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An infographic uses items such as images, graphs, and text to explain or present data. Below is a link to the infographic I created this week using Canva. I will also explain my use of visual rhetoric and my decisions during the creation of my poster about Lateral Reading. https://www.canva.com/design/DAFp5gSZ3go/16NxOJHOfn5JGDPWk0f2xA/edit?utm_content=DAFp5gSZ3go&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton                  My infographic is about Lateral Reading, that is, “an approach that helps students determine a source’s credibility by leaving the source and seeing what is said about it elsewhere on the Web” (Lowe, Zemliansky, Driscoll, Stewart, & Vetter, 2010) .  My initial concept was to mention the CRAAP concept (Credibility, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy and Purpose) and then explain why we should leave to use Lateral Reading to better determine the credibility of the source, see Figure 1. I proportioned the size of letters and images to e

I need to make a confession before going forward. The word “rhetoric” was somewhat intimidating, or confusing and unfamiliar to me before starting my Digital Writing online with Old Dominion University and, it still makes me nervous and creates a small anxiety, or mental block for me. So, in this post I’ll cover some visual rhetoric we encounter all the time. The word rhetoric is often associated with the “nonsense” around a subject, for example, “This is just political rhetoric we are hearing”. The word rhetoric is defined by Merriam-Webster as “…the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing”. In Digital Writing, visual rhetoric is the term used to cover the many ways a reader may be influenced through images, colors, arrangements and even the font of letters used. Four basic components of visual design: use of type, use of space and layout, use of color, and use of images. (Ramage, 2009) Table 1 from Ramage’s Chapter 9, Conducting Visual Arguments, provides some examples

If you picked up a book, an article or a research paper before online activity became really popular; then, you remember letting the author of that work take your hand and guide you through the material. It seems the digital age has altered authorship in ways that are not fully understood yet and modified the traditional lines between authors and readers. Adlington and Feez suggest that new technological resources (known as techno-semiotic) such as tags and comments allow users traditionally known as readers to add meaning to posted literary work.   Tags. Tags help authors categorize their blog, when searching a database, these are the keywords that help a reader locate the information. In the case of specialized subjects, as we learned last week, a medical student might look for the Latin word for a term instead of the English word to get to more authoritative material. Blogs are tagged, or tied, to certain words during searches, but the reader’s ability to add tags means the read

  In our Digital Writing class at Old Dominion University, we’ve covered several topics in the short first week. Those topics included how we give our attention to one or multiple ideas, the constant competition for our attention in an online world and how we can become conscious are regain focus when our mind wonders. We also looked at the valuable skill of crap detection, it is crap detection, and my own mistakes is the past that I will focus on. I have taken several online classes in the past that required research and, I can identify with anyone who feels the go-to online search engine provided way too much information. I made several mistakes as I searched for the info and as I chose what I used in my final work. Randall McClure makes several great recommendations to make better use of Google and Wikipedia in his article Googlepedia: Turning Information Behaviors into Research Skills. The steps are pretty simple and become easier with a bit of practice. 1. Use Wikipedia to g