photo essays

For the past two terms, I've been having first-year students compose photo essays using blogger. We discuss visual rhetoric for a few weeks, using mostly Detroit-area photobloggers as examples, and students put together their own projects, revolving around issues of concern to their own neighborhoods. I like the process for a number of reasons:

• student engagement during peer review process. on days when we use class time for peer review, students make substantive comments and really engage with each other's work, giving global commentary
• moves beyond analysis/consumption/spectator mode. the fy comp program where i did my graduate work was so rooted in Rhetorical Analysis (notice the capitals!) that for a long time i neglected writing-as-doing, as *production*-of-primary-texts
• opportunity to foreground the local
• transitions nicely into sustained attention to whatever issue students choose, as they move to a more traditional argumentation project (on the same issue) at the end of the term

Here's a few random samples. Enjoy...

Industrial Wasteland

Legacy Initiative

Graden City Library

Belleville High School: A Diamond in the Rough?

Abandoning Homes, Perpeatuating Problems