Regardless, it’s an interesting piece by Kevin S. Hawkins, who is an electronic publishing librarian over at the University of Michigan. The rest of the journal looks interesting this time around too. Based on what Hawkins is saying, it sounds like MLA has made some advances in dealing with electronic resources and in acknowledging the fact that almost all of the writing/editing done in academic/humanities-type journals involves computers.
And for me, this observation brought back unpleasant memories: “I’m glad to see that two holdovers from the days of the typewriter have finally been put to rest: underlining and double spacing after periods are out, and italicization and single spacing are in.” Twelve years ago, when I was trying to wrap up my dissertation in the summer before I began my first tenure-track job, I was in an epic (well, for me) battle with a thesis/dissertation reader in the Bowling Green State University graduate college.
In those days (I assume this is still true, though I don’t typically have to deal with such things at EMU because our graduate students do “projects” and not “theses” that adhere to such strict rules), this was the final stop for a dissertation, a hoop soon-to-be PhDs had to jump through even after a defense. The staff in this office was made up mostly of MA students on an assistantship, and their job was to proof-read for your run-of-the-mill errors and for adherence to a style manual– in my case, the MLA style manual. This reviewer did catch a number of errors I was able to tidy up, but this person (who was always anonymous to me) also tried to argue that I had to eliminate all contractions (I dare you to find that rule in the MLA style manual) and to change all italics into underlined text. I had a lot of italics in my diss, both for book titles but also for emphasis– probably a little too much emphasis– and I thought then (and think now) that underlining is ugly.
Well, long-story a bit shorter, I actually went back and forth via email with this person for a while, and I ultimately had to get a “supervisor” involved in order to remind this office that I had successfully defended my dissertation. I ended up presenting this person with a quote from that edition of the MLA style manual (the second?) which said italics were at least an acceptable substitute for underlining. I finished, went on with my life, and became the tenured professor you see before you today. I don’t know whatever happened to this reviewer, but I am guessing they are not happy with these new MLA changes.
Depending on what happens with English 328 next year, perhaps this could be a reading for that class….
Out of a discussion on Tech-Rhet the other day came this little tidbit from Bill HD: ScienceDirect (which indexes Computers and Composition) has a “Hottest 25″ feature for various journals. So, for example, here’s a link to the “hottest 25″ articles (in terms of people accessing them at least, I assume) in Computers and Composition from the October-December 2007 issues.
Since this site also has a handy “blog it” feature and there are some articles I can imagine teaching next year, I think I’ll go ahead and link those below as well: Understanding”Internet plagiarism” • Article Computers and Composition, Volume 24, Issue 1, 1 January 2007, Pages 3-15 Howard, R.M.
First off, let me back-track a bit and fill in a few more details on what I’ve already mentioned about C&W and this trip:
The “very good session” I went to on Friday morning before Jay David Bolter’s talk featured Rik Hunter,Dan Anderson, and Alex Reid. Follow the links for more info on the presentations. Actually, in Rik’s and Dan’s case, you can literally see what they did: both of them had everything pre-recorded and just “delivered” it by cranking up the computer and pushing play. Alex did his the old fashioned way– just talking. All were very good, but it was kind of strange to see the presenter standing there while his movie plays his presentation.
Speaking of Alex Reid, congratulations on the John Lovas Memorial Academic Weblog Award for Digital Digs!
I wish Jay David Bolter’s talk was online someplace, and maybe it will be at some point– they videotaped it. I thought it would be a really interesting teaching tool because he made a bridge/connection between the hypertext experiments of the early 90’s (remember StorySpace?) with gaming experiments (newsgaming.com, for example), poetry that plays on your iPod or your cell phone when you are in certain points of the Atlanta subway, a podcast tour of a cemetery, etc. It reminds me that I need to work gaming back into English 516 the next time I teach it.
Now on to the “part 3″ or concluding episode of Computers and Writing 2008 from my pov:
My session was at 10 AM on Saturday, and the “prime time” seemed to help us draw a pretty decent-sized crowd. Before me was Gian Pugnucci with a talk called “The WikiBib Project: Exploring the nature of Teaching Collaborative Scholarships in a Wiki.” Basically, he was talking about using a wiki as a means of facilitating collaboration on an annotated bibliography assignment in a graduate class. I’ve talked with Gian about this before and I think we’re going to try and work something out together on this for his and my grad courses next year.
I was second, and I’ll pretty much let my presentation speak (or not) for itself:
A slight tangent here: I actually managed to forget the do-hickey for hooking up my laptop, so I spent a few moments thinking I was screwed. But it turns out I was doubly covered. Since this was the computers and writing conference after all, someone in the audience (Carl Whithaus, actually) immediately volunteered his adapter. But besides that, the fine folks in Georgia were completely prepared for this, too. The guy doing tech support for UGa told me he had a whole bag full of the adapters I needed and was very confident that he could get the projector set-up to work. Quite a contrast to the way the projectors often work (or not) in Pray-Harrold.Anyway, I got some great feedback from folks on what to do with the whole “finished blogger” issue, and as we discussed during the session, my use of the word “failure” in my talk is probably not right. “Not finished,” “abandoned, or and as often as not, “ended at the appropriate time” are probably better terms. In any event, helpful ideas from attendees.
The third presenter was Natalie Szymanski from Florida State with a talk titled “Wikis and Composition Pedagogy: Avoiding the Bandwagon.” Basically, she was suggesting that maybe we ought to slow down a bit on all of this stuff like wikis. While I didn’t agree with many of the things she had to say, I had to give her credit because it’s nice to see someone at this conference have the guts to point out that we’re in the “writing business” and not the “isn’t this software I just learned about cool business.”
And then it was time for golf. I was part of a foursome with Steve Benninghoff, Gian, and Nick Carbone out at the University of Georgia Golf Course. In hind-sight, I think we should have picked a more “accessible” course since Benninghoff and I could have used a bit of a “palate cleanser” after the challenges of that course in Kentucky, and Gian and Nick, neither of whom had swung a club in over a year, could have just used something easier. This was one bad-assed hard hard course, certainly in the top 2 or 3 in difficulty that I’ve played, and a course that made me wish for an easy one like Pierce Lake or Eagle Crest.
But hey, it was a friendly game, and a good time was had by one and all even if the play wasn’t great. Actually, it got a lot more fun when we started the back nine and we played a cart versus cart scramble, but Nick had to leave a little early, so it just kind of degenerated into some sloppy play at the end of a long death march of a round.
Steve B. and Gian and I had some BBQ that I thought was pretty so-so, and then we went off to Kingpins Bowl and Brew for the ritual of the bowling night. I managed to catch up with a few folks who I didn’t get a chance to talk to much during the conference itself (including Courtney, who is doing great), had a few more Terapins, and even managed a little bowling (I scored 100– I had forgotten that real bowling isn’t as easy as Wii bowling).
And then Sunday was the long drive home. I managed to prod my more leisurely traveling companion onto the road by 6:30 and we were back in Ypsilanti in less than 12 hours, which, when I think about the expense and general pain in the butt of flying, makes me think that driving was a good idea, with or without the golf.
Next year, C&W is going to be at UC-Davis and it is going to be toward the end of June. I don’t know if I’ll be going yet or not, to tell the truth. On the down-side, the CCCCs is in San Francisco this year, and I don’t think I can afford 2 trips to California just to conference. On the other hand, Annette and Will and I might want to make this part of a west coast “pilgrimage” back to Ashland. We shall see….
Steve B. and I are (hopefully) going to be leaving soon for the long and exciting one day haul back to Michigan from the Computers and Writing Conference here in Athens, GA. But before I go, I wanted to post a link to a movie I made of my presentation, as I promised I would during my presentation. So here is:
Interestingly enough, I tried to upload this to Google Video and I was “rejected” for what they said were copyright reasons. I’ll have to figure out what the deal is with that later. I recorded this with KeyNote as I was talking at the conference, so this really is a kind of “Live, from Athens!” sort of deal.
Sure, some folks are at the Rhetoric Society of America conference right now (or soon) instead of at this fine conference, though, as I learned from talking to David Blakesley the other night, there are at least a few people going to both C&W and the every other year RSA in Seattle. David talked about how he was flying from here to there. Yikes! Not my idea of fun….
But so far, here (as in C&W) has been a pretty fun and informative conference. Steve B. and I drove for hours and hours and hours on Thursday, and made it in time for the reception at Tasty World (which was a bar rather than a cake store) and then had subsequent and largely unmentionable evening activities about Athens, GA. I can’t post pictures of anything right now because I forgot the cable to upload picts from my camera (very annoying), but I can tell you a good time was had by one and all.
I went to a good session this morning, went to a very good talk by Jay David Bolter, and a good and kind of heart-warming panel where I am pretty sure most of the speakers were giving their first conference presentation. I thought that was cool because I too gave my first conference talk at a C&W many moons ago….
Anyway, Steve B. and I did some shopping in the afternoon before attending the usual banquet. We left a little the banquet a little early (because we could) and wen heard afterwards that Nick Carbone was recognized this year as the C&W contributor/person of the year. Or whatever that is called. Congrats to him!
So far, UGa has put on a very pleasant comfortable and pleasant C&W, and Athens has been a lot of fun. As far as I can tell, it is as if Ann Arbor, Blacksburg, VA, and Charlottesville had a love-child and named it Athens. I don’t think I’m going to see much of the college music scene that has made this town so famous, but I’ve liked what I have seen.
Tomorrow, Steve B. and I present at different times and then it is off to the UGa golf course.
Maybe it’s just a temporary thing, but I’m a little miffed right now:
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation sponsored a great series on “Digital Media and Learning,” and worked out a deal with MIT press where you can order the print version or you can download the open source version for free. Here’s a link to that site.
However, when I tried just now to browse through one of these open source publications, the MIT press gives me an error and says that the file wasn’t found. What gives? Did someone have “take-backs” on these once free articles?
Update, May 26:
I’m happy to say I am wrong– all of this stuff still is available as PDF downloads. The site just appeared to be down for a while.
On the one hand, I appreciate the experiences being noted/recorded in these two videos. I’ve been there, of course. And I don’t blame these grad assistants for making these two videos and I don’t dismiss the reaction they have to the writing program at Iowa State (if I was running that program, I’d see this video as a bit of a “warning sign,” frankly). But I do have more of an “other hand” here.
First, this is probably more of the kind of video that should have been shown at some kind of GA gathering more or less privately, giggled at, and then put away. Probably not a video to post on YouTube or, um, Facebook. Second, and I don’t mean to sound all old and WPA-ish on people, but it’s never a good idea for GA’s to make fun of students publicly, even it is in modest ways and clearly in fun (as is the case with this video). Third, the administrative folks clearly over-reacted in trying to repress this. That just goes to show you what happens when administrators freak out.
And fourth (no offense to those folks at ISU) this video is probably twice as long as it should be. A little sensible editing would have helped, honestly.
Email clean-out blog post #2: Here’s a link to a report from the CCCCs called “Top Intellectual Property Developments of 2007 for Scholars of Composition, Rhetoric, and Communication.” It includes some links and information about, well, the title of the site: IP issues for the comp/rhet world. Among many other things, working in this material/discussion into ENGL 516 next winter might be one of the changes I make to that course.
Just to recap a bit: Thursday turned out to be the last day of the Jacksonville conference for me, and things were both less and more mysterious. I went to an excellent session in podcasting and student video projects in history and humanities courses presented by Deborah Vess from Georgia College and State University. Vess was the winner of the “grand prize” for her presentation: $5,000. No kidding. She gave a great talk held at a very non-stressing hour of 11 am. I linked to a couple of things she mentioned on Friday. And yet there was only about a dozen or fewer people there. Mysterious.
And who was the second keynote speaker at this international conference about education, learning, and technology in higher education? Why, Carl “All the President’s Men” Bernstein, of course. The mystery continues. He didn’t talk much about education, learning, and/or technology, but he did have some interesting things to say about politics and the like. Anyway, I spent much of the rest of the afternoon attempting to get caught up some school stuff and to get some exercise by walking around the Jacksonville riverfront.
Had I known ahead of time that there was nothing really scheduled for Friday morning I wanted to see and that my presentation was going to be on Wednesday, I would have preferred to have spent Friday traveling back home. But I didn’t know any of that when I made the reservations, so I rented a car (out of my own pocket, I should point out) and drove around various beaches and in St. Augustine. I uploaded some pictures from that day and a few from Jacksonville here.
Highlights? Well, there’s a state park between Jacksonville and St. Augustine called Guana River State Park that has the longest undeveloped beach I’ve ever seen in Florida; a pleasant drive indeed. St. Augustine was quite the tourist trap with actual old and historic buildings mingling in with ye olde towne t-shirt shoppe. And, because I know that Will would have wanted me to go, I even managed to get myself sucked into a visit to the Ripley’s Believe it or Not! Museum. Here’s the movie:
This article about podcasting turning into publishing. One of the points I think I want to make in my book project (oh yeah, that pesky book project… almost forgot about that…) is that one of the logical transitions/signs of success of a blog is the blog’s author gets some kind of book deal. So this makes sense to me.
The design code rap:
EveryZing. I haven’t played with this yet, but apparently, it’s an effort at creating a search engine that can look at multimedia for information. I heard about this at a presentation yesterday by Deborah Vess, who talked about…
… this, Apple + iPods @ GCSU, which is about a pretty large and interesting Podcasting/videocasting initiative at Georgia College and State University.
I think I would prefer to actually be leaving for the airport today, but when I booked this trip, I didn’t know exactly when the conference presentations were going to happen and I didn’t realize that there’s almost nothing on the program Friday. So as long as I’m here, I think I’ll find out what St. Augustine is like.
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Just to recap a bit: Thursday turned out to be the last day of the Jacksonville conference for me, and things were both less and more mysterious. I went to an excellent session in podcasting and student video projects in history and humanities courses presented by