Blog Juice for Educational Technology

Ummm, hope ya like code…I could NOT figure out how to fix this so that the html didn't show up.

What follows are my notes on the Next/Text meeting for Rhetoric and Composition. At first I was really vigilant about preceding people's comments with their names or initials, you know, so they'd get credit for what they said. But then things got so rapid-fire that I got lazy about it. These notes represent what we, as a group, said, and each of us made contributions: myself, Cheryl Ball, Cindy Selfe, Daniel Andersen, David Blakesley, David Goodwin, Geoffrey Sirc, Janice Walker, Jeff Rice, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Karl Stolley, Kim White, Michael Day, Victor Vitanza, and Virginia Kuhn. To give a little background, Next/Text is one of the projects of the Institute for the Future of the Book, which is part of the Annenberg Center at the University of Southern California. Next/Text is focused on classroom textbooks in particular. Our meeting was devoted to imagining how we in rhetoric and composition would go about creating a completely new electronic textbook — new, as opposed to CD-ROM companions to print textbooks: your basic linear, text-with-images, PDF-esque, “take a book from the tradition of print, digitize it, and smack it up on the Web.”

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When I first read about BlogBurst, it sounded like a great service for Kairosnews to be listed in:

BlogBurst is a syndication service that places your blog on top-tier online destinations. You get visibility, audience reach and traffic, while publishers weave the rich and diverse fabric of the blogosphere into their sites.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, that seemed to be the case until I got the invitation from them and went to verify Kairosnews. Their Contributor Agreement gives them substantial intellectual property rights:

Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, you grant to Pluck and its affiliates a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual license to reproduce, distribute, make derivative works of, perform, display, disclose, and otherwise dispose of the Work (and derivative works thereof) for any purpose, whether commercial or not.

Obviously, with Kairosnews, I couldn’t agree to this; I’m not the owner of all of the content here (nor would I if I was). Other bloggers beware. Make sure you read their agreement carefully before verifying your blog for them.

For the past several years, many scholars have been making a significant contribution to the knowledge in rhetoric and composition via their weblogs. Academic bloggers are conversing about topics such as professional issues in the discipline, best teaching practices, electronic discourse, and cultural criticism of digital space. Weblogs
are also making a significant contribution to the public intellectual commons. Because weblogs do not have the same gatekeeping checks as traditional scholarly publications, they have heretofore not been considered scholarly work and thus are not often recognized for the contribution they make to our discipline(s).

NB: Mike Edwards contributed heavily to these notes. In fact, most of what’s here is his work, so I want him to get credit for it.

The CCCC Blogging SIG had a large and productive meeting Thursday night in
Chicago. We began by discussing some of the initiatives the SIG had proposed
the previous year, including the one-page paper handout guide for teachers new
to blogging (which, we might hope, will continue to be revised collaboratively and kept up to date as necessary), as well as thoughts about assessment of weblog writing,
outcomes of weblog use in writing courses and professional endeavors, and a possible large multi-institution study investigating the
classroom uses of weblogs.

Following the initial discussion, we split up into five small groups focusing on
action in specific areas. The groups discussed their areas and reported back when
we reconvened. Here are the results of our discussion:

• The History of the Future of Writing
• Changing Literacies/Changing Mindsets: Communicating Across Digital Difference
• Imagining a Transformed Reality: On the Web, Over the Airwaves, Around the Globe
• Calling All Bloggers

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

I’ve posted the paper I gave at the 2006 tlt conference at Purdue this past week. I would love some feedback, questions, comments, or critiques. You can read it at my blog: http://www.languaging.blogspot.com
Mark

Lilia Efimova is interested in finding out more about how to use Drupal as a course management tool. Now’s our time to shine, folks!

I spent much of last week at a retreat dealing with learning communities, “classes that are linked or clustered during an academic term, often around an interdisciplinary theme, and enroll a common cohort of students.” Because writing can be applied to almost any discipline, writing courses are often parts of learning communities. One computer science professor, however, objected to the idea of combining his course with a writing course: “The problem with giving all these writing assignments is that then I gotta grade them.”

From what I could tell, “grading” writing assignments meant going over them with a red pen, writing “AWK” or “FRAG” in the margins. Several English faculty hastened to explain that not all writing assignments have to be graded. Indeed, one of their goals is to get students to see writing as an activity that makes and shares meaning, not as something done to get a grade.

This was my cue, so I stepped in. Blogs, I explained, are especially valuable for this purpose.

Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo.

I’m a little slow getting to read this piece over at Forbes on blogging. In some ways I wish I hadn’t read it all; in other ways, I wish I had read it sooner. This is the most negative text on blogging I have ever read, making them out to be at best personal diaries and at worst,

they are the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns.

Kind of ironic, isn’t it, that the rhetorical strategy of this article is not much different from what it complains about?

Don’t blog around here no more–or face suspension! At least, that’s what students at Pope John XIII Regional High School were told by the school’s administration. Officially, the ban is intended to protect kids from “terrists and them thar predtors,” but we all know it’s just to protect the ego and, er, good reputation of the faculty and administrators. Supposedly some free speech folks are getting riled up about it, but I don’t see how the school will be able to put the clamp down on all these students using commercial blogging services. How would they know who was who?

The English Council of California Two Year Colleges has entered the blog world at

http://ecctyc.blogspot.com

In the future, ecctyc will be posting news, regional updates, and announcements in addition to open blog discussions.

(Inside Higher Ed)

Merger mania hit the higher education technology market again Thursday, as the leading provider of learning management systems, Blackboard, Inc., said it would acquire its top competitor, WebCT, Inc., for $180 million.