betajames

I didn't attend as many sessions as planned. The usual excuses apply: big city appeal, conflicts of interest, hangovers, lingering hallway conversations. With that admission, though, I think I made it to a good variety. 

Conference session summaries and commentary, both of which may be inaccurate and/or inconsequential, follow. Speakers are identified by their Twitter accounts when possible.

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B.34 - Designing Education: What Videogame Designers and Rhetoricians Can Learn From Each Other

Samantha Blackmon (@saffista) encouraged the audience to think more like videogame designers, advocating a specific focus on the relationship between pedagogy and student engagement. Blackmon also ruminated on the idea of "to pass through" and what this means in videogames vs. how it occurs in a writing classroom. We can show through gameplay, through the act of performing knowledge, how we learn, which may lead us (students and teachers) to more effective writing processes. Blackmon also considered the heads-up display (HUD), in particular the PipBoy 3000 in Fallout 3, as a potential model for documenting process and progress, that the idea of a HUD in composition could influence the development of "squishy rubrics" for assessment.

Ian Bogost (@ibogost) introduced himself as coming to rhetoric from videogames and expressed interest in how cultural artifacts, e.g., videogames, work. "The rhetoric is in the rules," he explained. With Cutthroat Capitalism, McDonald's (the game), Oiligarchy, and Fatworld, Bogost put forth the idea of videogames as metarhetorical acts, as depicting process through a process. There was also an argument for algorithm and system over narrative and story, with page 82 of Diamond's _Guns, Germs, and Steel_ as an example of documentation, not discovery. Referencing McLuhan's Laws of the Media, Bogost encouraged the audience to think how and what we enhance, reverse, restrict, and obsolesce various and sundry processes.

Alex Reid (@digitaldigs) expressed interest in the affective aspects of composition, how ideas of flow and object-oriented rhetoric apply to the work we (students and teachers) do. For instance, if happiness is not a primary concern in composition or videogames, what is it that motivates? In this way, there are analogous challenges in composition and videogames. In the former, we have writer-object encounters; in the latter, we have player-object encounters. In both, there are unnecessary obstacles, but one still has greater appeal, perhaps because of its flow state. According to Reid, we can and should work more toward achieving and facilitating the flow state of composition.

Subsequent discussion concerned gamification, clarifying points on documenting process and progress, aesthetic intent, exploration as a form of play, and how we are (or can be) bridges between games and formal learning environments.

E.25 - Gaming the Academy

Scott Nelson and Andrew Rechnitz presented their work on The Agon, a game influenced by notions of roleplaying and make-believe in teaching and learning. Admitted gamer-scholars, Nelson and Rechnitz explained a variety of game scenarios based in agonistic competition for students of rhetoric to pass through. Rather than holding something like a mock trial in a face-to-face classroom session, The Agon will be a different sort of learning gamespace, one with closer ties to The Oregon Trail than Number Munchers.

Tekla Schell explained how she uses Mass Effect in teaching ethics. There was some focus on the videogame's dialogue wheel as the most interesting aspect because of how it doesn't so much present full dialogue choices as it does words or short phrases expressive of particular tone. Schell also noted that the relative positioning of students with the player-character Shepard can allow for a long view regarding the impact of ethical choices. 

G.23 - Poiesis in Motion: Rhetoric, Composition, and Mobility

Ehren Pflugfelder gave attention to the materiality in/of rhetoric, the embodiment of gesture, and notions of kinesis, energeia, and techne. He explained the regimes of movement in the world, how one can be living well and also have lived well, indicating existence and movement in "the moment up to the present." This is also the realm of gerunds. Most interesting to me, though, was Pflugfelder's unpacking of techne, which he explained as navigation while also nodding to Heidegger's position of it as a primary mode of revealing. It is through movement, through navigating technology, through expressing rhetoric that we are mobile.

Lars Soderlund provided something of a working example of this, delivering his talk about Gorgias's migrant teachings while walking around the room. Soderlund related the mobility of the sophists in educating the general public to the idea of circulation and how it feeds into a kairotic moment and then continues to circulate. Among the more recent examples Soderlund introduced was FDR's "fear itself," though he also related this to Jim Ridolfo's observations on rhetorical velocity. For Soderlund, circulation applies to ideas while mobility applies to people and things. 

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Given Pflugfelder's and Soderlund's consistent mentions of objects and things, I anticipated some talk of object-oriented rhetoric, but none came. And I'm still too much in the beginning stages of understanding OOR to inquire as to why neither presenter touched upon it.

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Jason Swarts produced a very helpful handout in relation to his talk on movement among and between locations and spaces and how it's possible to code and define them. Types of spaces identified by Swarts include geographical, municipal, commercial, event, transit, and social. The significance attached to locations include activities, times and dates, conditions, people, trajectories, addresses, and articulations. Swarts also explained how he coded a collection of Twitter data, moving from "location" to more specific areas, including "building," "event," "path," "road," "area," "relational," "geographical," and "transit. 

Ryan Moeller concluded the session with some perspective on his study of students' mobile and non-mobile writing events.

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I have to admit to being so interested in Moeller's talk that I took almost no notes. Among the few scribblings I took, though, is this: I'd be interested in overlaying Jason Swarts's coding passes on Moeller's study. I'm curious as to what might be gleaned from doing so.

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H.18 - Writing Text, Writing Code, Writing Connections

Julie Meloni (@jcmeloni) introduced the audience (or maybe just me) to critical code studies, explaining that everybody does something with code, but so many don't know what code is or means. "Everyone writes code, knowingly or not," she declared at one point. And doing so builds and feeds the machine, making it better and into something new. Writing and code both represent and construct the world.

Annette Vee (@anetv) spoke about the effects of code on computers and humans. Code says and does, making for real (not symbolic) change. All speech is performative; code is descriptive and performative by degrees. The perlocutionary should be the goal. Computers are linguistic/social objects, with code/software as the audience.

Brian Ballentine expressed interest in points of entry in software programming as well as the relationship between code and narrative. Ballentine used the Matrix as an early illustrative example, explaining Hollywood "code view" vs. "real code view. He later explained how writing bookends the software development process and the need to have narrative present in every stage, even if the meaning of "event" is something different for programmers.

L.29 - Serious Games and Digital Rhetoric

Doug Eyman (@eymand) thought aloud about writing and videogames, framing serious games as theory machines and advocating that the real value of games cannot/does not come from reading them as texts. Instead, games are a "generative force for defamiliarization." Eyman explained this through the different kinds of writing associated with games: writing ABOUT games (analysis and review), writing AROUND games (fan fiction and wikis), writing INSIDE games (e.g., Mass Effect's codex), and writing THROUGH games (mods, technical documents). It should be noted here that Eyman also mentioned machinima, but I didn't record where he placed that kind of writing, (either INSIDE or THROUGH makes sense). 

Steve Holmes read a paper on moving toward a rhetoric of the MMORPG, noting the rhetorical nature of videogames and how persuasion is evident through procedure. He invoked Ian Bogost, but Holmes also critiqued the apparent privileging of coded procedures, preferring to instead look at "uncoded" aspects of World of Warcraft. Among these aspects were social principles, random consequences, and extra-game social rewards. Holmes privileged the player over the system, noting out-of-game motivation and the realm of expressive products, and wants more accounting for human agency in procedural rhetoric.

Scott Reed (@rhetoroxor) looked at the challenge of boredom in our post-process moment, on how this involuntary loss of meaning leaves us with no history to made (boredom here, not post process, ha!). He stressed the need to be other than goal-oriented. Reed also advocated an embrace of the digital agon and for us to play with unexpected connections.

Jimmy Butts read a paper on play in the U.S. prison system, building upon the instance of an inmate banned from playing Dungeons & Dragons to argue for the precious importance of play to all humans. It was with marked sarcasm that Butts listed those games still available to those incarcerated: "Thank goodness for Stratego."  

Jan Holmevik spoke about the future of virtual worlds and WoW's movement from theme park to narrative. Play is a bridge, creating locations for our rhetorical consideration. In the future, Holmevik hopes to see more harnessing of the power of community-distributed models and less top-down structures.

N.04 - The New Work of the Digital Book in Composition Studies

Debra Journet began by talking about the book as something of intellectual heft, its weight, its length, its "symbolic rendering." The book is an object, a technology, a genre. How do we translate this materiality into something digital? How do we make the digital a comparable amount/form of work? What we recognize as a book is based in part on our assumptions about convention. If the university press book is the gold standard (and it is), there are important, necessary changes in distribution and authorship as well as economic consequences when moving into the digital. 

Cheryl Ball (@s2ceball) documented the process from idea to review, looking at what's possible now as well as best practices, abilities, and expectations in addition to issues of copyright and peer review. Ball addressed questions of time and money, assumptions about the amount of advance work, and the process of labor in digital production before narrowing to a focus on media-based vs. print-based language in various publishing documents (namely proposals and reviews). We need to recognize the print biases that persist and remain, the expectations associated with those biases. 

Ryan Trauman (@trauman) closed the session with some thoughts on fostering the digital push in acknowledgement of history. "History is a narrative technology," he said while previewing certain, various histories of new media, naming Gitelman, Kittler, Bazerman, Benjamin, Feenberg, and Foucault as places to start. In moving from history to practical example, Trauman noted the fallacy of "artist before her time." From his perspective, it isn't that innovators see the future so much as the shortcomings of current technology. "The future emerges out of negotiation," he explained. One such negotiation concerned the table of contents, which was both a design approach and opportunity for him, and he concluded his talk with a demonstration of a Flash-based table of contents that was dependent on reader selection for its clustering organization. 

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In my notes on the game-oriented sessions summarized above, I express annoyance over the introduction and use of videogames as metaphors, primary texts, and teaching tools. Even if they are in the right direction, these are small steps. I'm concerned that not much really changes as a result of these steps. I'm impatient for more substantial change. I don't want to use videogames in a composition course. I don't want a gamified composition course. I don't want some kind of immersive media replacement that dovetails with past/present pedagogy. I don't want a superficial layer on top of a learning system already rife with problems of engagement and motivation. I don't want achievements as replacements for grades. A videogame can function as documenting a process or system, right? I want games to call bullshit on what we do. I'm uncertain if games as metaphors, primary texts, and teaching tools are enough to do that.

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Who I met, re-met, and/or at least shook hands with: Jen Almjeld (@jenalmjeld), David Bailey (@dbfuturist42), Kris Blair (@cloudydc), Ian Bogost (@ibogost), Richard Colby, Chris Denecker, Scott Graham (@easyrhetor), Dennis Jerz (@DennisJerz), Liz Losh (@lizlosh), Brian McNely (@bmcnely), Scott Reed (@rhetoroxor), Alex Reid (@digitaldigs), (@Scrivenings), Lee Sherlock (@Imsherlock), Chris Tolley, Mark Vega (@megavark), and Quinn Warnick (@warnick).

I also spent an alcohol-infused, smoke-filled evening with Simon Ferrari (@simonFerrari), Ben Medler (@benmedler) and Simon's friend Mark (whose last name I do not recall).

Beer recommendation: Terrapin rye pale ale
Food recommendation: brisket barbacoa at Nuevo Laredo

Postscript: The discussion about conference hashtags was as important as it was, in some ways, moot. Many appeared amused and/or exasperated by the plethora of descriptors, from #4C11 to #cccc2011 to #theconferenceoncollegecompositionandcommunication. Newcomers included as many hashtags as they could while still getting their points across; veterans set up archives and tweeted about which hashtag was rising or falling in popularity. I won't be surprised to learn of future papers and talks given about this event within the event. I'll be interested in reading those papers and listening to those talks. And yet, I remain amazed at the hugeness of the conference. When compared to the overall number in attendance, I'd wager a slim fraction of those participated or even knew of the hashtag kerfluffle. This is not to imply that future analysis and scholarship on conference hashtags are unimportant or unnecessary. I'm just curious about perspective and perhaps how the absurdity of the event may have inhibited participation.

Every child knows that play is nobler than work.  He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard.  Games of chance require a wager to have any meaning at all.  Games of sport involve the skills and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them.  But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.

Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian. New York: Vintage, 1992.  p. 249

Above is a Wordle of the most popular terms in my notes on ENG 567's very own pecha kucha night last week. These presentations constituted precursors to full drafts of their semester-end projects.

Despite the commonalities evidenced in the Wordle above, each pecha kucha presented was unique in approach and theory. Annas, Bartholomae, Bleich, Elbow, Eldred, Freire, Lunsford, and Tompkins were among the names dropped in the presentations. One put forth an idea of FYC with a more intimate connection to the writing center. Another focused on basic writing via the contact zone. A couple suggested cultural and/or media studies as main areas of focus. At least two appeared to take elements of ENG 567 as direct inspiration, given plans to facilitate student writing via Twitter and/or Posterous. A few wrestled with the idea/importance of peer review, expressing some uncertainty about its real value. Many were concerned about audience awareness and writing voice. Many were curious about the use of technology in facilitating the development of skills. These current and future teachers of writing want to help students "forget it's a writing class" or to at least help them "to hate writing less."

The pecha kucha presentations focusing on research rather than syllabus development still related to composition pedagogy and theory. One drew connections to online roleplaying games and martial arts sparring sessions; another related the development and history of vampirism to the field of rhetoric and writing. Much like the book reviews performed earlier in the semester, these academic contributions look to be strong.

At this point, I have no concerns or worries about anyone's work, only some impatience in reading their research drafts and syllabi. For as green as some students might see themselves, I know I have much to learn from them.

The last two weeks witnessed the last two student-led facilitations of the semester. The respective areas of focus were basic writing and technology. Each facilitation began with an excellent distillation of the assigned readings before moving into discussions and exercises. What I find of interesting note now are the similarities. There were discussions of literacy and what constituted "necessary skills." There was talk of the importance of and need for immersion for both students and teachers, how the underpinnings of basic writing pedagogy as well as teaching with technology stress empathy and interaction. That just as we are all users of technology, we are also basic writers, communicating via symbols in a variety of interfaces, screens, and windows. That we have myriad opportunities to learn from students now about their own language as well as more about ours, to realize the differences might not be so great. 

Perhaps it is because of these similarities that we do not have a unified theory of basic writing or teaching with technology. Our ways and means of writing are so apparent and so many now. Technology is so ubiquitous. And academicats are so persistent in our pecha kucha presentations (which lie ahead this week!).

This possible relative of Ashley has been hanging around the house the past two days. It walks right up to me, so it doesn't seem to be feral. It would walk right into the house if I let it. It has been in a fight, has a limp and a mangled ear. I don't know what to do. Adoption's not really an option.

With the book review assignment completed this past Sunday, I thought it might be helpful/useful to those in and beyond ENG 567 to have a central place from which to access all reviews (save one). Below are links to and snippets of each review:

Beach, Richard, Chris Anson, Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch, and Thom Swiss.  Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and other Digital Tools. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon Publishers, 2009. Reviewed by Michelle English.

an excellent reference tool for both instructors who are just learning how to navigate the digital environment and those who already engage students in this type of writing.

Birkenstein, Cathy, and Gerald Graff. They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2010. Reviewed by Ashley Armstrong.

a wonderful book that not only provides students with the essential answers that they will be asking for when writing, but the two authors do it in a way that allows the students to feel in control.

Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. Reviewed by John McKeown.

Perhaps the largest benefit I could see composition teachers gaining from reading Bogost's texts is the knowledge that getting students to become better writers could be accomplished through the use of procedural rhetoric

Brueggemann, Brenda Jo, and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson. Disability and the Teaching of Writing: A Critical Sourcebook. Boston, MA: Bedford/St.Martin’s, 2008. Reviewed by Megan Breidenstein.

This sourcebook is a must for anyone going into the field of teaching composition, writing center work, or who just wants to have more knowledge on disabilities in academia.

Fleckenstein, Kristie S. Vision, Rhetoric and Social Action in the Classroom. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009. Reviewed by Tara Moreno.

Fleckenstein fails to clearly define what social action has to do with the composition classroom until the very end of the book.

Kolln, Martha, and Loretta Gray. Rhetorical Grammar: Grammatical Choices, Rhetorical Effects. 6th ed. NY: Longman, 2010. Reviewed by Melodie Barker.

What makes the book different from traditional grammar books is that it draws on discoveries from composition researchers and linguists and uses a rhetorical point of view to explain grammar.

Mao, LuMing, and Morris Young. Representations: Doing Asian American Rhetoric. Utah: Utah State University Press, 2008. Reviewed by Becky Woolever.

The purpose of the book was to counter the elimination, or as the authors state “institutional forgetting” of a culture and its practices.

Otte, George, and Rebecca Mlynarczyk. Basic Writing. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2010. Reviewed by Joshua Dugas.

the authors’ choice to reexamine [basic writing] in comparison to the English field and external factors bodes well.

Rice, Jeff. The Rhetoric of Cool: Composition Studies and New Media. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007. Reviewed by Kim Clark.

This book is definitely suitable for any serious instructor looking to understand why incorporating digital media into the writing curriculum is important.

By naming-- or at least attempting to name-- feminist composition theory, Siebler is moving the discourse forward.

Smit illustrates just how vital it is that a new approach to teaching composition be developed and implemented.

Tinberg, Howard, and Jean-Paul Nadeau. The Community College Writer: Exceeding Expectations. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010. Reviewed by Gia Huff.

the answers to the questions the authors posed were so interspersed throughout the book that I’m not even sure if they answered them all.

There hasn't been much writing here because there's been a fair amount of writing elsewhere. Emails to groups and individuals as well as tweets present a cumulative rival to the blogging that might have otherwise happened here. I think it appropriate, though, to mark the end of this particular week. In a way, it has already been marked by the last student-led facilitation of the semester, which occurred this past Tuesday. In each section of #345tw, the facilitation was a fitting end to the most overt collaborative aspects of the course. The M1 group concluded their facilitation with some friendly reminders about what technical writing is, does, and why. Earlier on, there were helpful nods to technologies that might assist in the production of technical documents as well as some forward-looking comments specific to the task analysis. The M2 group's facilitation held an exclusive focus on the task analysis that I think handled a potentially complex document format/style quite well. Awareness of audience and the tasks that audience will undertake are of paramount importance in technical communication, so I'm glad to see students' work reflecting that. 

Writing of work, blogging (posts & comments) and tweeting will be with us until Week 15 (and, make no mistake, they are collaborative in nature), but the facilitations and projects are over and done with. Our major focus now is the individual project, producing the documents necessary to its ultimate production. Blogging and tweeting can (and perhaps should) be in the service of that project and its constituent parts. We are surely in the proving grounds now, having compiled knowledge of and experience with elements of technical communication and now ready to perform. 

Even as I write now, my Twitter feed updates with the hashtag "#345tw." Audience analsyes are streaming in, the latest knowledge performances, and I look forward to reading them in the week almost upon us. 

Also: #345tw students should look for individual emails about overall course progress. These will continue the conversations begun earlier in the semester about being in accordance with the grading contract. Many of those conversations were fruitful and helpful, so I trust future discussions will be, too.

This spring, I'll be guiding my third graduate-level course in the MA in English program at the University of Michigan-Flint. Listed as ENG 560: Topics in Writing and Rhetoric, my current vision for the course concerns the execution of a booksprint. To be more specific, ENG 560 will be an eight-week collaborative writing project. The focus will be an issue, theme, or topic within rhetoric and writing studies. The issue, theme, or topic will be identified and decided upon by students and instructor. 

The result of our work will not be an edited collection, though. Most every graduate course concludes with a series of essays somewhat related to the overall focus of the course. That is not what will happen in ENG 560. The emphasis instead will be cohesion over collection. That is, we will be aiming for a cohesive, if not comprehensive, codex. There will be an overall argument and point to the work. Chapters will relate to and succeed each other in an academic, linear fashion.

Of course, the overall length of the book will depend on student enrollment. For example, if the minimum number of students take the course (10), we should be looking at a 150-page book. If the maximum number of students take the course (15), we should be looking at a book of over 200 pages. For either scenario to happen, students will need to work in pairs on individual chapters. That is, there will be two primary researchers/writers for every chapter. As such, I see my primary roles as facilitator and executive editor. If all those involved in this project approve of the end result, I may very well drum up external interest and/or pitch the text to publishers.

Given my preferred area of focus, i.e., rhetoric and writing studies, current ENG 567 students will be better prepared and primed for ENG 560. This should not dissuade others in the MA program from enrolling, though. 

ENG 560 will be mixed mode, meeting every Tuesday night from May 9 until June 28. Here's a quick shot of each week:

Week 1 - introducing & brainstorming
Week 2 - delegating & researching

Week 3 - researching

Week 4 - researching

Week 5 - writing
Week 6 - writing

Week 7 - editing

Week 8 - finishing up

The technology/technologies we use to facilitate the entire process will also be decided upon by students and instructor. Google Docs is the foremost possibility in my mind right now, but I'm very open to other recommendations/suggestions.

I'm also open to questions and concerns from current students and otherwise interested parties. Your thoughts?

miketodd07, thirdworldgirl-, and many others on Tumblr are liking and reblogging this quote attributed to John Steinbeck, but it isn't really a quote at all. It's Ronald Wright's paraphrase of something Steinbeck allegedly said or wrote. What's missing from the 'quote' is "John Steinbeck once said." That's important. Wright's being ignored and uncredited for his paraphrase; Steinbeck's being quoted in an improper way. 

I suppose I'm overdue for including a "cite Tumblr, fail the assignment" statement in my syllabi.