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Computers and Writing 2010 @ Purdue

Cheryl Ball sent out this preliminary announcement on the WPA list serve the other day.:

As chair of the CCCC Committee on Computers in Composition and Communication (7Cs), I am delighted to announce that Purdue University has been chosen to host the 2010 Computers and Writing onsite and online conferences. The theme of both conferences will be Virtual Worlds.

The online conference will be held May 6-13, 2010, in several technologies including Second Life.

The onsite conference will be held May 20-23, 2010, at Purdue University.

[RSA is the following weekend in Minneapolis, I believe.]

More information will be coming. In the meantime, congratulate our Boilermaker friends ;) and the 7Cs looks forward to seeing many of you at C&W 2009, hosted by UC-Davis, onsite next June.

I’m already getting excited!

(Even More) Watson 2008

I had the great pleasure of sitting in on a panel presentation given by Ehren Pflugfelder and Cristyn Elder from Purdue University on Plagiarism Pedagogy. Drawing on quite a bit of recent research on the subject of plagiarism as well as their own experiences addressing this issues as teachers, Pflugfelder and Elder walked us through some of the key features of a wonderful web resource they created for helping teachers more effectively teach studetns about plagiarism. There argument was basically that policies for dealing with plagiarism should not come from top down - university down to the classroom - but that they should be developed in the classroom context with students. In other words, the teaching of plagiarism should be part of the teaching of writing, and students should be involved in determining what would constitute plagiarism in their classroom context and what the consequences would be for committing this definitition of plagiarism.

The site offer some great, downloadable lesson plans and exercises for engaging students in this porcess. According to Pflugfelder and Elder, their site may soon become part of Purdue’s famous OWL. For now, though, you can access the site here.

Watson 2010 CFP

The good folks over at the University of Louisville have already posted a tentative CFP for the next Watson conference in 2010.  The theme will be “Working English in Rhetoric and Composition: Global-Local Contexts, Commitments, and Consequences.”  I think it looks pretty interesting, and I’m already thinking about potential presentation ideas.

Check it out here

(More) Watson 2008

Lev Manovich: Sporting bright green sneakers, Lev Manovich offered an intriguing new perspective for those interested in digital humanities or new media to consider.  He argued that while many in rhetoric, composition, communication, and cultural studies have studied the implications of technology for their disciplines, none have studied the “engine” of that technology: Software.

Manavich offers several compelling examples of how software - at some level - mediates almost everything we experience on a day-to-day basis.  Everything from Missiles to the food we eat to the environments we live in is influenced by software at some basic level.  He even claims that software is to the information society like the internal combustion engine was to the industrial society.

Toward the end of his talk, Manovich made some interesting connections to composition studies, claiming that we no longer have static, already there texts.  Rather we have immediate calculations, or “software performances.”  When we compose a document in Microsoft Word, for example, we actually using software to perform a new calculation with each keystroke.  The output we see and manipulate on the screen is the product of multiple and continuous calculations performed by the software in concert with our input as well as other software - like an operating system, for example.

Manovich argues that this offers us a new perspective to think about how we think about compose “texts” or even how we think about cultural work in general.  If software is now as expansive as all culture, how does that change the way that we think about, analyze, or value cultural experiences - like reading and writing?

Watson 2008

As many of you likely know, The Bi-Annual Thomas R. Watson Conference on Rhetoric and Writing was held in Louisville, Kentucky this past weekend (October 16-18).  Having been lucky enough to attend and present at the conference, I thought I would post a few highlights to the blog.  This will be the first of a few postings that provide a glimpse of some key conference moments.

Anne Wysocki: Beginning her talk with a video clip of animated Chicken McNuggets feeding from a tub of dipping sauce, and fish sticks swimming in a fish bowl, Wysocki asks her audience to consider a new relationship with “stuff.”  She argues that we have a reduced relationship with the stuff of our lives, which partly results in wasteful, disengaged consumption of stuff.  For example, we have cars, so we can go to work.  We go to work, so we can earn money to buy gas.  We need gas so we can go to work.  In other words, or relationships with stuff is trapped in a kind of closed circuit that isolates us and our stuff from a larger meaningful context.  

Wysocki moves from this discussion to the crafting of stuff, making an analogy between this craft and the craft of writing. Citing Philosophers from Socrates up through the ages, she explains that the craft of producing stuff should be valued beyond the goods that are produced. When we craft, we make decisions about how the stuff we work with will be shaped in order to work well in the world.  In making these decisions as we craft, we are situating our selves, our craft, and the object within the context of the world.  As such, when we craft we act on and influence the world, and we also learn something about ourselves and our roles in the world.

She concludes her talk by offering this understanding of craft as a way of thinking about and appreciating writing. Arguing that pages of writing are designed to encourage readers to lose sight of them as they focus on the abstract ideas, Wysocki argues that considering the craft of writing keeps the ideas from becoming disembodied. By thinking about the craft of writing, and the crafters behind writing, we sustain the link between the ideas and the body that produced those ideas.  When we put bodies back into writing, the page resonates with the body.  For example, in graphic design we know that angles invoke a sense of movement from viewers because it resonates with their bodies’ sense of falling.  A page of writing can function in similar ways, and, according to Wysocki, which could potentially to think about and discover unique ways of using the page to connect the author and the audience.

Electronic Commenting Tools

It seems like more and more of us are moving toward electronic commenting methods for providing feedback on student writing.  Having recently transitioned to electronic commenting myself, I can honestly say that it has definitely been a positive experience.  My comments tend to be more thorough and completely formed, and the process of exchanging and keeping track of student documents is much more efficient - not to mention environmentally conscious.

So far, I have been relying on the native MS Word commenting feature, which seems to work pretty well.  It allows me to make comments on student writing without actually interrupting the writing, and it seems to be going over pretty well with my students.  

However, I recently stumbled upon a useful piece of add-on software for MS Word called Annotate.  Essentially, it allows users create pre-written comments, organize them by category, insert them effortlessly, and tailor them easily to individual student needs.  It even allows users to easily provide links to online resources like Purdue’s OWL.

The one catch is that it is not available for the latest version of MS Word for Mac (2008).  Because Microsoft decided not to support Visual Basic for its latest version of Office for Macs - to the frustration of many - it doesn’t support many of the automated features that are available for the Windows version (2007).  Additionally, many of the software add-ons like Annotate are built with Visual Basic, so Mac users are out of luck in this regard for now it seems.

However, there are some glimpses of hope.  One work around, of course, would be to work with one of the many Window’s emulating programs now available for Macs.  This would allow users to run the Windows version of MS Word, which would be compatible with Annotate and other add-ons and functionalities.  Moreover, Craig Eisler, the General Manager of the Mac Business Unit for Microsoft, has recently indicatedthat the next version of MS Office for Mac will support Visual Basic.

Fall 2008: Introduction to Reading Games: Composition, Literacy, and Video Gaming

Guest Editors Richard Colby and Rebekah Schulz Colby of the University of Denver present us with several revealing web texts outlining the intersections of literacy and gaming,  This issue of Computers and Composition Online addresses the role that popular online gaming environments like those provided in World of War Craft or Second LIfe can have in terms of studying and teaching rhetoric and writing.  

What kinds of rhetorical gestures does one practice when forming and maintaining a guild in World of War Craft?  What kinds of composing practices do the citizens of Second Life participate in as they craft identities for themselves in a virtual world?  How can the “playful” nature associated with gaming translate into effective writing practices?

I invite visitors to consider these questions as you read the several web texts of this latest edition of Computers and Composition Online.  Please consider this blog your writing space for “playing” around with any thoughts or questions you might have relating to the implications of gaming on the study or teaching of rhetoric and composition.

Joe Erickson
Blog Editor 

 

Welcome Note

Computers and Composition Online is the refereed online companion journal to Computers and Composition: An International Journal, now in its 24th year and currently published by Elsevier. Our goal is to be a significant online resource for scholar-teachers interested in the impact of new and emerging media upon the teaching of language and literacy in both virtual and face-to-face forums. As part of this goal, we wish to foster a sense of community and collegial sharing of ideas by providing an online space where select features, announcements, and community resources work together to promote a virtual exchange for the latest and best work in the field.