An Exercise in Blended Technologies

Using ClipConverter and Google to locate commercials and print advertisements and download them to my computer, I assigned my student groups in Canvas two advertisements and two commercials each to evaluate, focusing on their use of logos, ethos, and pathos in particular as these were the subject of their assigned textbook reading.

Specifically, the groups’ prompt was to use “the checklist on pages 252 and 253 of [their] textbook as a starting point [to] rhetorically analyze the two print advertisements and the two commercials…. On the board create a chart to record any appeals to logos, ethos, and pathos that may be present in each advertisement. Be prepared to discuss your results.”

Having uploaded the four artifacts with this prompt in each group’s daily discussion area, I then created a separate page in Canvas, accessible to all groups, where all of the advertisements and commercials could be viewed as each group shared its results. Besides accomplishing the objective of re-familiarizing them with these rhetorical concepts, the aim was to bring textbook, the online classroom, and the physical classroom’s key features of group tables, mounted screens, and glass boards together in a single concerted exercise.