"No More Grocery Store Tomatoes: Using Homebrewed Content Management
Systems in the Writing Classroom." Michael Haynes and Marc
Pietrzykowski, Georgia State University.
“(Com)posers or Consumers? A Reconsideration of the
Impact of New Media Writing Technologies on Today’s Composition
Students.” Dr. Randall McClure, Minnesota State University, Mankato
"Online Work: Theories, Challenges, and
Perspectives." Pavel Zemliansky, James Madison University and Kirk St.
Amant, Texas Tech University
"From Management to Assessment, Reflection to
Representation –Exploring the Array of Digital Portfolios' Purposes,
Audiences, and Development." Troy Hicks, Michigan State
University, Red Cedar Writing Project, and Paige V. Baggett, College of
Education, Department of Leadership and Teacher Education, Mobile Bay
Writing Project.
"No More Grocery Store Tomatoes: Using Homebrewed Content Management
Systems in the Writing Classroom." Michael Haynes and Marc
Pietrzykowski, Georgia State University.
If evidence from journals and listservs such as TechRhet are any
indication, more and more RhetComp academics are becoming involved in
the building of information systems, whether building them from
scratch or adding to an existing CMS like Drupal, PHPNuke, or XOOPs.
In fact, composition-oriented content management systems built by
independent professors for classrooms have even become relatively
high-profile mainstream media items, with USA Today, C-Net, and Wired
all featuring articles in early 2005 regarding this trend, focusing on
one of the more successful "homebrewed" systems, Qualrus.
What we'd like to propose is a forum discussion of content
management systems made by Rhetoric and Composition professors. The
discussion would include topics ranging from practical coding issues
to the political aspects of dealing with administrations that want to
use proprietary software. The delivery system for this online panel
will be forum software that allows discussions on various aspects of
creating and using a CMS in an academic environment to take place over
the five days of the conference. We would like to host this discussion
on our own server while simultaneously mirroring the discussion on the
C&W site, so that participants can use either portal for entering the
discussion. Discussions will be prompted and spurred on by questions
we will present, but participants will be encouraged to start their
own threads on topics they are interested in.
Allowing participants to aid in defining the conversation is part
of a larger strategy. On our server, the discussions will take place
in a XOOPs-based CMS. All participants will be given administrative
rights to the site and will be invited to take a hands-on approach to
the site, allowing them to explore a CMS they might no be familiar
with as well as providing them with places to blog about their
experiences and link to their own software for feedback. These
discussion can then be mirrored using RSS feeds onto the C&W site, and
vice versa.
We hope our discussion will generate enough useful data to then
develop a web-based resource for other professors interested in
building their own information systems.
“(Com)posers or Consumers? A Reconsideration of the
Impact of New Media Writing Technologies on Today’s Composition
Students.” Dr. Randall McClure, Minnesota State University, Mankato
In their 2003 essay, "Under the Radar...," Danielle DeVoss, Joseph
Johansen, Cindy Selfe, and John Williams open with the following
question: "What understandings of "text" and "composing" will students
bring with them to the college classroom in this decade, especially
those students habituated to reading and composing new-media texts?"
(157). Now, it is easy for those teaching composition today to
comprehend the fact that most students are quite familiar and
comfortable with the reading of new-media texts. In teaching in
computer environments for nearly a decade, I have observed the steady
increase in student comfort level with reading such texts.
Unfortunately, students have yet to develop anywhere near the skills
needed for or interests in composing new-media texts, despite their
pervasiveness in their lives.
This paper presents the initial findings of a survey of more than
500 composition students’ new-media reading and composing practices.
One initial finding suggests that today’s students have become
primarily, if not exclusively, consumers of new-media texts. Further,
it is suggested that students composing with new-media are nothing
more than "(com)posers"--students using and reading new-media, but not
composing themselves with it, critically assessing it and its
influence on culture and literacy practices, or redefining their
notions of “text” or “composing” as Devoss et al imply. Much like the
"posers" in area skate parks and rock clubs, "com(posers)" have an
awareness and perhaps an interest in new-media, but they are far from
the cultural center of the technology, simply consuming it on a
superficial level.
Work Cited:
Devoss, Danielle Nicole, et al. “Under the Radar of Composition
Programs: Glimpsing the Future Through Case Studies of Literacy in
Electronic Contexts.” Composition Studies in the New Millennium:
Rereading the Past, Rewriting the Future. Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom, Donald A.
Daiker and Edward M. White. Carbondale, IL: SIUP, 2003. 157-173.
"Online Work: Theories, Challenges, and
Perspectives." Pavel Zemliansky, James Madison University and Kirk St.
Amant, Texas Tech University
Online communication technologies (OCTs) are continually changing
how we think about both the workplace and business interactions. The
ever-increasing availability and accessibility of online workplaces
technologies allows employees to perform many tasks outside of
traditional workplaces and timeframes. Perhaps one reason for this
shift is the advantages offered by virtual organizations - or groups
that interact solely through OCTs. Many organizations have reported
high levels of satisfaction related to virtual workplace models.
E-work not only changes workplace dynamics, but also appears to reduce
absenteeism, bolster employee loyalty, and increase employee
productivity.
Theorists and teachers of composition, rhetoric, and professional
communication who use computer technology need to be aware of these
trends as such awareness will help them better understand the
directions of professional applications of OCTs and to prepare their
students to understand and use these technologies in the professional
world. The proposed panel presentation will review the rise of e-work
to prominence, outline current issues and challenges and discuss some
practical implications the topic has for teaching and research. As
each presenter comes from a different discipline and takes a different
approach to OCTs, the overall panel presentation will provide
attendees with a more holistic perspective on OCT use as well as
present models and methods for using OCTs as a basis for collaborative
teaching within and across departments.
"Writing on the Computer: Craft or Knack?" Shaun Slattery, DePaul
University.
How one writes on the computer is highly idiosyncratic.
Operational-level choices, such as functionalities, quick-key
commands, and input devices, as well as higher-level choices such as
personal information management and software, are often the product of
highly-individualized experience. But these choices, made either made
strategically or as a result of habit, can affect how
computer-mediated writing is experienced and the resulting products in
significant ways. Richard Young (1980) summarizes classical
distinctions between purposeful strategy (craft) or mere habit
(knack), calling craft "the knowledge necessary for producing
preconceived results by conscious, directed action" and knack "habit
acquired through repeated experience" (p.56). Such a distinction is
important to teachers of writing.
This disjunct between the way in which a "knack" for
computer-mediated writing is learned and our pedagogical goals for
helping students become strategic and critical choosers and users of
digital technologies is problematic for the field. This presentation
will discuss findings from a recently completed study of the mediated
composing processes of a group of technical writers and their varying
awareness of their own processes. Data from this study - the shear
volume of software and texts and complex, rhetorical information
environments - speaks to the complexity of digital writing as it is
experienced in the workplace as well as the need to begin to study and
describe digital composing process in the hopes of teaching our
students conscious directed strategies for writing on the computer.
"From Management to Assessment, Reflection to
Representation – Exploring the Array of Digital Portfolios' Purposes,
Audiences, and Development." Troy Hicks, Michigan State
University, Red Cedar Writing Project, and Paige V. Baggett, College of
Education, Department of Leadership and Teacher Education, Mobile Bay
Writing Project.
Teachers are increasingly faced with the
aspiration and/or expectation of providing detailed evidence of
knowledge, skills, and abilities through digital portfolios. As
teachers represent themselves more and more in digital spaces, there
are personal and professional risks and benefits involved in the
process. An array of purposes, audiences, and development practices
will be considered as the varied representational modes of digital
portfolios are presented.
In particular, findings from a multi-year project
that questioned how and why teachers compose digital portfolios-as
well as their self-perceptions during that process-will are shared.
This project adopted an action research stance purposely, framing some
of the ethical and methodological reasons for choosing such an
approach as part of the transformational experience for the teachers
and the researcher. By questioning some of the common (and uncommon)
expectations that digital portfolios put on teachers, this discussion
will explore some of the assumptions embedded in the evaluation of
teachers through new media and implications for teacher preparation
programs. Additionally, as one of the institution-driven purposes of
providing valid and efficient ways to achieve evidence of meeting
standards, the digital portfolio as a management system that
facilitates data production for program evaluation will be
specifically discussed. In this case, the implications of the need for
the assessment results driving the tool selection and digital
portfolio development will be considered.
Overall, the intent of this e-forum is to
generate scholarly discussion initiated by the research, and
experiences, of two university faculty members using the digital
portfolio in varied forms, modes of development, and for diverse
purposes and audiences.
