Introduction

The intention behind this co-piloted project was to produce a collaboratively written “Digital Dictionary” for classroom teachers who want to incorporate technology into their writing classrooms, but who also find that the technology terminology can be daunting. This project began in Lanette Cadle’s Digital Rhetorics and Pedagogies course at Missouri State University in the spring of 2009 and was passed over to Elizabeth Monske’s Teaching with Technology course at Northern Michigan University in the spring of 2011.  This information will be available in a print and web version.

Together, the students in these classes compiled over one hundred terms from LOL to OSS and more.  The purpose of making this dictionary into a living version is to have readers contribute to it through written comments.  We hope that readers will question the terms listed as well as the terms not listed, because the natural fluidity of a living language means that by the time this information gets into print, some of these terms may change or fall out of use.  With that in mind, this web-version becomes even more important.

As for the upcoming print version, it is portable. It doesn’t need electricity as long as the sun is out. It also has a distribution system that has the advantage of time and tradition, meaning that this book will reach many through libraries that the website may not. In any case, the authors hope that you not only find this dictionary useful, but that you find it entertaining as well. Web culture practices are rife with humor (i.e. Rickrolling–see definition) and in writing our own definitions rather than compiling and citing definitions written by others, we hope to include that lightheartedness and in-group humor in this terminology with one important difference: this time everyone is in on the joke.