Blog Juice for Educational Technology

The current issue of CCO is now live and offers an issue that highlights the richness and diversity of interests in Computers and Writing research today. In Theory into Practice Andrea Ascuena and Michael Mattison offer (Re)Wiring Ourselves: The Electrical and Pedagogical Evolution of a Writing Center, a look at an online writing center and its evolving pedagogy. The Rhetoric and Discourse of Instant Messaging by Christine A. Hult & Ryan Richins take a deeper look at IM using discourse analysis. The Virtual Classroom brings a piece by Matt Barton and Charlie Lowe. Databases and Collaborative Spaces for Composition is a helpful look at Content Management Systems for those trying to decide which of the many out there fits their particular needs. The Print to Screen section now has up-to-date abstracts of the print Computers and Composition articles. Our Professional Development section has two articles: Making Blogs Produce: Using Modern Academic Storehouses and Factories by Jen Almjeld and Chaos: An e-interview with Johndan Johnson-Eilola contributed by Robin Murphy. Finally, the Reviews section has an embarrassment of riches this time with Technology and English Studies: Innovative Professional Paths Edited by James Inman and Beth L. Hewett and reviewed by James Schirmer; Podcasts, Vodcasts, and ProfCast, a software review by Paul Cesarini; The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil, reviewed by Adam Ellwanger; and Radical Feminism, Writing, and Critical Agency: From Manifesto to Modem by Jacqueline Rhodes, reviewed by J. A. Rice.

If after all that reading you are inspired to submit a piece to Computers and Composition Online, we are accepting submissions for the Fall 2006 issue. Send us your submission using the following focus areas:

• Theory into Practice    Theory, thoughts, and speculation.
• The Virtual Classroom    Pedagogy and classroom experience.
• From Print to Screen    Online features that connect with current print journal themes
• Professional Development    Our past, present and future. Send your interviews and profiles as well as conference updates and calls for submissions.
• Reviews    Not only books, but sites, events, and other blended media.

Since web publishing gives us some flexibility in timing, we can accept submissions up to November 1, 2006 if the piece is especially polished and web-ready. Earlier submissions have more opportunity for interaction and editing comments from the editors and reviewers, a real advantage for those open to the collaborative nature of web writing and editing.

Send your submission via email in a .zip file or give us an URL. Potential articles need to be web-ready–.doc files or other purely text-based articles are not suitable. Check current and past articles at http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/home.htm. In preparing your submission, also note that CCO is a refereed journal and allows time for reviews of submissions. Authors wishing to do so may use a mutually agreed upon form of the Creative Commons License for
their article; CCO supports fair use and the open source movement in academia. If you have any questions about format or content, please feel free to
contact us by email. Queries are welcome.

Kris Blair
Editor
kblairATbgnetDOTbgsuDOT edu

Lanette Cadle
Senior Editor
lanetteDOTcadleATgmailDOTcom

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Brian Fehler (Tarleton State University), Elizabeth Weiser (Ohio State University-Newark), and Angela Gonzalez (Texas Christian University) invite scholars in rhetoric, composition, literacy, and communication studies to contribute to the collection Teaching Audience: Theory and Practice.  Considerations of audience have been important in our disciplines at least since Aristotle’s Rhetoric, and this collection aims to open a space for discussing how scholar-teachers theorize and teach audience in first-year and advanced writing and communication courses.  In particular, this collection will address such questions as: 

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Have you recovered from the trip to Lubbock? Or let your fingers rest upon the keyboard after the online conference this spring? If so, and you're hankering to get back to work, consider submitting a revised version of your conference presentation to Kairos. Queries welcome before deadline.
Kairos Call for Webtexts: Computers & Writing 2006 Issue
Submission deadline July 1, 2006
Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, Pedagogy, an online, peer-reviewed journal, invites authors to submit their work from the Computers and Writing 2006 conferences (onsite and online) for inclusion in the C&W issue. The editors encourage all authors who present at the C&W Onsite and Online Conferences to submit for this issue.

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The deadline for the CFP below has been extended till June 15, 2006. Please e-mail the editors if you have any questions. Thank you.

Introduction to the Subject Area

Online communication technologies (OCTs) are continually changing how we think about both the workplace and business interactions. More and more employees perform their job duties outside of traditional workplaces. The ability to work online offers more flexibility and responsiveness, both of which are essential for business success in the new millennium. OCTs can also enhance knowledge management (KM) by facilitating information sharing across an organization. Simultaneously, managers, workers, and educators who manage and work online or train others face new challenges and problems. These challenges include issues of corporate and employee time management, technology training, effective online communication among employees and with clients, and others.

Classical Rhetoric and Digital Communication: A Canon Blast into the Net

The Internet. Blogs. Hypertext. CMC. Wikis. Drupal. IM. What would the classical ancestors of Western rhetoric think of today’s digital world? How should we reinterpret the work of ancient rhetoricians in light of emerging digital practices?

Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy is pleased to announce that it will again recognize outstanding webtexts with awards to be presented at Computers and Writing 2006 in Lubbock, Texas.

Please see the full text of this announcement for criteria.

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).

Call for Papers: Composition and Copyright (edited collection)

Eds. Steve Westbrook, Ph.D. & Timothy Hodge, Esq.

We are seeking 500-word proposals for an interdisciplinary collection of articles that examines the relationship between copyright law and the activities of writing, researching, teaching, and learning. Regardless of the particular activity or combination of activities under discussion, we are concerned primarily with the legal, questionably legal, and illegal production and distribution of texts, which we define broadly to include verbal, print, auditory, visual, and new media, as well as computer code.

2007 CCCC Convention: Call for Proposals

25 Years of Reading and Misreading Orality and Literacy

This session is intended to mark the 25th anniversary of the publication of Ong’s Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word by exploring the ways the text has been read and misread by those working in the fields of composition studies, rhetoric, literacy studies, orality-literacy studies, and communication studies. Suggested topics include but not limited to considerations of its reception and its influence, reflections on reading and rereading the text over time, its connection to Ong’s other works and the related work of others, as well as extensions, critiques, contextualization of its ideas.

In the Fall 2005 issue of Computers and Composition Online we are pleased to present offerings from both new and established voices. Typical of these blendings is our Theory into Practice section where the pairing of Collin Brooke’s “Weblogs as Deictic Systems: Centripetal, Centrifugal, and Small-World Blogging” is answered by Steven D. Krause’s “Comments on Collin Brooke’s ‘Weblogs as Deictic Systems.’” Also in that section is “Making Online Spaces More Native to American Indians: A Digital Diversity Recommendation” by Angela M. Haas, who proposes a more expansive look at what diversity in digital spaces should mean. Over in the Virtual Classroom section, “A Role for Blogs in Graduate Education: Remediating the Rhetorical Tradition?” (by Rebekah Shultz Colby, Richard Colby, Justin Felix, Robin Murphy, Brennan Thomas, and Kristine Blair) describes and reflects on their experiences as graduate students and instructor writing in a course weblog while also intensively examining rhetorical theory face-to-face. In “Computer-Assisted Language Learning in the 21st Century,” Brita Banitz discusses the possibilities and the challenges second and/or foreign language educators face when using technology in their classrooms. Our Professional Development section offers Rich Haswell’s “Text-checkers: A Chronology and a Bibliography of Commentary,” and this issue’s reviews include Literacy in the New Media Age by Gunther Kress (reviewed by Michael Charlton) and Composition in Convergence: The Impact of New Media on Writing Assessment by Diane Penrod (reviewed by Eric Stalions).

As editors, we strive to make each issue of CCO address something new, whether it be a new approach to a continuing topic or reflections on new media. Another source of pride for us is the opportunity this gives new web authors to contribute to the journal. If you have work you would like us to consider, please send your submission via email in a .zip file or provide a URL. Potential articles need to be web-ready–.doc files or other purely text-based articles are not suitable. Check current and past articles at http://www.bgsu.edu/home.htm to get some idea of the level of digital formatting required. In preparing your submission, also note that CCO is a refereed journal and allows time for reviews of submissions. Focuses for the sections are as follows:

* Theory into Practice Theory, thoughts, and speculation.

* The Virtual Classroom Pedagogy and classroom experience.

* Professional Development Our past, present and future. Send your interviews
and profiles as well as conference updates and calls for submissions.

* Reviews Not only books, but sites, events, and other blended media.

* From Print to Screen Online features that connect with current print journal
themes

If you have any questions about format or content, please feel free to contact us by email. Queries are welcome, and we’d be happy to discuss your piece at the upcoming CCCCs or Computers and Writing Conference.

Kris Blair

Editor

kblair@bgnet.bgsu.edu

Lanette Cadle

Senior Editor

LLCadle@MissouriState.edu

In the Fall 2005 issue of Computers and Composition Online we are pleased to present offerings from both new and established voices. Typical of these blendings is our Theory into Practice section where the pairing of Collin Brooke’s “Weblogs as Deictic Systems: Centripetal, Centrifugal, and Small-World Blogging” is answered by Steven D. Krause’s “Comments on Collin Brooke’s ‘Weblogs as Deictic Systems.’” Also in that section is “Making Online Spaces More Native to American Indians: A Digital Diversity Recommendation” by Angela M. Haas, who proposes a more expansive look at what diversity in digital spaces should mean. Over in the Virtual Classroom section, “A Role for Blogs in Graduate Education: Remediating the Rhetorical Tradition?” (by Rebekah Shultz Colby, Richard Colby, Justin Felix, Robin Murphy, Brennan Thomas, and Kristine Blair) describes and reflects on their experiences as graduate students and instructor writing in a course weblog while also intensively examining rhetorical theory face-to-face. In “Computer-Assisted Language Learning in the 21st Century,” Brita Banitz discusses the possibilities and the challenges second and/or foreign language educators face when using technology in their classrooms. Our Professional Development section offers Rich Haswell’s “Text-checkers: A Chronology and a Bibliography of Commentary,” and this issue’s reviews include Literacy in the New Media Age by Gunther Kress (reviewed by Michael Charlton) and Composition in Convergence: The Impact of New Media on Writing Assessment by Diane Penrod (reviewed by Eric Stalions).

As editors, we strive to make each issue of CCO address something new, whether it be a new approach to a continuing topic or reflections on new media. Another source of pride for us is the opportunity this gives new web authors to contribute to the journal. If you have work you would like us to consider, please send your submission via email in a .zip file or provide a URL. Potential articles need to be web-ready–.doc files or other purely text-based articles are not suitable. Check current and past articles at http://www.bgsu.edu/home.htm to get some idea of the level of digital formatting required. In preparing your submission, also note that CCO is a refereed journal and allows time for reviews of submissions. Focuses for the sections are as follows:

* Theory into Practice Theory, thoughts, and speculation.

* The Virtual Classroom Pedagogy and classroom experience.

* Professional Development Our past, present and future. Send your interviews
and profiles as well as conference updates and calls for submissions.

* Reviews Not only books, but sites, events, and other blended media.

* From Print to Screen Online features that connect with current print journal
themes

If you have any questions about format or content, please feel free to contact us by email. Queries are welcome, and we’d be happy to discuss your piece at the upcoming CCCCs or Computers and Writing Conference.

Kris Blair

Editor

kblair@bgnet.bgsu.edu

Lanette Cadle

Senior Editor

LLCadle@MissouriState.edu

Alison Mackeen, editor of The Wild, Wild Wiki volume that Matt Barton and I are working on, forwarded this to me. Alison is starting a new imprint a U Michigan Press entitled digitalculturebooks. Below is a call for nominations to a new series they’re launching in short order.

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

digitalculturebooks is currently inviting nominations for our forthcoming collection, The Best of Technology Writing 2006.

The only such volume to be dedicated exclusively to technology writing, The Best of Technology 2006 will feature innovative, stylish, and accessible writing on a wide variety of technologies and topics, and in a wide variety of genres, including narrative features and profiles; Big Think and opinion pieces; business, investigative, and citizen journalism; art and design criticism; policy analyses; and personal essays.

The UMass Amherst English Department is co-sponsoring a K-college Conference on Writing, Teaching, and Technology on April 7 and 8, 2006. From the Call for Proposals:

The rapid development of computer capabilities is providing new venues for writing for people of all ages: personal web pages, web diaries, and blogs make it possible for people to write and share their work around the globe. As technology facilitates writing, it also challenges our very notion of writing. Writers can compose not only with words, but also with images and sound. Software programs are moving far beyond spell-checking; some are being marketed claiming to evaluate writing. Finally, technology also provides new opportunities for teaching writing (for example, electronic writing portfolios; software, like WebCT, that organizes courses and facilitates sharing of drafts; distanced education platforms). This conference aims to allow teachers from different backgrounds and with different interests to share methods, ideas, and projects for using technology effectively in the writing classroom.

Kathleen Yancey will give the opening address, and Charles Moran will be the speaker for the closing session. If you’re within a few hours’ drive of Western Mass and have an interest in technology and teaching, it looks like an interesting conference.