" (38), but on principle, such instruction engages the differentiated learning styles of the modern-day student. I like the idea of "the search for limits, the search for structure" being in and of themselves fruitful stages of the writing process (40); a wider usage of different modes of communication more freely enables this.
Chapter 2 further illustrates the restrictions of privileging alphabetic mode over others by making a convincing case for the necessary and fruitful inclusion of spoken word in the writing process. For too long, writing has been considered a silent, individual activity; I work with people still of this mentality. But multimodal writing (in fact, any good piece of alphabetic writing for that matter) is inherently interactive and social, founded upon Freire's conviction that classrooms should be places where "students and teacher collaboratively come to name and transform the world (at least in part) through the process of speaking and listening to one another" (67). I find this aspect of multimodal literacy encouraging as one of the many disadvantages I bemoan in technology is its ability to alienate people and prevent meaningful relationships. I like the idea that 1) we need not lose the age-old art of conversation in our embrace of media literacy and 2) we can utilize media (like Audacity, as Palmeri suggests) to create and further meaningful relationships in the writing process.