Pictures in Canvas_Spring 2019

As I probably mentioned once before, one thing I like about Canvas, the learning management system that I am using for my online classes, is the ability to add my own pictures to designate the assignment modules. I often think of these pictures as metaphors for what the students are asked to do in any one assignment module. My pictures for Spring 2019 appear below. I have tried to get student feedback, but no one has yet commented on my pictures and what meaning that they convey.

The last four pictures come from a park located above the Missouri River in Leavenworth. I enjoy walking along North Esplanade Park and often take my camera with me. The park where I used to walk has been closed off since March because of the flooding.

The students were asked to take a position in the argumentative synthesis. That view from a solitary park bench has been enlarged to show the incorporation of more sources in the expanded argumentative synthesis. The revision assignment reveals the rapidly approaching end of the semester. Earlier, the students are greeted with the serenity of the introductory materials before they start taking a path in the first week of class and cross a bridge into critical reading for the rhetorical analysis.  The picture for the informative synthesis, on the other hand, is the closest thing, and the most realistic, to what the students face in that assignment as they compare and contrast what appears in three articles on the same topic.

Long before I decided to pursue degrees in English, I wanted to be a photographer. I had enlisted in the Air Force with that intention right after I finished high school, only to learn that I am color blind and not qualified for that career field in the military. That initial interest in photography appears in my playing with the pictures that my students see in Canvas.