CandCBlog

Deadline Extended to 5 March, 2010.  Don’t miss this great opportunity to contribute to an important scholarly discussion.

As shown in the Fall 2009 Computers and Composition Online special issue on Web 2.0, open source projects are a significant part of social media, especially media intended for education. Although some of Web 2.0 is open source, that overlap barely begins to cover the purpose, practice, and priorities that comprise open source in academia, especially for those who teach and research in composition studies. This special issue invites submissions centering on open source as it connects to writing and the teaching of writing.

Even now, five years since Computers and Composition Online published Laurie Taylor and Brendan Riley’s Open Source and Academia (Spring 2004), the open source movement grows in importance while at the same time remaining an under-the-radar stance, despite the significant inroads open source has made into writing pedagogy. At the heart of this lack of transparency is definition. What is or isn’t open source remains slippery. Scholars may see open source in academia as primarily an intellectual property issue and advocate Creative Commons use and more openness in scholarly publication. Others may see it as a software accessibility issue and support alternatives to proprietary software used in teaching, i.e., using Moodle instead of Blackboard or Open Office over Microsoft Word. Still others look to the rhetoric beneath the stance and and see open source as a continuation of the fundamental idea of academic freedom: in order to have freedom of expression, academics need to also control the ways their works are expressed, not outsource intellectual work to for-profit corporations that usually have different agendas than academics.

In this special issue of Computers and Composition Online, editors Lanette Cadle and Kristine Blair with guest editor Joe Erickson ask for webtexts that investigate the purpose, practice, or priorities needed for an open source  connection with writing theory or pedagogy. For the purposes of this issue, we will be using the most inclusive definition of open source possible and will consider, especially in the Virtual Classroom section, webtexts depicting assignments using free software that may not be purely open source, such as Google Wave, which is part of Google, but has opened the code for independent developers to use. Here are a few suggestions divided by sections:

Theory into Practice

This is where purpose will be examined, a place to ask—and answer—the why questions.

• Open source and academic freedom
• Defining open source
• An answer to the question, why would anyone give away software/code (why non-proprietary exists)
• Copyright, copyleft, or no copy: when copyright limits academic accessibility

• Collaborative programming as composition
• When is free truly free? The dilemma of free yet proprietary software

Virtual Classroom

Clearly, this is where case studies or how-to webtexts based on classroom practice will fit.

• Using an open source CMS (content management system)
• English Education majors and open source use
• When the classroom default is open source (Open Office vs. Microsoft Word, etc.)
• Assignments using FOSS (free OR open source software)

Professional Development

Open source is a huge issue for those interested in the larger issues of publication, ownership, and collaboration. Setting priorities and advocating priorities, including calls for action, would be a good fit here.

• Why are there no open source plagiarism detectors? Open source as a measure of usability in education.
• The open source university. What happens when a university consciously prefers open source

Reviews

Although book reviews are always welcome, this issue will be a very good place for software reviews. For examples of how this has been done in the past, see the Web 2.0 issue reviews of Open Office and Moodle. Suggested reviews include DrupalEd,  Sakai, Google Wave (highlight open source aspects of this project), Gimp, Zotero or any other software or social media that is open source (not proprietary) would be welcome. Please send a query.

Queries and submissions should be sent to Lanette Cadle at lanette.cadle@gmail.com, Kristine Blair at  kblair@bgnet.bgsu.eduor Joe Erickson at jericks8@gmail.com. Webtexts only—no word processor documents. Also, webtexts need to be produced using web authoring software such as Dreamweaver or Frontpage rather than created on a site such as Google Sites. Submissions need to be received by Friday, February 5, 2010 in order to allow time for peer review. Revisions due by Friday, May 7,  2010.

Wix is a really cool, free, and easy to use tool for creating Adobe Flash based websites.  It’s as easy to use as a Blogger account, and there is no coding of any kind required.  For as easy as it is to use, it is a pretty robust tool that could potentially empower and enable novice web designers (students) to create some  pretty sophisticated websites. Worth a look for anyone teaching any kind of course with a digital media component:

http://www.wix.com/

The JUMP: The Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects is an online journal focused solely on publishing multimedia projects produced by undergraduates.  I think this is such a great idea considering ho much work is produced by undergraduates in various writing programs around the country every semester.  A journal like this can not only inspire ideas that will help spur creativity among burgeoning undergraduate new media writers, but it also provides a place to share and validate their work.  For anyone who teaches new media writing courses to undergraduates, this could be a great resource to introduce to your students.  Check it out.

ust found this.  Sounds like it would be a great opportunity for those interested in video gaming and composition.

Rhetoric/Composition/Play: How Electronic Games Mediate Composition Theory and Practice (and Vice Versa)

Computer and video games continue to inundate the entertainment market, and culture along with it. Traditional text games, adventure games, first-person shooters, the immersive worlds of role-playing games (massively multiplayer or otherwise), simulations, “casual” games such as solitaire, and even web advertisements posing as games have formed a landscape rich with opportunities to examine composition-rhetoric’s history, theory, pedagogy, and practice, where scholars can use, examine, and imagine the impact of games and gaming on writing.

Writing and rhetoric permeate games and game communities, and as a recent Pew study found, the civic engagement of gamers is greater than that of non-gamers, with higher instances of players considering moral and ethical issues as well as social responsibility — and in many cases, communicating with others about these issues. Engaged writing is also connected to the way gamers learn the complicated strategies, tactics, and rhetorics within game worlds, while games are increasingly used as tools to teach writing.

Rhetoric/Composition/Play will be an edited collection designed for scholars new to computer/video games as well as those who are more expertly versed. The book will consist of academic essays that assess, theorize, and contextualize computer/video games vis-a-vis composition-rhetoric. We invite 900-1200-word proposals for this proposed collection.

Specifically, we invite proposals that investigate the following (although the lists are not exhaustive):

1) Rhetorical theory and computer/video games (Theory: Rhetorical/Critical/Ideological/Cultural)

• How do various rhetorical theories intersect with game and play theories?
• How does playing games foster rhetorical readings of gaming spaces for the gamer?
• How does playing games necessitate certain rhetorical strategies and practices within game worlds and/or communities?
• What kinds of rhetorical agents and/or agency does playing games construct?
• How do other theoretical and critical approaches intersect with game and play theories?
• How do rhetorical, critical,ideological, and cultural approaches help us better understand the impact of games in literacy practices?
• What roles do games play as objects of production/ consumption?
• What are other assessments and critiques of the intersections between rhetorical and critical theory and computer/video games?

2) Composition and computer/video games (Practice: Writing/Learning/Playing)

• How and to what extent are processes of gaming, playing, and writing similar or divergent?
• How do game design and writing as design overlap?
• What are other assessments and critiques of the connections between writing and computer/video games?

3) Writing pedagogy and computer/video games (Praxis: Pedagogy/Composition/Gaming)

• How can electronic games help us reconceptualize classroom spaces?
• How can gaming worlds become pedagogical spaces?
• How can electronic games inform traditional writing practice?
• How can electronic games inform a critical, cultural pedagogy that facilitates students’ critical reading and rewriting of game spaces?
• What are other examinations of pedagogies that use electronic games to teach rhetorical and/or writing concepts and practices?
• What are some critiques, examinations, historicizations of current pedagogical trajectories of using off-the-shelf games, serious games, games-for-learning, and simulation in the writing classroom?
• What are the pedagogical differences between teaching with a game designed specifically for pedagogical purposes and teaching with a game designed originally for entertainment?

Send 900-1200-word proposals with brief author bio (with university affiliation) via email to Matthew S. S. Johnson (email: matjohn at siue dot edu) AND Richard & Rebekah Colby (email: rshultzc at du dot edu). Deadline for proposals is 15 January 2010. Final manuscript length will be approximately 15-35 pages (standard,double-spaced). Queries welcome.

Sophie is a digital authoring tool that enables authors to develop large projects for publication in digitally rich, networked environments.  It’s already receiving some pretty good reception on the journalism scene, and some academics seem to be warming up to it as well.  This isn’t a website authoring tool; it’s more of a digital book authoring tool, but even that designation doesn’t quite do the tool justice.  It’s new and interesting, and I think it has the potential to have a pretty significant impact on digital academic publishing, especially for recent ventures like the Computers and Composition Digital Press, which seeks to publish book length projects suitable for digital publication.

Clair Lutkewitte of Ball State University seeks papers for an under contract edited collection addressing the following:

Writing instructors who teach online or in networked classrooms are embracing highly collaborative Web 2.0 applications in their writing pedagogy. This essay collection, under contract with Fountainhead Press in the X Series for Professional Development, seeks to provide writing instructors with examples of writing classroom pedagogy that has creatively and effectively used new Web 2.0 applications in composition courses (such as FYC, Research Writing, Basic Writing, Argumentative Writing,and so forth). Accepted essays will blend theory and practice, explaining why particular Web 2.0 applications can be helpful to students as they create their texts and providing advice to teachers on overcoming challenges when working with particular Web 2.0 applications.

The essays should 1) provide examples of assignments that use particular Web 2.0 applications (whether one at a time or in conjunction with one another), 2) include a theory-driven explanation of how and when these applications fit into the course and semester, 3) incorporate examples of student work that demonstrate the usefulness of the Web 2.0 applications, and 4) speculate about the types of infrastructures and resources needed in order to teach with Web 2.0 applications.

I invite manuscripts from writing instructors who can address the goals above and who are interested in sharing their pedagogy with teaching assistants, new teachers, or those teachers new to Web 2.0 technology. Manuscripts should be sent to Claire Lutkewitte via email (.doc or .rtf format) by December 30, 2009. My email address is celutkewitte@bsu.edu.

Please refer to the Fountainhead X Series style guide at http://
www.fountainheadpress.com/english/XSeries_Style_Guide.pdf
for specific requirements, especially noting the requirements for
permissions to use student work.

Here are a few examples of the Web 2.0 applications
and usages that essays could emphasize:
• Blogs open to the public.
• Photo sharing applications, such as Flickr
and Photobucket.
• Video sharing applications, such as You-
Tube and stashSpace.com.
• Social Networking applications, such as
Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace.
• Google applications, such as Google Docs
and Google Notebook.
• Wiki applications for creating/revising
course curriculum and sharing pedagogy or
for having students write collaboratively,
do peer review, brainstorm topics, and keep
track of deadlines.
• Folksonomies, such as del.icio.us, for social
bookmarking and tagging.
• Web authoring applications, such as Weebly,
to help students create digital portfolios.
• Data Mashups, such as Flickrvision, to
assist students in combining data in useful
ways.

The New York Times is running an interesting story on an emerging hybrid genre in fiction, what they refer to as “Vooks,” or Video Books.  One publisher, Simon & Schuster, is introducing short video clips into electronic novels.  Apparently, the videos mostly add depth to the textual plot points, but in some cases they actually advance the plot.  According to the article, this experimental genre is a response to growing interests in e-readers, and an acknowledgement of diminishing interests in purely textual fiction.

As a person deeply fascinated with the potentials of new media for crafting both fiction and non-fiction, I think this is a promising development.  Check it out here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/books/01book.html?_r=2&hp

Clive Thompson of Wired.com has an article on “New Literacies” in which he cites Andrea Lunsford.  Lunsford has collected a ton of writing samples from students at Stanford between the years of 2001 and 2006, including school assignments, blog postings, chat sessions, and many other formal and informal types of writing.  After looking over her data, Lunsford, argues the following:

“I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization”

Thompson offers Lunsford’s remarks as part of his response to the typical doom-and-gloom conversations about how technology has supposedly reduced writing to a state of impoverishment.

A short, but utterly relevant and insightful article -