GRN Is Scannable!

Scan the QR code with your cell phone app to be taken directly to the GRN Web site!  Post it to your Facebook or Google+ pages, tatoo it on your--well, someplace visible, wear it on your t-shirts, or, well, just scan it!

Look for more exciting news from GRN.  And don't forget to donate to the C&W/GRN Travel Grant Fund and Ride2CW!

My First WPA Conference

Day One:
I really didn’t want to eat hotel fare my first night in Baton Rouge, but as I wandered a bit away from the hotel, I realized it probably was not a good idea to be out alone, so here I sit.

Day Two:
WPA breakfast. Sightseeing.  Old friends and new ones.  At the WPA banquet, I admired Amy Kimme Hea’s beautiful necklace—beads—so she GAVE it to me!  (Hey, gee, I really like your computer!)

I discovered there wasn’t much open at night or on the weekend around the hotel.  The downtown area was pretty much closed up when the workers in downtown businesses go home.  That plus much construction work going on in the area made for slim pickings.  However, I did manage a bit of “fun” sightseeing on this lonely day, when I hadn’t yet run into anyone I knew who wasn’t busy.  I found the old State Capitol building, and took lots of amazing pictures (well, amazing for me—even if my photography skills stink).

Day Three:

I enjoyed attending all the sessions.  Lots of fresh perspectives and very interesting questions!

Day Four:
Exhausted.  But my flight out isn’t until tomorrow morning, so after the half day of sessions, I ventured out again.  Found some more “fun” sightseeing things to do:  a casino that thinks it’s a boat (but doesn’t go anywhere), a planetarium/science museum (didn’t allow pictures), an art museum (I didn’t take pictures because most art museums don’t allow them, so I didn’t even ask), and a ship/veteran’s memorial (yes, I took pictures).

Day Five:
Finally, I’m home.

All in all, WPA is an amazing conference, but somehow I felt “out of the loop.”  I did know many of the people in attendance—and I’m going to be hosting the WPA conference in 2013—but perhaps since I don’t usually attend the conference, or perhaps because technically I’m not  a WPA, I really didn’t get the warm/welcoming/nurturing feeling that I expected from a conference of this (small) size.  Everyone seemed to be too busy, too otherwise engaged, or whatever.  It just is NOT the kind of conference that welcomes “newbies” with open arms.  Sorry, but that’s the feeling I got.

I’m glad I went for two important reasons.  One, since we will be hosting the conference, it’s good to have a sense of it, of the expectations and needs of the attendees, etc.  And, even more important (to me), I really did get a lot out attending the sessions.  There  are some very smart people out there in WPA-land!

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

April 15 is the deadline to submit proposals for the Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy! 


The Georgia Conference on Information Literacy invites proposals across disciplines for workshops and presentations that will consider, extend, or otherwise address information literacy in K-12 and postsecondary settings.

http://ceps.georgiasouthern.edu/conted/infolitproposals.html

2011 Graduate Research Network at Computers and Writing Conference

The Graduate Research Network at the 2011 Computers and Writing Conference invites you to join us! We need presenters and discussion leaders. GRN discussions are informative, exhausting, and not to be missed. Please spread the word! http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/writling/GRN/2011/index.htm

Follow the links for information about the CW/GRN Travel Grant Fund as well. Apply for a Travel Grant, or donate to the fund if you can.
Hope to see you there!

Sample Video - LILAC Wiki

Sample Video - LILAC Wiki

I have posted some sample Research Aloud Protocol (RAP) video links to YouTube. The links are available on our WIKI. Let me know what you think.

Writers Talk: Cheryl Ball

"Cheryl Ball is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Illinois State University. She teaches classes in multimodal composition, digital media, composition theory, and digital publishing - known as "New Media Studies." She also serves as the editor of Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy.


"While visiting Writers Talk, she offers insight on the use of digital technology in the classroom, illustrates how different media can work together to reach new audiences, and shares her prediction on the demise of the internet."

http://www.ohiochannel.org/multimedia/programs/media.cfm?file_id=125254&program_id=107792

Online Publishing and Malleable Texts: When Do Digital Publications Become "Permanent"?

At the 2010 Computers and Writing Conference at Purdue University (May 2010), I was privileged to be part of a roundtable with Michael Pemberton (Georgia Southern University), Kathleen Blake Yancey (Florida State University), and Nick Carbone (Bedford/St. Martin’s). Following is (mostly) what I said, just in case anyone is interested.

Traditional citation formats have focused on print sources which, once published, have remained relatively stable, and most online scholarly publications have retained this model. However, as scholarly publishing online allows—or even encourages—more malleable (literally, “to beat with a hammer,” according to Dictionary.com) texts, what kinds of challenges will this create for citation practices?

In his presentation on “E-Book Rhetoric” at a recent symposium at the Georgia Institute of Technology, L. Andrew Cooper discussed a custom e-book initiative between Georgia Tech and Bedford/St. Martin’s. Students purchase a 5-year subscription which, to use Cooper’s words, “evolves with the book.” That is, as long as the student’s subscription is current, the e-book s/he accesses online is continually updated, so that the “book” the student reads today may not be the same “book” s/he read last month. Of course, changes are probably not drastic or frequent—but they COULD be.

Traditionally, as Michael Pemberton noted, errors or updates in books, newspapers, magazines, journals, or other print media are noted in subsequent editions, often in fine print. Of course, even if errata were to be published in bright red, engorged font on the front page of a subsequent edition, when our students (or, for that matter, when WE) access articles in print or online, we usually don’t read subsequent editions to determine if there have been any amendments or corrections!

While allowing for edits to “published” work in online venues can help to ensure that scholars are accessing correct and up-to-date information, this could also wreak havoc on citation practices. Do we cite the date published, the date last modified, or the date of access—or all of the above? Will we have access to historical publication information (such as the “history” in WIKIs and shared Google docs, for example), or will we take a researcher’s word that the source USED to say thus-and-so? Will subsequent work that relied on the information ALSO need to be amended, and so on and so on and so on? And, of course, multimedia—video, essays, etc.—create further complications. (I believe it was Nick Carbone who further problematized this with the concept of “reflowable textuality,” for instance, reformatting various media to fit small screens.

Obviously, the date that information is accessed is essential. Unfortunately, styles such as APA eschew including online publication information for information accessed through online databases that the researcher BELIEVES to be the same as print editions (ouch!). APA does now encourage scholars to include the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for sources, which is MUCH more reliable (and realistic) that what MLA has done, of course. MLA now thinks we should just Google online sources rather than include a URL (MLA 182) so, even though they DO encourage scholars to include the date of access, I don’t think that’s enough if we don’t know which site the scholar may have consulted in the first place.

We’ve all seen what happens when we Google a source that is no longer available -- Google offers up a cache-memory copy. And the WayBack machine stores lots of no-longer-available sites. Many sites are mirrored, and even information in online scholarly databases may be available through different means (try Google Scholar versus EBSCO Host versus CompPile, for instance). In other words, it is entirely conceivable that multiple versions of an article may exist, such that the “googler” may end up with an entirely different (older? Newer?) version. If one site is amended, are all of these copies also updated? 

So, here are some of my questions for scholars and for editors of online publications: 

1. Include “errata” notices/corrections ON the original “page” for online publications.
2. When that is not feasible, retain historical documents and include links to these historical publications, perhaps with editorial or authorial notes about the necessity for amending.
3. Offer citation suggestions for authors that specifically note which “edition” (corrected or not) is being used, including the URL where feasible, or, even better, the DOI.
4. Ignore MLA…. (or at least turn our backs on it!)