Hey all…welcome to another experiment in podcasting. This podcast comes to you from the 5th Annual Kutztown University Composition Conference for Student Writers. Three brave souls, Tim Crane, Katrina Albert, and Renee Franklin agreed to have their panel recorded for this little experiment. (btw…check out our vlogging from KUCC posts on the KU Comp/Rhet blog).

As you may know, I am now the proud owner of a “Snowball” by Blue Microphones. I went for this mic because it every review I read/watched pointed to this USB mic as THE mic to have for professional quality podcasting and digital recording. The big bonus with the Snowball is that is has the capability of 360 degrees recording…so, you can plop it down in the middle of a table, plug it into your laptop, and you’re good to go. And that’s what we did. I’ve gotta say, I’m quite pleased with the quality.

A Little Context:

This panel grew out of my ENG 230 Advanced Composition class this spring.  The first text for the class is Rhetoric: A User’s Guide by John D. Ramage.  Let me just say that the text is not a “user’s guide” in the “how-to” genre.  More of a “user of rhetoric” introducing the uninitiated to rhetoric through the lens of rhetoric.  Students learn in the first couple of pages that Ramage will not tell them what rhetoric “is,” but he will tell them quite abit about what it is like in terms of other things.  He suggests that rhetoric is a Western version of Tao or Dine.  In short, it’s a non-traditional introduction to rhetoric. 

To complicate things that are already complicated, the paper I assign focusing on Ramage is not a traditional paper.  It asks students to write a travel narrative recounting their journey through “Ramageland” (you can check out the paper assignment here).  The papers are generally very creative and quite engaging.  The three papers you will hear here are three such creative and engaging responses to my first assignment.  

I’d love to hear your responses to this podcast…in terms of the quality of the sound, thoughts on the papers, questions about the assignment, ideas about the conference, or…well…you tell me.  I’ll get out of the way now…you can click on the radio (top) or the play button below to hear the podcast.

 Journeys with Ramage panel at 2009 KU Composition Conference [47:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (89)