Category: Scholarship

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Jacobson Symposium, 2006: the prelude and rethinking the CCCCs again

It’s been a fine day before the Jacobson Conference at Creighton University in Omaha, NE. I’ve been trying to be kind of modest about this, but I’m actually the keynote speaker for it this year. I’m honored to do it– I hope I don’t screw up too bad.

I’m going to be talking about blogs– a slightly different definition of what they might be, about how MySpace is kinda dumb, about “blogs gone bad,” and about how blogs can work to teach writing. I’ll post a link to a web site for my spiel soon.

The conference is pretty small– about 50 or so folks– and it’s organized by Bob Whipple, who is a professor here, the Jacobson Chair in Communication, and a long-time computers and writing kinda guy. In the course of talking this afternoon, I think we figured out that we’ve known each other via the computers and writing conference or mailing lists for about 10 or so years now.

Anyway, it’s been a good time so far. Dr. Whipple showed me around campus, introduced me to many fine folks, we figured out how to make the computer stuff work (I was having some weird problem with a lot of the images in my powerpoint presenation, which I had burned to a CD, showing up on a Windoze computer– makes me glad I brought my monitor adapter so I can just hook up my laptop to the lcd projector), and then back to the hotel. After some afternoon reworking my presentation, catching up on school stuff, and doing a little shopping, Bob took me to dinner at Omaha’s legendary Bohemian Cafe, a Czech family restaurant that’s been around since 1924- great food and good campy fun.

One other thing I’ll mention, and this has been on my mind lately since there has been some discussion on the WPA-L mailing list about the CCCCs being so expensive: maybe they ought to have that conference in a town like Omaha.

Okay, okay, Omaha isn’t quite the tourist destination of Chicago or New York or San Francisco, and I don’t really know how easy it is for most people to fly in (it’s a pretty small airport). But I know there’s a big huge convention center here, plenty of hotels downtown, and a pretty neat little tourist-type area called Old Market.

To top it all off, the hotel I’m staying at is pretty sweet. There’s high speed internet access in the room, and even free printing through a service called PrinterOn. And I am quite sure this is quite a bit cheaper than the Palmer House.

I guess I’m suggesting that maybe the CCCCs organizers ought to rethink some of the future locations of the conference, and I think that perhaps they ought to think of some “mid-sized” and slightly out of the way towns like Omaha. I like going to fancy cities and doing fancy things as much as the next guy, but it’s also nice to have conferences in towns where people in the field (and composition and rhetoric folks are not generally blessed with enormous expense accounts) can actually afford to attend.

Just a thought. And I hear they have good steak here, too.

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A few misc. links on a Sunday morning….

I think I need to revisit my RSS software because I don’t think Safari is doing it for me. Maybe I’ll shift the whole regular reads blogs to bloglines; maybe I should buy some kinda software. But that’s something I’ll do in May or so (along with updating the look of this blog and about 100 “to do” list items). In the meantime, a few links I came across this morning I need to look at more in the near future:

On with what promises to be a very busy Sunday….

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CCCCs, Part 2: My 2 cents on it all

Despite the fact that I had a very busy couple of days and long nights, I ended up getting up this morning at about 5 am. Actually, I had one of those nights where I woke up at 3 and then never really got back to sleep. Well, I guess it makes sense. Today is my 40th birthday, and I hear old people don’t need as much sleep.

Anyway, I thought I’d write a sort of wrap-up post on my Conference for College Composition and Communication experience in Chicago. It was kind of a “short trip” for me this year; really, I was only at the conference on Thursday and Friday morning. There were a variety of reasons for this, including the fact that I didn’t want to spend the day of my birthday on the interstate. One of my grad students, who was attending the CCCCs for the first time, was trying to give me a good-natured hard time about this, and also the fact that I only went to two other panels (other than my own). “What’s the matter, don’t you want to learn anything new?” she asked. Well, learning something “new” is relative, especially given that I’ve been to this thing about ten times. And besides that, not all (maybe even most) of the learning takes place in the panels.

Here’s what I remember (with the help of some notes):

  • I went to see a panel called “Writing Program Administration Database-Style: Knowledge Management and the End of Traditional Composition Studies,” which was a panel by the folks at Texas Tech about this database system they use there called either TOPIC or ICON– that seemed to be an interchangable title to me. This has been talked about on things like the WPA mailing list quite a bit already (and there’s a CHE article on this I have yet to read), but basically, this is a system where students submit all of their writing into this database where it is then commented on/graded by different instructors in the program. The Texas Tech folk claim it’s more efficient, it’s a better use of resources, it provides better student feedback, etc.

    I don’t know. I don’t have a problem with “the machine,” at least not in the way that a lot of people in comp/rhet do. And I certainly don’t have a problem with a system where someone other than the instructor gives feedback or even a grade on student work. But I don’t see the system as being all that “efficient.” The answer to that question when I asked was (basically) that it was more efficient because the turn-around on student writing was greatly reduced; still, it seems to me that if you just told the instructors they need to do around an hour’s worth of grading every day (which is what they do with this system), you’d end up with an efficient system as well. I don’t think they had a very good answer to my other question of who “owns” the work in this system, and that’s significant because they claimed to have about 1,000,000 artifacts/writing samples from students. Someone asked where the “proof” was that, at the end of the day, this system provided better instruction, and they didn’t have a very good answer for that, either (though Becky Rickly did say that was coming at the Computers and Writing conference).

    It’s all kind of a moot point for schools like EMU anyway; I mean, I can’t even get the IT people to let me run MySQL/PHP on an “official” server for God’s sake.

    And, as Collin Brooke pointed out to me in the book exhibit area the next day, this probably isn’t the best way to give graduate assistants appropriate “on the job” training/experience, something that is an important part of the Ph.D. schooling process. Sure, TOPC/ICON gives all students experience grading/commenting on student papers and the like, but, as Collin pointed out, there’s more to classroom teaching than that. There is, for example, the important experience of being a teacher who has to himself or herself return papers to students which that teacher gave a bad grade. That’s an important interpersonal/teacherly moment. In TOPIC/ICON, it is taken out of the classroom teacher’s hands since grading comes from “the system.”

  • The other panel I went to included a presentation from Bill Condon (“The Case against Correctness: Fairness, Reality, and World Englishes”) and one by a guy at Wisconsin-Stevens Point named M. Wade Mahon about ellocution (“The Other 18th-Century Elocutionists: Watts, Fordyce, Gentleman, Barrie, and the Role of Elocution in the Development of English Literature”). I don’t know what it says about me, but the elocution stuff was the reason why I went to this panel, and I thought it was very interesting. Other fun facts from this panel: it was held in this room that looked vaguely castle-like, and Peter Elbow found his way into the audience.
  • I ran into Clancy “Culture Cat” Ratliff before my presentation because the stupid CCCC program had us talking about similar topics at the same time. We didn’t chat much, but she seemed nice and it’s always good to put a face with a blogger.
  • I ran into many other miscellaeous colleagues and friends from the past, too many to list here. Hi again to everyone if you’re reading this now!
  • My presentation went well, I think. I don’t want to say much more than that about it, other than to point out that I have already put the audio of my spiel and the PowerPoint slides up on the web. I was able to record it with a microphone I borrowed from Steve Benninghoff (thanks for the offer though, Jeff Ward!).
  • I always like the book exhibit area, and I bought a few things that might come in handy later. Though I have to say I didn’t really spend much time at the textbook booths (and certainly no time at the McGraw-Hill booth!) I guess the thrill is gone for me. Another EMU grad student attending the CCCCs for the first time told Steve B. and I how great it was that she was getting all of these free books. But as I told her, she will reach a point in which she will wish the textbook publishers would just stop sending her all these damn books.
  • Speaking of textbook publishers: one of the highlights of the conference for me was the Bedford/St. Martin’s party, which was in the main hall of the Field Museum. On the one hand, it was really cool for obvious reasons, and the not so obvious reason that they let folks wander through the exhibit areas (sans food and drink, of course). I got a chance to get a sort of shortened version of the Pompeii exhibit, which was beautiful though perhaps a little too sobering for a cocktail party. On the other hand, because it was at such a cool location, the party seemed more crowded than usual, so getting food and/or drink was a challenge.
  • While at the party, I talked a while with John Walter and briefly with Cheryl Ball, and I urged both of them to pitch the idea of a Computers and Writing Conference in Las Vegas sometime soon to the “seven C’s” group. We’ll see if that idea takes hold.
  • I also talked with a colleague who I will leave nameless who is also a textbook author about the sad state of my now dead textbook project. This person (and every other person I’ve talked to about this, frankly) thought it was pretty stupid of McGraw-Hill to not just let me publish what would be an otherwise unpublished book on the web. But it’s also clear to me after talking to this person (and others I know who have had been successful at textbook publishing/writing) that when all is said and done, I didn’t work hard enough on the project and I didn’t really realize how much work I was signing up for in the first place. Hey, live and learn, live and learn….
  • I went to dinner at the Greek Islands with some colleagues from EMU (Linda and Cathy) and some folks from other places that one or all of us knew in some way (Susanmarie and Tom). We all ended up talking to some college kids at another table who were in town to go to a conference on photography and education– or something like that.
  • After that, I met up with Bill Hart-Davidson and Steve B. for some “after hours” conference events at Miller’s Pub and then the bar at the Palmer House (where I actually chatted business with my favorite textbook company guy in the world, Nick Carbone, who is also my new inspiration for dieting), then for a bite to eat, and then home.

All in all, a good time. I always like the CCCCs, I always like Chicago, and I’m looking forward to next year in New York. But I have a suggestion to anyone on the planning committee, just in case you’re reading this: why not have this conference someplace warm in March for a change of pace? Miami? San Diego? Honolulu? Just a thought…

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"Broadcast Composition : Using Audio Files and Podcasts to Build Community and Connections in Online Writing Classes"

I made it back home after the CCCCs in one piece– more on my conference adventures tomorrow or so when I get a chance tomorrow or so. But in the mean-time, I thought I’d go ahead and link here to an audio version of my CCCCs presentation about audio files and podcasting in online classes. Be warned! It’s 9.2 MB and about 16 minutes, so use with caution.

I think it loses something without the PowerPoint presentation. I hope I can get this ProfCast thing to work and I can tie it to the audio to the visual soon enough, but if you want to enjoy the slides right now too, you can see them here.

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Scott McCloud Rocks!

This is a belated post about the Scott McCloud presentation on campus on Monday night, late because I left for Chicago and the CCCCs first thing Tuesday. But in any event, McCloud’s spiel was great. I was hoping to link to some sort of news story about it, but I can’t find one at the Eastern Echo or the Ann Arbor paper; it might be too early for the Echo…

It was a huge crowd, pretty much a full house in the union ballroom, an interesting mix between typical EMU students/faculty and area comic geek/enthusiasts. And the crowd was part of the show, at least for me. One of my grad students (this was our “class” for the week) told me that a young person in front of him “would shoot his arms high in the air with the double devils-head ‘rock-n-roll’ hand sign every time he saw or heard something he liked.” Another grad student said something like “With all these people here, I bet it’d be tough to get a game of Dungeons and Dragons going in Ann Arbor tonight.”

McCloud’s presentation, which (of course!) involved hundreds of PowerPoint slides, was basically divided into three parts. The first was about a new book he has coming out in September, a book he’s clearly excited about, and one that sounds pretty interesting, too.

Then he talked about I guess what I would describe as his “philosophy� of comics, which is too complicated to try to explain here, but which involved (evolved out of?) a lot of his own background, which is quite interesting. McCloud’s father, who was literally a rocket scientist, was (is?) legally blind. And weirdly, McCloud lived in a neighborhood that seemed to be weirdly populated with kids who would group up to end up working as comic book artists, graphic novel writers, and children’s book illustrators.

Then he talked about his concept of the “infinite canvas� and comics, particularly about comics on the web. Essentially, McCloud talked about how the technology of print is responsible for the way that we have traditionally read comics and thought about things like panels. The cool thing with the web (not to mention high-speed access and software like flash) is that a lot of those rules can either go out the window entirely or at least be questioned in some interesting ways. And he had some super-cool examples to show too.

All in all, a great show and in interesting talk.

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Krause's Pre-CCCC Podcast

Here’s a brief podcast wherein I share a few thoughts about the upcoming CCCCs.

Three additional things:

  • The title of my talk is “Broadcast Composition: Using Audio Files and Podcasts to Build Community and Connections in Online Writing Classes.”
  • The software that I was talking about not getting to work is Profcast. Hopefully, it’s something I’ll be able to figure out later, but not before I am off to Chicago. Though I just figured out that the software developers are in Ann Arbor; maybe I can just stop by and ask.
  • I forgot to mention in my podcast that I really like the CCCCs quite a bit. Unlike MLA, where the general mode is formal and job-seeking, the CCCCs is casual and happy. Sure, a few schools interview there, but not many (and I hope it stays that way). And given that the job market in composition and rhetoric is considerably better than in most of the fields popular at MLA, I suppose there is a better vibe at the CCCCs based on professional and financial stability.

Anyway, I’m ready for the Chicago adventures…. almost….

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A writing/exercise tally: not a bad idea for me, too….

On Clancy “CultureCat” Ratliff’s blog, I noticed this morning she’s keeping a tally of her writing and exercise patterns. Not a bad idea linking writing to working out, especially while working on the dissertation.

I remember when I was in the midst of that project— wow, I just realized, this was ten years ago to the month (I am getting old!)– I didn’t take this approach. I just ate and ate and wrote and wrote and generally did not take care of myself. I was in even much worse shape than I am right now, and that’s saying something; the workload this term has made the gym seem like a distant memory.

Sigh….

Well, maybe I’ll get some exercise walking to and from my hotel to the Palmer House in Chicago.

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On writing talks

I can’t say that I’ve been somewhat MIA on my blog simply because I’ve been working super-duper hard on talks that I’m giving at the CCCCs and at the Jacobson Symposium in Omaha the following week. That’s only part of it. The week before last was winter break, and while I did blog and work a lot while in Florida, I also vacationed a lot too, which means that I fell too far behind on work things due this past week. And there was also a fistful of meetings and other obligations in the department. It was one of those weeks that felt like two weeks.

Anyway, even if I haven’t been working super-hard on my presentations, I have been working. I’m not completely done with either of these spiels but I have good starts on both and, in a sense, they are both written in my head already. This is not to say that I am ready to give these talks, nor is it to say that I am going to just “wing it.” But I’m getting there.

I know that I’ve written about this here in the past– actually, almost exactly a year ago— but it’s on my mind so I’ll say it again: in the choice between conference performance styles of someone “reading a paper” versus “speaking/talking extemporaneously,” I say “reading a paper” wins out. Listening to someone read something out loud that isn’t meant to be read out loud can be painful, but I think it is much worse to listen to someone, ah, “wing it.” Let me put it to you this way: just “winging it” often ends up being a bit like singing in the shower: sure, it sounds fine in there to you, but try that in front of other people and it usually goes poorly. So, IMO, unless you’re a really REALLY good public speaker and/or you basically have a presentation that you wrote previously memorized, it’s probably best to read something.

If my speaking role is small/short, obviously interactive, and/or extremely casual, I prepare some notes– possibly a hand-out– and that’s about it. These sorts of settings would include what at the CCCCs are called “Special Interest Groups,” workshops (which are basically the same as teaching and things like that tend to be too interactive to plan too carefully), roundtable discussions, etc.

But if my speaking role is not short, which is the case for both of the things I have upcoming, I need to write a script. And I say “a script” as opposed to “a paper” or “an article” because I think a presentation script has to sound good in a way that’s different from something meant completely for the page, and it has to be relatively short. In my experience, a 15-20 minute presentation should be about eight pages long, double-spaced. And better to be the speaker whose presentation is a little short than the one who is still rambling on after 25 minutes.

There are two different things I’m playing around with this year that are new for me. First, PowerPoint slides, and lots and lots of ’em. At last year’s CCCCs, I went to see a fantastic presentation by Lawrence Lessig. Most of Lessig’s fantastic-ness was the very smart things he had to say, but almost as impressive to me was the “show” of his presentation, which included about a million slides. Most of them were very simple– just a few words on a screen– but the effect was fantastic. So while I’m not hoping to imitate Lessig exactly, I am going to have a bunch of slides in the spirit of Lessig.

Well, that and Stephen Colbert’s “The Wørd” segments on his Comedy Central show. In other words, I’m hoping to have a lot of slides that are a combination of informative and entertaining.

Assuming the LCD projector works, of course.

The second thing I’m playing around with– probably after the conference, actually, though who knows, maybe before– is this software that Collin mentioned recently in this post which is supposed to make it easy to merge audio and PowerPoint (or Keynotes) presentations and end up with an mp4 multimedia presentation. The software is called Profcast, and other than what I just wrote, I have no idea how it works yet. If I get around to finishing my presentations soon, I’ll let you know….