In fairness, 10 car songs that hit on all cylinders is meant to tie the rise of muscle car culture to some specific instances of popular music, but I've been doing a lot with playlist assignments lately and can't help but sense a missed opportunity. I've been conceptualizing the playlist assignment as somewhere near the textual edge of a print/media continuum that can be helpful for thinking about educational change--instead of walking completely away from print activities and toward media compositions, instructors can traverse the continuum, weaving print and media literacies together as they go.

Playlists, then, work really well, because they require very few non-print steps to implement. HTML is nice, but with a word processor or pencil and pad, you can create the list. But, when you make the list, you also delve into the world of music and sound. Sure, you'll think about song titles. But for the list to really congeal, you'll have tap into the messages and the lyrics. Even better, you need to create patterns of sound based on the musical elements of the songs. Yes, the assignment is easy and composed with print, but selecting and sequencing the songs kicks you into a process of musical analysis and arrangement.

So, I'm not that impressed with some of what's on the list:

Mustang Sally, Wilson Pickett
Little Deuce Coupe, The Beach Boys
Little Red Corvette, Prince
Pink Cadillac, Bruce Springsteen
Hot Rod Lincoln, Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen
409, The Beach Boys
G.T.O., Ronny and the Daytonas
Coupe de Ville, Neil Young
Rocket 88, Ike Turner
Pontiac Blues, Sonny Boy Williamson.

Now, some of these seem like possibilities for a car list, but others just seem to take up too literal a connection between the song and the message that might be woven into the list. I'm not all that familiar with Bruce Springsteen, but I know that any song with the lyrics,

Beyond the Palace hemi-powered drones scream down the boulevard
The girls comb their hair in rearview mirrors
And the boys try to look so hard

probably deserves to jump ahead of "Pink Cadillacs," even if that song has an iconic luxury car in the title. Other observations: no songs by the Beach Boys allowed in the list--no, it's not that I don't like the songs or appreciate the cultural reflections they create; it's just that it's too easy and direct a connection.

Well, it's easy to critique someone else's list, so I should probably offer some ideas of my own. It will take a while to really put together a list, but a couple of candidates that have shuffled across the earscape lately would be,

Neil Young, Unknown Legend
OMC, How Bizarre
The Doors, LA Woman
Citizen Cope, Sun's Gonna Rise
Buck 65, Wicked and Weird.

I'll need to think about this some more. It turns out wikipedia has a heckuva list started. Now to take those raw materials and compose.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 09:33 AM
Taged as >> the sounds of cars reverberate through the earscape | Permalink

What I really like about the program are the timelines which essentially enable a kind of iMovie-like composing. What's valuable, though, is that unlike iMovie, the program has equal power in handling extensive and complex text. It also allows placement of text and any other media in the composing space, adding an arrangement dimension to the composing process. This screen capture (3 mb) represents my attempt to stitch together some videos.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 09:07 PM
Taged as >> dabblings in the new media waters | Permalink

If you subscribe to the Chronicle of Higher Education, you might want to click over to "YouTube Youniversity" by Henry Jenkins. I don't have an account and had to settle for a version of the piece passed around through e-mail, which makes me want to revise my earlier comments about e-mail--the added relative privacy of e-mail probably has its advantages. Jenkins's piece makes a number of points regarding media and teaching. There is the familiar call to move beyond analysis if we hope to provide relevant instruction in new media:

In such a world, the structural and historical schisms separating media production and critical-studies classes no longer seem relevant. Students around the country are pushing to translate their analytic insights about media into some form of media production. And they are correctly arguing that you cannot really understand how these new media work if you don't use them yourself.

Before we started our master's program [in comparative media studies], I went on the road to talk with representatives of more than 50 companies and organizations. They told me that they value the flexibility, creativity, and social and cultural insights liberal-arts majors bring to their operations. They also shared a devastating list of concerns--liberal-arts students fall behind other majors in terms of teamwork, leadership, project completion, and problem solving. In other words, they were describing the gap between academic fields focused on fostering autonomous learners and professional contexts demanding continuing collaborations. Those desired skills were regularly fostered in other disciplines that have laboratory-based cultures that test new theories and research findings through real-world applications.

At such a moment, we need to move beyond preparing our students for future roles as media scholars, wrapped up in their own disciplinary discourses, and instead encourage them to acquire skills and experiences as public intellectuals, sharing their insights with a larger public from wherever they happen to be situated. They need to be taught how to translate the often challenging formulations of academic theory into a more public discourse

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 07:40 AM
Taged as >> youknow who youare | Permalink

I'm thinking of two episodes that lately brought home the shifting sands of online communication. In episode one, I sign my son up for the SAT exam. Peter set up a yahoo e-mail account several years back and occasionally I'll forward things to him, so I put down that address when setting up the exam. But a funny thing happened on the way to the information. Peter stopped using e-mail. "I haven't checked that in years," he told me. "I don't even know the password." And then our conversation: me suggesting that teachers and the workplace are constantly using e-mail, nostalgically reflecting on how the ubiquity an ease of e-mail made a huge difference in bringing technology into education during the last decade.

Episode two bubbles up from observations of e-mail lists during the last week. The two writing-related lists I'm on both featured the passing around of youtube URLs. I perceived an odd bit of excitement in the tenor of the messages--this is so interesting, you've got to check out these videos, etc. Of course the videos were already viral in the blogosphere, so the combination of using this (I think I'll call it lagging) medium and the enthusiasm in the e-mail messages for the emerging space just amplified my sense that a generational shift is taking place--generational in revealing the different habits of adults and children or teachers and students, and generational in helping us discover what really matters about communication.

Hint: It's not just (really) about the exchange of information. Some of the best e-mail discussion list threads bob and weave with dozens of messages building upon one another. All those commingling ideas. Wow. But still, e-mail as a message sharing technology is not all that dazzling, is it? All those separate inboxes. All that prose. It's the social energy that matters when e-mail is working and that energy is clearly moving elsewhere on the net. If I were to don my cynic hat, I'd observe the irony in recognizing that move in the slippage space of e-mail discussion lists devoted to communication and rhetoric. But, I'm still not all the way acclimated to the new spaces myself, so for now I'll embed an image into this message and let it float onto the Web.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 09:04 AM
Taged as >> it's the social exchange | Permalink

I like the piece for the way it tries to resuscitate writing by pulling it away from professional contexts that have sucked out its life:

But as the letter fell out of favor and education became professionalized, with its goal less the expansion of the mind than the acquisition of a job, writing began to be seen largely as the purview of writers. Writing at work also became so stylistically removed from the story of our lives that the two seemed to have nothing in common. Corporate prose conformed to an equation: information x polysyllabic words + tortured syntax = aren't you impressed?

Great stuff, but not enough. The piece takes one more step, explaining that writing works not only because it helps people connect. Writing matters because it helps us make sense of the distractions and traumas of our lives, and, with any luck, writing helps people make it through these difficulties. Tired sentimentality? I don't think so. Wheeling writing back toward personal struggle and survival closes the loop. It's not just that we need a space for writing to be non-professional and alive. Instead we need a place where writing can help keep us alive.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 02:15 PM
Taged as >> getting by with words | Permalink

The Tyger.

Tyger Tyger. burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp:

When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 03:12 PM
Taged as >> Blake poem forged anew | Permalink

Learning bits of Korean history from teachers and my parents, I've always felt bad about not being able to do anything about our history when I've known such sad facts. This is why I wanted to do my video collage with a Korean related topic. There are even more tragic poems written during the Japanese occupation of Korea, however, I chose Kim Gi Rim's "The Sea and the Butterfly" because I thought the clear blue and white images would go well with a visual project. The white butterfly is our nation's innocent students who would come to the world with bright hopes and ideals. However, the dark period of that era would drench their hopes like the soaked butterfly's wings in the poem, and leave them mostly in despair.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 09:22 PM
Taged as >> moods and moments placed into motion | Permalink

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 12:09 PM
Taged as >> muals into collages into flow | Permalink

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 06:41 AM
Taged as >> from the teaching files | Permalink

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 02:13 PM
Taged as >> cell phone video makes abuses of power public | Permalink

The second half of the video deals with the gnomewatch blog, a site that really pushes the limits of familiar conceptions of information literacy. The site is social, multimodal, intricately linked with print and television media, heavily situated in economics and pop-culture, and subtly deceptive. It takes way more than clicking past the first page of a set of search returns to read it.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 08:39 PM
Taged as >> Literacy gnomes are hard to find | Permalink

Captain Planet 1.2mb	The End Game 5.4mb	Pretty Woman 1.5mb

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 07:30 PM
Taged as >> I almost forgot how much I like teachmix | Permalink

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 09:43 AM
Taged as >> audio messages sway with sound | Permalink

Getting used to public writing means getting comfortable with idea sharing. Hard task, given that the currency of communication is built upon ideas, including the foundational original idea. Amplify that with mythologies of owning insights, and the call for claiming, collecting, and guarding ideas sounds clearly over the realms of academia and culture. Dragons with hoards, we protect our mental wealth, waiting for challengers and watchful for opportunity.

But private writers also suffer under the delusions of unique ideas. Take the textbook I’m beginning. I’ve decided to stop looking at other textbooks for a while, because I want to express my vision without having it gravitate too far toward the conceptions others have developed for teaching writing. How wrong is that? The question for me is not just rhetorical. Clearly it makes little sense to propose a complex system without looking at, even building from, what has already been done. And, the impulse to express a personal perspective merely places me in the mythology, finds me further retreating into the metaphysical cave of ideas.

So, yes, it’s wrong. But at the same time, I ask for the counterpoints. Duplication of ideas makes little sense without identifying those worth trying to emulate. And, it’s likely that I’ll have great difficulty escaping the constraints of the existing idea system for teaching writing, so the least I can do is make a strong effort to break away, to resist with the knowledge that the forces of inertia will pull the project back in the direction of the already known. So, for now, I write alone in avoiding the models that shape the field of first year composition texts.

But, of course, I write here publicly and welcome the thoughts of others. And, I write having spent plenty of time studying books meant to teach writing. Further, it’s clear that such conventions are fixed enough to influence the text, regardless of my intentions. Through the lenses of argument, the rhetorical situation, critical thinking, and the writing process come projected images of what writing looks like and of which instructional templates are needed to teach composition.

The question becomes even more pressing, then: how can I send out my message, given this institutional structure? I should admit I’m jumping straight to vowing to work within the institutions to try to evoke change. I like the more radical, overturn-the-system camps, and I know a leap is needed to assume I can have an impact within these constraints. But, I believe I can work with many of these structures, use the constraints, sonnet-like, pushing my ideas and teaching even as I borrow from existing forms. (I do know this is not an unfraught proposition.)

I really want to focus on the new media and the old media texts. To ask students, What are you making? In part, I think the technology-based writing I prefer necessitates this kind of foregrounding of projects, of texts, genres, and media. Working with code or cropping tools casts composition as construction, foregrounding files, tags, shapes. Really what’s needed is a strong focus on products. Of course, few compositionists would advocate for a product-based pedagogy in a writing text. But, I’ll figure out a way to help students focus on the physical aspects of the projects they will be making.

Similarly, I want to write expressively, and I want students to do the same. I want to invite students to identify personally with their writing projects. It’s not just that topics should be connected to interests, but projects should be relevant in form as well. Images. Sounds. Essays. Playlists. Enjoyable. I want students to have a sense that they can be insightful. I want them to be unsure about their tasks, to test and learn about new techniques and materials. I’d much rather err on the side of making things fun and creative, than on the side of making them familiar and formal.

And, I want students to know that, while it’s right to write the personal, much of what they say will be radically public. They will be buffeted by the media maelstrom. They will read and build upon the writings of others. And, they will address an audience. They will pass their compositions through a medium, feel it shape the writing, send the work through channels to be shared with others. They’ll project through space and time. They’ll project to people. Pitch. Sway. Entertain. Write.

So, the question again: How can I emphasize texts, advocate for expression from authors, and champion public writing given the constraints of educational and rhetorical institutions? My response is to build upon familiar ideas. The image here represents notes I’ve taken on my proposal for the writing guide. My notes pull out the time-worn rhetorical triangle, a structure handed down since Aristotle and featuring ethos, pathos, and logos (or author, audience, and text in other constructions).

I’d like to restate this three part structure with terms more in line with my goals for the project—identify (ethos, author), connect (pathos, audience), and construct (logos, text). I’m similarly thinking through how to respond to terms and structures like argument and critical thinking; more on that later. My hope is that this template and others will emphasize aspects of writing that matter to me. I also hope that this represents more of a building from than a capitulation to traditional structures and the status quo. In fact, I see a possible broadening of the current structures of writing instruction through terms like identify and connect, terms which not only derive from familiar conceptions like author and audience, but which, I hope, also urge writers to express their own ideas.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 11:07 AM
Taged as >> planting pivots and shouldering forward | Permalink

For the past few months I've tried to write new media pieces when making posts on this blog. It's oddly fitting, then, that this post (the first installment of many) consists of all prose, since it is here that I'll finalize the manifesto for my future writing projects, projects that, I hope, strengthen the bridge between new media and printed texts. I've sketched out ideas for such a manifesto once or twice in the past, but now I need to further develop my approach as I begin two writing textbooks. I'm calling the project Write Now. It will consist of two books, a writing guide and a handbook, each with extensive new media emphasis and content.

Both books will involve a good deal of public composing and social networking in their development. In fact, a key aspect of the project will be the way the development is opened up to public participation. I'll gladly build from the models so well developed by the Institute for the Future of the Book. The open and public composition processes they have set up for both the GAM3R 7H30RY and Without Gods books represents the kind of shared or moderated writing I'd like to accomplish. I'll also point to Collin's Rhetworks, Jeff's Digital Detroit, and Jenny's Auditory Epideictic as paving the way for actualizing the social possibilities for scholarship. I'd like to do something similar with my next textbooks.

I hunkered alone for two years recently writing a literature textbook and CD. I just don't have a taste for such isolated writing right now, and I'd like Write Now to have the benefit of online feedback and development. Conceptually and logistically, conflicts will surely arise. I'd like to implement a personal vision and produce published books for profit. But I'd also like to see a shared process of development within an interested community of readers and contributors. I'd like to make materials freely available to the public through an open source model that will help the community and make the materials stronger. But I know the commercial nature of the project will limit a good deal of this outreach potential. My intent for addressing these conflicts is to be honest, to admit that the context of commercial publishing will shape the work, to strive to be reflective and progressive in working with and against the grain of publishing pressures, and to ask for and facilitate the giving of help.

I should begin with a brief reflection on the process of finding a publisher for the project. For the past year I've spoken with every major publisher for college writing. Interactions have ranged from informal conversations about the project, to extended face-to-face meetings with officers, editors, development teams, media teams, marketing teams, and sales teams. In all of these interactions I have found the publishers to be genuinely interested in the future of writing. I'm not naive enough to overlook economics in their motivations, but, in the face of frequent criticisms of publishers as unresponsive to and exploitive of college writing, I'd be remiss in not observing that I found every publisher to be eager to listen, open to new possibilities, and, in instances, more tuned-in to student needs and desires than many instructors. Publishers seem ahead of the field in acknowledging that Web 2.0, portable devices, and new media will create profound changes for writers in the next decade. We talked about these developments at an If:book meeting in April and I was pleased to see that publishers, although approaching from different standpoints, were absolutely ready to participate in similar conversations.

I also should say I've learned a lot through the process of looking for a commercial venue for Write Now, and for the most part what I've learned makes me happy. Publishers take seriously the process of discovering what students and instructors want. Hierarchies between signing, developing, marketing, and selling textbooks are breaking down; instead information and decisions are shared, in part necessitated by the increasing risk factors associated with the investment costs of new editions. Publishers are more focused on a holistic approach to fewer texts, which hedges investments and limits options beyond the main stream, but also has the potential to result in better books, provided the vertical flow of information makes its way into the development process.

Publishers are also keenly aware of the price concerns regarding textbooks. Across companies, it's clear that publishers are ready with shorter versions of books should instructors and textbook committees request them. Publishers also are financially motivated to respond to the pressures that prevent students from buying and keeping books; no surprises here. What's promising, though, is the trend toward customization. Again, without any exceptions I could see, publishers are moving toward providing custom versions of texts and media that will help instructors, textbook adoption committees, and students identify and create texts that meet specific needs.

And, publishers are ready to push technology and social writing both in the production and distribution of their products and in the content of the texts. I proposed playlist, podcast, photo essay, collage, video collage, online profile, and dozens of other technology-based assignments for Write Now. Everyone I talked to welcomed those projects and wanted to keep the media and technology focus of the books. And, not one publisher balked at the notion of shifting the production model of the book to one consistent with the second Web. I proposed adding a public dimension to the writing through social software. I suggested participation from a broad community, and asked that publishers fund and facilitate that participation. I asked that some of the materials be released for the community to use and modify. We all had questions about logistics and boundaries, but every publisher was eager to implement these processes in the development of the books.

In fact, my eventual selection of Prentice Hall as a home for the project was based mainly on their eagerness to figure out together how we might transform the development process by opening it up. I started with an admission that I felt like I was straddling two worlds: one the open source, communal knowledge sphere I admire and participate with online, and two the world where I wanted to publish textbooks that challenge the state of writing but reach mainstream writing classes. We sat down and started brainstorming about how that might happen. The results will evolve over the next several years, but I wouldn't have committed to the process if I didn't believe it would offer opportunities for future students, for publishers, and for me to push writing.

So, I'm going public with this writing project. Look for more reflections, links to resources, and calls for participation here. If it works, look for those materials to develop into a shape recognizable as some form of open publishing. I'm not sure what to expect if it doesn't work. Either way, the process will play out in this and the other public spaces that make up the social Web.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 01:02 PM
Taged as >> writing push coming from the inside out | Permalink

Second, if you click on the ProCreate tab, you can see that the Web site makes explicit calls for participation from new media writers.

The only limitations are please use the logo provided, a positive campaign message and the website URL somewhere in your video.

• Large Green Apple logo.
• Download our footage from the e-waste yards in China (67MB) and India (34MB). These files are large Quicktime files for editing only. Here are our videos suitable for viewing.
• Large photos you might want to use.

If you want to send us a video, publish it on any popular video sharing site and send us the link. We'll feature the best videos here on the site. But some of them we'll only share with you first by e-mail, so be sure to sign up.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 10:50 AM
Taged as >> greenpeace spoof writing bites into apple | Permalink

Paris Hilton Voicemail

Batman Voicemail

Mother Nature Voicemail

I'm thinking of a number of twists that might go with this assignment. The first would simply be to have both the voicemail prompt like these, and then to record a message from a caller that demonstrates a different character or perspective. As a challenge, I'd like to tell a story or make a point using a series of calls left on a voicemail.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 02:55 PM
Taged as >> profiles in audio presence | Permalink

1.) As a writer, I'm eager to use mash ups to create new messages. My Yomamma Mash was great fun to make, but also helped me see through the issues circulating around the controversy over Stephen Colbert's speech at the correspondent's dinner. Yomamma offers strong virtual slaps to the face, and blending Colbert's words with the video clips from the M-TV show made me realize the serious criticism and angry challenges beneath the humor of the speech.

2.) As a writing teacher who favors new media, I'm encouraged by the trend to remix video content because it results in sentiments like

Top-down marketing, when the company creates a message for consumers to absorb, is an antiquated approach, said Tim Hanlon, senior vice president at Denuo, a division of the advertising firm Publicis Groupe. Consumers are savvy about the messages companies send and are now empowered to offer feedback about those products. "They don't need marketers," he said. "It's the new landscape."

3.) As someone who studies writing and media, I wonder similarly if and when mash ups will make it into the conversations of scholars. I don't mean, when will scholars talk about mash ups, like now in this blog posting. I mean when will they talk through mash ups. Jeff recently posted a video trailer for an academic article. My Mission Improbable mash up was done mostly for fun and does not work as well as the Yomamma clip, I think. What can scholars make of with these alternative forms of expression?

The Washington Post includes with its article a mash up challenge. I'm going to try to use the raw materials to create a response to something academic, probably to follow up on the recent discussions composition teachers have had about writing outcomes. Anyone care to join me?

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 08:47 AM
Taged as >> let's mix it up academically | Permalink

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 01:27 PM
Taged as >> screencast reflecting teaching at the edges | Permalink

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 01:43 PM
Taged as >> new writers take the lead | Permalink

I’d like to send out a message aimed at two different audiences. It’s a post to weave together two threads of conversation I’ve been considering of late. The first thread is Web 2.0. I know: not another summation of what makes the second Web different from the static Web. But, remember, I’m thinking of two different audiences here. And one of them needs to learn more about the current state of the Web, and especially about writing on the Web. Consider the composition outcomes offered by the Council of Writing Program Administrators:

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

 

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 08:57 AM
Taged as >> weaving the second Web and writing outcomes together | Permalink | Comments (3)

Moreover, publishing within such a network seems increasingly crucial to media scholars, who need the ability to quote from the multi-mediated materials they write about, and for whom form needs to be able to follow content, allowing not just for writing about mediation but writing in a mediated environment.

Point two:

The move from the discrete, proprietary, market-driven press to an open access scholarly network became in our conversations both a logical way of meeting the multiple mandates that academics operate within and a necessary intervention for the academy, allowing it to forge a more inclusive community of scholars who challenge opaque forms of traditional scholarship by foregrounding process and emphasizing critical dialogue. Such dialogue will foster new scholarship that operates in modes that are collaborative, interactive, multimediated, networked, nonlinear, and multi-accented. In the process, an open access scholarly network will also build bridges with diverse non-academic communities, allowing the academy to regain its credibility with these constituencies who have come to equate scholarly critical discourse with ivory tower elitism.

I don't want to come of as hyper-critical. I'm eager to see this play out. There is also a pedagogical dimension that is really worth a look. I'm excited about such moves and want to plug them.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 07:54 AM
Taged as >> new venues and process may mean new ideas and relationships | Permalink

On a side note, the interview was conducted with an M-Audio Microtrack--a portable digital recorder that will run a phantom powered microphone. I'll report back when I experiment with the equipment a bit more.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 12:29 AM
Taged as >> reflecting images through ima