English 111 in 60 seconds! Can it be true?

Two weeks before classes started, I (along with my cohort of five other TAs) began a rigorous training to prepare for the first several weeks of classes. With the guidance of our Composition Coordinator Dr. Jackie Cason, we were introduced to the curriculum and began developing and designing unit plans, daily plans, and course activities to engage our students throughout the semester.

One of our assignments during the training was to develop a "Concept in 60." Several of these videos can be found on YouTube, and the idea is to express a concept using multimodal presentations of text, audio, and visual elements in only 60 seconds.

Sixty seconds is not a very long time! While developing our "English 111 in 60" videos, we found ourselves making several rhetorical choices very similar to those we make as writers. While the focus
of English 111 is largely on the written text, we also hope to demonstrate to our students how reading "text" can extend beyond the written word, and literacy extends beyond reading and writing to various other skills, like multimodality and technology.

All in all, the training was a great start to the semester and all of us TAs in the English department are excited to begin the semester. We hope students are ready to explore not just the written word, but also audio and visual texts and combinations of all of these to create meaning in the world around us.

Enoy!

Stacie