Business: March 2006 Archive Page

Still unconvinced of my suitability, he reminded me that the job involved backbreaking work and that the average person could not hack it. He warned me that I would leave the job daily with various aches and pains. I countered that I worked out regularly and that I was not afraid of a strenuous job, though I must admit I was starting to worry.

To prove my point, however, I showed him scars on my hands. "Are these the hands of someone who is not used to work?" I offered, looking him squarely in the eyes. The part I left out was that the scars did not come from hard labor but from falling on glass when I was in the third grade.

I was working so hard at creating a working-class persona that I felt like a fraud. But my responses did the trick, and he asked when I could start. --Eugene Thompson --Moonlighting (Chronicle)

An academic takes a package-handling job to finance a research trip overseas. There's an office recruiting day laborers and telemarketers that I pass every morning on my way to work, and I confess I've sometimes thought about stopping in...

In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting with him to write a blog that launched Tuesday. --Ben Domenech Resigns (post.blog)

That was quick.

Gaming tends to be regarded as a harmless diversion at best, a vile corruptor of youth at worst. But the usual critiques fail to recognize its potential for experiential learning. Unlike education acquired through textbooks, lectures, and classroom instruction, what takes place in massively multiplayer online games is what we call accidental learning. It's learning to be - a natural byproduct of adjusting to a new culture - as opposed to learning about. --John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas --You Play World of Warcraft? You're Hired!: Why multiplayer games may be the best kind of job training. (Wired)

Why Plagiarism Makes Sense in the Digital Age: Copying, Remixing, and Composing (CCCC 2006 Chicago -- Day 2)

This was a jam-packed, no-downtime, hardly-time-to-breathe presentation. I'm posting the notes that I took while the presenters were speaking, very lightedly edited afterwards in my hotel room. I hope whatever inadvertent remixing I did while taking these notes doesn't distort their intended message too much. In many ways, this panel felt like the continuation of, and one possible fulfillment of, the discussion raised by a panel from last year's Cs, "Writing Teachers Writing New Media."

Jim Porter addressed the crowed room by noting that plagiarism is, in many respects, a normal part of the writing process. Especially normal in the realm of digital writing. “Composing in the digital age is different.” The technical functions of copy/paste change everything. Remixing makes sense. “We do believe in the ethic of fair use.” The issue of plagiarism is more complex than it’s typically portrayed. Playing copyright police supports the business practices of corporations that have a vested interest in the status quo.


Catherine Latterell, Penn State U, “What is Remix Culture?”

Latterell showed clips and examples of remix culture. “My presentation is very consciously a collage and a sample of other people’s work.” Streetwear movement of customizing sneakers; the tuxedo T-shirt. The remix uses media in ways independent of the original designer’s intentions. The Tangelo and “Sprite Remix.” Pets: Labradoodles. (Labrador poodle.)

Quoted Emerson on Quotation and Originality. “By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.”

A State of the Union remix that chops up Bush’s statements.

Pete Rojas, “Bootleg Culture.”

Office Space meets Super Friends (classic mash-up).

Sampling assumes or recognizes a shared network of meaning.

“Sampling plays games with memory.”

DJ Spooky’s Rebirth of a Nation.

Sampling implies breakdown of boundaries – truth/meaning, author/audience.

MySpace: The Movie

Lessig: “Everyone in the life of producing and creating engages in this practice of remix.”


James Porter, Michigan State University, “Forget Plagiarism, Teach Filesharing and Fair Use.”

Reiterated what has been said by people in our field before. “If you don’t like what I say, you can blame all the immoral influences in my life.”

Brian Martin, “Plagiarism: A misplaced emphasis.”

Mark Rose, “The author as proprietor: Donaldson v. Beckett”

Lessig – “Many kinds of piracy are useful and productive, either to create new content or foster new ways of doing business. Neither our tradition, nor any tradition, has ever banned all piracy.”

“We are all pirates.” (“Image used without permission of Disney.”)

Criticizes the black and white view of plagiarism, which insists on some gray area, “context-dependent issues” where the answers is “it depends.”

“Be rhetorical about plagiarism.”

Copying without attribution and without permission is not always unethical.

Is it ethical to use somebody else’s design content for a web page, without attribution, if you plug in your own content?

Students – “well it depends on what course you’re doing it in.”

“We are all ‘plagiarists’ “ but in an ethical context.

Chris Dussold was fired for copying another professor’s teaching statement. University couldn’t make a sexual harassment charge stick, so they went after him for the boilerplate teaching. Have we ever plagiarized boilerplate syllabus text without acknowledging the source. Ever use an existing PowerPoint template? Cut and paste bibliography entries? Reuse paragraphs from your own presentations?

Much of our professional work involves reusing templates and boilerplate without attribution. A laboratory director who did little of the actual work may have his name appended to a list of authors.

Plagiarism not reduced to unattributed copying. The real issue is “taking someone else’s work and representing it as your own, in situations where it matters.”

Got a big laugh noting that “like you” he goes to Wikipedia for a definition of a term – in this case, “plagiarism.”

Teach not so much “what is plagiarism” but “how to you make the decision” of what’s right or allowable in which context.



Danielle Nichole DeVoss, Michigan State University. “Pastiche, Remix, the RIAA, and/in the Writing Classroom.”

IANAL

We are digitally literate technoretoricians. Not the hobby horse, but the bull in the china shop.

Our culture clings to an antiquated, romanticized notion of what writng is. Most, if not all writing takes place today in computer-mediated places. (Showed slides of people working together.)

The ability to compose documents with multiple media, to distribute, and to allow audiences to interact with that writing, changes many of the principles and practices of composition, which favors and privileges print-based notions.

(Included Leeroy Jenkins as an example of digital delivery.)

Offered 3 scenarios by “Amy Deel” a master’s student. If students translate and illustrate a piece of writing into a multimedia piece. Most students choose copyrighted material. Can you encourage them to publish their work? Can you publish it yourself in a conference presentation?

“When you’re downloading MP3s, you’re downloading Communism”

Copyright vs Copyleft.chart (attributed it to Jim.)

Puttign writing teachers on the grid almost squarely in the copyright domain.

Jack Valennti – “who’s just a rhetorical treat”

Mapped the values of composition instruction on top of the RIAA values of individual benefits.

Michael Day, once a student project goes public on the web, there is much more to consider. [I botched the 2nd half of the quote.]

Says it is “phenomenally difficult” to secure legitimate permission.


Johndon Johnson-Eilola, Clarkson U.

Begins with remixed movie trailer – Shining.

Plagiarism “as stealing” is about 12% of reported cases. Of more interest is cases where the concept of authorship fails to keep up with the creative processes. Defining “creativity” as the production of an original, unmixed text is a narrow view, idealizing the isolated genius. Take a problem-solving or problem-posing approach should push our students to use existing information to solve real problems. Composition hews pretty closely to those traditional views.

Shift the goal of writing from performance to action in context. Shift away from one extremely limited concept of reality, away from the hidden genius, away from writing as an isolated, de-contextualized process.

We tend to remain committed to that final artifact – original words, produced by the student. The ghost of the authorial genius remains between the lines, propping up what is becoming and increasingly unrealistic artifact in our digital age.

Thinking of composition instead of assemblage of parts, independent of what is original and what was existing. The distinction is “if not meaningless, at least secondary.”

Students recognize the hierarchical value of originality, causing students to hide their borrowed fragments. Focusing on problem-solving values assemblages.

Web design and design patterns – available from numerous sources. (Autocomplete, breadcrumbs, tabs.)

In theory, a web designer could create a new site only from assembling assisting material.

Ethical concerns. “Stop encouraging students to produce original texts all the time. Tell them to work, at least occasionally” on collages. We don’t want students to claim that they wrote something that they didn’t actually write. Honesty about authorship is honesty framed within a binary arrangement between original text and borrowed text… asking students to be “honest” about what they wrote and what they borrowed is simply a tool that helps us preserve the value of the original writing.

Creativity moves to the assemblage. Citation is no longer a way of making subordinate elements in text, but rather a way to reward students for their new skills, to situate texts in preexisting, but new contexts. Their goal should be to filter and remix existing texts in order to solve problems. Students are encouraged to make explicit their borrowing. Encouraging writing instructors to recognize the value of this compositional skill.

How Writing Centers Respond to Writers? Needs (CCCC 2006 Chicago -- Day 2)

Deborah Burns, Merrimack College. “Taking Care of Business: The Writing Center as a Site of Curricular Reform.”

Burns said that for years, the writing center had little impact on the business school. But a recent new program encouraging communications skills in business mandates inclusion of extensive writing activities, as well as other skills that can be learned effectively in a tutoring environment. Most of the faculty in business had no experience with writing-related pedagogy. Writing center provides “business writing fellows” for every writing-intensive business course. The most problematic area centers on business writing assignments – group composition. In a course “Business Enterprise,” a written analysis and PowerPoint presentation was required. Overwhelming majority of students (first-semester freshmen) found the work very challenging.

Students placed in a 3-5 member work group; meet with “business writing fellow” in group tutorials. Often only 1 or 2 of the group members would actually show up; some became frustrated by the idea that the writer had to be present in order to get feedback. (They wanted to delegate to the “best writer” in the group.) Not all students participated during writing tutorials – some IMed, took phone calls, or just sat there. Business faculty didn’t have a problem with the “best writer” model, since that was the model they all used themselves when in graduate school. (This works against the course goals, that expected all students to demonstrate writing proficiency.)

Burns explained her efforts to work more closely with the instructor. I’m sure her business colleagues can, with her guidance, easily see the benefits of apprenticing, scaffolding and the practical functions of group tutorials. She ended with an anecdote from a tutoring session following the new, improved integration of the writing center’s resources. During that session, a non-participating student answered his cell phone for the second time. His classmates turned to him and said, “Come on! We need to get this done.” I enjoyed hearing her success story, since it reminds me of the progress I saw happening during the years I spent at the University of Toronto, in what was then the brand-new Engineering Writing Centre.


Mary Zdrojkowski, Eastern Michigan University. “Laughing Matters in Writing Centers.”

Zdrojkowski’s dissertation is on institutional uses of laughter. Started out with “I’m Mary Zdrojkowski, and you’re not,” but didn’t smile. Then she commented on the fact that some of us thought it was funny, but most didn’t. She also invited those in the audience who might have expected a talk on how to use humor might instead be interested in going to Deborah Tannen’s talk.

Showed a video clip of a tutoring session where a student and tutor discuss whether to indent paragraphs. The student told the tutor that the tutor is wrong about something, but it came out easily and both were laughing about it. Literature studies of irony, sarcasm; philosophical questions of humor (superiority, incongruity, aggression). Tutors, when speaking to each other, can be sarcastic. Zdrojkowski noted that tutors who inadvertently offend students during a tutoring session might backtrack and recast their comment as a joke.

Made a distinction between humor and laughter. Things can be funny without laugher, and people can laugh at something that’s not funny.

Notes that doctors rarely laugh, but that patients laugh regularly in the initial interview when they tell the doctor where their pain is. Students will also laugh, at the precise moment when they “lay their souls naked” and express their feeling that they can’t write.

It found it easier to make sense of the heavily marked-up transcripts (with symbols indicating “smiley voice” or pause in seconds than it was making sense of most of the videos (because the video was unclear and it wasn’t always clear to me at first who was the student and who was the tutor), but I did enjoy seeing the contrasts. One very nervous student makes jokes at her expense, and before long the tutor and student have bonded over laughter; a hostile student leans back in his chair and complains about the professor, and keeps complaining (and laughing) while the tutor responds with stony silence.

I’m feeling tantalized, since I’ve always been interested in linguistics. But we’re going through the clips so quickly that I’m not sure I’m absorbing what I’m supposed to be getting out of watching these clips, or how she herself uses these. She answered that in response to a question from the audience. I think I would have rather watched fewer clips and heard more of her evaluation and conclusions. Nevertheless, her presentation made me think very carefully about the power imbalance when a student comes to me for tutoring. (Of course, I also sometimes hear students complaining about the writing center.)


Laura Patterson, Seton Hill University: “Let them Do Research! Two Uncommon Approaches to Teaching Research in a First-Year Writing Course.”

Patterson began by discussing the context of the panel. She feels she is the odd woman out because of the four panelist, she is not a writing center coordinator. Patterson noted some of the problems associated with getting students to do research on cultural identities. The students felt overwhelmed when being asked to consider cultural identities for the first time, much less asking them to think about it on a critical level. Students were so stressed that instructors felt they were pushed into a counselor role. She noted that for the 3-page research project that was the culmination of the first semester of the course, she asked students to choose a stress-release activity, and to research that activity, in order to address the question, “How does this activity reduce stress?”

The assignment was very structured, more than Patterson would have liked, but she finds this structure necessary for this particular project. She noted that the project is not really about cultural identities; some students resisted, with one student claiming not to have any stress in his life. (Patterson’s response: “I want to be you!”) Some students found that a particular activity didn’t reduce their stress. Perhaps due to the self-help culture, students “did buy in from the outset.” Practicing that stress-release activity was a kind of primary research. The project requires ongoing analysis. Requires the first-person voice; students wrote far more than 3 pages; reported benefits in other classes; were eager to share their results; students felt they had “done something purposeful with their research.”

Patterson remembers this as a “very positive time in the classroom.” Ended with the image of her on the floor with her students, during a student presentation on yoga.

Kim Pennesi, Seton Hill University. “Let them Do Research! Two Uncommon Approaches to Teaching Research in a First-Year Writing Course.”

Her biggest challenge as writing center administrator is getting students to buy into the writing process. Students who expect to drop off a paper and get it proofread, or they are interested in the superficial mechanics of the process, without worrying about the underlying principles. Student attitude to research: “After writing my paper, I always have a hard time trying to plug in my sources.”

Pennesi had students do the prewriting, but instead of actually writing the paper, they simply wrote and presented a reflection paper on their experience. She shared a detailed checklist of what she asked her students to do. Pennesi noted that, since SHU is switching to a one-semester first-year course model next year, she’s not sure what to do with what she’s learned about replacing the research paper with a reflection paper.

Newsweek Educational Program (CCCC 2006 Chicago -- Day 1)

A big part of the CCCC convention is the exhibit hall, where publishers offer their latest titles. I peeked in before the exhibit hall opened, and found the chaos very interesting. The exhibitors work for hours to set up booths that I might spend 2 seconds glancing at as I walk by. The scene reminded me of how much goes into preparing this convention.

While chilling out in the lobby, I spent some time talking with the rep from Newsweek, who is here to exhibit materials from Newsweek’s education program. I liked what I saw of their current unit on popular culture and an older unit on innovation. My initial sense is that the materials don’t really represent the way students really work. It makes perfect sense that Newsweek would want to introduce students to samples of its work (the same company also publishes The Washington Post). Newspapers have a vested interest in the literacy of a population, since in addition to all the other benefits literacy brings to a society, more readers means more subscribers, which means more ad money.

But students don’t start their research with Newsweek or The Washington Post – they start with Google. The rep at this conference admitted he couldn’t show me very much evidence that the Newsweek educational program was taking advantage of new media.

The Newsweek materials include stand-alone subject guides that anthologize recent articles on a particular theme. It also includes a newsletter that presents study questions, vocabulary guides, and current events quizzes, keyed to each week’s issue of Newsweek. (Apparently the woman who writes that newsletter gets a FAX of the magazine over the weekend, just before it goes to press, and she’s supposed to have her newsletter finished by Monday, when it’s sent out to teachers.)

When I teach journalism, I do have students read current issues of the paper, and as part of the discussion about sources, bias, and credibility, we have wandered into topics such as nuclear proliferation in North Korea, the Swift Boat Veterans’ attacks on John Kerry, and the Danish cartoon controversy. But I don’t really teach those events. That news writing class had 33 students, which is huge by Seton Hill standards, and very large for any writing class. While I’d like to see students engaging intelligently with the world around them, the only part of that course I think I could cut to make room for more current events would be the exercises I assigned that had them covering events on campus. But that first-hand reportage taught important lessons that students simply would not be able to get out of a book. Getting out there and doing their own local reporting fits perfectly with the educational practices that serve millennials best.

Still, that doesn’t mean there is no place in my curriculum for a current events-based resource. I never assign students the kind of rhetorical persuasion that asks them to use current news reports to support a particular stand on a hot issue. Some students choose to write those kinds of essays on their blogs, of course, in which case I will help them out. But it’s not a genre that I actively teach.

Looking at these materials makes me wonder whether I should give it a try.

There never has been a better time to get into Web journalism. We are making money, we are hiring, and we are actively searching for new, innovative ideas. After ten years, there are no veterans in this field. This is your chance to be among the first. --Anthony Moor --Go to the Web, young journalist! (Online Journalism Review)

It's Not Monday, but I Hate Garfield. (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

I started writing this as an example, on the paper of a student who put a bit of plot analysis in the spot where an academic thesis should have been. While this isn't quite as good as the story of J.R.R. Tolkien writing down the opening of The Hobbit on the back of a student paper, I still thought the result was worth sharing.

A lit crit paper uses scholarly sources to support a non-obvious claim. What you’ve presented as a claim is really data taken from plot events. It’s a bit like saying “'Garfield' is a comic strip about a fat cat who loves lasagna.” Of course that's what "Garfield" is.

But I'd much rather read a paper that argues, “'Garfield,' a comic strip that began in the late 70s (the “me decade”) and became wildly popular during the consumerist 80s, takes a lightly satirical approach to American suburbia’s self-centered complacency, obesity, and social dysfunction. While many Americans happily enjoy the inoffensive, bland humor of the Garfield comic strip, when compared to the biting social commentary of Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”) or the contemporary realistic approach of Lynn Johnston (“For Better or For Worse”), creator Jim Davis appears little more than a merchandising master, whose staff of hired writers and artists supply new material for the character while Davis himself spends most of his time negotiating business licenses. Far from satirizing weaknesses in the American psyche, “Garfield” is a prime example of the mediocrity and anti-intellectualism that American pop culture celebrates.”

Woah.. I had to go to Wikipedia to find some material for that, but you see what I mean – I exaggerated just a bit, but now I’ve probably gotten your attention.

When former Gizmondo executive Stefan Eriksson wrecked his million-dollar Ferrari on the Pacific Coast Highway last month, it simply seemed like a fitting metaphor for the death of his hapless handheld - the destruction of one expensive piece of machinery to mark the end of another.
--Gizmondo Bizarro (Game Revolution)

If all the news reports are accurate, the Gizmondo game system seems to let you race a Mercedes SLR, crash a Ferrari, manage the careers of special agents as they rise from eldertransport rent-a-cops to homeland security agents, and elude the authorities via a luxury yacht.

"We also wanted your cubicle to give you a little shred of dignity and recognition and acknowledge you exist because you're probably not getting that from your co-workers or your boss. So we've built in a mechanical flower that's acoustically activated. When you're gone, it's wilted. But when you come in, it's acoustically activated and pops up to attention, might even shudder a little bit with happiness.

"Even your wastebasket will kind of vibrate with happiness when trash is thrown into it. So you want the cubicle to love you and care for you, kind of a womb experience." --Scott Adams --Scott Adams: Dilbert's Ultimate Cubicle (CNN)

From 2001. Still pretty amusing.

The cubicle was not born evil, or even square. It began, in fact, as a beautiful vision. --Julie Schlosser --Cubicles: The Great Mistake (CNN Money.com)

The Food and Drug Administration today approved the sale of the drug PharmAmorin, a prescription tablet developed by Pfizer to treat chronic distrust of large prescription-drug manufacturers. --Wonder Drug Inspires Deep, Unwavering Love Of Pharmaceutical Companies (The Onion (Satire))