This video, revised for class but after which the editable footage was lost, is perhaps the most powerful example of The Normal Group’s practice of converging digital media and academic writing practices. This project was pitched by Vince Scannell, who asked classmates, “How does pedagogy need to change when students have Google in their pockets?” The students quickly recognized the power of Katherine Hayles’ take on hyper and deep attention, and the video includes several clips from an interview they conducted with her at Watson.

By Jessica Huang, Amos Rein, Steve LaGioia, Vince Scannell (with Hayles’ interview footage by Andrew Chamberlain)

Abstract: The Internet allows us the opportunity to access information with one click, making the technologies we live with affect the way we, as undergraduate students, think and learn. As part of our English 239: Multimodal Composition class, we attended the 2008 Thomas Watson conference to pick the brains of professors, such as Dr. Katherine Hayles, to ask how pedagogy needs to change to accommodate this increase in digital technology and what kind of cooperation is necessary between students and their teachers so both parties can effectively communicate to and learn from each other. Our main argument addresses these issues and is presented as a video using footage of sessions and interviews conducted during the conference. Based in part on Hayles’ theory of deep and hyper attention, we argue that since students today are used to constant and simultaneous input from different sources, we can easily become bored with traditional, linear texts.