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!)

 

Grand Unified Citation Theory: Response to TechRhet Thread

Michael Wojcik writes, " the real problem [with creating a new citation system] would be getting other people - notably journal editors - to accept it." But actually, having created a citation format of my own way back when, the challenge isn't with the journal editors but with getting teachers to use it.

Michael Salvo is correct that citation formats aren't really all that different—they use the same elements, but join them in different ways and forms. In The Columbia Guide to Online Style, I attempt to define those elements and to explain (at least briefly) why there are different ways of emphasizing them by discipline: the COS-Humanities Style, designed to work with styles such as MLA and Chicago, for instance, focuses on the author of the work (ethos based), while the COS-Scientific Style, which works with styles such as APA and CSE, follows the author/date system, whereby the date something is published is often of primary importance.

That said, I think we (not I, but WE) could actually design something that works—and which would work better with bibliographic software which, quite frankly, does a lousy job with citing anything that is not standard print books/journals/newspapers.

For me, as a teacher, I think it is more important to help students (future scholars!):

1. Identify the TYPE of source they are using, and
   
2. Identify the ELEMENTS they need to record
   

Then it's actually not so difficult to put these together (using bibliographic software, or a style sheet or manual) as needed.

I actually LIKE what APA has done by encouraging/requiring the inclusion of DOIs in citations. These Digital Object Identifiers are better than URLs even for accessing/locating documents. MLA? Well, see my MLA rant at http://mywabbit.blogspot.com/2008/09/mla-rant.html.

I think it's very interesting (okay, remember, I have a very sick sense of humor!) that:

• MLA couldn't figure out that the "URL" created by online databases wasn't a real URL, so, yeah, it was ridiculously long and unwieldy and didn't work outside a particular database anyway, so they just gave up and decided to just say "Web" (even though items in library databases aren't actually ON the Web, just accessed FROM it). And excluding URLs (or other identifiers) for items that are on the Web—we can just google them??—is the utmost in ridiculous-ity!
• APA released their new manual with PAGES of errata—they finally released a new edition of the new edition, of course, which corrects those errata, but the damage is done….
  

I think the Columbia Guide still works (although the latest edition is 2006, so new models might be useful), but as Charlie Lowe continues to prod me, we can take this further.

But the challenge is to get people to listen to us—and remember that K-12 teachers learned MLA in first-year comp classes, then learned APA to use in their education classrooms, then they use whatever book is foisted upon them which usually includes MLA for their students to (not) learn.

Many first-year composition teachers are also given textbooks chosen by committee—many of the members of which are literature-trained (can you say "MLA"?). So here we are.

And our own textbook publishers, who once DID actually include Columbia Online Style have given up on including it since no one (outside our small group) knows what it is anyway—so no one bothered to look at it.

So, am I saying we can't change the world? Not at all!

We can:

1. Develop a bibliography generator that will actually work (knowing what we know about the elements of citation and identifying the variety of types of sources that researchers actually use).
   
2. Work with librarians, educators ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES (this isn't something we, as writing teachers, can do ourselves), editors, and publishers to develop formats that can be easily generated, and that help to ensure the sustainability of links/identifiers, such that the potential ephemerality of digital scholarship is addressed.
   
3. Teach our students (and demand that our textbook publishers include) whatever we come up with.
   

Maybe someday, everyone will do as I did in my presentation at the Computers and Writing Conference last week, when I said I believed we should "just turn our backs" on MLA (um, if you weren't there, I was wearing a black denim jacket with a very bling rhinestone skull and crossbones on the back!).

GRN and Travel Grant Submissions

We have just discovered a problem with the online submission forms for the Graduate Research Network and the Computers and Writing/GRN Travel Grant Fund.

According to our IT folks, a spam filter patch is the culprit. They are working on the problem, but in the meantime, any submissions posted after 9pm on Monday, April 26, 2010, were NOT received. I don't know at this time if they are recoverable or not.

To be on the safe side-and for those who have waited until the last minute to submit-we are extending the due date for submissions until Thursday, May 6, 2010.

Please submit the required information via email to jwalker@georgiasouthern.edu.

You can see the required fields online:

• Broken GRN Submission Form: http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/writling/GRN/2010/submit.html
• Broken Travel Grant Application Form: http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/writling/GRN/2010/application.html

Again, please do NOT use the forms. If you have any questions about whether or not your application(s) have been received, please email me at jwalker@georgiasouthern.edu. We apologize for the inconvenience!

CCCC 2010 Preview Notes

1. http://iamdananderson.net/screencasts/cccc2010
   
   

   "I'm a Map I'm a Green Tree" from Daniel Anderson on Vimeo.
   

   Daniel Anderson's presentation for the 2010 CCCCs conference.
   

   At the conference, he strips the voiceover out of the video and delivers it live. Using the "I'm a Mac I'm a PC" commercial clips against the "I'm a Map I'm a Green Treet," he shows the confluences (word?) of the word and technology.

   What I find interesting in this video is how he accessed information in the video, using:
   

• flickr
  
• google/google books
  
• Wikpedias
  
• scans of a book
  
• Scan of a scholarly journal
  
• Macmail/email
  
• Pandora radio site
  
• Photoshop and sound mixer
  

LILAC questions: So, are WE (scholars) using these tools to locate and access information (are we? I do!). If so, what are we (or should we be) teaching our students?

2. http://stevendkrause.com/scholarship/cccc-2010/

Steven D. Krause, "RIP-ping, Mixing, Burning: A Remix Manifesto as Research Writing" CCCC 2010 presentation.

Presentation shared pre-conference as a blog using flickr photos (which he created as slides of course in iMac), movie trailers (video from YouTube about patents, books, and music…. Sampling, remixing, scholarly journals, data—research and then remix to make something new—transformative uses?) Krause's point seems to be that students might be "chicken" to reach beyond the 5-paragraph essay, for a variety of reasons:

"First, despite the notion that incorporating new media/popular culture like movies, music, and more into our classes is a good idea because it is what the "kids today" are into and this is the "digital native" world they know, I once again found in my students a surprising amount of ignorance and apathy. And I found this especially among my "true freshman" students, as opposed to the sophomores, juniors and seniors who found their way into first year composition for various reasons. I'm not entirely sure what the cause of this ignorance and apathy about what should be their contemporary culture is all about, but it certainly seemed to be there."

"Second, and perhaps this is one of the causes of their ignorance and apathy, there is the problem of the assumptions and inevitable compartments about "school" versus "life." SImply put, I think a lot of students have in mind stuff we do in school and stuff we do in life, and there is a bright and uncrossable line between these two realms. This is one of the problems I've seen about incorporating things like Facebook into my teaching, and I think it extends to an extent here. I think students' default positions are often to see things like remix culture– all the stuff that GirlTalk was doing and most of the things discussed in RiP– as being distinctly in the "life" realm and they are uneasy about that crossing the border into "school."

"Finally, and this is where the chickens thing comes from, I think that students are often very leery of leaving the confines of the cages of convention that they have been raised in. As I understand it, even when so-called "free-range" chickens are raised in humane conditions (and they often are not, of course), they are reluctant to leave their cages and certainly not their source of easily obtained food. They are, after all, domesticated animals. I think that a lot of students are in this sense "chicken:" too scared and too dependent on an educational system designed to domesticate them to think outside of "the box" even when the assignment explicitly asks them to do so. In fact, after going through all of the cage-breaking tricks I tried throw at them with these exercises, a disappointing number of them retreated to the old and stale school genre they are most familiar with."

Does this relate to LILAC? The video certainly relates to IP class!

Rhetorical Reflections: Borderless Communication in a Multimodal World

I was delighted to attend the symposium Friday, April 9, 2010, hosted by Georgia Institute of Technology and Bedford/St. Martin's on "Rhetorical Reflections: Borderless Communication in a Multimodal World."

The symposium featured a roster of fantastic speakers, including Andrea Lunsford, Ron Balthazar, Robin Wharton, Michael Neal, Michael Pemberton, Rebecca Burnett, L. Andrew Cooper, TyAnna Herrington, Mike Palmquist, Joanne Harris, Manuel Perez Tejada, Letizia Guglielmo, Laura McGrath, Janet Bean, Christy Desmet, Karen Gardiner, Angela Hall-godsey, Amy Kimme Hea, Roxanne Mountford, Daniel Vollaro, Andrea Wood, Paulette Richards, Candice Welhausen, Jared Johnson, Matthew Paproth, Danielle Lawson, Nirmal Trivedi, Lee Odell, Susan Katz, and Bedford/St. Martin's own Nick Carbone, Leasa Burton, and Karita France dos Santos. If I left anyone out, I apologize profusely. It was indeed a cornucopia of ideas!

In addition to the speakers, the symposium featured a roster of Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellowship poster presenters. The projects were astounding, and the conversations that ensured were lively and well-informed. I came away with so many ideas and so much to think about!

The symposium was held at the historic Academy of Medicine in Atlanta, GA. The building is on the historic register and has recently been ceded to Georgia Tech. It will soon be undergoing renovation, but in the meantime, it was a wonderful location for a symposium bringing together rhetorical reflections from the Agora with the 21st century classroom!

Kudos and thanks to Georgia Institute of Technology and Bedford/St. Martin's for sponsoring this event.

Call for Proposals: 2010 Graduate Research Network

Make your plans now! We invite proposals for work-in-progress discussions at the 11th annual Graduate Research Network at the 2010 Computers and Writing Conference, May 20, 2010, hosted by Purdue University.

The C&W Graduate Research Network is a FREE all-day pre-conference event, open to all registered conference participants. The GRN consists of a morning session composed of round-table discussions, grouping those with similar research interest with discussion leaders who facilitate the conversations, and a workshop during the afternoon of special interest to participants. We welcome those pursuing work at any stage-from just beginning to consider ideas to seeking venues for publication.

Submit your proposal online at http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/writling/GRN/2010/submit.html

Small travel grants may also be available. See details at http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/writling/GRN/2010/awards.html

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS IS APRIL 30, 2010! Early submissions are welcome!

For more information, visit our Web site at

http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/writling/GRN/index.html or email Janice Walker at jwalker@georgiasouthern.edu

Kill the Apostrophe

Sorry, but I couldn't resist linking to this one: http://www.killtheapostrophe.com/

Hmmm, this might actually be useful for a class learning how to use apostrophe's (or is that apostrophes???). OMG!