By the end of first-year composition, students should have a critical understanding of digital literacy, including:

• using the computer for drafting, revising, responding, and editing
• employing research strategies using electronic databases
• conducting web-based research and evaluating online sources
• understanding the difference in rhetorical strategies used in writing traditional and hyper-text prose/graphics.

I should note that these outcomes are the current set listed on the WPA technology plank blog and they may have shifted some after discussion at the recent WPA conference, but they will serve to highlight the need to explain something about the second web to the WPA audience. The outcomes represent a static understanding of the Web and technology-mediated writing. (For expansion on the concerns regarding the statement, see the recent discussion collected nicely by Kathie Gossett and Derek Mueller.) I’m in an odd position, since I really know just a little about Web 2.0 and even less about how to construct outcomes for writers. Further, the members of the WPA community represent an audience of sophisticated writers, expert teachers, and gifted scholars. I feel, though, that I can address this group to say, focus more on the nature of writing today on the Web. I can say this because I, too, need to think through the kinds of writing outcomes that might play out on the current Web.

So, what might writing teachers remark about the Web today? Well, clearly the Web is growing functionally and visibly social. Take the communication activity that characterized healthy e-mail or newsgroup discussion during the first years of the Net boom (say, 1994-2001), and then translate it into Web space. The Web and its mechanisms of subscription, notification, trackback, and comment now facilitate a more public and spatialized version of e-exchange. If e-mail once eclipsed the letter, it now sits in the shadow of the social Web. Where does that leave writing teachers looking toward the future (present)? Note: this is not a train on the tracks argument. (It's not about technology's ubiquitous nature and reach. The claim is that writing can be a social act, a claim nearly every writing teacher would support, but a claim often not reflected in many classrooms.)

Perhaps there really is only one audience addressed in this message, since the second audience I had in mind concerns itself as well with the nature of writing. This group might be represented by the sample in the latest Pew report on the state of blogging. Members of this group almost certainly “get news from the Internet” (97%) and most of them (77%) “have shared their own artwork, photos, stories, and videos online.” Seventy-seven percent. And, get this:

Bloggers also like to create and share what they make. Forty-four percent of bloggers have taken material they find online – like songs, text, or images – and remixed it into their own artistic creation. By comparison, just 18% of all internet users have done this.

And this:

[F]our out of five bloggers (80%) post text to their blog, but nearly as many (72%) display photos on their blog. Nearly half of all bloggers (49%) say they have posted images other than photos to their blog – items such as drawings, graphs or clip art. Close to a third (30%) of bloggers had posted audio files to their blog and another 15% vlogged, or posted video files to their blog.

True. Writing rules the blogosphere, but three quarters of bloggers posting images? Thirty percent posting audio files? Fifteen percent posting videos? That’s a lot of writers dealing in multimedia.

Of course, not all bloggers post multimedia. More to the point, not all writers blog. So, maybe this is just a fringe element, a blip. But I don’t think so. The Pew report notes the rapid growth of blogging. Twelve to nineteen year olds blog more than twice as much as older bloggers. The percentage of blog readers has shot up since 2005. No, this is not an insignificant shifting of the ways people are writing. Writing is moving into social Web space. And Web writers compose with multimedia.

And, that’s exactly why I’d ask a group of teachers, scholars, and practitioners of writing to think about the activities and opportunities (tag as outcomes, if needed) afforded by the second Web. It’s a chance to put forth some suggestions about what you need to know and what you need to do to write today. To write today you need to

• Conceptualize networks,
• Find and move materials,
• Make rights decisions.
• Edit images,
• Edit sounds,
• Use a movie or authorware program,
• Compose prose,
• And what else?

You need to spatialize the net. Understand computing metaphors, established (desktop, server) and alternative (bus stop, kitchen sink). Know about files and applications. Understand and shape your computing environment. Find archives and databases. Compose searches. Get into the public domain. Know not to be thwarted. Capture. Screen shot. Exercise your fair use. Make decisions. Give credit. Know about layers. Resize. Crop. Add text. Move among media. Compose with a timeline. Fade in. Say something. Shape it. Fade out.

I list these needs as expectations. I would hope students leaving a writing class could meet such expectations. I list them because I feel there are more important outcomes that these activities might facilitate. One, they might enable students to participate in written exchanges with currency. And, two, they stand a good chance of engaging writers with their materials. The outcomes might be the ability to say something meaningful personally and relevant socially. Only then are we likely to discover that unnamable suspension felt when writing well, forgetting (I would hope) the assignment, and instead fixing on the mixing