Journal

CCCC 2006: Day Three

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It’s been an oddly hard day. I feel so disconnected from the CCCC world. Maybe it’s just that all my work is K–12. Maybe it’s that I’ve not been here in so long. I dunno.

I went to a Computer Connection session during the I session time, primarily to hear what Bradley Dilger had to say about access issues. There were other presenters there as well, so I heard John Walter and Gina Merys’ presentation, “Developing a Local Digital Culture: A Grassroots Initiative,” which primarily explored the recommendations to help their university’s program meet graduate (and eventually undergraduate, by extension) needs for computer interaction, exploration, and pedagogical investigation. It seems to be a fairly complete proposal.

In discussion of various resources, wikis came up and John recommended schtuff.com as a free host site. During the workshop on Wednesday, someone suggested pbwiki.com. Maybe I can choose one and start investigating myself.

Bradley’s piece of the session was “Thirty Minutes to Better Web Accessibility.” Working off Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into Accessibility, Bradley’s 30-minute outline proposes “five ‘quick fixes’ for making your site accessible.” Easily the best overview of the issues I’ve heard. Though, okay, I admit that I haven’t run out to revise the accessibility of any of my sites. Surely I can put that off a few more days. I really wanted to consider a ReadWriteThink lesson plan based on his discussion, but the most obvious one that I could think of would have relied on a free screen reader, and such a thing doesn’t exist. I’ll have to think on it more to figure something out. I’m sure that we should have a lesson that explores these issues. It’s just a matter of figuring out what and how.

Next, I was off to Session J.11: What’s Queer about Writing Program Administration? New Research from the Field, with Will Banks, Martha Marinara, Jonathan Alexander, and Samantha Blackmon. Selfishly, I went to the session to see Will and Sam, but expecting to be bored out of my mind. I really don’t need info on WPA work. That’s just too far away from anything I’m doing now or likely to do anytime in the future. Happily, it turned out to be a great session. The group of them had done an analysis of FY comp readers, evaluating them for inclusion of explicitly queer material. The findings were probably predictable. GLBT folks aren’t identified in biographical notes. When their texts are included, they are frequently texts that do not focus on the queer issues for which they are known. And overall, the biggest relevant issue was a recurring gay marriage debate in the various argument sections. The findings were really quite in line with the various race, class, and gender analyses that I did of texts and syllabi in the late 80s and early 90s. You’d think things might progress, take a different path. You’d think we’d learn lessons and make things better; but everything seems to follow the same, tired, slow-paced progression.

I finished off the evening with the Fifth C SIG, which went well. Again, I’m just there as an ex officio observer, so I don’t actually have to do anything :) After that, I just wandered off back to my room, where I frittered about till 9:30 when the Rock and Roll Party started. I went down to the party for about an hour. Nothing like watching comp/rhet people dance.

I saw good people and some good sessions, but I hate this part where I’m alone—like dinner, waiting, parties. I’m so bad at everything social, and the end result seems to be that I’m alone by my own failure. Stupid me.

Journal

Windows: Color Cop

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Download of the Day: Color Cop – Lifehacker—cool tool that lets you sample nearly anything. Use the dropper to grab colors off the desktop, open browser windows, and many applications. It gives you both hex and rgb. It wouldn’t let me sample off a moving video, but it’s let me grab color from everything else that I’ve tried. Should save oodles of time and energy.

Journal

CCCC 2006: Day Two

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I had some crazy dreams during that sleepathon. I was in some crazy house, which I had apparently purchased, and my sister Holli was there helping me. The strangest thing was that the porch was pushing back into the house, somehow jamming into the building. After some investigation, Holli said that I could just push it back out and watch it so that it wouldn’t creep in again. It was as effortless as shoving a chair across the floor, which was odd given that I was shoving a huge concrete structure. There was a second floor on this house as well, which seemed to be filled with unusual furniture that had been draped and otherwise left unattended. Holli wanted to look through it, but she didn’t because, she said, Daddy had told her not to. There was some sort of bay doors off on to a porch with an enclosed glass chamber that looked very Victorian. I remember wanting to get out there, but not being able to because of all the furniture on that floor between where we were and the bay doors.

I have to say that I am fully and completely dumbfounded on what any of that means. A convention dream would have made so much more sense. How can I come to convention and have insane house dreams?

Anyway, I eventually got up and even dressed. I didn’t plan on the first sessions, cuz as anyone will tell you, I’m not a morning girl. I did do a run through the exhibit hall. Actually, it was fairly leisurely, but I foolishly had on my staff nametag so I was a little limited in what I could do. I did identify a couple of books that I was interested in, checked on the tech center, and the pubs booth, which is at the very back of the exhibit hall. Unfortunately, it’s set up in this way where it looks as if you’re already at the back of the room before you get there, and when you do round the corner on one side, you can’t see anyone because the cashier’s desk is behind a huge column. There was no one there at all when I went in yesterday, but I did see my Kit on display, which was marvelous fun. I’m betting they’ll have low sales though. The booth is really not very prominent.

After my exhibit hall tour, I was off to Session C.24: Picture This . . .: Visual Literacies from Zine to Virtual Responses:

The session wasn’t really all that aligned with things I need, but there were some interesting bits. One speaker, Scott Warnock, was using Camtasia to record comments on students’ papers. He mentioned a recent Time article that referred to the rambunctious young kida as GenN, and more interestingly “Screenagers.” He explained that “Technologies are being refined; and we’re gonna use them or they’re gonna use us.”

Speaker Jeffrey Maxson talked about “Ethos through Design,” connecting the style and design of riot grrrl sites and zines to intentional questioning of authority. He pointed to the establishment of street cred through their stylistic choices, such as ransom note text, cut-out lines of text, and so forth. Sex Pistols, punk design. What I found most interesting about the entire conversation was that it validated my belief about the entire “MySpace and slow death of the web” discussion on Techrhet. While people were lamenting the horror of students’ color choices and centered texts, I thought those choices might be establishing a communal style. Maxson’s talk would have been a great addition to the implications on the list that those crazy kids just don’t know better. He also shared an excellently fun site: http://www.disgruntledhousewife.com/, with what has to be my new fav new info, Meals Men Like. Now I’ll catch a man for sure.

After C.24, I wandered back to the Exhibit Hall, where I ran into John, Tari, and Bradley. Some brief chat, and then I had to run up to the room to eat something for lunch before I died of hunger.

I attended the 7Cs meeting at 4PM, to provide all the excitement that an ex officio person can. Actually, I think I mainly jumped on my age-old hobby horse. The conversation wandered into plans that sounded amazingly helpful only to tenure track and tenure-interested folks. Generally speaking, the meeting went very well. Especially well, I guess, since I don’t have to do anything. Being ex officio has its charms.

After the meeting, off to the Bedford/St. Martin’s party at the Field Museum. There was an incredible wait for the elevator, and I got to sit and chat with Harriet from the B/SM New Media group on the way over. Inside, I had water and some snacks, and I wandered around among dinosaurs. Sue, the T. Rex, looked mean, especially when I was standing in a line for water and she looked like she was coming right for me. I don’t think she was being very thoughtful.

After a while of wandering about the cavernous room and not finding anyone new to talk to, I decided to head back to the hotel. Serendipitously, I ended up walking out with Cheryl Ball and Moe with the MTU-snow injury. Cheryl insisted that I could tag along to a Kairos party, even though I really wasn’t part of the group. Because of Moe’s crutches, the bus folks loaded us into the first seats on a bus—and Cheryl and I took it upon ourselves to welcome everyone to bus individually. “Welcome to the bus!” :)

After the joyful bus ride, we walked to the Exchequer for the party. Had a nice time chatting with folks from various places. Got to see Joyce Walker and Eric Hayenga, and the end of a couple of basketball games before Tony Atkins kindly escorted me back to the hotel. All in all, a long, but interesting day.

Journal

Musings

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There is clearly something very pathetic about coming to CCCC and staying in my room, going to bed before 9, and then getting up at 12:30 am and watching DVDs while I write. My brain is clearly fried or pickled or full of stupid. Sometimes I’m such a doofus.

Personal Journal, Teaching with Digital Tools

CCCC 2006: Day One

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Ahh. Day one, and how do I spend it? Fiddling about for a while in my room. I didn’t go to a morning workshop, so there seemed no reason to rush. I did go downstairs to make myself a nametag and check on all my NCTE coworkers, to make sure that no one needed help. I decided to go ahead and lug my heavy laptop to the workshop so that I could take notes on the session. I was fortunate enough to get a seat near a plug, so I didn’t run out of battery power. The battery on this thing seems to only last about an hour :-/ Perhaps I should see if I can buy an extra battery for it, or maybe this is another excuse to get that baby Mac that I want.

There is no wireless in the meeting rooms so all I could do was take notes. No live blogging from CCCC it appears. Delayed blogging will have to do, so here goes:

I’ve broken in on an afternoon workshop, Fostering and Sustaining a Community  and Culture of Digital Writing, with Doug Eyman, Dànielle DeVoss, Joy  Durding, Angela Haas, Stephanie Sheffield, Martine Rife, and Suzanne Rumsey.  The room is relatively full of people, but I managed to get here early enough  to get one of the outlets in the room. The group has introduced themselves,  and Danielle even introduced the handouts and CD of resources (and an excellent parallel Web site with copies of the resources).

After a brief introduction, we’ve been set to work as a group to think about
quuestions sent to folks in advance–basically defining the genre of digital
writing and exploring the pedagogical and professional issues and goals involved.
Issues that came up include:

  • Lack of professional development
  • Challenge of working in a completely paper-based classroom and meeting
    students current literacy demands
  • How to build community and programs, at the beginning of the process
  • Conception of literacy in general, not just decoding words on a page
  • Distinguishing between technology as a media and technology as a mode of
    delivery
  • Goals: using tech because we can, or because students really need this
  • How does it shape community
  • Not just techne of it but also critical analysis
    of the media

There was lots of discussion of the term digital rhetoric, with one definition that focused on “anything you can transmit by the Internet”–an oddly limiting definition. Also focusing on word and image, none of the other modalities. Someone mentioned CAPTology (computer aided persuasive technology). Most visual assignments focus on image as argument/persuasion. Need to consider other modes of discourse.

Sharing of group goals for the workshop, and for exploration of digital rhetoric at home institutions. Importance of sharing, fact-finding. There was discussion of whether the word digital was necessary. If rhetoric is communication by any available means, isn’t the word rhetoric enough? And that exchange led to a crowd favorite question: “What is the opposite of digital rhetoric–analog rhetoric?”

Throughout the session, there were many video clips and Web site examples of
writing and pieces for students to discuss and explore. All were excellent,
but my favorite has to be the World of Warcraft video–”Grab  your dick, and double click for porn.”

There were a number of specific assignments described, and I didn’t begin to
get them all written down. Here are a few:

  • List the different digital communities  you belong to and think of the ways that you interact in those communities. An  idea that was somewhat a combination of things included in the ReadWriteThink  lesson Defining Literacy in a Digital World and Paying Attention to Technology: Writing Technology Autobiographies.
  • Focus on an exploration of the Variety of ways that we represent  themselves in those different communities, including analyzing current representations and creating creating new ones. Doug Eyman described a variation where students began by investigating themselves online. Another example was to have students create a profile for a group or organization that they belong to. Parts of the conversation overlapped with the ReadWriteThink lesson plan Naming in a Digital World: Creating a Safe Persona on the Internet.
  • Analyze various Web sites and then apply what you learned to designing your own Web site, an idea shared by Joy Durding, which she used with 9th graders. I rushed up to ask her to submit it to ReadWriteThink. She had the resources. She just needs to make it fit our format. And it’s definitely a lesson that we could use on the site.
  • In discussion, ask students to consider what you need to know to compose
    the various digital texts that they interact with. While mentioned as a simple
    point of discussion with students, the idea seemed like a possible lesson plan
    idea to me. It could be a sort of variation of Defining  Literacy in a Digital World, which really focuses on reading. What we need  is a parallel Composing Texts in a Digital World lesson plan that focuses on  the ways that people create these various texts. I’m thinking not of something  that teaches all composing skills so much as asking students to look at available  texts and analyze the composing skills behind the texts.
  • As discussion swirled, another lesson plan idea came to me, and since I had
    my laptop, I just began writing. I tentatively named the lesson Exploring
    the Digital Divide: A Social Action Project    . It seemed to me that perhaps an important  project was to ask students to do some actual exploration of the issues of
    access around them. The working overview that I came up with is “Students define
    issues of digital access and the resources necessary to take advantage of digital
    resources. With their definitions in hand, small groups complete an environmental
    scan of the digital resources available to them in a specific setting (e.g.,  the classroom, the school or local library, the workplace) and determine how
    they are effected by the digital divide in a local community. Inspired by this
    field research, group members propose and complete a social action project
    appropriate for their findings.” It may be too much, so I may end up focusing
    it more; but it’s a start and I think it could be a useful lesson plan.
  • Dànielle described a postcard assignment. She has students get postcards
    of the university and then analyze them: how does this represent the university?
    After exploring, they create their own postcards that represents how you
    feel about your school? Might be able to create a ReadWriteThink lesson plan
    that does similar things with postcards from their state or region, or they
    could use other documents on their location (e.g., pamphlets and resources
    from the chamber of commerce or visitor’s bureau). Another variation might
    be to ask students to look at historical postcards to determine what they can
    tell about the place and time as it is communicated in the text of the card.
    Juniors and seniors might get postcards from college visits and complete the
    assignment as Dànielle described it.