In her article/essay, Shipka suggests that gifts, tokens, mirrors, OEDs, thesis statements, linear texts, and more [perhaps nachos, guacamole, sour cream, and pico de gallo] are potential material/resources for multimodal, task-based compositions. Moving from the hypothetical "top down" (285) linear five-paragraph-print-essay with an underlined thesis statement with a one-person audience (the teacher) to a composition that contextualizes the assignment "... in ways that are of interest or importance to [the student/writer] ... and experienced by its recipient(s)" (ibid).
The student examples used in Shipka's essay exemplify the students' manipulation of the assignment. Nancy Martin -- former Bread Loaf professor, now deceased -- once said, "If you don't understand the assignment, manipulate it ..." Every Shipka example shows that the student wanted the reader/viewer/participant to experience the event -- to walk in the shoes of a woman in the '50s, to mirror the difficulty of a mirrored text, to design gifts for everyone, to replicate place in the the web -- these all show "compositionist" interest and audience engagement.
I'm beginning to think I'm writing a summary, but I don't mean to be. I really am intrigued by these processes and for the potential to have my students compose multimodal texts ... or are they projects? I prefer to call them texts to perpetuate the philosophy of moving, perhaps evolving, from alphabetic text to multimodal text (not project).
In the video below, my students react to a multimodal text delivery on censorship by Bill Moyers.
