Computers and Writing, Part II

Disclaimer: My conference notes are frequently transcriptions of a talk. These are raw, unedited notes.

Session 3.2: Ethics and Technology
Session 5.8: Special Delivery: The Production and Distribution of Multimodal Public Rhetoric
Session 6.6: Closing the Loop in Cyberspace: Online Learning Environments as Sites for Assessing Learning and Technology
Session 7.4: A Rationale for Using Burkean Theory to Analyze Digital Media
Session 8.2: Orality and Literacy 2.0

Blogging Computers and Writing, Post 1

Disclaimer: I tend to transcribe in my notetaking, so I may be always quoting. These are raw notes, so be kind.


Lunch Session: Friday, May 18

Blogging

Speaker 1: Lowell Boileau (http://www.detroityes.com/)

Lowell is an artist whose paintings reflect the city/changes
Began by thinking of the web as a way to bypass the gallery system to sell his paintings
"The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit"--original site
Evolved over time
Lots of photographs
Not really a "blog"--forum run discussion that discuss the various issues in Detroit life.
Quote: "Web more about sociology instead of technology"

Speaker 2: Mollika Basu (http://detroit.metblogs.com/)

Mollika blogs for a corporate blogging group. The blog is a group blog that discusses the various activites/events in Detroit.

Speaker 3: Randy Wilcox (http://www.detroitfunk.com/)

Photographing empty buildings
Elbert C Donovon building--old Motown headquarters--found lots of important papers
http://www.detroitfunk.com/2006/06/28/back_to_motown.htm
http://www.detroitfunk.com/2006/06/30/motown_lowdown_1.htm
Photoblog (would that be a "phlog"?)

Questions and Answers:

Sense of responsibility about representing your city?

Randy: I'm not a cheerleader--I show everything I see. People respond and love it--give feedback and keep reading.

Mollika: don't see it as good/bad to show the different aspects. Our blog represents a small portion. Encourage people to blog it all to get a holistic view.

Lowell: grabbed Detroit Yes--I am a cheerleader; felt need to have an honest discussion. Try to find the most beautiful moment--bring out the beauty and potential oft the city.

Comment from audience on the way Randy's personality comes out through his blogging--even the small bits of information.

To Randy: tell us about Sean?
Basically, this was a discussion of the negative side of blogging--the people who attack you verbally and even "physically" by tearing down sites. The dangers of hackers, basically.

Question: neighborhood/region based? Is there a good amount of local blogging action?
Lowell: lots of neighborhood threads on detroityes; geographic regions and school-based

Question: archives of this work; are there any efforts toward archiving these sites/snapshots of the city?
Lowell: there are spiders/bots archiving (archive.org); SoulfulDetroit.com--forum has reunited Motown people there; talking to Wayne State person (didn't get the name) to discuss archiving the discussion.

Question for Mollika: do you get pressured from restaurants/etc?
Mollika: not me, but some other bloggers do get this; untrained "citizen journalists" who don't know where the lines are. Our sit is almost like a franchise; we have resources to help us determine what is and isn't appropriate.

Getting Priorities Straight

Inside Higher Ed reports that there's a disconnect between high school and college instructors with regard to their definitions of "college readiness." Of particular interest to me is the following bit of information:

In English, the survey suggests, high school instructors’ focus on the development of students’ ideas overlooks basic grammatical and syntactic skills — possibly leading to an increased need for remedial teaching at the college level. Reading had the least misalignment between secondary and first-year college instructors, but the survey suggests that the reading skills acquired at previous levels are not built upon in high school.

As usual, reading and writing are coupled together as English tasks--which they are and should be--but the information about reading reinforces what I've seen over and over. We don't pay any attention to reading as an ongoing developmental skill. Once you can pass a comprehension test, pick out important information (efferent reading), you're considered ready for the reading world. The fact that reading is the place where we all have the same expectations indicates there's a long way to go to change our understanding of the trajectory of reading development.

Two Minute Post

I've got two minutes left on my grading countdown. I'm grading Regents exams today, a delightful task that always gives me cause for a chuckle. I give myself 28 minutes for a packet of 15 essays; any remaining time is "fun" time.

Today I learned that faculty shouldn't give comprehensive final exams because they shouldn't expect students to know those things. I also learned that abortion isn't legal in some states and isn't constitutional. Finally, I discovered that African-American teens are expected to live on welfare.

One minute left--amazing how long 2 minutes can be! I think I'll grab a fresh cuppa joe.

. . .and we're back!

Not a post about the C's in sight, I see.

Returned last night around 9:30 p.m. to find that the ants had not colonized my kitchen as I'd feared. Breathed a sigh of relief, prepped my classes, and went to bed. Now, 24 hours later, I feel ready to at least acknowledge that which I attended.

So I chatted with UGA peeps (Lex and Bob and Scott, to name a few), met new peeps*, and did a good bit of listening.

* Matt, for one, who is a bit quick on the draw with the camera. To him I say: C & W is coming soon, and if I don't get you this time, I'll catch you when you're on my turf in 2008.

CCCC 2007

We arrived in NYC at 10:30 a.m. and headed to our hotel. Within an hour of checking in, we were on our way to the NY Hilton to get our conference goodies (mainly the 300+ page program books) and map out our subway route. Yes, I said subway; we aren't staying at the conference hotel because it's just too expensive AND I know of this lovely little boutique hotel on the Upper West Side that is tres cher...but not too cher...but I digress.

On the way down to the Hilton we chatted about lots of things, including the notion that we could easily pick out "conference participants" from other folks. This led to a discussion of the differences between, say, a roomful of Classics scholars and a roomful of Modernists (that wasn't the actual comparison, but I'm just tossing out an example). I would say that this ability to categorize a person based on their general demeanor/appearance is pretty darn interesting. If we do look the same, is it because we are in a particular cohort or because people like us are drawn to it?

I'm going to try to post about the sessions I see at the C's. There are quite a few of interest to me.

Validation?

In a fit of pique during this utterly unproductive Spring Break (in which I've stared endlessly at charts trying to make sense of them) I replied to a post on the WPA listserv. The conversation had turned, as it periodically does, to the matter of the rhet/comp--literature divide. When "writing" became the sub for "rhet/comp" but "literature" remained, I brought out my little soapbox.

Long term viability for English studies will come not when we jettison the literature enterprise, but when we recognize the multiplicity of activities that come under the banner of English studies. For the purposes of the above conversation, that means ending the verb--noun battle (writing vs. literature) and using the verb--verb connection--writing and reading.

Rhet/comp classes are to Literature classes what writing classes are to reading ones. Two peas in a snuggly language pod.

And the validation? Well, that came when folks started talking about the reading/writing connection in response to my post. Felt pretty good indeed.

Maybe there's a place for my dissertation after all.

How Many?

I've been having size anxiety regarding my dissertation. I suppose the question I want to be asking is "how long is too long?" I'm tortured, however, by the question, how long is long enough?

I don't like being thought of as one of those namby-pamby people who want to do the bare-ass minimum, so let me make myself clear--I'm not trying to get out of writing a thorough dissertation. I just don't want to find myself padding it to make it hit some arbitrary page count. I want it to have what it needs to have in it to make it a viable, interesting, contributory document.

In other words, I seem to think that I'm writing a document that people will want to read, instead of just accepting the fact that I'm writing a document that a few people have to read in order to say that I've completed the requirements for my degree. If it's interesting and capable of sustaining further inquiry, I suppose that's a pleasant side bonus.

Vexed, I am, but soldiering on.

Academics Will Study Anything

Society for the Study of Lost

I can now indulge in television with no guilt at all. This is contentment.

Race Obscures?

James Sherley has ended his hunger strike, with the hopes that MIT will continue to review his failed bid for tenure. I find it interesting that Dr. Sherley is an adult stem cell researcher who, according the article about the end of his strike, opposes embryonic research. This seems to me to be a much more provocative point of speculation about his tenure denial. I wonder whether it was his work, and not his race, that proved to be his downfall, and if so, what about it was untenurable?

Writing Spaces

Today I saw the writing promised land. To gain admittance I'll have to shed my PC citizenship and join the Mac world. One $35 piece of software has been enough to make me crave a Mac.

Scrivener is a writer's dream. When I looked at the first screenshot I was seduced. Here, in one window, was the writing desktop. A space for ideas. A place for notetaking. A birdseye view of the entire project. A place to actually write, surrounded by the visual cues that link you to the rest of your work. I wanted to weep.

I found some PC equivalents, but none that really made my heart sing like this one. I think it was the corkboard that really did it for me.

Mental Exhaustion

I just had an interesting, rambling discussion with a colleague regarding the future of English departments/studies. When we arrived at the inevitable and primary question, "What do we teach?," the divide between us was clearly outlined: I believe we teach "-ing's" and he believes we teach "-ion's." The conversation stalled at that point, and has left me in a very melancholy mood.

And then there was the disagreement about "-ic's," which I can only summarize as being closely related to the "-ing's" and "-ion's."

My brain hurts and I want ice cream.

A Little Bit of ?

It's not even that unspeakable; I speak it all the time, but only in select circles and only in certain moments. Since this little blog outpost is so remote, I think it will do.

Nothing reinforces my stupidity like writing this dissertation. Nothing produces more anxiety than letting other people see my work. Nothing makes me doubt myself more than awaiting feedback on my thinking and my writing.

I recognize that a dissertation is an exercise, that it is meant to demonstrate your readiness for the work of the life of the mind. It is a soul-sucking-baring-leveling activity that strips away all artifice. At the end of the day, all you are left with are your words on a page and the thoughts those words represent.

Sigh. I feel tiny today, but emboldened just a bit by typing. I don't want to be a self-idulgent little whiner. I just need, sometimes, to acknowledge that this is a tough process.

Good Thoughts

I've just started reading Anne of Green Gables. I feel the need to fill an alarming gap in my childhood reading. This thought will sustain me for some time:

"--when you are imagining you might as well imagine something worthwhile--"

The Joy and Beauty of Fluid Argumentation

The loftiness of this post's title points to the floaty feeling I get when I see a class make knowledge happen. Today my apprentice ran two "debates" in class--complete with rebuttals--that made my little teacher heart sing! The students used research packets they had constructed on Wednesday to support their arguments for or against propositions related to the driving age. Nothing really new there, I suppose. The joy and beauty came after the initial arguments were made.

Both teams taking the negative approach (arguing against the propositions) decided to make counter proposals that upped the ante higher. Sure, the second debate's effectiveness was lessened by the repetition of the approaches, but what was so fascinating to me was how quickly the students adapted to the changing landscape of the argument and how the quality of the argumentation and refutation developed over the course of the two debates. It was like watching a paper or two go through successive drafting processes right before my eyes.

I'm hoping that the fluidity of that experience will carry over to the next class, since we had no time to discuss the debates at the end. If we had to do it again, I'd videotape the experience and replay the tape in a subsequent class for further discussion. I'd forgotten how closely related speech and writing are; this class period reinforced that connection for me in some useful and productive ways.

Food for Thought

In his forward to Reconstructing the University (Frank and Gabler), John W. Meyer summarizes the authors's insight into the University as follows:

...the university is more about establishing the cultural or religious map of the cosmos and of human action and structure in this cosmos than about facilitating particular activities within this system. The university is more about creating and installing the frame for the demonic powers of "man" than about technically enabling the powers themselves. (xiii)

There are times when I read little truths like this one and I think, "yes, this is exactly what I would mean to say if I were trying to articulate this point." Meyer's summary perfectly captures this idea of the university and encapsulates the precise reason why, for example, we will never be able to fully "prepare" a student for any real-world work experience. His point about the creation of cosmologies and frameworks really resonates with me as well; what has our struggle been, after all, if not about changing mindsets and teaching students to think in certain precriptive ways (no matter how much we delude ourselves otherwise?)?

Food for thoughts and thinkings.

Alternatives to Race-Based Admissions

I've long wondered why universities needed to factor race into admissions policies at all. The public debate over race-based admissions indicates that the only way to get the student from a disavantaged background is to use their race as an indicator of said status.

Not so, according to this Chronicle piece. Researchers are working on a formula to identify "strivers," students from disadvantaged backgrounds who are working hard and may be worthy of the admissions risk. The plus? These students are likely to come from the very races admissions officers seek.

News

I knew there was a reason why I studied words, why I teach students to be aware of the ways the words in their words operate. Words, apparantly, are dangerous.

Software Being Developed to Monitor Opinions of the U.S.

Of course, stories like this one make teachers look pretty dangerous...of falling down.

Dude

Plagiarism

Sometimes blogs only contain one item, and the blogger becomes one lone voice with one lone purpose. This appears to be one of those items. I link it, however, because the one lone question, how do we deal with the new opportunities for plagiarism effectively, is worth chewing on for a while.

The Concerned Professor

Read the blog post. Then read the comments, the majority of which castigate the writer for being a "lazy" teacher or a whiner or a plant from the "Student of Fortune" website described. What is happening in this world?

A Computer in Every Lap?

I haven't even read this article and I feel compelled to post.

"Saying No To School Laptops"

I'm not a big fan of laptop initiatives, especially when it comes to primary and secondary education. My friends may find this funny, since my primary research interests and my livelihood are inextricably tied to the use of technology in the classroom. Let me explain.

I have yet to see a "killer app" for educational purposes, an application of technology that eclipses any of the more conventional methods of learning AND necessitates 24/7 access to a computer. Students don't need them to learn. Administrators, hardware and software manufacturers, parents, and teachers extol the values of increased access to technology, but I haven't heard or seen one compelling argument or piece of evidence that demonstrates a clear educational advantage.

Don't get me wrong: students need to learn to navigate technology to be employable in the current workforce. They should learn to do basic tasks on a computer. But that doesn't mean that the computer should be considered on par with the textbook, the notebook, the pen or pencil. It just means it should be available to them, in a lab setting, where they can practice.

What do laptop programs REALLY teach students? They teach them how to be good consumers of technology. When we start teaching students to master and create the technology, then I may reconsider my opinion.

I guess I should read that article now.