Literacy, Culture, and Identity Web resources
http://www.nifl.gov/nifl/facts/facts_overview.html
Have students look at links between socioeconomic status and literacy rates as they read Kozol's Illiterate America? What do the statistics show? What does the book show that is different?
Try to determine from this website what the producers of it mean by "literacy"
Find statistics about which you have questions. Here's an example:
In the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS), the average annual household income of the total adult population
at prose literacy Level 1 was $15,480, compared to $8,520 for welfare recipients;
at prose literacy Level 2 was $25,010, compared to $9,540 for welfare recipients;
at prose literacy Level 3 was $35,020, compared to $11,710 for welfare recipients; and
at prose literacy Level 4 was $45,610, compared to $15,820 for welfare recipients.
(Barton, p53, Table 4.7)
Does all of this mean that welfare recipients are achieving greater levels of literacy with less income?
http://wrt-howard.syr.edu/Bibs/Literacy.bib.html
Howard's literacy bib
http://www.reconstruction.ws/053/benton.shtml
This one's an essay on public sphere. It's brief and online and I think could raise some interesting questions for students regarding the kinds of literacy it takes to be active in a public sphere. It alludes to media literacy, political literacy, basic literacy. . . I really should assign this one.
www.exhibit13.com
Blue Man Group's tribute to 9/11
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Literacy, Culture, and Identity
What is it that I hope students will get from this course?
High priority:
* A sense of literacy as much more complex than just reading and writing
* An understanding that functional literacy is not enough to be successful, that just teaching people to read and write does not give them access to social networks and status, etc.
* Increased facility in one of the following areas: visual, critical, cultural literacy (more able to read and use visual rhetoric, better at identifying root causes of social problems, more aware of the assumptions they make based on their cultural backgrounds)
What is it that I hope students will get from this course?
High priority:
* A sense of literacy as much more complex than just reading and writing
* An understanding that functional literacy is not enough to be successful, that just teaching people to read and write does not give them access to social networks and status, etc.
* Increased facility in one of the following areas: visual, critical, cultural literacy (more able to read and use visual rhetoric, better at identifying root causes of social problems, more aware of the assumptions they make based on their cultural backgrounds)
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Drawing on other literacy courses on the web:
After reading the review essay on new books in literacy studies in CCC, I was inspired to take a look at my ever-evolving materials for the Literacy, Culture, and Identity course I'll be teaching in the spring. One of my primary challenges, as I perceive it, is to make the course slightly sexy and accessible to advanced undergrads while making it appropriate for grad students. I have quite a long list of potential texts at this point, but I'd like to meditate a bit more on the possible shapes of this course as I continue to read some of the scholarship in literacy studies.
Sociolinguistics
http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/bin/p12.dll?C01E300_5_0
"role of language in many of the ‘big issues’ of life: identity, social relationships, social control, ideology, democracy, power, freedom and pleasure"
"Two key questions in sociolinguistics are: ‘Why do we speak differently in different contexts?’ and ‘How can we identify the different social functions of language?’"
"Discourse analysts look at ways in which texts and speakers communicate social and political values, and at how important aspects of identity are created through participation in discourse."
Technological literacy/literacy technologies
http://www.rpi.edu/~geislc/literacy/syllabus.htm
literate technologies: new communication technologies that have texts at their core; that depend upon reading and writing for their production and consumption. These include hypertext, voice recognition, email, classification databases, personal digital assistants, the web, ebay, and blogs — to name a few.
We will examine these literate technologies in counterpoint to four core concepts developed in literacy studies: literacy as practice, literacy as control, literacy as mediation, and vernacular literacy. Our goal is to understand the scope and limits of these concepts in the context of new technologically mediated environments — to see, in what sense, literate technologies challenge, extend or modulate the ways we read, write, and otherwise use texts at the dawn of the 21st century.
Position Paper
You are expected to write four position papers. They are due in email by 5 PM Monday so that the discussion leader can prepare fo Wednesday's seminar.
The position papers should, in less than 3 pages, characterize and analyze a literacy concept (from the literacy reading) in relationship to a phenomenon in new communication technologies (described in the technology reading). Consider them in counterpoint to one another. To do this, your paper should do the following:
introduce the concept and its general relevance or significance in literacy studies;
characterize its application as presented by the literacy author;
analyze its extension to new literate technologies as described by the technology author;
place your analysis in the context of other possible concepts, particularly concepts presented by other authors we've read;
suggest the implications of the concept for your work and the work of others like you in the field;
conclude with an overall assessment of the concept's contribution to studies of technologically mediated communication.
Politics of Literacy
http://ww2.lafayette.edu/~falbob/ENG350Syllabus.html
Some texts to consider, not already on my list
Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza
David Bartholomae, “Inventing the University”
Dewey, How We Think
Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone”
Richard Rodriguez, The Hunger of Memory
After reading the review essay on new books in literacy studies in CCC, I was inspired to take a look at my ever-evolving materials for the Literacy, Culture, and Identity course I'll be teaching in the spring. One of my primary challenges, as I perceive it, is to make the course slightly sexy and accessible to advanced undergrads while making it appropriate for grad students. I have quite a long list of potential texts at this point, but I'd like to meditate a bit more on the possible shapes of this course as I continue to read some of the scholarship in literacy studies.
Sociolinguistics
http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/bin/p12.dll?C01E300_5_0
"role of language in many of the ‘big issues’ of life: identity, social relationships, social control, ideology, democracy, power, freedom and pleasure"
"Two key questions in sociolinguistics are: ‘Why do we speak differently in different contexts?’ and ‘How can we identify the different social functions of language?’"
"Discourse analysts look at ways in which texts and speakers communicate social and political values, and at how important aspects of identity are created through participation in discourse."
Technological literacy/literacy technologies
http://www.rpi.edu/~geislc/literacy/syllabus.htm
literate technologies: new communication technologies that have texts at their core; that depend upon reading and writing for their production and consumption. These include hypertext, voice recognition, email, classification databases, personal digital assistants, the web, ebay, and blogs — to name a few.
We will examine these literate technologies in counterpoint to four core concepts developed in literacy studies: literacy as practice, literacy as control, literacy as mediation, and vernacular literacy. Our goal is to understand the scope and limits of these concepts in the context of new technologically mediated environments — to see, in what sense, literate technologies challenge, extend or modulate the ways we read, write, and otherwise use texts at the dawn of the 21st century.
Position Paper
You are expected to write four position papers. They are due in email by 5 PM Monday so that the discussion leader can prepare fo Wednesday's seminar.
The position papers should, in less than 3 pages, characterize and analyze a literacy concept (from the literacy reading) in relationship to a phenomenon in new communication technologies (described in the technology reading). Consider them in counterpoint to one another. To do this, your paper should do the following:
introduce the concept and its general relevance or significance in literacy studies;
characterize its application as presented by the literacy author;
analyze its extension to new literate technologies as described by the technology author;
place your analysis in the context of other possible concepts, particularly concepts presented by other authors we've read;
suggest the implications of the concept for your work and the work of others like you in the field;
conclude with an overall assessment of the concept's contribution to studies of technologically mediated communication.
Politics of Literacy
http://ww2.lafayette.edu/~falbob/ENG350Syllabus.html
Some texts to consider, not already on my list
Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza
David Bartholomae, “Inventing the University”
Dewey, How We Think
Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone”
Richard Rodriguez, The Hunger of Memory
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
readwritethink.org
I come back to this site periodically, and I think I'm trying to figure out whether I can use it to any good ends in my courses. Perhaps it is more appropriately a capstone resource. When I first came here and first taught 458, I wanted to encourage English ed. students to do some professionalizing work. I don't think I've been very successful with that, and now that Betsy is integrating some of that into capstone, it may seem a bit redundant if I design an assignment to search for, evaluate, use professional resources. Still, it's worth considering. I think I'm ready to revamp 458 slightly. It worked very well once, but it has room for revision.
I come back to this site periodically, and I think I'm trying to figure out whether I can use it to any good ends in my courses. Perhaps it is more appropriately a capstone resource. When I first came here and first taught 458, I wanted to encourage English ed. students to do some professionalizing work. I don't think I've been very successful with that, and now that Betsy is integrating some of that into capstone, it may seem a bit redundant if I design an assignment to search for, evaluate, use professional resources. Still, it's worth considering. I think I'm ready to revamp 458 slightly. It worked very well once, but it has room for revision.
Reading and Reading Theory
Nice post, Kevin, and it brings several things to mind:
Literature circles in K-12 education.
Way back when I was finishing my dissertation and working at the National Center on Education and the Economy, my colleagues, Elizabeth Woodworth and Brooke Hessler, and I were working on drawing reading theory and practice from English education professionals into the composition classroom. One of the practices commonly used to foster reading and to train readers are literature circles. Now, I'm drawing on a somewhat faint memory at this point, but I believe Harvey Daniels is the author of the ur-text on literature circles. The primary thing I remember about these circles is that participants take on roles each time they meet, trying a different role periodically. And the roles included "the Connector" whose role was to connect the text to another text and the "Linecatcher," whose role was to find a line or two that really sounded cool or resonated with the reader in some way. The idea is that mature readers do these things automatically but that people who haven't participated much in this kind of discussion need a little experience, a little training in acting like mature readers. So, though many of our students will have at least some of these approaches in their arsenal, I'm suggesting they might benefit from a little bit of the literature circles training. Because as writing instructors we know that the students often write better once they know how to read better. We might add a role like "rhetorical analyst" or we might break down the roles that would encompass rhetorical analysis, particularly prior to asking students to do complex analysis.
I like the idea of adding a dimension of student selection to this activity of reading groups. Each reading group might select one full text within the scope of a broad topic or from a list developed by the teacher (a way to make sure that the readings in some way tie back to the course and can inform broader classroom work and discussion). The teacher would schedule dates for the groups to meet and the groups could work out schedules for role rotation. And/or the reading group work might be a group blog, or both.
This whole thing could be the primary literacy or leadership content and the groups, after reading and discussing the text could be asked to present on the text in such a way as to teach the whole class something about literacy or leadership.
Birkerts, and perhaps more importantly a strand in authorship theory that suggests readers and writers collaborate in the meaning making process (with culture that always present yet hard to pin down collaborator)
Ok, the one thing with about which I have resoundingly agreed with Birkerts is his concept that readers and writers collaborate in terms of meaning making. It sounds like Blau is talking about something like Daniels' Literature Circles in the college setting with an eye toward this strand of authorship theory.
My own interest in Reading Don't Fix No Chevys as a possible Literacy, Identity, and Culture text.
I had recently added this book to a list of books I want to read as possibilities for the Literacy course I'll be teaching in the spring. What do you think about its relevance for such a course at the 400/600 level?
Finally, I am compelled by your idea that we need to put engagement in the foreground. Of course, that is one of the primary reasons I come back to community/civic engagement. There is some evidence that engagement of the sort I think you are talking about happens in these classes with "real" audiences, contexts, purposes, etc.
Nice post, Kevin, and it brings several things to mind:
Literature circles in K-12 education.
Way back when I was finishing my dissertation and working at the National Center on Education and the Economy, my colleagues, Elizabeth Woodworth and Brooke Hessler, and I were working on drawing reading theory and practice from English education professionals into the composition classroom. One of the practices commonly used to foster reading and to train readers are literature circles. Now, I'm drawing on a somewhat faint memory at this point, but I believe Harvey Daniels is the author of the ur-text on literature circles. The primary thing I remember about these circles is that participants take on roles each time they meet, trying a different role periodically. And the roles included "the Connector" whose role was to connect the text to another text and the "Linecatcher," whose role was to find a line or two that really sounded cool or resonated with the reader in some way. The idea is that mature readers do these things automatically but that people who haven't participated much in this kind of discussion need a little experience, a little training in acting like mature readers. So, though many of our students will have at least some of these approaches in their arsenal, I'm suggesting they might benefit from a little bit of the literature circles training. Because as writing instructors we know that the students often write better once they know how to read better. We might add a role like "rhetorical analyst" or we might break down the roles that would encompass rhetorical analysis, particularly prior to asking students to do complex analysis.
I like the idea of adding a dimension of student selection to this activity of reading groups. Each reading group might select one full text within the scope of a broad topic or from a list developed by the teacher (a way to make sure that the readings in some way tie back to the course and can inform broader classroom work and discussion). The teacher would schedule dates for the groups to meet and the groups could work out schedules for role rotation. And/or the reading group work might be a group blog, or both.
This whole thing could be the primary literacy or leadership content and the groups, after reading and discussing the text could be asked to present on the text in such a way as to teach the whole class something about literacy or leadership.
Birkerts, and perhaps more importantly a strand in authorship theory that suggests readers and writers collaborate in the meaning making process (with culture that always present yet hard to pin down collaborator)
Ok, the one thing with about which I have resoundingly agreed with Birkerts is his concept that readers and writers collaborate in terms of meaning making. It sounds like Blau is talking about something like Daniels' Literature Circles in the college setting with an eye toward this strand of authorship theory.
My own interest in Reading Don't Fix No Chevys as a possible Literacy, Identity, and Culture text.
I had recently added this book to a list of books I want to read as possibilities for the Literacy course I'll be teaching in the spring. What do you think about its relevance for such a course at the 400/600 level?
Finally, I am compelled by your idea that we need to put engagement in the foreground. Of course, that is one of the primary reasons I come back to community/civic engagement. There is some evidence that engagement of the sort I think you are talking about happens in these classes with "real" audiences, contexts, purposes, etc.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
I was about to blog on one of my many other sites, but saw that you had updated recently, Amy, so I thought I would join the party over here.
I was reading Sheridan Blau's The Literature Workshop, or more specifically the second chapter, in which he describes how he runs a literature workshop. He offers a much more sophisticated pedagogy than "read the text, talk about it." His process is collaborative and re-cursive, and one of the generalizations is "Reading is a process of constructing meaning or composing a text, exactly like writing. The reading of any difficult text will entail drafting and revision (largely in the reader's head) and will frequently begin with what amounts to a zero draft. Just as writing may be defined as rewriting, so is any reading worth doing essentially a process of rereading" (53). The second generalization is that "Reading is, and needs to be in a classroom, a social process, completed in conversation" (54). The third principle: "Literary reading and literary study . . . teach students an intellectual discipline that defines critical thinking in every fied and fosters academic success in every subject of study" (57).
Blau goes on to take a quick jab at composition programs that remove literary study "for fear that it will overtake and marginalize the study of rhetoric, or in the interest of asserting the value of composition across the disciplines" (58). The new GTAs read the Lindemann-Tate exchange, and we are wrestling with question of "what to read" in composition classes. Klosterman obviously figures in to the discussion.
As I was reading, I was thinking about Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good For You. He explains numerous times that he still advocates reading and the development of traditional literacy skills, but he makes an argument for recognizing the complexity of contemporary video games and television, "texts" that seem to be successful because they are difficult and engaging, not because they are simple and straightforward. I have also been reading a bit of Reading Don't Fix No Chevy's, which also makes the argument that boys and young men are looking for a challenge, an engaging education, and they aren't seeing that challenge or engagement in reading. That book has a few stories, however, of boys turned on to reading when the subject matter is right, or when the text seems relevant.
None of these observations are going to seem new or surprising, but I still find it difficult to figure out exactly how to work with these insights. Klosterman is going to provide the kind of reading experience that will engage some students, but alienate others--particularly our female students, perhaps. Short readings, while easier to work with and teach with, do not provide any significant kind of engagement unless we can convince students to read, re-read, and re-read again. That is a habit we want to foster, but those re-readings have to result in significant gains of understanding, which is why Blau uses poetry, not non-fiction prose.
Should we form small reading groups within our classes, let them determine their semester reading list, get them write about those readings? Doing so would present pedagogical challenges and likely limit the ability to use texts as models. Do we not worry about the reading problem in writing classes? Many will argue that good writing emerges from reading, but in terms of a call to write, good writing seems to emerge out of a complex, interesting, and/or compelling exegincy, not necessarily based in texts. In McLuhanesque Figure-Ground terms, I think one of our educational problems I/ we face is that we(?) keep putting reading and writing in the foreground (skills to work on), when we should be putting "engagement" as the figure we are after, engagement that can flow from reading and writing.
Or, do we just stop worrying about teaching so much and focus on our blogging?
I was reading Sheridan Blau's The Literature Workshop, or more specifically the second chapter, in which he describes how he runs a literature workshop. He offers a much more sophisticated pedagogy than "read the text, talk about it." His process is collaborative and re-cursive, and one of the generalizations is "Reading is a process of constructing meaning or composing a text, exactly like writing. The reading of any difficult text will entail drafting and revision (largely in the reader's head) and will frequently begin with what amounts to a zero draft. Just as writing may be defined as rewriting, so is any reading worth doing essentially a process of rereading" (53). The second generalization is that "Reading is, and needs to be in a classroom, a social process, completed in conversation" (54). The third principle: "Literary reading and literary study . . . teach students an intellectual discipline that defines critical thinking in every fied and fosters academic success in every subject of study" (57).
Blau goes on to take a quick jab at composition programs that remove literary study "for fear that it will overtake and marginalize the study of rhetoric, or in the interest of asserting the value of composition across the disciplines" (58). The new GTAs read the Lindemann-Tate exchange, and we are wrestling with question of "what to read" in composition classes. Klosterman obviously figures in to the discussion.
As I was reading, I was thinking about Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good For You. He explains numerous times that he still advocates reading and the development of traditional literacy skills, but he makes an argument for recognizing the complexity of contemporary video games and television, "texts" that seem to be successful because they are difficult and engaging, not because they are simple and straightforward. I have also been reading a bit of Reading Don't Fix No Chevy's, which also makes the argument that boys and young men are looking for a challenge, an engaging education, and they aren't seeing that challenge or engagement in reading. That book has a few stories, however, of boys turned on to reading when the subject matter is right, or when the text seems relevant.
None of these observations are going to seem new or surprising, but I still find it difficult to figure out exactly how to work with these insights. Klosterman is going to provide the kind of reading experience that will engage some students, but alienate others--particularly our female students, perhaps. Short readings, while easier to work with and teach with, do not provide any significant kind of engagement unless we can convince students to read, re-read, and re-read again. That is a habit we want to foster, but those re-readings have to result in significant gains of understanding, which is why Blau uses poetry, not non-fiction prose.
Should we form small reading groups within our classes, let them determine their semester reading list, get them write about those readings? Doing so would present pedagogical challenges and likely limit the ability to use texts as models. Do we not worry about the reading problem in writing classes? Many will argue that good writing emerges from reading, but in terms of a call to write, good writing seems to emerge out of a complex, interesting, and/or compelling exegincy, not necessarily based in texts. In McLuhanesque Figure-Ground terms, I think one of our educational problems I/ we face is that we(?) keep putting reading and writing in the foreground (skills to work on), when we should be putting "engagement" as the figure we are after, engagement that can flow from reading and writing.
Or, do we just stop worrying about teaching so much and focus on our blogging?
Friday, September 09, 2005
Mediated Disaster Rhetoric (another topic for ATTW?)
I'm guessing this topic will be addressed at the conference because it must surely be on the minds of lots of technology oriented rhetoricians. NCTEs "request/resource" site, WPA's site, all of the myriad resources springing up on the web to help victims of Katrina. And most of those victims are still worrying about food--how many have access to the internet? Just another way that those who already had the resources to begin with are doubly, triply more prepared than those who did not have vehicles to get out, did not have insurance for their possessions, etc. We have the sense that our technologies pull us together when they just as frequently separate us and make the distances more acute.
I'm guessing this topic will be addressed at the conference because it must surely be on the minds of lots of technology oriented rhetoricians. NCTEs "request/resource" site, WPA's site, all of the myriad resources springing up on the web to help victims of Katrina. And most of those victims are still worrying about food--how many have access to the internet? Just another way that those who already had the resources to begin with are doubly, triply more prepared than those who did not have vehicles to get out, did not have insurance for their possessions, etc. We have the sense that our technologies pull us together when they just as frequently separate us and make the distances more acute.
ATTW
So I don't misplace the call:
Call for Papers: Association of Teachers of Technical Writing
9th Annual Conference
Proposals due: October 28, 2005
Wednesday, March 22, 2005, 8:30 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.
In conjunction with the 2005 CCCC Annual Convention (March 22-25)
Chicago, Illinois
Texts/Technology
ATTW invites proposals for papers, panels, and poster presentations to be given at its annual conference immediately preceding the CCCC. The full-day event includes concurrent sessions, poster presentations, book exhibits, and opportunities for exchanging ideas, working on projects, and networking in a supportive and challenging academic environment.
Conference theme: Technology as Text
This year's conference will explore our field's unique relationships with technology. We will explore and examine new research, teaching methods, workplace practices, and administrative activities that inform and teach us about new, current, and past technologies. The goal of these presentations will be to help us better understand and practice technical communication and communication in scientific, professional, and workplace contexts.
Inform, Teach, Critique
We challenge participants to create presentations that will inform the field about new communication technologies and at the same time interrogate these technologies for their social, ethical, technical, practical, environmental, or material implications. Rather than look to tutorials or demonstrations, we are seeking robust studies, explorations, and research partnerships that engage subjects on several levels and demonstrate new ways to study and report on the technologies that we invent, use, and are subject to in workplace, academic, and daily practices.
Potential Topics
Some particular areas of interest include (but aren't limited to) research that examines,
* the implications, challenges, and rewards a specific technology brings to communication practices,
* connections between technological and theoretical knowledge building,
* relationships of our own technology learning to the practice of scholarship: what does mastering a new technology or creating new technology, constitute in terms of our scholarly, intellectual enterprise?
* presentations that teach and interrogate a specific technology,
* the social values associated with specific communication technologies including the economic value, ethical implications, and value added of communication technologies,
* pedagogies that enable students to engage, address, and use communication technologies
* research methods that the field can use to examine and understand new, current, and past communication technologies.
* investigations into the social contexts in which technologies are implemented and used.
Proposals, limited to 200 words, are due October 28, 2004. We offer two general formats:
Regular Sessions: 15 minute talks within 45-minute panel presentations. We will give presenters the opportunity to post copies of their presentation or paper at the ATTW Conference site approximately two weeks before the conference.
Poster Presentations: We will include opportunities for posters (3'x4') to be presented throughout the day with special times dedicated for conversations and specific discussions regarding this work.
Submit proposals for regular sessions via the ATTW website at http://www.attw.org. Connect to the site, register (or enter your password), then follow the links for conference paper submissions. All proposals will be peer reviewed. Proposals will be accepted after September 12, 2005.
Workshop Sessions: We will make room for two 1 1/2-hour workshops as an alternative to panels of speakers. Workshops might focus on pedagogical issues, strategies for working with external partners, consulting, or research issues. Please submit workshop proposals directly to Brenton Faber at Clarkson University (faber@clarkson.edu).
Registration and updates will also be available on ATTW's e-mail discussion list (ATTW-L) and web site (www.attw.org ). For additional information, contact Brenton Faber at Clarkson University (faber@clarkson.edu) or Bill Karis at Clarkson University (karis@clarkson.edu).
So I don't misplace the call:
Call for Papers: Association of Teachers of Technical Writing
9th Annual Conference
Proposals due: October 28, 2005
Wednesday, March 22, 2005, 8:30 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.
In conjunction with the 2005 CCCC Annual Convention (March 22-25)
Chicago, Illinois
Texts/Technology
ATTW invites proposals for papers, panels, and poster presentations to be given at its annual conference immediately preceding the CCCC. The full-day event includes concurrent sessions, poster presentations, book exhibits, and opportunities for exchanging ideas, working on projects, and networking in a supportive and challenging academic environment.
Conference theme: Technology as Text
This year's conference will explore our field's unique relationships with technology. We will explore and examine new research, teaching methods, workplace practices, and administrative activities that inform and teach us about new, current, and past technologies. The goal of these presentations will be to help us better understand and practice technical communication and communication in scientific, professional, and workplace contexts.
Inform, Teach, Critique
We challenge participants to create presentations that will inform the field about new communication technologies and at the same time interrogate these technologies for their social, ethical, technical, practical, environmental, or material implications. Rather than look to tutorials or demonstrations, we are seeking robust studies, explorations, and research partnerships that engage subjects on several levels and demonstrate new ways to study and report on the technologies that we invent, use, and are subject to in workplace, academic, and daily practices.
Potential Topics
Some particular areas of interest include (but aren't limited to) research that examines,
* the implications, challenges, and rewards a specific technology brings to communication practices,
* connections between technological and theoretical knowledge building,
* relationships of our own technology learning to the practice of scholarship: what does mastering a new technology or creating new technology, constitute in terms of our scholarly, intellectual enterprise?
* presentations that teach and interrogate a specific technology,
* the social values associated with specific communication technologies including the economic value, ethical implications, and value added of communication technologies,
* pedagogies that enable students to engage, address, and use communication technologies
* research methods that the field can use to examine and understand new, current, and past communication technologies.
* investigations into the social contexts in which technologies are implemented and used.
Proposals, limited to 200 words, are due October 28, 2004. We offer two general formats:
Regular Sessions: 15 minute talks within 45-minute panel presentations. We will give presenters the opportunity to post copies of their presentation or paper at the ATTW Conference site approximately two weeks before the conference.
Poster Presentations: We will include opportunities for posters (3'x4') to be presented throughout the day with special times dedicated for conversations and specific discussions regarding this work.
Submit proposals for regular sessions via the ATTW website at http://www.attw.org. Connect to the site, register (or enter your password), then follow the links for conference paper submissions. All proposals will be peer reviewed. Proposals will be accepted after September 12, 2005.
Workshop Sessions: We will make room for two 1 1/2-hour workshops as an alternative to panels of speakers. Workshops might focus on pedagogical issues, strategies for working with external partners, consulting, or research issues. Please submit workshop proposals directly to Brenton Faber at Clarkson University (faber@clarkson.edu).
Registration and updates will also be available on ATTW's e-mail discussion list (ATTW-L) and web site (www.attw.org
Brainstorming for ATTW: wikis in community engagement
Last night, during 3, 5, and 7 o'clock feeding sessions and in response to the ATTW cfp, I began to think about the intersections of civic engagement and technology and returned to a technology I've been interested in for some time for its communal knowledge making quality, the wiki. Admittedly, I have not read the scholarship on wikis, though I have visited that virtually mainstream wiki, the Wikipedia many times and have discussed the possibility of a teaching wiki for our department with Kevin.
My thought of last night was that I should make building a literacy wiki one of the projects of the new Literacy, Culture, and Identity course, and I should talk about the role of the wiki in community engagement writing at ATTW. Previously, I had thought about simply building a web-based literacy resource, something I was thinking about even in my grad program. Now, however, the wiki seems more ideal because it would allow multiple users to add to and adjust it. It would also raise lots of interesting literacy questions in and of itself--requiring a bit of engagement of the technology in the spirit of Cindy Selfe's constant urgings not to allow the technology to be invisibile, to question the social implications of the technology itself.
Oh, and, while this will make Kevin crazy, that leads me circuitously back to Birkerts who questions technology and its impact on the activity of reading. Is Birkerts so much more unfounded in his arguments than Plato/Socrates? Do we allow Plato the room to be nutty about a technology we take for granted simply because he lived so long ago and he is firmly planted in the canon about which we have stopped overtly warring?
The things I would need to do if I decided to pursue this route:
* read the scholarship on wikis to know what has been said about their use
* think about what implications that scholarship has for community engagement practitioners, for the goals of civic education (if this territory has not already been hashed and rehashed, as I suspect it might have been, even though the technology is relatively new)
* learn how to build a wiki
* build it
* meet with community members to consider whether it can serve any purposes for them (if I want it to be part of the community writing on that level--it might simply be an additional project that would prepare students for their community work)
* integrate it into the literacy course
Clearly there's some work to be done in this path. And how do I write an even halfway decent abstract in time--lots of reading and thinking. . .
What might wikis offer the Literacy, Culture, and Identity course?
Last night, during 3, 5, and 7 o'clock feeding sessions and in response to the ATTW cfp, I began to think about the intersections of civic engagement and technology and returned to a technology I've been interested in for some time for its communal knowledge making quality, the wiki. Admittedly, I have not read the scholarship on wikis, though I have visited that virtually mainstream wiki, the Wikipedia many times and have discussed the possibility of a teaching wiki for our department with Kevin.
My thought of last night was that I should make building a literacy wiki one of the projects of the new Literacy, Culture, and Identity course, and I should talk about the role of the wiki in community engagement writing at ATTW. Previously, I had thought about simply building a web-based literacy resource, something I was thinking about even in my grad program. Now, however, the wiki seems more ideal because it would allow multiple users to add to and adjust it. It would also raise lots of interesting literacy questions in and of itself--requiring a bit of engagement of the technology in the spirit of Cindy Selfe's constant urgings not to allow the technology to be invisibile, to question the social implications of the technology itself.
Oh, and, while this will make Kevin crazy, that leads me circuitously back to Birkerts who questions technology and its impact on the activity of reading. Is Birkerts so much more unfounded in his arguments than Plato/Socrates? Do we allow Plato the room to be nutty about a technology we take for granted simply because he lived so long ago and he is firmly planted in the canon about which we have stopped overtly warring?
The things I would need to do if I decided to pursue this route:
* read the scholarship on wikis to know what has been said about their use
* think about what implications that scholarship has for community engagement practitioners, for the goals of civic education (if this territory has not already been hashed and rehashed, as I suspect it might have been, even though the technology is relatively new)
* learn how to build a wiki
* build it
* meet with community members to consider whether it can serve any purposes for them (if I want it to be part of the community writing on that level--it might simply be an additional project that would prepare students for their community work)
* integrate it into the literacy course
Clearly there's some work to be done in this path. And how do I write an even halfway decent abstract in time--lots of reading and thinking. . .
What might wikis offer the Literacy, Culture, and Identity course?
Monday, August 22, 2005
Topic: Border Studies
Well, this is a bit of an aside to be starting my research semester, but I am going through old email to declutter before beginning, and I came across an invitation for visiting professorships at the University of Glamorgan in Wales in the area of border studies. I found the centre for border studies' mission statement and materials provocative (not to mention finding the idea of being a visiting professor lovely). It strikes me that we've gone around and around in this department about defining ourselves. Are we going to do space studies, as Kevin suggested, regional studies, as Tom and others have suggested, Native American studies, or something else? Many of the issues relevant to all of these "studies" fields touch on border issues. Not to mention that North Dakota is on the largest unprotected border in the world. I think the Centre for Border Studies in Glamorgan is looking for people with some depth of experience in border studies (which I simply do not have at this point) yet we might start to think about how our department could do some border studies.
Brainstorming:
How is my work tied up with borders in some way?
Jessie Redmon Fauset:
Well, race has been a border in the US from the beginning, becoming a bit subtler recently, but no less invidious. Slavery created boundaries that could not be crossed by blacks in the US. These boundaries (North-South being the most obvious) came to have great significance as slaves journeyed north to freedom, as the Civil War directly or indirectly broke down the free-enslaved border which eventually led to the great migration to industrial centers.
During the Harlem Renaissance, Harlem was a black community with borders, into which whites felt free to venture to discover otherness (exotic, poor, wild). Fauset did not embrace this "other" division--she wrote instead about something outside the established black-white boundaries: middle class black experience.
Community Engagement:
When one invokes that amorphous term "community," one immediately conjures visions of boundaries. Community emphases connection, but within boundaries usually. I've written articles that suggest (not uniquely) that community engagement classes break down the classroom/"real" world divide and others have discussed bridging town and gown. Perhaps the argument might be made that in our global, international, webbed world having a sense of one's community might be increasingly important or at least increasingly challenging.
Well, this is a bit of an aside to be starting my research semester, but I am going through old email to declutter before beginning, and I came across an invitation for visiting professorships at the University of Glamorgan in Wales in the area of border studies. I found the centre for border studies' mission statement and materials provocative (not to mention finding the idea of being a visiting professor lovely). It strikes me that we've gone around and around in this department about defining ourselves. Are we going to do space studies, as Kevin suggested, regional studies, as Tom and others have suggested, Native American studies, or something else? Many of the issues relevant to all of these "studies" fields touch on border issues. Not to mention that North Dakota is on the largest unprotected border in the world. I think the Centre for Border Studies in Glamorgan is looking for people with some depth of experience in border studies (which I simply do not have at this point) yet we might start to think about how our department could do some border studies.
Brainstorming:
How is my work tied up with borders in some way?
Jessie Redmon Fauset:
Well, race has been a border in the US from the beginning, becoming a bit subtler recently, but no less invidious. Slavery created boundaries that could not be crossed by blacks in the US. These boundaries (North-South being the most obvious) came to have great significance as slaves journeyed north to freedom, as the Civil War directly or indirectly broke down the free-enslaved border which eventually led to the great migration to industrial centers.
During the Harlem Renaissance, Harlem was a black community with borders, into which whites felt free to venture to discover otherness (exotic, poor, wild). Fauset did not embrace this "other" division--she wrote instead about something outside the established black-white boundaries: middle class black experience.
Community Engagement:
When one invokes that amorphous term "community," one immediately conjures visions of boundaries. Community emphases connection, but within boundaries usually. I've written articles that suggest (not uniquely) that community engagement classes break down the classroom/"real" world divide and others have discussed bridging town and gown. Perhaps the argument might be made that in our global, international, webbed world having a sense of one's community might be increasingly important or at least increasingly challenging.