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.

Notes from the Georgia Conference on Information Literacy

Okay, I’ve been told that I need to update my blog. I mean, sheesh, isn’t once a year enough??

Well, maybe not. So….

Anyway, there’s an old Chinese curse (or so someone somewhere once told me) that goes “May you live in interesting times.” And the times have definitely been interesting for me (no, I’m not trying to make excuses for only blogging once a year—well, yeah, maybe I am, but ANYWAY….).

This year’s Georgia Conference on Information Literacy is history, and we’re gearing up to get ready for next year’s. Once again, the Conference was deemed a success according to the surveys of attendees, and those kind of markers, but, more importantly, I truly enjoyed all of the wonderful presentations I attended.

A few I want to mention especially:

Anthony Atkins and Robert Searcy of the University of North Carolina,Wilmington, presented “Writing the Image in Composition: Student/ Teacher Collaboration,” in which they discussed having students analyze and produce visual texts. I have to say I was blown away by the multimedia projects the students at both the graduate and undergraduate levels completed! In the same session, Jonette La Gamba of the University of South Florida presented “Teaching Elements of Rhetoric: Employing Visuals,” outlining a plan to teach first-year composition students elements of classical rhetoric and writing by having them create advertisements, “borrowing” and repurposing visual elements--or creating their own. Some fascinating examples!

Karen Lunsford from the University of California at Santa Barbara presented on “Using Orientation Materials with Writing Assignments,” showing what UCSB is doing with Sakai and Moodle, making “library orientation materials more directly relevant to students by making them part of research writing assignments.”

The keynote presentation on Saturday was by Keith Curry Lance, former director of library research service (Colorado State Library) Department of Education (Denver) and entitled “Powering Achievement: The Importance of School Libraries on Information Literacy and Academic Achievement.” He showed us information he had collected on the demonstrated links between “high-quality school library programs and high-stakes test scores.” None of us were surprised by these links, of course! But seeing these statistics was still extremely interesting, especially in light of the ongoing studies Lance is still involved with hoping to learn more about these important relationships.

Joan E. Broome, of the Zach S. Henderson Library at Georgia Southern University, and Christine Whitlock of the GSU chemistry department are working to teach information literacy to students in organic chemistry, and Barbara Hightower and Michelle Schutt, both of Auburn University, Montgomery, are teaching library research skills to nursing students in WebCT. Their presentations continued this important strand on using technology to help make information available to students and customizing information literacy instruction to better fulfill disciplinary needs.

Finally, I attended the presentation given by Julie Housknecht, Betsy Whitley, and Adrienne Button, all of North Georgia College and State University, entitled “Beyond the Skills Survey: Activities as Assessment.” A testament to the success of this presentation (and, I think, of the conference as a whole) was the amount of audience involvement in this timely and thought-provoking presentation, even at the end of a full slate of conferencing, when so many participants at most conferences are looking for toothpicks to hold their eyes open. Not here! Obviously, assessment, especially in this era of evidence-based decision making, is a “hot button” topic! The activities they outlined look to prove useful for many participants at any level!

Hopefully before the year is out (!), I’ll blog a bit about my own conference panel on my other blog (no, I don’t update it any more than I do this one!). But check it out anyway (link to LILAC blog).

So, okay, this Conference was definitely NOT squirrel splat! J

Keep an eye out on my home page at http://personal.georgiasouthern.edu/~jwalker for a link to the call for proposals for NEXT year’s Georgia Conference on Information Literacy, October 3-4, 2008, at the Coastal Georgia Center in Savannah. The deadline for proposals will be April 15, 2008, so get your thinking caps in gear.