Volume 24, Issue 3, 2007
Global Issues:International Perspectives on Computers and Writing
Letter from the Guest Editor
Taku Sugimoto
Technologizing Africa:
On the bumpy information highway
Dwedor Morais Ford
Non-existence of systematic education on computerized writing in Japanese schools
Taku Sugimoto
Announcements
Computers and Composition Awards
Call for Papers:
Computers and Composition Special Issues
The Future of Graduate Education in the New University:
Intersections between Technologies and Literacies
Guest Editors: Philip Bernick, Peter Goggin, and Patricia Webb
Universities are currently undergoing radical shifts. With the new standards put forth in "The Responsive Ph.D." report to the public and the calls for more connection between university coursework and the New American University's value on community imbeddedness—along with business's emphasis on the need for innovation and competitiveness—we are placed at the intersections of what the university once was and what it will be. Graduate education prepares future faculty to be active participants in universities and colleges, and, as a result, it is incumbent upon graduate professors to rethink and re-envision our curriculum and pedagogies so that they not only respond to but directly shape the new directions of the university. Mediated communications play a significant role in these changes, and those of us in rhetoric/composition who specialize in computers and writing are particularly well situated to shape the direction of an increasingly technologized university system. Therefore, it is time for us to reflect on the ways in which our graduate programs/offerings have changed in the last ten years and map out future directions that will help us and our students directly participate and shape the direction of the universities in which they will find themselves.
We invite submissions for this special issue of Computers and Composition. We are looking for articles that address some of the following issues:
- Graduate curriculum now and then
- Role of computers/writing graduate courses with English departments and universities
- Changing research agendas, writing practices, and “texts”
- Distance learning and graduate curriculums
- New digital literacies and graduate courses/students
- Best practices: correspondence between writing in the academy and industry
- Intersection between external pressures and graduate curriculum
Abstracts due: October 1, 2007
First draft of Articles due: March 1, 2008
Final Article due: July 1, 2008
Please send abstracts via e-mail to <patricia.webb@asu.edu>.
A Thousand Pictures: Interfaces and Composition
Guest Editor: Joel Haefner
“A picture is often said to be worth a thousand words. Similarly, an interface is worth a thousand pictures.” Ben Shneiderman, The Craft of Information Visualization (2003).
Recently, the online journal, Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, Pedagogy, issued a call for an “Interface Editor,” a new editorial position that suggests the importance interfaces play in communication. If, as Ben Shneiderman says, an interface is worth a thousand pictures, then a single interface carries the impact of a million words.
Scholarly papers are solicited for a collection which focuses on the role the interface plays in composition. For the purposes of this CFP, we can construe “interface” broadly as the communication boundary between a user and a system—although essays which contest or transfigure that broad definition are quite welcome. And the word “user” suggests that the interface interacts with both writer and audience. Articles could, for example, address such topics as:
- The politics and economics of word processing interfaces used in the composition classroom
- The classroom as an interface
- Blog interfaces
- Visual rhetoric and interfaces
- Cognitive approaches to interfaces
- The printed page as an interface
- The intervention of textbooks in student composing
- Academic institutional structures and composition
- Human Computer Interaction principles and the teaching of writing
- Cultural systems (racial, ethnic, sexual, gender, etc.) and composition
Initially, I am soliciting two-page proposals for full-length essays. A short vita (maximum 2 pages) is also requested. A brief selected bibliography (not more than one page, in addition to the two pages mentioned above) will strengthen any proposal. All submissions should be made as email attachments in either .DOC or .RTF formats; please use your initials to begin any file name to prevent overwriting. Please send proposals and inquiries to jhaefner@iwu.edu
Tentative Deadlines:
Submission of two-page abstracts: January 1 2008
Acceptance of proposal: April 1 2008
Submission of full paper: September 1 2008
Return of paper with readers’ comments: December 1 2008
Submission of revised paper: February 1 2009
About the Editor:
Dr. Joel Haefner is the Writing Coordinator and a Lecturer in Computer Science at Illinois Wesleyan University. He holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa and a MS in applied computer science from Illinois State University. His articles have appeared in College English, Computers and Composition, English Journal, Prose Studies, and other journals.
Composition in the Freeware Age:
Assessing the Impact and Value of the Web 2.0 Movement for the Teaching of Writing
Guest-edited by Randall McClure, Michael Day and Mike Palmquist
Web 2.0 technologies have clearly taken hold of early twenty-first-century culture, and some technologies, such as social networking sites, have also exerted their influence on higher education, including the teaching and learning of college composition. O’Reilly (2005) conceded that there is still a significant amount of disagreement and criticism of Web 2.0 as both a term and a concept; however, he also noted the staggering number of references to it, a number that today stands at close to 100 million in Google and approaching 1000 in Google Scholar.
The main features of the Web 2.0 movement and Web 2.0 technologies, according to O’Reilly and others (Downes, 2005; Addison, 2006; Alexander, 2006; Thomas, 2006), include the use of the Web rather than the personal computer as the main platform for work. As such, Web 2.0 has shifted the focus from working locally to working in a networked setting, in which the Web is seen as a social, collaborative, and collective space. Other features consist of viewing the Web as an intelligence and information source resulting in new forms of organization, such as folksonomies or tag clouds, treating web users as co-developers and recognizing the influence of the Web on software applications as services rather than products, including the innovative re-implementations and combinations of software applications designed to enhance users’ experiences. The focus of the Web 2.0 movement is on users, devices beyond the personal computer and uses beyond the individual workstation. These concepts would appear to have application in the teaching of composition due to the iterative, unfinished but always updatable nature of writing now evident on the web and in software development, especially with regard to open-access materials and open-source environments.
This special issue examines the theoretical, practical and pedagogical issues of the Web 2.0 movement for the teaching of writing. The issue highlights implementations on Web 2.0 technologies as well as considers the Web 2.0 movement as a direction for thinking about the locus of our work in composition studies. Questions to consider include the following: How should we define Web 2.0 thinking in the context of composition, and how has it influenced the development of Web 2.0 applications? How are Web 2.0 applications being used as educational tools in composition and to what effect? How can they be improved in the future? How do our uses of Web 2.0 applications fit or not fit within existing institutional and educational structures (e.g. technology and curriculum planning), and how might our uses change those structures?
The guest editors invite proposals that answer these questions regarding the Web 2.0 movement and its influence on the teaching of composition. Proposals should be one page, single-spaced (approximately 500 words). Deadline for submission of proposals is 1 January 2008. Please send proposals via email to Randall McClure (randall.mcclure@mnsu.edu). Queries are welcome.
(Final manuscripts will be 15-30 pages in length, double-spaced. Manuscript deadline for accepted abstracts is 1 December 2008.
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