In case you're wondering

I've moved some stuff, specifically my "Online Utilities and Courseware Test Page" stuff, to a Wiki. I'm hoping someone will want to help me organize and test out stuff, so, if you're interested, let me know! I THINK it's all at http://mywabbit.pbwiki.com/, but if that doesn't work, well, then, your guess is as good as mine! Oh, yeah, and there is a long list of stuff that still needs to be added. See http://mywabbit.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_archive.html for more.

Final Thoughts from 2008 NCTE in San Antonio, TX

We finished the Executive Committee at NCTE a bit early (Thanks to Cheryl Glenn for keeping us on our toes!)., so Michael Day and I decided to take a boat ride down the river. As I was waiting for him in the lobby of the Marriott RiverCenter (remember, this is San Antonio—TEXAS for Pete's sake!), someone walks by wearing a t-shirt that says:

1/20/09: The end of an error!

Hmmm, sounds like a "bush-ism" to me!

Anyway, it was a beautiful day for sightseeing and listening to our narrator/boat-driver/steersperson (whatever you call him) in an almost surrealistic/Disney-esque ride. Michael got some GREAT pics (I'll just post one here. If you want more, well, you'll have to ask my twin!).

Then, after a bit of shopping at the River Center Mall (where we all kept running into each other!), I joined Michael, Mike Palmquist and Carolyn Handa for dinner. The guacamole was made to order right at our table! And I decided to enjoy my first ever mojito. Hey, good friends, good conversation, good eats (and drinks). What can I say??

The next morning it was back to the real world. On the way to the "real world," however, I noticed one of the flight attendants who—I SWEAR this is true—was a Sarah Palin look-alike! (Or maybe it WAS Sarah Palin? After all, since she can't be president…). Anyway, I had a very scary thought: is her hairdo and "look" now "in" with republican women? I'm old enough to remember the Kennedy era, when women throughout the country began sporting Jackie's hairdo and style of dress. And of course Hilary Clinton has made pantsuit-wearing an art. So… Eeek.

Well, my students are waiting for their final exam, so I guess it's time to get to work. Until next time….

More Notes from NCTE 2008

Hmmm, my twin, Michael Day, and I must make quite a pair. Someone at the conference likened us to the character "Day Walker" from the movie Blade. Ok, so now I have to admit I have never seen the movie, but I think I need to see it now so I will know whether this "likening" is, well, something I like or not!

While Blade didn't win any awards from NCTE, President George W. Bush most certainly did! He won the 2008 "Double Speak" Award for (are you ready?): "aspirational goal." Go, Bush!

Oh, yeah, and Paul Matsuda, editor of Research in the Teaching of English, told the group that they needed submissions. So, if you're considering where to send your work for publication, don't forget this very important journal! (Hmmm, ok, so I need to get my LILAC paper in order and submit it!!).

The Executive Committee Retreat began at 1pm Sunday, led by none other than our own Chuck Bazerman. For strategic planning, he said, we need to identify issues we (may?) be able to make headway on in the current climate (political, professional, economic, personal).

We spent about 30 minutes (or so) on the first question: What are longstanding or emergent concerns of our organization (or subgroups thereof)? What needs need to be met?

My group (Group #3) came up with the following list of concerns (in no particular order):

• Technology for presenters/attendees at conferences should be assumed
  
• Assessment and accredition: "outcomes-based" decision making
  
• Mandates for such things as dual enrollment/credit, e.g., high school-to-college
  
• Research, research, research! We need research on just about everything, especially longitudinal studies on assessment, etc. Of course, we also need funding for such studies…
  
• Internationalization—pressure to internationalize, but often without sufficient knowledge and greater awareness/change to writing programs in this country as well as directing writing programs in other countries.
  
• Public discourse—what place does it have in our classrooms and in our lives and in our scholarship and beyond?
  

So, other groups composed their lists as well, and we used GIANT sticky notes to list them all on the walls of the room. Here are some of the lists from other groups:

Group #1

1. Economics
   
   1. Equity – space, technology
      
   2. dual credit/enrollment
      
   3. adjunct and hiring issues
      
   4. course load/workload issues
      
2. Defining the field
   
   1. basic writing "issue"
      
   2. defining first year course
      
   3. under siege (for instance, dual credit enrollment)
      
   4. how to make ourselves relevant (avoid business model)
      
   5. authority issues
      
   6. globalization/internationalization
      
   7. building our credibility as a field.
      
3. access
   
   1. Tuition
      
   2. access to higher education
      

Group #2

1. Conditions are eroding
   
   1. Adjuncts
      
   2. "Master" core syllabi (standardization of courses)
      
   3. Raising course caps
      
   4. We need research (longitudinal studies) to convince the "powers that be" to do X (public discourse)
      
2. Dual enrollment issues
   
   1. Integrity
      
   2. Research
      
   3. Etc.
      
3. Conferencing strategies to meet the needs of younger or "poorer" or whatever members
   
   1. Equitable professional development for all (not just for those who can afford to come to our annual conferences)
      

Group #4

1. Relationship between comp/rhet and English as a language
   
   1. Mono-linguistic assumptions
      
   2. Where is comp/rhet located?
      
      1. Organizational chart
         
         1. Contingenet/adjunct labor
            
2. Working conditions
   
   1. Adjunct faculty
      
   2. Workload issues
      
   3. (Research – impact on student learning?)
      
3. Assessment/accreditation
   
   1. Teacher preparation
      
   2. Second language learners
      
   3. Dual credit
      

Everyone there pretty much agreed that we need to do a better job representing "us" to the public. PR – public (mis)perception(s). Makes this a good time for:

1. Research: because of mandates that affect US: our teaching, our courses, our field. Era of outcomes-based decision making. Public climate that (may) be willing to engage in rational conversations? Public funding for research?
   
2. Conferencing, professional development, access, etc.: Economic situation; "green"; ubiquitous technology (the technology is here NOW to make it happen)
   
3. 2^nd language issues
   
4. Globalization: 3 and 4 go together. Because of the global nature of our population and the internationalization of business, we need to be more concerned and better prepared.
   
5. The first-year course as a "sub-prime mortgage" idea – d ual credit/enrollment/AP score exemptions; adjunct faculty reliance; class size; workloads; freezes on new hires; research on effectiveness, definition, etc.
   
6. PR – why NOW?
   

 

NCTE will be sponsoring The National Day on Writing, October 20, 2009 (see http://www.ncte.org/action/dayonwriting for more information!). NCTE will host 21^st century literacies, local as well as national spaces.

 

[Don't ask me why I thought of this as we were discussing the Day on Writing, but it's in my notes: I thought about doing a "how to write a FaceBook profile" project with my 1101 class in the Fall 2009 – the next time I'll be teaching first-semester comp. I could invite my students to pick a theme/topic and write about it. For instance:

 

    ENGL 1101 Fall 2009

    How to Write a FaceBook Profile

• Technological how-to
  
• What kinds of things to include/exclude. Why?
  
• How to attract…? (what does your profile say about you?)
  
• Lots more things to think about here!]
  

Anyway, that was all I wrote down about the retreat, but it was a lively afternoon!!

 

NCTE Sunday General Session, November 23, 2008

Kathleen Yancey, Presidential Address "The Impulse to Compose and the Age of Composition: Four Quartets"

From the Declaration of Independence drafted by "thirteen white men" to the election of Barack Obama (and his many writings from books to text messages) "by a landslide," writing is an important part of the political landscape, as Yancey makes eminently clear. Yancey used a split screen for her presentation, and I couldn't help but notice that the Declaration of the Independence was on the screen to the audience's left, while Obama was on the screen to the audience's right. (I actually mentioned this to her after the presentation, suggesting that perhaps many of us would think this was a reversal of the "proper" order! She responded that she always found it interesting to consider the multiple ways the audience "reads" these kinds of things; while she was presenting it as chronological, some of us were intent on "reading" it as political. Heh.)

At any rate, Yancey presented the forecast of English composition as a social problem: "We are literacy educators," she asserted in four quartets:

1. An impulse to write, tested
   
2. An impulse to write, scaled and experienced
   
3. An impulse to write, processed, and
   
4. An impulse to write, electrified, networked
   

In Quartet 1, then, she discussed the history of "writing," from an emphasis on teaching children penmanship, with the focus on children as readers and listeners. As Deborah Brandt notes, writing was labor intensive (messy ink smudges, penmanship, manual typewriters that took LOTS of muscle to pound).

Citing Mark Richardson's recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i11/11a04701.htm if you have an account), Yancey discussed the old Harvard writing exams and the birth of our current writing curriculum, which was note even based on anything to do with writing per se, but instead of ensuring that students could discuss literature in a "paper."

Thus we come to Quartet 2 (okay, okay, I'm leaving out so MUCH good stuff, but these are notes, for goodness' sake!). Science and progressivism reared their heads and "writing became a phenomenon to be measured," beginning, says Yancey, in 1909 with measuring ratings of, what else—handwriting! At any rate, the tests "tested pupils, but they also tested teachers." (Sound familiar??). In 1935, NCTE developed a proposed curriculum, and there was something about a "Report: Testing Unfair, Unwise" by Robert C. Small, Jr., Assoc. Press. (Okay, these are ROUGH notes. Whaddya want? You should have been there in person to hear Yancey speak for yourself!)

The 1930s-40s saw the influence of science and the absence of theory in composition. "Teaching behavior and responsibility through composition" rather than creativity and critical thinking. Hmmm, this reminds me of the many, many, many texts that were used in my old typing class in high school (as well as the many typing tests that were administered to job applicants) WAY back in the 60s and 70s) that didn't just provide text for typing practice/testing, but that actually were about writing business letters or business etiquette or other "professional" practices in the work place.

In response, of course, we later began to see research in the field (for instance, research into composing processes leading to the process movement, NCTE's statement on student's use of language in 1974, etc. And of course, portfolios…. (now genre, activity theory, situated learning).

So, what was left? Teacher as examiner—a model still in effect today.

Transformative: personal computer (even before the Internet) as desktop publishing can inspire creativity, visual composing, etc.

So, Kathleen Yancey included "Beebo" in her list. I was seated next to Michael Day and neither of us had ever heard of this term, so I looked it up in Wikipedia:

Bebo is a popular social networking website, founded in January 2005. It can be used in many countries including Ireland, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia. A Polish version was launched recently, which uses a different user database. There are plans for French, German and other versions. Founded by husband and wife Michael and Xochi Birch, Bebo had a major relaunch in July 2005.^]

It was bought by AOL on March 13, 2008 for $850 m (£417 m).

"Bebo" is an acronym for "Blog early, blog often".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebo

So, now we've come to Quartet 4: Enter digital technology and Web 2.0 – and writers are everywhere. Students are sharing; they are both creators and recipients for news. We have what Deborah Brandt terms "self-sponsored writing" and what Kathleen Yancey terms the "Age of Composition." A new era – digital technology.

Yancey makes it clear that students now want to have at least some control over their learning: she tells the story of the AP exams where students used social networking sites to join forces (over 30,000 strong) to write "This is Sparta!" (crossed out so it wouldn't count against them) somewhere in their AP exams! Posted to Wikipedia (but removed about a month later), this story deftly illustrates the power of social networking (among other things!). So, asks Yancey, "How can we build on" students' knowledge of composing in a digital, connected era? Web 2.0 allows for "communication, conversation, connecting, and community," she says (is this, I wonder, a possible new meaning for CCCC?).

"Today," says Yancey, "if you're writing at the screen, you're writing on the network." Noone is writing alone anymore. "Through writing, we are." This brings us, then, to

 

"A New Agenda, A New Composition" – a new kind of citizenship – with

1. New models of composing and composition (apart from testing!)
   
2. New audiences
   
3. New definitions of "writing" (is it a verb or a noun?)
   
4. And new models for teaching (heh, she used a "wordle" for her slide!)
   

In conclusion, she stressed, "We need to become serious about helping students become (citizen) writers instead of good test takers." Amen (or is it "ah women?") to that!

YouTube and Turkeys

It's that time of year, when people start talking turkey. Well, some of us do anyway, especially when our minds turn to food. So, I'm talking with a friend about plans for Thanksgiving dinners past, present, and future (it was almost lunch time, and we were hungry!), and she tells me that turkeys are actually very stupid birds.

"They are so stupid," she says, "that they stand out in the rain with their heads up and almost drown!"

"Heh," sez I. "I wonder what would happen if you crossed a turkey with its head up in the rain with an ostrich with its head in the sand."

Her reply? "A really cool YouTube video!"

Day Last at the 2008 Georgia Conference on Information Literacy

The day began with a keynote address by Dr. Carol Simpson of the School of Library and Information Sciences at the University of North Texas. In her address, entitled "Can You? Should You," sponsored in part by Linworth Publishing, she discussed the "current fair use climate and the raging battle between those who think educators should force educational fair use to the wall, and their oppornents who advocate a more conservative approach." While she didn't present anything new for those of us who have been following IP issues (albeit, in my case anyway, marginally), nonetheless much of the information she presented was new to many in her audience. Her presentation was clear and well put together, using humor in the right places and in the right proportions. I especially like her use of the David Pogue video on RIAA at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF7cHmyEJ-c.

I also attended Panel 35, beginning with "Just Google It: Bringing Students' Information Literacy to the Composition Classroom" by Susanna Coleman. I thought she had a very interesting spin, using text messaging skills to help students figure out keywords for Google and/or library database searches (so long as the students learn to spell the words out instead of "txt-ing" them!). She also showed a comparison of Google Advanced Search screen with an Ebsco database search screen, arguing that we can help students learn to navigate the admittedly complex world of scholarly databases by helping them see how it is similar to what they already know. Unfortunately, of course, in my experience few students use the advanced search feature in Google….

Thomas Ferstle next presented "Information Literacy the WIKI Way," in which he likened WIKIs to participatory, democratic (and fun?) forums, arguing that such forums enhance students' writing to each other and therefore tends to be "better" than students writing just for the teacher.

The panel ended with "Blogging, Information Literacy, and the College Classroom" by Catherine Ramsdell. She discussed how blogs have gone from early beginnings (c. 2000?) to mainstream in 2008. Students are excited about writing, she says, especially when they get comments from real readers.

Wow, there's SOOOOO much more I could have said about the great presentations and the wonderful people at this conference. But then, people might think I'm a bit biased since I'm one of the conference's organizers….

Ah, well, maybe those people will just have to come and see for themselves!

Georgia Conference on Information Literacy

Savannah, GA, September 25-26, 2009

Or, as they say in this neck of the woods,

"Y'all come!"

More Good Stuff from the 2008 Georgia Conference on Information Literacy

Panel 19

Lars Soderlund's presentation, Access and Competition: Profile of a Digital Information Literacy Business" was particularly interesting, I thought. Not only was his content interesting – an "information literacy contest," actually a business that learns from its contestants how people learn information literacy skills—but his presentation took the shape of an audio file. Why do I think playing an audio file to a live audience at a conference interesting? Well, maybe because there was a live person (Lars) sitting at the front table while it played so that, when it was done, he could answer questions. Ah, technology. How will "conferences" look in 10 years? Or will they all be virtual?

Amy England presented "Confessions of a Neo-Luddite, or How Changes in Access Have Changed my Attitudes toward Technology," which I thought was a definite turn-around from Lars' presentation. Only it wasn't really anti-technology, of course. Amy's discussion of access, however, was an appropriate foil. That is, access, she argued, is still not a "given." As a result, she continued, there is increased reluctance to use any but the most basic IT. The investment necessary to use IT is not just in dollars, as she so rightly pointed out, but in time and frustration as well. Is it worth it? (Well, to me, of course it is, though I have to admit that, given the frustrations of workload and time, sometimes I find myself backing off from learning things I'd like to learn or, even worse, "playing" with things I'd like to play with in the classroom.)

Workshop 3

I decided to attend Judi Repman's workshop on "Using Web 2.0 Tools to Teach Information Literacy in the School Library Media Center." What a good decision! I'm so proud of myself! There was standing room only for this well done workshop.

Judy was joined by two of her students, Lucy Bush and Diane Griffin, who discussed their use of Web 2.0 tools. Diane talked about creating a classroom resource WIKI page which students can add to throughout the semester (including a dictionary or glossary of key terms, a study guide, and many more valuable resources). Lucy talked about the use of Google Pages for a Virtual School Library.

Voice threads, twitter, microblogging, lions and tigers and google, oh my! So much to learn. So much to play with. Exhilarating! Exhausting! My department chair happened to be sitting next to me during this workshop, and I watched her furiously making notes. Maybe some of the barriers that Amy England talked about in her presentation (Panel 19, above) can actually be breached someday. J

Panel 26

I rounded out the day by attending "iPods, Inquiry and Information Literacy: Developing a Program for USC Upstate's First-year Students," presented by Louise Ericson, Brenda Davenport, and Andrew Kearns. They promised to address the important question of "What would a comprehensive information literacy program for first-year students look like?"

They had been introducing students to the library and its services with a tiered approach not unfamiliar to most of us:

1. library orientation
2. "You be the expert" - annotated bibliography assignment
3. Career exploration worksheet

Then, they said, they had an "Aha!" moment (I wish I could have one of those!). They re-created their library tour as a podcast, following ACRL standards as the basis for instruction. Their handouts for the presentation are available on the conference CD (visit the Georgia Conference on Information Literacy Web site at http://ceps.georgiasouthern.edu/conted/infolit.html for more information).

They also incorporated a cell phone search and ACRL information literacy standards identified by students. I'm really not doing this presentation justice, of course. I have seen other libraries attempt to move their orientation and information sessions into podcast-land (visit iTunesU and I'm sure you can find some examples), but most of them are not interactive (yet). At any rate, visit their Web site at http://www.uscupstate.edu/library/ and you can find more information about their project.

Stay tuned for tomorrow!!

2008 Georgia Conference on Information Literacy

Another conference has come and gone. The 2008 Georgia Conference on Information Literacy took place October 3-4, 2008, at the Coastal Georgia Center in Savannah. The weather couldn't have been more perfect, Oktoberfest celebrations were in full swing on River Street, and yet the conference sessions were packed, a testament to the high quality and timeliness of this year's presentations!

I wish I could have attended all of the sessions, but, of course, I'm one person and could only manage to be in one place at a time. Once again, I took some VERY rough notes, which I'll post here, but I hope if anyone has notes about the sessions I missed (or can add to what I've got here) they'll post them somewhere for us all to see. Luckily, too, a CD that collects some of the PowerPoint presentations in advance of the conference each year is also available. Visit the Conference Web site at http://ceps.georgiasouthern.edu/conted/infolit.html for more information (and to see the CFP for the 2009 Conference!).

So, here goes:

Panel 10

"Information Electracy: Developing a Category System for the Image" presented by Sean Morey, University of Florida. Morey presented alternatives to Aristotelian logic in an imagic age à la Greg Ulmer (whence the term "electracy," a term I distinctly dislike, by the way, even though, like many people in the field, I hold nothing but high regard for Ulmer and the important work he's done in the area). I thought it was really appropriate that Morey's presentation was actually a movie—yes, he sat there in person while we watched the movie (hmmm, wonder if I can get a copy of it? It was a really GOOD movie/presentation). Of course, he didn't address the intellectual property issues that might be involved in his use of several movie clips (real movies) included in his movie/presentation, so, hmmm, maybe I better not ask…. Ya never know!

Ionut Emil Iacob (Georgia Southern University) and Kevin Kiernan (University of Kentucky) then presented "IBX: Image Based XML for Digital Projects in the Humanities," which is a project they are working on that uses image-based XML (IBX), an image-based tagging system, to create a searchable database of images/artifacts (exigesis?). You can see more about this project at http://www.eppt.org. I hope we will be able to get them back next year to see how the project develops!

Marcia Ribble from the University of Cincinnati completed the session with her presentation of "Teaching Media Literacy: How Can It Fit into Teaching Composition?" Students, she says, are not just purveyors, but also creators, of images. The textbook for her class, Media Literacy by James Potter, approaches the topic from the standpoint of production. Historically, our field has looked at the reception of text rather than at its creation. Her class approaches production from the vantage of media (including text, of course, but also images and other media). [Our field has, of course, historically analyzed text (and images)—and taught our students to analyze literary artifacts—even while we have purported to teach production. That is, we teach our students to write, yes, but often what we are really teaching them isn't to write at all, but to analyze works of literature (in writing). Now we see a distinct shift in our field, as we teach students to analyze texts, images, and other media that they find in such spaces as FaceBook or MySpace instead of "great works." ]

 

Panel 12

"When Does Information Become Proprietary? The Link between Quotation and Attribution" presented by Carol Simspon, University of Texas, was a great way to round out the first morning of the conference. She presented some tried and true suggestions for helping students to avoid plagiarism. With her background in law, I found her written information for students particularly helpful since she was careful to define her terms and be explicit—very useful! I was a bit thrown off, however, when she said students might sometimes be guilty of unintentional plagiarism because they don't know how to make good "note cards." Do people REALLY still teach note cards?? Can you say "20^th century!!"? I would also argue with her about the ethics and/or usefulness of using a plagiarism detection service, such as TurnItIn.com, but her presentation did make great use of examples and audience involvement in looking at some of the problems that these types of services may raise in even identifying plagiarized passages to begin with. All in all, a very good session.

 

More good stuff to follow. Watch this blog!

 

MLA Rant

Okay, so just when word processors finally made the process of footnoting and endnoting easier, MLA decided that was not the way we should cite sources. Instead, we should use parenthetic notes and the list of Works Cited.

Okay, so we did.

Now, Word includes an automatic bibliography generator (I know, I know—it kinda sucks; all the bib generators kinda suck and they are all GIGO—Garbage in, Garbage out—but anyway, it’s there). So what does MLA do in response? They change all their formats.

Now instead of underlining, they’ve finally read their own book and they are using italics. And now—sheesh, are you ready—we have entered bizarro world.

Now we have to include the medium of publication (like APA, only worse)—even for BOOKS and journal articles (the medium for these, by the way is “print”). For journal articles accessed through library databases, we no longer need include the library information (which was silly anyway)—but now the medium is designated as “Web” (even though, technically, the library databases aren’t on the Web, but accessed through a portal FROM the Web (usually—anyway, go figure).

There’s even more silliness. You GOTTA be sitting down.

Once again, MLA has decreed we don’t need to include the URL for Web sources. MLA has decided that, heck, you can use a search engine. So just providing the medium (Web) works.

So, if the file happens to be in some format other than html or print, the medium gets, well, complicated (according to MLA anyway), so you have to designate Microsoft Word document, jpeg, television, radio, DVD, CD, LP (do you believe it!?), .PDF, etc. In other words, you have to know a lot of things that most of our students (and many of the rest of us) don’t know about a given source—and often don’t need to know.

Oh, yeah, and make sure you only include ONE space after a period (not two).

The 3rd edition of the (infamous) MLA Style Manual includes all of these changes and more.

Yet another reason to ignore MLA and adopt the 2nd edition of The Columbia Guide to Online Style instead! http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-13210-7/the-columbia-guide-to-online-style .

Oh, yeah, but in case you were wondering: in the few instances where MLA does include a URL in their citation format, they still advise us to turn off hyperlinking so we can designate text that should be hyperlinked with (Gasp!) those silly angle brackets….

Are we having fun yet?

Using Word 2007 to Post Blogs

Well, this isn't exactly earth-shatteringly new (I used to be able to write and publish blogs with Word 97-2003), but it's much easier now in Word 2007.

Simply click the menu button in the top, left-hand corner of Word, select "New" and then "blog post." You'll have to register your blog, of course, in order to publish it—and the picture publishing stuff seems to me to be a bit clunky and unclear (why isn't Flickr an option??), but other than that, it's pretty easy.

For more information and help should you need it, visit "Help with Blogging in Word" at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA101640211033.aspx.

I've got a new blog!

Yeah, okay, so the last thing I need is another blog NOT to keep up-to-date. But somehow, having three blogs now makes me want to actually do more.

So I wanted to check out WordPress and, quite frankly, I'm impressed with it. Of course, my "Squirrel Splat" post is still here in this blog, so I'm keeping this one, too!

Anyway, if you're at all interested (then you are probably insane), but check it out: http://janicewalker.wordpress.com/

CCCC 2008

Okay, so I think that about half of the passengers on the Atlanta to New Orleans flight on Tuesday were going to Cs. Everything went smoothly (at least relatively so), and on time! I actually started writing this blog entry (are you ready??) with pen and note paper (really!) during my flight. Yes, yes, I know, but....

I lucked up at the airport and was able to share a cab to the hotel with Kathy Yancey, Sandra Jamieson, and Rebecca Moore Howard. My roommate, Risa Gorelick, Chair of the Research Network Forum, had arrived earlier, so I was able to join her and her friends for dinner as they each celebrated new jobs/positions.

I spent Wednesday in an all-day CCCC Executive Committee meeting, which actually went by much faster than you would think, especially with Cheryl Glenn riding herd over us to get our work done! But I noted something interesting during my bathroom break: A sign on the back of the women's bathroom door, that women could not help but notice as they left the room, reminded us: "Warning--drinking alcoholic beverages during pregnancy may cause severe physical and mental birth defects." Of course, I agree this is an important warning, but I just HAD to know what (if anything) was posted on the back of the men's room door. I ALMOST went in to see, but I though better of it, and I got my "twin" Michael Day to check it out. There was the exact same message--so women would know not to drink during pregnancy, and men would know to make sure women didn't drink during pregnancy (although, actually, the sign could be misconstrued, I suppose). Hmmm. Okay.

We also enjoyed a very "New Orleans" (and very good) lunch together at Mulate's before we resumed work for the afternoon. Michael and I walked back from lunch at Mulate's through Riverwalk, which meanders up and down different levels back to the Hilton. We walked as far as we could outside, enjoying the view of the river, before the "walk" forced us back in to see the food court and shops. I thought it was interesting that, the closer we approached to the Hilton, the more "upscale" (e.g., EXPENSIVE) the shops became....

Now, no CCCC experience would be complete without the de rigeur "elevator stories." If you've ever been to a CCCC, you know exactly what I mean. So, one of the elevators in the bank that went to my floor was an outside elevator with a beautiful view of, well, of another building and an alley with dumpsters and such. Go figure. At any rate, when the usual bunches of us entered the elevator we noticed that several buttons were already lit, but, undaunted we lit up some more, pressing the buttons for our separate floors. The elevator began its ascent and the lights in the elevator went off (I discovered later this was to allow a better view of the dumpsters outside). It caught us all a bit off guard, I think, but, okay, it was just a light, right? However, at each floor we stopped at, ALL of the buttons for the floors we had pushed went out, too. So, of course, we pushed them again. But at one floor, someone got on and pushed a floor below us--and the elevator went back down with all of us wanting to go up (well, almost all of us).

Being rhetoricians, of course, we stayed on the elevator (well, everyone except Nick Carbone, who, since he works for a publisher, had better sense and extricated himself in search of a different elevator), and tried again, pushing buttons, until we finally did actually arrive where we wanted to be. Ah, elevators.

So on Thursday morning, early, I went to set up the booth for the Rhetoric and Composition Journal Editors, a group that doesn't really (officially) exist, but that has a booth in the exhibit hall at CCCC every year anyway. Basically, we're just a bunch of journal editor types who decided a few years ago to make information available to people as a service to the discipline, and we all pitch in to pay for the space at the conference and take turns volunteering to staff it. I always coordinate it, so I needed to set up the space. Everything was going fine until I realized I forgot to bring a notepad in case anyone wanted to write anything down. Ya never know. I never realized just how difficult it could be to find a notepad at a conference of writing professors.... Finally, one of the publishers actually came through with some pads of "sticky notes"!

MORE LATER (maybe). :)

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: 2008 Graduate Research Network

Computers and Writing 2008 announces the ninth Graduate Research Network, a forum for discussion of research projects and work in progress related to Computers and Writing. The C&W Graduate Research Network is an all-day pre-conference event, open to all registered conference participants at no charge.

Roundtable discussions will group those with similar interests and discussion leaders who will facilitate discussion and offer suggestions for developing research projects and for finding suitable venues for publication. We encourage anyone interested or involved in graduate education and scholarship--students, professors, mentors, and interested others--to participate in this important event.

The GRN welcomes those pursuing work at any stage, from those just beginning to consider ideas to those whose projects are ready to pursue publication.

The Graduate Research Network is free to all registered conference participants. For more information, see the full Call for Proposals at http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/writling/GRN/2008/index.html or email jwalker@georgiasouthern.edu.