Web design

I've been reading through your wikis and looking for sources for your web projects. Hopefully each of you has signed out a book, or received an email from me which contained some useful references. As soon as you get the content (or at least the sources for the content) lined up, we can move on to figuring out how to organize what you have to say as a web presentation. The wiki software is pretty clunky (though I am impressed with what some of you have done with it), but creating your website should open up some possibilities for using elements of design to enhance your discussion.

On Tuesday, I will present some materials available for teaching multimedia and/or visual rhetoric and design.


To give you an idea of what web essays look like, you might want to check out Kairos a web journal on writing. These essays are about teaching digital writing, and they are presented in web format.

If you want to see *advanced* design in action, check out entroyp8zuper, a web design studio. Their work is interactive, beautiful, and provides excellent examples of visual communication (for a range of purposes). I do not expect anything so elaborate -- but I thought you might enjoy looking at their work.


You might also want to look at TECFA's links for design. TECFA is an academic unit in the field of educational
technology. It was created by the School of Psychology and Education at the University of Geneva. Scroll down to 2.1

If you scroll down further, you will discover the web style guide,the web design group's elements of design. These sites contain different presentations of the material which we will go over in class -- or to put it more accurately -- which you will present to your classmates.

After you review/rate one another's wiki sites, you and your group will read through materials for teaching visual/multimedia composing (web design). Then, next week (as scheduled on the new calendar) each group will give a presentation on one set of materials. In the presentation, you will:

1. Give an overview of information in your material which is relevant to web writing; your discussion should cover elements of design, visual rhetorics, relationships between print & text, role of the reader, and so on.

2. Discuss how you could apply this information as you construct your web essay.

3. Evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching material you have reviewed.

The format for the presentation can be interactive, collaborative -- how ever you think will be most engaging for your classmates.

eBay: taking a hard look at the ordinary

So you read one more article that went into great analytic detail with respect to something that seems ordinary. Just as we belabored defining cyberspace and then spent two classes examining the "meaning" of links and genres -- concepts which you understand and can use intuitively -- now we spent a class examining the "literacies" associated with eBay. At this point is might feel safe to say that this class is about making "mountains out of molehills." Yeah. I guess it is.


Applying critical, reflective analysis to "ordinary" practices allows us to understand our culture and our selves in more depth. It allows us to identify and generalize why particular interactions play out as they do. Saying that online writing is like both speech and print is both obvious and profound. It is obvious if we leave it with the surface generalization, and it is profound if we identify the features of writing and the features of speech which online writing has appropriated, and then try to theorize and understand what these features allow us to say and the kinds of social interactions they structure. So, yep, that's what we're doing. We are spending a great deal of time taking an exhausting, if not exhaustive, look at what is happening to literacy and writing in the digital age.

For any of you who were interested in my brief overview on the future of internet governance, a copy of the report can be found at http://www.wgig.org. Reading the background report will help you understand the recent political history which caused the group to be formed. The speaker at the conference was Peng Hwa Ang, Dean of School of Communication at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Chicago

So here we are. If you want to read the abstract for our talk, it is available atAOIR Conference papers.

There is a print version of my paper at this site. Jackie and Josh have their own sites and should have their papers posted shortly.

Blog address for Amanda H.

I have added a link for Amanda H.'s blog -- so that is everyone. My links are in random order but the two Amandas are right after one another -- so be sure to add Amanda to your list.

Thinking about the Wiki assignment

On Tuesday, October 4, we will go over the assignment sheet for the wiki. For this project, you and your group will define, explore, and create linked discussions of a focused set of concepts important to online writing.

Several of you mentioned you might like to incorporate some aspect of gaming into your focus. The following links give an indication of what literacy researchers have been writing about games, learning, and creating "texts."

topics related to gaming and literacy

games+learning+society

I also overheard a buzz about fan fiction and about ethics/regulation/ownership issues.

(Matt I am still working on a good page with many references on virtual realities which is going to connect to *writing*)

For those of you who are still thinking in general terms, Virginia Montecino at George Mason University has put together a very useful cyberography of online resources for a range of issues. Montecino

As we go over the assignment sheet, we will talk about how you can narrow these huge conceptual areas to a list of concepts you and your group will define and discuss in your wiki.

Links and Genres: Blog Assignment for Tuesday

I posted at NEWS on WebCt that I would give you an overview of Kress. I acknowledge the article required careful reading, but I also think it is clear and that he makes us re-examine our intuitive assumptions about genre, and he offers a re-definition of the term which we can apply to cyber-genres.

We began our discussion by clearing up what Kress means by text -- and our interpretation was that he meant anything we could "read" -- or develop a "reading" of. We are developing genres for text in the large sense -- so that webpages and all the encompass are considered texts.

Kress defines genre as "that category which realizes the social relations of the participants involved in the text as interaction." So to begin with he is treating genre not as related to the symbols and forms of which texts are physically composed, but as the social interactions through which texts are "realized." To realize a text, I am assuming, means to interpret or creat meaning of a text.

He then identifies three types of relations structured by genres.

1)Relationships reported in the text: that is relationships among actors, objects, and events reported in the text (eg relationships within the content;)
2)relationships implied by the text; that is relationships between the participants who bring the text into meaning (eg between the implied reader/audience and the author);
3) and relationships within the social world or discourse within which the text participates. In the two examples from Kress's discussion the texts are a recount and a procedure, and Kress shows how these two forms participated in the conventions and expectations of the discourse or social world for "doing science." )

Kress' discussion illustrates how his definintion of genre can encompass discussions of the effects of design and of multigenre texts.

In his concluding section, he points out that texts have always been multigenre, and that an revised understanding of genre is necessary to enable us to analyze and think about text produced in a culturally plural, globalized world. In English, this means that the older conventions for naming genres were based in formal features connected to print technologies and that they named texts as a whole. In contrast, Kress suggests that his approach can be applied to aspects of a range of diverse texts in a range of modes.

BLOG ASSIGNMENT: In class, we created an intuitive list of internet genres - mail sites, search sites, shopping sites, IT sites, entertainment sites, review sites (this list is by no means complete and many of these categories can be broken down further). We then talked about how we would use Kress' definition of genre to analyze: 1) the modes of expression (image, text, sound, motion) within the text, 2)the design of the text (the relationships of the different elements in the text -eg between images, graphics, headings, blocks of print, etc)and 3) the relationships structured by the text as a whole.

Continue this exploration in your blogs. Choose a genre or sub-genre and analyze it using Kress' approach. Look at at least three sites within a particular genre and try to identify the kinds of relationships which caused us to intuitively identify it as a genre. Does the group you chose to analyze (say you chose shopping sites and looked at ebay, bestbuy's site, and amazon) really constitute a genre within Kress' approach? Or do they structure different relationships? Describe the relationships which you find at the sites.

Announcements and Reflections

Thanks for the comments! I am starting to get ideas about your interests are and what you might choose for your website project. If I know that a group of you are interested in the same sorts of ideas it will help me decide how to group your for the wiki project (which we are going to discuss on Tuesday).

Note that Stephanie's blog is now linked to this page. Check out her entries and give her some comments.

This week we moved away from defining/discussing features of cyberspace and began some in-depth analysis of the writing in online spaces. On Tuesday we analyzed the architecture created by the links on two sites which have some of the same customers -- but very different approaches to marketing and developing their products: Mozilla and Microsoft.

This analysis raised questions which were beginning to cloud the horizon in your blogs about Woolley, Heim, and wikipedia. The questions are about the reliability of information, the value of scholarship versus open discussion with respect to creating knowledge, and so on. In particular, Matt and Ryan have staged a running swordfight up and down the stairs of their classmates blog. Lots of feinting and lunging -- but it looks like the victor is yet to be declared.

What is interesting to me about this discussion is that within your comments you have raised most of the assumptions, values, and beliefs which are identified either with the print generation (learnng is through reading + being taught, knowledge is best expressed in language and it is best taught by experts, knowledges exists in the world to be discovered. . .) and the internet generation (learning through doing rather than talking, knowledge is interactive, dispersed and created. . .). See:

AOIR Conference Papers

What is more -- these differences are at the heart of a struggle for control/regulation of the internet, and the outcome of this struggle will have an inestimable impact on our futures with respect to how our educational system -- and eventually our government and economic interactions -- will be structured.

Check out:

John Perry Barlow

So there is some thinking left to do here.

The Big Picture

So you are working on a response to the Heim essay, another piece from an earlier era in the internet's very brief history. Even though this article was written only seven years ago, again, so much has changed. More recent work by Michael Heim can be found at www.mheim.com

As you continue reading the assignments in your text, I am hoping one of the ideas or relationships, or events described in these articles will pique (peak? peek?) your interest. And that you will (quite naturally) turn to the internet for more information. For the website you develop for your third project, you will create a site which presents your exploration and extension of ideas connected to some aspect of "writing for cyberspace."

For example, if you become interested in "the relationship between humans and technology" you might look at Psychnology
www.psychnology.org/232.php
or if you are interested in gaming research (and writing, of course) you might look at
www.gamestudies.org
You will gather ideas, participate in

If you aren't sure what you are interested in, you might start with:

www.com.washington.edu/rccs/links.asp


You will notice that some of these sites are academic. Yeah. All right, well, this IS a college course. Don't hold it against them. Skim through. There are actually many sections, sometimes even whole articles which are quite readable.

Worth noting: Because many of researchers and journals focused on digital spaces are from countries other than the US, even though most are written in English, it is not always perfect English. Just thought I'd mention it.

AHHHHHH!!!! . . . another post about Woolley!!

Well, no, not actually, it won't all be about Woolley. I'll probably go off topic.

Some thoughts on reading your blogs. I appreciate that you all tried to remain positive about going into such depth regarding an article which you didn't like that much the first time through. I observed that for some of you his metaphors worked and for some of you they didn't. Though it may have been an interesting idea for some of you to think about cyberspace as like a human body, or like a city -- for some of you it was not interesting. In fact it was confusing. And some of you indicated (or did I read this wrong?) that it mostly seemed out dated and like it didn't really tell you much about what cyberspace is. All right. What can I say except that it is a "classic" piece and in all the anthologies?

Also, I noticed that in your blogs, some of you took various strategies to make your blogs your own. With humor, by adopting a persona, by using a non-academic voice. Good. As long as you are on topic, and directing some serious inquiry to the material we are covering -- I appreciate the creativity. It makes more interesting reading for me. Go for it.

And now. . .

THE LIST
(features of cyberspace gleaned from your blogs and your arduous close attention to Woolley)

1. it can change the real world,

2. it's interactive, fast, global connection changes the world in particular ways which other forms of communication technology have not (at least not exactly)

3. what it communicates about an event can have more impact than the event itself

4. it is an unfolding frontier where conventions for "ownership" and regulation are still evolving (and are fiercely disputed)

5. it is not transparent

. . . please add to this list. . .

Blog addresses

 Here are links for everyone's blog.  

NOTICE:
Suzanne's blog address.
There is not an 's' before her last name.

Chandler     http://0380fall05.blogspot.com/
Mullinnix    http://3080fall05mullinnix.blogspot.com/
Smith        http://3080fall05smith.blogspot.com/
Richardson   http://0380richardson.blogspot.com
Moskowitz    http://3080fall05moskowitz.blogspot.com/
Josh         http://3080fall05burnett.blogspot.com
Feecia       http://3080fall05anson.blogspot.com
Angeli       http://0380angelicabreros.blogspot.com
Sylvia       http://0380tararuj.blogspot.com
Jackie       http://3080fall05lopez.blogspot.com
Matt         http://0380harabin.blogspot.com
Nadia        http://3080fall05lahens.blogspot.com
Amanda       http://0380fall05faria.blogspot.com
Ryan         http://3080fall05valdez.blogspot.com

Class Sept 13

So now you have three forms of communication to compare -- academic summaries, whole class discussions, and chat (somewhat constrained and directed compared to the "wild" variety -- but still . . . ).

Your chat transcripts should be in your WebCt mailboxes.

In class Wednesday I collect all the URLs for your blogs so you can post them as links on your blog in the side bar (for directions for editing the link list, check out http://help.blogger.com ). You can also set classmates blogs as favorites on your computer. If someone has more ideas for how to arrange an easy system to connect to everyone's blog -- let me know and we will set it up.

This is a short entry -- bookkeeping stuff. I am looking forward to reading your blogs so I can respond to them.

* 

Creating a blog

As you read on your syllabus, one requirement for this course is to keep a blog. A blog differs from journals you might have kept for other courses in that it is public. I expect you to read your classmates blogs and to reply to them. And I expect your classmates to read your blog.

I am hoping we can let go of ideas about showing how "smart" you are on these pages (save that for your finished writing). The purpose here is to share ideas -- to explore thoughts in progress.

Your blog will be evaluated on: relevance of your posts to materials raised in readings and class discussions; responsiveness to questions/ideas raised by classmates; how you use it.

Suggested uses for blogs:
* to raise questions about or offer summaries of/reflections on readings and class discussions
* develop ideas for other assignments
* ask answer give suggestions for how to solve technical issues related to the course
* thank or acknowledge classmates for help
* communicate about assignments (raise or answer questions about how to meet the requirements of an assignment)
* develop drafts, flow charts, etc for assignments