This Is How We Dream Parts 1 and 2: Richard Miller

Richard Miller's videos or presentations on This Is How We Dream Parts 1 and 2 was very inspiring to watch. I think in today's society, people are stuck between the old writing and reading and the new writing and reading. I think our world is becoming mostly technologically based, and the older ways of doing things are eventually going to be dead.

The old way of read or writing is just that; students or teachers or anybody that needed any type of information only had books to turn to in order to do research. Text was only in the form of actual paper in a real place, such as a newsstand or library. Just as Richard Miller mentioned in his This Is How We Dream videos, writing has and is changing. The new way to read or write is to basically listen and watch. Instead of reading, people can watch or listen to things. Instead of writing, people can collaborate with other's works and make new, modified works.

Multimedia writing is becoming more and more common, especially among universities or colleges and other schools. An incremental change that Richard Miller talked about in his videos was the fact that people's use of reading and writing has changed; people use laptops versus paper, word processing, and desktops. Any person can do almost anything and everything on the computer or internet. Books or texts have "dual lives" according to Richard Miller. Books have a temporary space in the form of an actual book or text that can be picked up at home, school, or library. Books also have a permanent place on the internet; books or texts are slowly becoming web-based. Anybody doing research can find mostly everything on the internet without having to step foot inside a library. The method of information being web-based is for the purpose of "sharing knowledge infinitely" (Richard Miller's This Is How We Dream Part 1). An example that Richard Miller gave when using multimedia writing was his MLK project. He used the documents of print, sound, and visuals to create one project.

Multimedia writing needs to become more prevalent among students and teachers today because the use of multimedia is growing. Teachers need to be prepared to write with multimedia, and I think that I am prepared to write with multimedia. This EDM 310 class is helping out with some multimedia writing by just learning the basics of technology. My future students will eventually have to learn how to write with multimedia as well. I will have to teach them so that they will be effective in the process. I do think that students today will be at least aware of multimedia writing if they do not know how to write with multimedia already. Multimedia has many different functions. The main function is to collaborate with different types of media and people to create a new work that shares information or knowledge.

Another thing that Richard Miller mentioned that I agree with is the fact that we need inspiring teachers. Teachers need to want to share information together and openly. Teachers need to share openly because that is another way of learning and creating. Also, for multimedia writing to become effective, there need to be "inspiring spaces" as well as "inspiring teachers" (Richard Miller's This Is How We Dream Parts 1 and 2). Multimedia writing is more useful today than regular publication because multimedia writing gets across to more people faster. As Richard Miller mentioned in his example in his This Is How We Dream video, if he had not put his video on the internet, then people would not have received his message quickly if at all. The new "publication pushes ideas into our culture" (Richard Miller's This Is How We Dream Parts 1 and 2).