Making Waves Within Webs: Rhetorical Agency in a Complex World — CCCC 2009 – Session O.11

Kristen Seas, “Ripple Effect: A New Perspective on Rhetorical Agency” Lars Soderlund, “Kairos and Emergence” Marc Santos, “Social Bookmarking as Distributed Research” Jeremy Tirrell, “Decorum and Emergent Ethics” I was particularly interested in this panel, in part because I taught the session chair in a few technical writing / new media classes when she was…

Web 2.0 Wavelengths: Examining Spaces Created Within Electronic Discourse – CCCC 2009 – N13

[I came in about 10 minutes late so I didn’t catch the beginning. These are my rough notes, lightly edited.] Similar:Fascinating observation on Trump's ability to drive the "Spygate" story Within the span of five days, Trump we…Culture[E-Mail is for Old People] –[E-Mail is for Old People] (User Frie…AmusingLanguage Log » 25 Questions for Teaching with…

Business Meeting — CCCC 09

3500 attendees, successful innovations in on-site childcare and poster-paper sessions. Finances are good, considering the recession. There will be a slow increase in internet technology; 2 years ago there were 3 dedicated “internet rooms,” this year there were 6, and next year there will be 9. I should check the WPA-L archives for explanation of…

Amusing satire on Twitter

Short animated video Similar:A WWII Propaganda Campaign Popularized the Myth That Carrots Help You See in the DarkYet another widely held cultural myth fa…CultureHow iPhone Apps Steal Your Contact Data and Why You Can't Stop ItNothing really new in this article, but …BusinessWhat kids do when Dad won't hand over the iPod So I’m not…

A Loose Canon No More: Style's Relevance to Writing Instruction – CCCC 2009 – Session I36

Nate Krueter, “High Stakes Style” Star Medzerian, “Rereading the Past: Style’s Place in Our Disciplinary Memory” Mike Duncan, “Destroying the Topic Sentence” William Fitzgerald, “Dressing Up in Style: The Return of the Figurative in Composition Pedagogy” This was one of the most enjoyable 4Cs panels I’ve attended, mostly because it reminded me that I got…

Digital Gaming: MMORPGS and Player Identity — CCCC 2009 — Session F25

Katie Retzinger, “Immediacy, Desire, and the Other: MMORPGS and Constructions of Identity” Mathew S.S. Johnson “The World is Subject: Gamers as Potential for Change” Phill Alexander: “Running with the Bulls: The Race Rhetoric of the Tauren in World of Warcraft” The study of games and composition have long overlapped in the areas of popular culture…

Blogs: Understanding the Potential and Challenges – CCCC 2009 – Session E15

Pamela Gay, “The Blogitorial: An Alternative ? Genre for Writing” Derek Boczkowski, “When Writing (and Teaching) Goes Public: Blogging and the Wall-less Classroom” Michael J. Faris, “What’s in a ‘Zine? A Public Ancestry of Blogs” What follows are my rough notes, lightly edited.  I’ve inserted my own thoughts in square brackets. Similar:WAOB MisSpelled (final episode…

From Validity to Validation: How to Use Validation for Better Writing Assessment — CCCC 2009 — Session D09

Michael Williamson, “Validity and Bias in Writing Assessment” Les Perelman, “The Five Paragraph Essay Makes People Stupid and Machines Smart” Brian Huot: “How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the 5-Paragraph Essay” Nancy Glaser, “One of Many Myths: Does the Five-Paragraph Essay Sink or Swim in Large-Scale Writing Assessments.” Edward White, Respondent. (White recently…

Mike Rose, "Writing for the Public" — CCCC 2009 — Session C

[My own thoughts will appear in brackets. I regularly assign Rose’s essay, “I Just Wanna be Average” to my freshman writing students. He considers the editorial a valuable form of public writing, and teaches graduate classes that ask students to use their specialized subject knowledge to produce editorials of value to the broader community.] Bringing…

(Re)Mediating Social Technologies — CCCC 2009 — Session B21

Dawn M. Armfield, “On the Go: Mobile Technologies and Literacy” Daisy Pignetti-Cochran, “What are you doing? Teaching with Twitter?” Kimberly A. Schulz, “Social Presence in the Online Writing Classroom: Community-building through Social Networking Technology” (with comments from Laura Gurak) I do the “suck air in through my teeth” thing whenever I hear statements about how…

Reba the Rebarbative Rhubarb

If I were a children’s author, I would write the story of Reba the Rebarbative Rhubarb.  Of course, at the end, she’d be Reba the Redeemed Rhubarb. Similar:"The threat is no longer simply from government censorship."After using examples from Warsaw and Pra…CultureA day after using an apparently altered hurricane map, Trump defends his Alabama claimIt…

Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime?

Powerful journalistic storytelling. There’s no way to tell this story without being disturbing. And then there’s the big twist that comes in from left field at the end… stunning. No significant facts were in dispute. Miles Harrison, 49, was an amiable person, a diligent businessman and a doting, conscientious father until the day last summer…

Preparing the Obituary

If the newspapers do not survive, then what takes on the crucial social and economic roles they have performed over the past century and more? That is unknowable. Failing some inventive institutional spark, some vital functions might simply go unperformed. The Internet is creating a “tragedy of the commons” situation for news, and no one…