Metaphoric Space, Cyberspace, and Work Space — Computers and Writing 2009

Chair Mikhail Gershovich, Barch College, CUNY Hacking Spaces: Place as Interface Danielle Nicole DeVoss, Michigan State University Douglass Walls, Michigan State University Scott Schopieray, Michigan State University Writing-a-go-go: Ubiquitous Computing and the Thirdspace of Workplace Writing Tina Bacci, University of Rhode Island The Examined Life–Cyberspace Style: The Construction of Space in the #philosophy IRC Undernet…

Ecotones and Crossroads: Re-imagining the Spaces of Learning in an In-between Time — Computers and Writing 2009

Barbara Ganley, Centers for Community Digital Exploration Barbara Ganley is Founder and Director of the new national organization, Centers for Community Digital Learning, Barbara Ganley has spent her career exploring integrated learning across formal and informal contexts. For nineteen years as a lecturer in the Writing Program and English Department at Middlebury College, and director…

The Impact of Ubiquitous (or not so ubiquitous) Computing on Faculty and Students — Computers and Writing 2009

These are my notes, lightly edited, from a panel at Computers & Writing 2009. I only found a single plug in the meeting room, in the very back row. This is a small conference, so I probably appear fairly antisocial typing way in the back here.  (I’ll move up when the panel actually starts in…

Becoming Informed

A former Infocom beta-tester re-discovers interactive fiction (and enters the interactive fiction competition) Back then in the mid-80s, the only (decent) interactive fiction was being produced by Infocom, the almost legendary, and now defunct, software company formed by a bunch of MIT grads. After cutting my teeth on the Zork series, Enchanter, Infidel, and Witness…

Bibliophilia: A History of the Growth of the Steam Engine (1878)

I enjoy steampunk, a cultural aesthetic which celebrates what both ordinary and extraordinary things might look like, had technology progressed along the lines that Jules Verne and his contemporaries imagined. As a literary subgenre, it imagines that the immeasurable power of steam has opened the skies, leading legions of top-hatted gentlemen-explorers and parasol-wielding adventuresses to…

The Kindle Factor

Charles Crowell writes a valentine to Amazon’s e-reader as a cost-saving tool for cash-strapped college students: If we extrapolate these savings from these two courses over a two-semester, ten-course academic year, we could expect an average savings of $245.05. That number, of course, would vary according to the cost of the respective textbooks, their number,…

What is an adventure but a fumbling through novelty?

Andrew Hussie remixes Dinosaur Comics with a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story. The results hurts my head, and not in a good way. But that’s a good thing, because, well, it’s a remix of Dinosaur Comics with a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story. Similar:Fun With Charts: Scale MattersAt first glance, this chart makes it loo…Culture'Anti-dopamine parenting' can curb a kid's craving…

Arbitrator Dismisses Google Grievance

An arbitrator has found that Lakehead Uni­versity did not violate a collective bargaining agreement when it replaced its campus e-mail network with Google’s e-mail service. — CAUT ACPPU Bulletin Similar:Picking a rubric in Canvas should not be so frustrating that it makes me want to blog abou…In general, I find Canvas a fairly decen…AcademiaAcademics work…

The Newspaper Suicide Pact

Your newspaper overlords believe they can sell you their content if they can just get  everybody on the same page and nail the sales pitch this time. They’re looking for the magic words, not the underlying logic (the tricky part? Doing all this without breaking federal anti-trust law). This is folly, of course. Even MIT…