Blog Juice for Educational Technology

Addicted to Words

The BBC News published an interesting article today. The extract below describes the unsettling disconnect between what Bush says, versus what he actually manages to do:

As I listened to him I suddenly had my own revelation.

George Bush's principal problem is not that he can't articulate what's on his mind. It's that he sometimes says it all too well. (I can only remember one line from that world-class word schmoozer Bill Clinton and it was a disclaimer about Miss Lewinsky which the former president probably wished no one had remembered!)

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Apropos of my recent reading of Donald Lazere's recent article in JAC, I was thinking about what a great movie Bulworth was. Have any of you used it in a composition course before, or considered using it?

The University of Texas Computer Writing and Research Lab (CWRL) has recently launched a new blog called Blogging Pedagogy.  We describe the mission of our blog as follows:

This is a blog about pedagogy and English studies. It is a space to share stories, successes, and failures. The hope is that a blog format will connect assignments with specific teaching styles and philosophies.

While our focus is on English studies, we also welcome more broad discussions about pedagogy in other fields.  In the future, we hope to add a weekly installment "Podcasting Pedagogy" in which we’ll talk to those throughout the field(s) of English studies about pedagogy. 

The University of Texas Computer Writing and Research Lab (CWRL) has recently launched a new blog called Blogging Pedagogy.  We describe the mission of our blog as follows:

This is a blog about pedagogy and English studies. It is a space to share stories, successes, and failures. The hope is that a blog format will connect assignments with specific teaching styles and philosophies.

While our focus is on English studies, we also welcome more broad discussions about pedagogy in other fields.  In the future, we hope to add a weekly installment "Podcasting Pedagogy" in which we’ll talk to those throughout the field(s) of English studies about pedagogy. 

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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?

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:

Michael Schrage of the MIT Media Lab wrote a piece for The Financial Times saying that there should be no computers in schools. He argues that billions could be saved by keeping useless technologies out of schools. As an educational technologist, I felt that I needed to address his critique.

 
I think his main argument is with educational software companies, but he fails to differentiate between them and between teachers using technology in the classroom. His article cites nothing other than his own opinions, but it is an interesting read nonetheless.

A sense of injustice is a powerful motivator. Notice the honor rightly paid to Rosa Parks, one of the few ‘little people’ to be accorded the honor of a ceremonial funeral at the nation’s capitol. A sense of injustice turns you into a crusader, a person devoted to righting wrongs and correcting injuries. It is this sense that brings me to you today. Terrible crimes have been committed. Some of these crimes include mischaracterization, mistrust, and disrespect. In other words, we face violations of all the norms of liberal democratic discourse. These crimes are so grave that we are forced to pause at the triumphalism of liberal hegemony and acknowledge the necessity to re-think our commitment to its norms and values. Let’s begin with the first crime:

Sometimes you’re a victim of ennui.

You’ve read all about this and all about that. You’ve enjoyed the ravings of various radio madmen. You’re debating with yourself the merits of hating Islamic jihadists. You’ve watched one too many crime procedurals on television starring men with carrot red hair that so cleverly out the criminal. Luckily there is some eye candy designed to satisfy the male gaze. You wonder whatever happened to the acoustic mirror, Lacanian analysis, Derrida’s essay that worked as a forward to a book on the Wolf Man, why Wittgenstein was so eager to fight for the Austrians. You notice how the rain has ruined your neglected patio furniture. You wonder why you have a patio.

You know you’re in trouble when characters cannot find a way to resolve their “issues” within the space of 370 pages. If our fiction places us with insurmountable obstacles to a fulfilling life, when we cannot even imagine what it might look like to be happy campers, when the best we can do is always already second best…well, like I say, you’re in trouble. But so is your culture. Or, perhaps, I would propose: so is our culture.

In her novel _Oryx and Crake_(2003) we are treated to another ‘end -of- the-world’ narrative. This is a particularly good one, as I remember, because some of the best descriptions I’ve ever experienced of technical brilliance and sensuous enjoyment find their way into the subconscious. But my focus here is on the condition of those engaged in applied rhetoric, another way of saying the field of composition.

In this corner,in the purple book cover, Mark Backman. Noted editor, child solitaire, imaginative designer, and, not least, author of the well regarded _Sophistication: Rhetoric and the Rise of Self-Consciousness_(1991). As a young man he was quoted saying unlikely things: ‘Rhetoric is essentially an attitude about public expression’;
‘Rhetoric resides at the crux of the relationship between language and reality’; ‘The disposition to be rhetorical has always been controversial because it involves a kind of personal power, the capacity to influence the private thoughts of others through the public use of language’. Stealing from Heraclitus he once wrote: “Change is the only Reality.” Less controversial, yet also pointed he wrote: “Any structure well be effective, in the presence of chaos.” As a principle of life he was willing to assert: “Control implies consciousness of the self, the scene of enactment, and the other persons in the play.”

Once one has the chance to peruse the pages of Walter Jost’s _Rhetorical Investigations_(Virginia: 2004)things never are the same. Imagine one day you wake up and discover that the three types of classical rhetoric-deliberative, forensic, and epideictic-do not exhaust the types of rhetorical encounters one might have on that day! Could things be going any better? You’ve just visited a new continent, one you’ve lived on for years without knowing it.

But in an effort to tame some of this extravagant energy, let us look closely at the passage: “Chaim Perelman has observed that ‘it is indeed in the course of daily conversation that the opportunity to engage in argumentation most commonly presents itself.’ His point aligns with that of Cicero, who elevated leisured conversation on abstract issues to nothing less than a fourth genre of rhetoric, on a level with and often borrowing the topoi and strategies of deliberative, epideictic, and forensic.” (p. 160)

Rhetorical argument: what it is.

The position of those who make rhetorical arguments is that of *concerned citizen*. In other words, we don’t claim the expertise of the authorities in academic, government, or corporate circles. Yet, unlike the experts, we have a legitimate interest in shaping and reflecting a common world that we make by our production of arguments. In a sense it is the common world that is the *special* interest of the citizen.

This view of rhetoric is grounded in the republican vision of oratory. From Cicero and to the British rhetoricians of the 18th century, rhetoric is seen as the art of inventing and shaping arguments. There is no rigid or timeless standard for the production of these arguments; rhetoric is really grounded in the notion of a common adventure. The bond that holds the artifice together is the desire to maintain a common world; the idiosyncratic is not invited.