Affordances of Tumblr
Essentially, what Tumblr affords the classroom is an opportunity to seize the direction new forms of media can take the composition classroom. In his introduction to The Social Media Reader, Michael Mandiberg writes that "new media forms such as blogs and social networking sites have focused squarely on active audience participation, uprooting the established relationship between media producer and media consumer ... the line between media producers and consumers has blurred" (1). As this page and the practical application of Tumblr page show, Tumblr is an excellent tool to use to blur those lines and to make students active participants in their own learning and active audience members of their peers' learning.
However, there are other affordances as well, including but not limited to the ways in which
However, there are other affordances as well, including but not limited to the ways in which
- Tumblr challenges the traditional notions of what counts as research (i.e., academic journals) by providing space for multiple types of sources to be discovered and considered during, at the least, the initial research stages
- Tumblr's options for text, video, photos, and audio uploading help different types of learners (visual, aural, etc.) move more smoothly through the research process and be more actively engaged throughout that process
- Tumblr encourages students to develop rhetorical awareness about what research they post and why because the variety of research that can be posted comes from different rhetorical situations and is geared toward different audiences
- Tumblr helps students develop traditional research skills such as narrowing searches, compiling sources, evaluating sources, etc. while also encouraging them to develop technological skills such as posting, uploading, tagging, etc.
- Tumblr allows students to become distributors and producers of research instead of only consumers of research