Writing: March 2006 Archive Page

The 10-year-old winner of a children's poetry competition had to hand back her prize money after newspaper readers noticed that her poem was the work of a well known writer.

"It's a mini drama for her. She did not realize it had been written by someone else," a member of the competition jury said Tuesday. --Child poetry plagiarist unmasked (Reuters|My Way)

That's one way to get ahead in life. Let's hope the young poet has learned her lesson.

The decline of handwriting and the rise of e-mail and text messaging has been highlighted in a new survey of media consumption in the digital age.

It suggests that half of written communication is by e-mail, 29% by text message and just 13% by pen and paper. --E-mail and text 'replace writing' (BBC)

But take a look at this detail about methodology: "The IPA TouchPoints survey was based on 5,000 people who updated an electronic diary every half-hour for a week."

If the data gathering mechanism is online, that is going to skew the data in favor of electronic writing.

The History of the Future of Writing (CCCC 2006 Chicago -- Day 3)

These are rough notes, typed as the presenters were speaking, and lightly edited back in my hotel room before being posted online.

Helen J. Burgess Washington State University. "Whatever Happened to My MOO?"

Administered Appalachia Moo, had fun building and coding, "absolutely no fun interacting with anybody in it." Likes coding objects.

Talking about how moos are disappearing. "I miss my moo, and I wish it would come back, but it won't."

For a while, it seemed as if Moos and VR were the next big thing. Lambda Moo, Diversity University. Usability problem, the geek problem, and the learning curve inherent in both teaching writing and teaching mooing. Blogs and wikis, in the post moo world, we're moving back towards text as narrative. "Even my mom has a blog. The question i want to ask today is, 'Whatever happened to my moo?'"

Made the intriguing argument that the motion away from moos and towards blogs is a conservative movement, a retreat from earlier attempts to consider writing as code. Blogs have become the medium of choice for journals, self-reflection.... sees blogs as a "conservative move." Said that "given that the mainstream media are pretty slow," blogs may look radical to MSM.

The truth is that "moos freaked us out." Asked to think of ourselves as objects as well as words. "We're no more or less important than any object in the moo." The move to blogs represents a retreat to familiar narrative, and expresses an anxiety about thinking of ourselves as coded objects. "We're moving back in time."

We still find narrative blogs so comforting because they don't force us to think in this manner.

"The retreat to the textual identity construction of the blog" is misleading. Blogs are composed of database objects, discreet chunks, that complicates this sense of blogs as narrative.

[In both cases, the fact that blogs have an easier learning curve means that more non-geeks access blogs than moos, so naturally the sense by which those blog authors think of their online writing will differ from the sense that smaller, more elite group of moo-ers had when they were coding their text. "Push-button publication for the masses," formerly the slogan for MovableType. --DGJ]

The blog objects can be tagged as a category and recategorized by editing a database.

The chunking and recategorization of the database-driven blog makes us relate to the blog as if it is object oriented -- though technically the databases are relational rather than object-oriented. Second Life -- in contrast, it is "true life action" animated. But the basics in Second Life are the same.

You can adjust your avatar according to sliders "so you can make your boobs go -- whoo!" – (gesturing out and in with hands… laughter).

"Looks suspiciously like The Sims Online." The Sims in Second Life are much more like MOOs than they are like games. There's no real point to them... the point is that you build. You can do anything you wanted.

For her, the interaction, building, describing and coding was more fun. "I've seen really bad implementations of writing classes inside Moos." MOOs viewed as the ancestors, not of writing environments, but coding and building environments. "And that's what happened to my moo."


Michael Day, "The History and Future of Machine Logic"

Day -- "I don't claim any originality for anything I'm going to say today." Two scenarios -- one's kind of doomsday, and one's kind of fun.

Doomsday. Most would agree writing has changed quite a bit, with students coming to us with a great deal of experience in digital media. As teachers of writing or composition, we're faced with the need to cover a lot of venues and territories, and the discipline of comp is struggling ot keep up.

Students are adept at social networking interfaces, video games, and informal e-mal. Referred to Kathy Yancey's past keynote, which emphasized the value of keeping up with student multimedia use.

Day referred to Youtube and Flickr and praised the mashups our students are producing.

Day referred to a number of automated processes for marking papers, with vendors claiming that the software does a good job of agreeing with the grades assigned by human assessors.

Software can be fooled by contentless writing that's gibberish but follows the semantic patterns expected by the software.

Day said the Texas Tech model is better, in that the human graders mark papers, though the computer makes that process smoothed. Day wonders what we're losing when students can no longer schmooze and sway their evaluators, since rhetoric is all about schmoozing and swaying.

Day paints a picture in which only the elite classes are marked by the instructors who actually teach the class. A second-tier would be a situation in which student writers are evaluated by Wal-Mart -- that is, humans who don't have personal relationships with the authors. A third tier will only be evaluated by machines.

But is it so bad to use computers to help us write?

It's not the technologies themselves, but the ways they are used to which we have to pay attention. Yes, they can be panoptic and oppressive, but what if we used it in the formative stages in their writing, not the final evaluative stage. Will ETS let us "play" with these tools?

What if the computer were "kind of a straight man, or a differently intelligenced entity" and what if the computer's role was to help us get beyond the limits of our own platitudes and reasoning, could force us out of the box, provide new word for us, new ways of saying.

What about the possibility that computers can help us find new mindsets? Help us create analogies, helping us break out of conventional writing and thinking.

Rob's Amazing Poetry Generator
Yong Poets "Just For Fun" Word Play

Echoed Lessig's consideration of your students as "The Remix Generation" and praised Lessig's talk from last year.

Computer software can help us make the stretch between the known and the unknown.

Voice recognition software and its role in the composition process... we've all had that moment when the student can say it, but can't write it out. "What if we deliberately programmed the computer to misunderstand" and transcribe something else, in order to force composers out of the box.

Introduced the concept of "Babbles" from RiverMOO -- a text game involving software that grabs a "markov chain" (? – sorry, I didn’t catch that) to construct automated orations. He amused the 20 or so in the audience with an emotive oral interpretation of this hilarious mashed-up drivel.

Like most people in the field, Day recommends that we pay attention to the ways computer evaluation can be oppressive, while being open to the ways that it can help us.


Laura Gurak, University of Minnesota, St. Paul. "Writing as Code, Code as Writing."

Began with a personal reflection on how she dropped out of school in her 20s, got an apprenticeship in the printing business, and worked in a small print shop where she learned the business just when computers were changing it.

Reflected on the time she realized she'd spend a lot of time typing. Notes that some people simply aren't meant to write. They may be wired differently, with an oral fluency that doesn't translate to writing.

Moved from a printing apprenticeship to software development.

We cannot figure out what happens under the hood in Word,. "You turn the thing on, and the Clippy comes up and asks, 'What do you want to do?' "

Suggests that for people whose primary genre is speech, it's a great thing to have the computer tell you what to do.

Of classical rhetoric -- most is dead, but ethos is still viable.

Template-driven literacy. "No technical writer really writes anything from scratch." In the real world, they will be expected to work on a huge database, writing in something called "controlled English" so it can be readily translated and localized.

Noted that the documentation for pacemakers was so expensive and wasteful because doctors in the operating room didn't want to spend time reading the instructions anyway -- they would open up the pacemaker and throw away the instructions, One solution was to put the documentation on CDs. Gurak comically mimed trying to boot up a computer while in the operating room. [I couldn’t resist, and called out: "Clippy says, 'What operation do you want to do today?' " Day chipped in with, "I can't do that, Dave." ]

Gurak says she hasn't done much on the aesthetics of code.

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.

Technology, Play and Pedagogy: Video Gaming and New Literacies (CCCC 2006 Chicago -- Day 2)

As is always the case with a conference blogging exercise, these are my rough notes, typed as the speakers were talking, and lightly edited in my hotel room at the end of the day.

Matthew S. S. Johnson, Indiana University, Bloomington: “Communities in Playspace: Writing and Democracy in Online Communities.”

(I arrived a bit late… I’m going to ask Johnson to send me a copy of his paper so I can do it justice. He says that in the part I missed, he mostly went over composition theory, which is sort of presumed to be a priori knowledge at this conference, though there is only so much of the literary theory in which I was trained that translates into the world of rhetcomp. Thus, I wouldn't mind seeing what Johnson sees is important for laying the groundwork for the use of video game culture in the writing classroom. But since I heard him speak last night and went to dinner with him afterwards, I think I can piece it together reasonably well.)

Johnson was discussing the unique design model of Seed. Developers aren’t stopping their work once the game is released. They will continue to develop the game based on the decisions made by the players. The more players choose a certain mode of interaction (in this game, which has no single conclusion), the more likely the developers will go in that direction.

Johnson also noted the fact that the developers of “Oblivion” courted and encouraged fans to give suggestions for where the previous incarnations of The Elder Scrolls fell short.

Many developers are providing web kits that permit players to make fan sites easily. Gaming corporations do this to garner interest in the games, and even maintain some sense of control over those websites. But the consumers produce fan fiction and other related texts that enhance and build upon the gaming experience. That mass of fan-produced writing does influence the designers as they create the next iteration of the product.

Programmers stand by waiting to see what players will do, and the player actions (in the game and in the writing they do about the game) forms a feedback loop.

Gaming communities create openings that are potential merger points for compositions.


Erin Smith, Michigan Technological University. “Semiotic Domains Reloaded: Literacy and Localization in Video Games.”

An excerpt from a longer work in a publcation edited by Cynthia Selfe and Gail Havisher, with chapters co-written by scholars and gamers. Gee’s What Video Games Have To Teach Us about Language and Learning presents literacy as a social practice. We need different literacies to function in different semiotic domains. Video games, for Gee, are marked with certain characteristics, shaped by the internal and external design grammar. Within the game world, learners test their cognitive models. Video games provide an environment that can foster active learning.

The game industry provides an extraordinary example of Jameson’s claims about global communication forces. Exemplifies the logic, strategies, and contradictions of a force striving to balance global reach and local appeal. To what extent can we lay claim to cultural information in the world of the game, without considering broader contexts. Sony coined “global localism” rather than forcing local cultures to adapt to global culture. Can range from making sure you have the local slang right, to completely re-writing the narrative. Microsoft has a “geopolitical product strategy team” that pays attention to cultural factors that affect the way their products might be received.

Game developers design game from the outside, with localization in mind. Plot lines that would require too much revision to be localized in other cultures, may be scrapped, or only released locally.

Gee: cultural models are images, storylines, or metaphor that we recognize as “normal.” They remain invisible to us unless we are challenged. For instance, most military games penalize players for killing civilians, but in a game whose name I didn’t catch, settlers are considered combatants, and may be shot without penalty.

Quoted a scholar (the name sounded like “EE woo BOO key”) who notes that Japanese electronic products don’t carry a “cultural odor” that leads consumers to associate those products with Japaneseness. Schoolchildren perceive Japan as “cool” because it created Pokemon, but Japanese computer games and other characters don’t look Japanese. There’s a term for the non-Japaneseness of these characters. (Smith didn’t spell it, so I won’t even try to reproduce it here.)

Referred to a student, Eve, who wrote to the author of David Freedman, Creating Emotions in Games, to challenge his reading of Final Fantasy X. “You stray so far from the reality of the game that it makes me wonder whether you were playing it blindfolded with earplugs.” Eve has a “culturally aware” position, quotes from details in the gameplay in order to defend her critique of Freedman.

Differences in the Japanese voice acting and the American voice acting. The original team’s work on the Japanese game “could have been blown to hell” by a bad translation or a radically different voice interpretation.

If we’re going to start bringing games into the classroom, contextualize them, and it will serve our literacy goals more fully if we do.

During the Q & A, an audience member asked about the idea that the Japanese are using their electronic products to represent themselves culturally as westernized, that therefore their products do have a “cultural odor.”


Alice Robinson, University of Wisconsin Madison. “Videogame Design as a Writing Process.”

Works with Jim Gee. Robinson’s goal is to determine designer intent. Do designers intend the active critical learning results that researchers note when they study gamers?

Gunther Kress, “Design shapes the future through production.” Design is a cognitively higher activity than critique, which looks backward at a text.

As a linguist, Gee looks at rule systems. The “internal design grammar” is a “complex system of interrelated parts meant to engage and even manipulate the player in certain ways.” You have to go beyond the internal design grammar if you ever want to get good at the game, and reach for the external design grammar. Players become readers of the IRD, but also a writer, since nothing happens unless you do something first. Players are demanding a lot more from game designers, demanding more from their interactive experiences with games as texts. Genre molding, mixing genres is part of the future of games.

Robinson repeated the designer/player, writer/reader, teacher/student slide that was a central part of her SIG presentation last night. Her research focus separates designers from marketers, artists, sound engineers, etc.

Quotes from one designer shows he is thinking very clearly about what people say, in a social environment, about the games they played. I think the audience responded meaningfully when Robinson invited us to imagine what our own authorship process would be like if we thought first and foremost about what our readers will say to each other. Paraphrasing the designer’s goal, Robinson said, “I want students [probably Robinson’s Freudian slip for “players” … speaking energetically from notes, she actually made this substitution several times] to have memories about playing my games, and I design my game to create those memories.”

The designer is not creating individual activities, but rather the environment. Killing a dragon is an isolated task, much like doing a worksheet. The task itself is part of a larger problem-solving effort. Designers want players to outsmart them.

[I like how Robinson moves back and forth between the designer/player relationship and the teacher/student relationship. I wonder if “problem solver” makes sense.]

If the end statement is “I can’t believe you can set everything on fire!” that means something different from putting a flamethrower in the game. In curriculum design, starting with “I want students to write a research paper” is akin to putting a flamethrower in a game.

In response to my question about the function of pedagogy in game design, she admitted that she is focusing on “the most progressive designers,” whose games are instantiations of the new literacy studies theories.


During the Q & A, Cynthia Selfe expressed concern that English teachers are “going to muck it up.” She thought about that phrase, and came up with instead the delightfully oxymoronic notion that we will "muck it up" because we, as English teachers, “tidy up” the genres that we pull into the classroom. She encouraged us to think about this genre as the students’ space, and encouraged us to respect this genre and learn from the students.

Johnson noted that he’s very careful about writing about the gaming communities that he doesn’t participate in, so that he doesn’t “take the data” that belongs to the game world.

Using Genre to Help Students Envision Themselves as Writers (CCCC 2006 Chicago -- Day 2)

I volunteered to chair this session, so I wasn't taking copious notes, just jotting down possible discussion prompts.

Scott Whiddon, Louisiana State University, "From Cellblock to Center: Literacy, Identity and the Angolite."

The Angolite is an award-winning news magazine produced by the inmates of the Lousiana State Penitentiary. He noted that criminality and illiteracy are often taken as synonymous. This publication lets its contributors and editors transcend their role as "prisoner" and lets them participate in the outside world that their circumstances and mistakes have denied them. He also mentioned the Angola Prison Rodeo, in which prisoners particpate before a sold-out crowd. [I asked whether the print-only Angola might perpetuate some of the power differentials that we see eroding in the outside world, with the rise of digital distributed culture. I also couldn't help but think how both the magazine and the rodeo are attempts by the prisoners to take control of and even invert the panopticon. Instead of being subjects, observed by the invisible eye of authority, they become performers, interacting for and with the public who has paid to come see them. Whiddon noted that the articles in The Angolite feature redemption stories -- precisely the kind of thing that the general public wants to hear from inmates.]

Lisa Bickmore, of Salt Lake Community College, prestented "Writing 'Just on Paper,': Genre, Exigency, Situation." Since I've taught web design and writing for the web, I had to bite my tongue when she showed a slide featuring a mockup of a student website. The students had cut and pasted colored paper to indicate buttons and menu bars on a piece of poster board, and pasted what looked like an 8 1/2 x 11 paper printout in the center of the board.

My own biases made it hard for me to see beyond the paragraphs of plain text, poured into an approximation of a web design. You can put your boots in the oven, but that don't make 'em biscuits.

I can certainly understand the value of a paper prototype, and of course I know nothing about the technical literacy or access to computers that Bickmore can expect from her students.

At any rate, Bickmore applied Jim Gee's definition of literacy as social action, and presented samples from two student projects who chose to write on progressive topics. During the Q & A, I noted that as a journalism teacher, I make it perfectly clear that no human endeavor is ever perfectly objective, and I briefly described how I use the story of an article that appeared in the student newspaper when I was an undergraduate. An article reported that two demonstrations of equal sides took place at the same time, with pro-choice demonstators on one side of the downtown mall, and pro-life demonstrators on the other. The student reporter included four direct quotes and one paraphrase from protestors on one side of the issue, and merely quoted the slogans shouted and carried by demonstrators on the other side of the issue. I tell my students that, if they're waiting for me to tell them which side of the issue this reporter favored, then they're missing the point of the story -- it's bad journalism, no matter which side it favors. Students don't have to adopt a neutral tone of voice in the composition classroom, but still, in light of the activist framework she supplies to this wriiting assignment, I asked her whether her conservative students felt comfortable expressing themselves in the same way. (She answered that she was glad somebody asked that question, and noted that one group of mostly male students wrote about their opinion that Title IX was unfair.)

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.

Opening General Session (CCCC 2006 Chicago -- Day 2)

Two huge projection screens flank the dais here in the grand ballroom. One screen shows a video close-up of the program chair, Akua Duku Anoyke. The other screen shows a textual transcript of her words. There is a soft chuckle in the room when she mentions a name – Rosanne Cook – that appears on the screen as “roast Ann cook.”

As is always the case with conference liveblogging, these are the rough notes that I took while the presenters were speaking. I've lightly edited them, but please don't consider them a professional transcription.

The announcement that there are 900 newbies led to applause.

The word “pedagogy” came across on the transcript as “pedestrian Gojy.”

(I should note that the transcripting is really working very well – just because I note the amusing glitches shouldn’t be taken as criticism. I just enjoy pointing out the limitations of the technology.)

Joyce Rain Anderson introduced the Scholars for the Dream awards, a program to bring under-represented groups to present at the CCCCs for the first time.

The 2006 Exemplar Award was presented to David Bartholomae, who got a standing ovation. Bartholomae says he told his brother, “It’s like a geezer award.” “I’m of that generation that says the 4Cs was our graduate school.” His graduate training offered no coursework in composition or pedagogy, and it did not take education of freshman seriously. Bartholome points to the successful growth of CCCCs, but worries that in the focus on creating graduate programs and rhetoric and composition theories, perhaps the central importance of freshman writing education has been lost. Why should freshman English remain an area of primary importance: By turning our energies to the upper divisions, and research, we are confirming the deans’ bias towards research, rather than teaching. Freshman comp asks us to ask, what is the place of reading and writing in a general sense, as they might be practiced outside the canons of advanced study? IF we turn away from freshman English, we lose the opportunity to think about the relationship of being accountable to the public. Bartholomae notes that one can make a successful career focusing on lower-division classes and freshman writing. (Another standing ovation.)

Rebecca Burnett presented the 4Cs Memorial Scholarship, honoring former CCCC chairs who have passed away, and supporting four graduate student conference presentation.

Joe Janangelo, the local arrangements chair, introduced and recognized some of the key people who worked to organize the conference. He spoke touchingly of mentors past, encouraging us to thank the mentors who surround us, including people we encounter in the elevators, the assistants who do our photocopying, the people who clean our offices, our partners, and children.

Kyoko Sato, NCTE president, recalled the “thin, white, diaphanous material wafting up from the concrete floor” that partitioned the convention hall last year. She spoke of the commonalities between secondary education and college teachers. She noted “slight edginess” of the CCCCs personality as opposed to the general NCTE personality (but quickly qualified that as a good thing), and expressed her interest in encountering theoretical terms. Her mention that NCTE has opened a satellite office in Washington, D.C. in order to make NCTE concerns more visible to the government. (There was a short burst of enthusiastic applause, which seemed to surprise her.) As part of the NCTE efforts, the states are being encouraged to look at Reading First, and to create a range of assessments, decreasing the testing burden. (Louder applause.) Sato invited us back to Chicago in 2011, to celebrate CCCC’s 100th birthday.

Sharon Mitchler, chair of the 2-year college commission, noted that community college “is where the action is.” (Applause.) She previewed panels of particular interest to 2-year college teachers. She also asked members who are currently teaching in 2-year colleges to stand, and then asked those who had taught there in the past, to stand. A small but significant number stood. Then, she invited everyone who has ever attended a 2-year college to stand – and by this time, half the room was on its feet.

Conference on College Composition and Communication -- Day 2 (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

Here are links to the blogs I wrote on the second day of the confernce. I'm posting them past midnight -- all this took place on March 23.

• Opening General Session
  
• Jay Wootten’s CCCC 2006 Address: ‘’Riding a One-Eyed House’’
  
• Publish, Plagiarize, and/or Perish?
  
• How Writing Centers Respond to Writers’ Needs
  
• Technology, Play and Pedagogy: Video Gaming and New Literacies
  
• Why Plagiarism Makes Sense in the Digital Age: Copying, Remixing, and Composing
  
• Wiki SIG (Special Interest Group)
  
• Dinner with Engineering SIG

See Conference on College Composition and Communication Day 1.

1UP: Perspectives from Scholars/Practitioners of Video Games (CCCC 2006 Chicago -- Day 1)

I arrived early at this session and spent some time reconnecting with Matt Barton, whom I know from previous conferences. Barton is working on a book on graphic adventure games, and gave me some suggestions on what I might do with my interactive fiction work. I really enjoy his work on Armchair Arcade.

Another early arrival was Matthew S. S. Johnson, a dyed-in-the-wool narratologist. I told him that Jesper Juul, whose dissertation slammed interactive fiction and the mythology surrounding it, has moderated his position in his new book, Half Real, which works towards integrating narratology and ludology.

The three of us discussed our hopes that the CCCC video gaming community, which is just beginning to form, will last.

The first speaker, Alice Robinson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, spoke on, “What Videogame Designers Can Teach Writing Instructors.” She works under James Gee. She began with some statistics from a recent Pew study demonstrating how pervasive computer games are in mainstream popular culture. Since students are often casually gaming in one window while they are doing homework in another window, Robinson discussed the relationship between what happens in the brain when one plays a game, and what happens in the brain when one writes a composition. Finishing a four-hour session with Civ IV involves reviewing the charts and data that the game displays as part of the end-of-game debriefing. She touched on the “embodied cognition” aspect of video games, which I presume refers to the fact that people learn in many ways, and that the direct manipulation of the simulated environment ties into our hard-wired system that lets us learn through interaction with the real world. Robinson noted that good games have a “design grammar,” and compared the “designer/player” relationship to the “teacher/student” and “reader/writer” relationship. All the theory that identifies positive ways that the teacher/student and reader/writer dichotomy can interact with each other and enrich our understanding of texts, the designer/player relationship is perhaps even more suited to helping us understand the many positive ways that that barrier is transgressed (I’m using my own words here – she is going very quickly through the introductory material.) Her research involves interviewing professional game designers. She spoke positively about the connections between creating a world and teaching; notes that designers are interested in the metaskills their players develop. [But when I attended the Serious Games summit, it was very clear that the “fun vs. pedagogy” debate was alive and kicking, with the designers feeling pushed around by the authority that serious games projects gives to the curriculum designer.] that writers often fail many times, and games can help motivate us to try again.

Mark Mullen, from The George Washington University, presented “Designs on the Future: Student-Authored Game Design Documents in the First-Year Writing Class” looked at student-authored design documents (including help files). He taught a course called, “I’m Game: Exploring the Art, Science and Economics of Electronic Games,” as part of a first-year writing and research course, and spoke of it as a pre-disciplinary critical thinking course. (A little later he spoke of it as a technical writing course, and contrasted it to the literary analysis one finds in most other writing courses.) One of the two sections of this course was entirely female, the other was with two exceptions all male. While about 45% of women acknowledge playing games, women wouldn’t consider Solitaire or Freecell as “games,” when the dominant cultural paradigm for “computer games” involves combat and killing. The students also developed the criteria they used to evaluate their own assignments. All the students played American MaGee’s Alice, a nightmare version of Alice in Wonderland. Students developed a group contract, a design treatment, a “pitch meeting,” prep of the final draft, and the students scored each other’s proposals based on the criteria they had set up. AR2076 – a “horrifically violent” first-person shooter proposed by three women. Players had to recover each of the 10 original amendments in the Bill of Rights, and each level was themed on each of the original amendments. Bringing George Washington back from the dead to spew wooden teeth, etc. In writing classes, we only ask students to do simulation activities… asking them to create a design document pushed them beyond that paradigm. “Some of the best writing I’ve seen freshmen produce, bar none.”

Matthew S. S. Johnson, of Indiana University Bloomington: “Revisiting Rivalry: Computer Game Competition as an Invention Strategy.” (Matthew, do you have a home page?) The competitive spirit of gamers can encourage and inspire in online environments. Johnson noted that in the last 20 years, rhetoricians have lauded motions away from competition and “victor and vanquished,” towards a more nurturing model. But in MMORPGs, the competition is not the point – the point is personal improvement; such a game never “ends,” so nobody is ever a “loser.” All those who keep playing keep improving. Competition is seen as negative because of the victor/vanquished dichotomy; Johnson notes that there is joy, forgiveness, strength, action, and nobility in computer games. Competitive elements in MORGs are in the background, motivating characters, while players write to each other in forums, blogs, walkthroughs, guides, etc. The gamer community includes a way for players to give feedback to modders, whether feedback to aid in revision, or a review intended for other potential players. Mod contributors compete with other modders, but they also benefit. Collaboration is not opposed to competition; can serve as a valuable incentive to discuss and write.

Matthew Barton turned the discussion over to the audience of about 10. “Why are you here?”

The first comment from the audience was from a 1st year comp teacher at Fresno State Calif; he says that video games are legitimate texts that have been “completely ignored, almost to the point of humiliation, by academia,” and praised CCCC for scheduling such a session.

Another audience member said he was interested in methodology. “We want to teach them to look at things critically,” and was using for methods to integrate games rather than just show video clips. [I should look up Kurt Squire’s dissertation, on games in education.]

I piped up to invite attendees to look up “New Games Journalism,” and recommended “Bow, Nigger.” (Obviously, there's offensive language on the other end of that link.)

Samantha Blackmon Somebody sitting near Samantha Blackmon mentioned her research on Second Life, and strongly recommended the wikis being written by gamers.

Another speaker says she has used games in intermediate comp classes. She says some students say they don’t really play games. [Chatter from the audience: I’m not a gamer, but… I’m not a writer, but… I’m not a feminist, but…] Her focus is on rhetorical representations of otherness in video games. (Race, gender, and sexual orientation.) Robinson asked this speaker to comment on what to do when the public expects all research on games to focus on the media effects, particularly on children. “Try to move them away from, ‘This is evil, and it must die.’” [Mullen’s ornery response: “Why are you so afraid of your children?”]

While everyone hadn’t yet had the chance to speak, Barton noted the time was nearly up, so we shifted briefly into strategizing mode, as group members ponder the challenges we will face from colleagues who don’t see videogames as legitimate.

When the event broke up, those of us who hadn't made other plans met up with Charlie Lowe and Bradley Bleck, and went out to get some Chicago pizza. (I could've used a third slice, but Brad looked very, very hungry.)

The dress code at CCCCs varies. Matthew S. S. Johnson looks like The Man (though the pastel tie and the ponytail work against that image). Matthew Barton said the shirt he didn't bring was even geekier:

load "*",8,1

I'm proud to say I'm geek enough to recognize that as a Commodore 64 command. (Back then, we didn't need no steenkin' icons.)

900 Newbies (CCCC 2006 Chicago -- Day 1)

According to one of the Newcomers’ Orientation Committee volunteers, there are 900 first-time attendees signed up for this conference. A staff member at the registration desk said there are 2800 people already registered, and they expect about 3400 in total.

I think it’s a great idea to have a table in the registration area, specifically to make first-time attendees feel welcome. My first time at the CCCCs, I was part of a panel that included three members of the writing center where I worked at the University of Toronto’s engineering school. Sorry, that should be “centre,” not “center.”

Victims of poor high schooling, of whom we have plenty at my university, often come to my classes asking, "Is this an 'opinion paper' or a 'research paper'?" I tell them that that is a spectacularly bad question based upon a false dichotomy; that I'm interested neither in mere feckless opinion nor in the random accumulation of facts, but rather in reasoned argument based upon a secure empirical and philosophical foundation. --John D. Arras --It's a Simple Game (Chronicle)

A great quote: "I generally believe that PowerPoint is the spawn of Satan. It breeds passivity in the students and it disconnects the speaker from the audience."

I use slide shows only rarely -- when I want to show students a typographical mistake in a sign, for instance. I'm working on a special slide show that uses images to teach the difference between active and passive verbs. I've probably put far too much effort into it, which means I'll feel motivated to use it again in the future to justify the effort I put into it, even if it turns out to be no more effective as a teaching tool as a traditional workshop with a pre and post quizzes.

Next slide, please.

Protagonist --> click --> a regional Canadian airline
Protagonist = pilot
Setting --> click --> some African herd animal
Setting = a savannah
Problem --> click --> some antidepressant drug
Problem = need to acquire medicine
Antagonist --> click --> some historical doctor
Antagonist = a doctor who won't dispense the medicine (nice synch on that one)

Now adapt the above to a Fantasy setting. The protagonist is a dragon rider. He's been sent afield to acquire some healing herbs for his dying king. He seeks out a Druid on the savannah who is reluctant to part with the herbs. He must talk the Druid into trading the herbs, or fight him and take them. --[Using Wikipedia to Conquer Writer's Block] (PartiallyClips)

Use Wikipedia's's "random article" link to generate story ideas.

Taking our previous analogies for punctuation, what happens when it isn't used? Well, if punctuation is the stitching of language, language comes apart, obviously, and all the buttons fall off. If punctuation provides the traffic signals, words bang into each other and everyone ends up in Minehead.... The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without there is no reliable way of communiating meaning. Punctuation herds words together, keeps others apart. Punctuation directs you how to read, in the way musical notation directs a musician how to play. --Lynn Truss, Eats, Shoots & LeavesDash It! We're All Trussed Up: Eating, Shooting, and Blogging (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

When I first taught this book in Intro to Literary Study last year, some student responses were negative. Truss adopts an insider tone, preaching to a choir of fellow "sticklers." I worried that, since many of my students already feel inadequate about their punctuation skills, perhaps they felt that Truss was mocking them -- and that, through my selection of a book, I, too was mocking them.

There are other books that speak more directly to a young American audience, but I liked this book so much I wanted to give it another try.

On Monday, when I introduced the students to the book, I gave a little speech about the importance of punctuation, and noted that it's not their fault that they've gotten this far without being forced to learn it. I tried to reassure them that I understood this was new and challenging material, and I reassured them that even if they don't know all the rules explicitly, they've developed an intuitive sense of punctuation. So most of the rules will simply codify knowledge that they already know on somelevel.

Still, I pointed out that if SHU were to graduate English majors who can't punctuate, then I'm not doing my job.

As students blogged about their reading, Elyse paid me a high compliment when she asked, "Does this NOT remind you of Professor Jerz?" Amanda and Denamarie said they had steeled themselves to hate the book, but they found themselves pleasantly surprised. Andy said the book "does an excellent job of making 'boring material' (no offense) something fun and interesting."

Kevin even made a paper badge that said "U.S. Punctuation Patrol" and wore it to class. Erin and Sarah both said they wanted to keep reading, and Amanda actually did keep reading.

A few students reported feeling paranoid about punctuation mistakes they might make on their blogs. That led to a discussion of formal and informal writing rules, and my expectation that a blog is somewhere between formal and informal. I'm pleased to stand by and observe as they notice their own proofreading skills sharpening. Nobody has ever accused me of a lack of enthusiasm, but I think I was even more enthusiastic than usual when I related the release of endorphins in the brain when one catches a punctuation error to the rush that one gets when besting one's own score in a race or finishing a really good book. I said something like, "If you're an athlete and you beat your own record, you feel a little rush of pleasure because your DNA is telling you that you've just done something that's likely going to increase your chances of survival and making it more likely you'll pass on your genes to your future children. If you feel that same little rush of pleasure when you catch a punctuation mark or finish a really good book, that's your cells telling you that the literary skills you're developing in this class are making you more likely to be successful in the world."

Somewhere in there I managed to co-opt the lizard-brain hunting instinct (as opposed to the lizard brain-hunting instinct) and connect it to proofreading. I saw heads nodding, so I think it went pretty well.

Now I wish I had given them more chapters of Truss to read back-to-back. As I said, last time I got a bit of resistance when I introduced this book, so when I put the schedule together this year I figured I'd give them some time to absorb the first part of the book, and I'd gradually start increasing my expectations in the area of accurate punctuation. Now I worry it might be harder to restore the momentum, since Truss was hilarious in the introduction, but the body of the book doesn't sustain quite that level.

I tried to shift the last part of class time to a discussion of their literary criticism papers, but coming down off of that punctuation speech, it was a bumpy ride. I ended up letting them go early.