Notes from the Walter J. Ong Archives: "For instance, Ong was quite adimate about the fact that not only does primary orality not exist anymore, we, as literate people, are unable to accurately comprehend a primary orality consciousness. This doesn't mean that primary orality is primitive, it's just different. It's like anything else. Once you've had a cognitive shift, once you've obtained a new perspective, or learned a new bit of information, you can't unshift or return to the pre-changed understanding of an issue. For instance, at some point when studying Ezra Pound, one will learn that he had become an anti-Semite and a supporter of Mussolini. Upon learning this, one can choose to reject Pound as a subject of study, one can use this information to better understand Pound's work, or one can ignore it. What one can't do is unlearn this information or return to a time when they didn't know this about Pound. Because literacy permeates our society, literacy permeates our consciousness and we can't unlearn this cognitive shift. What Ong isn't addressing here is individual literacy."

Sometime between now and Friday, go to page 37 and complete the "believing/doubting" assignment. Post the results to your weblog. You should spend 15 minutes writing for and against the statement of your choosing. If you don't like the ones provided, come up with your own. Contact me or post a comment if you have questions about this. And remember, I am in 126g--swing by and say hi, or to ask for help, etc.

For class on Wednesday: Be sure and read the first two chapters of Allyn and Bacon's Guide to Writing. We'll be doing some in-class activities, and life will get boring in a hurry if you haven't done the reading.



Also, please paste the address of your weblog into the comments at the end of this post. If you just arrived today, then go to blogger.com (links all over this page) and create a weblog. Then come back here and tell me the address. Yes, I know you wrote down your addresses in class, but it's easier for me to steal the code from the comments in order to put them here on the web page.

Yahoo! Groups : uvscwrite



The above link connects to our class email list. Please subscribe if you have not done so.

Alliance for Computers and Writing (ACW): "Alliance for Computers and Writing (ACW) "

Please try downloading and installing this piece of software on your respective machines:



Firefox.





After you've downloaded it to the desktop, double-click to install. Really, it's a good thing.

The New Yorker: The Critics: Books: "One of the most mysterious of writing�s immaterial properties is what people call �voice.� Editors sometimes refer to it, in a phrase that underscores the paradox at the heart of the idea, as �the voice on the page.� Prose can show many virtues, including originality, without having a voice. It may avoid clich�, radiate conviction, be grammatically so clean that your grandmother could eat off it. But none of this has anything to do with this elusive entity the �voice.� There are probably all kinds of literary sins that prevent a piece of writing from having a voice, but there seems to be no guaranteed technique for creating one. Grammatical correctness doesn�t insure it. Calculated incorrectness doesn�t, either. Ingenuity, wit, sarcasm, euphony, frequent outbreaks of the first-person singular�any of these can enliven prose without giving it a voice. You can set the stage as elaborately as you like, but either the phantom appears or it doesn�t."

The New Yorker: The Critics: Books

Danny O'Brien explores the latest, cheapest, flash drive combo units.

Oblomovka: I'm still in the middle of deciding. But I've learnt three lessons: one, the folk who make the sensible engineering choices are probably the smarter and cheaper manufacturers too. Two: you always do your best consumer research in the two hours after you bought the goods. Three: no matter how long you stay out of the gadget rat race, there's always one more object of desire."

The Chronicle: 6/6/2003: Scholars Who Blog: "To a remarkable degree, blogs also appear to bring full professors, adjuncts, and students onto a level field. With no evident condescension, senior faculty bloggers routinely link to the political-affairs blog maintained by Matthew Yglesias, a senior at Harvard University. 'Nobody knew my name when we started this,' says Josh Chafetz, a current Rhodes scholar whose OxBlog, written with two fellow Americans at Oxford, has made him a well-known figure among academic bloggers. 'In many ways it really is almost a pure marketplace of ideas. You can build up a readership. You just have to write things that people like.'

'You do see some of the barriers of rank and hierarchy break down,' says the woman who blogs pseudonymously as the Invisible Adjunct. (She granted an interview on the condition that her identity not be revealed.) 'An undergraduate and an adjunct can speak to someone with tenure on a more or less equal footing.'"

: "Actor-network theory (ANT) is concerned with the processes by which scientific disputes become closed, ideas accepted, tools and methods adopted - that is, with how decisions are made about what is known. These decisions are often - usually - temporary, but closing the black box, in Latour's terms, of disputes allows people to take the work of others as a resource and move on, rather than continually reproducing and questioning it. According to their model, the work of science consists of the enrollment and juxtaposition of heterogeneous elements - rats, test tubes, colleagues, journal articles, funders, grants, papers at scientific conferences, and so on - which need continual management. They conclude that scientists' work is 'the simultaneous reconstruction of social contexts of which they form a part - labs simultaneously rebuild and link the social and natural contexts upon which they act.'
from Ole Hanseth
ANT was born out of ongoing efforts within the field called social studies of science and technology. The field of social studies of technology in general and ANT in particular are evolving rapidly. When going about doing your business -- driving your car or writing a document using a word-processor -- there are a lot of things that influence how you do it. For instance, when driving a car, you are influenced by traffic regulations, prior driving experience and the car's manoeuvring abilities, the use of a word-processor is influenced by earlier experience using it, the functionality of the word-processor and so forth. All of these factors are related or connected to how you act. You do not go about doing your business in a total vacuum but rather under the influence of a wide range of surrounding factors. The act you are carrying out and all of these influencing factors should be considered together. This is exactly what th"

Gmail - [techrhet] world's largest wi-fi zone


Polywogs and blogs: we should all in the end be astonished at the vast changes wrought by the gimmicks themselves. What will work will work, but it's the pace of change that I would like to hasten, and I've learned that the biggest problem there is not functionality but the psychology of our administrators. Good programs and good teachers will continue to be ploughed under because their cool technology was not rhetorically situated. Jeff may criticize "conformity," but there are advantages to framing what we do in terms that powerful people understand.

Southpinellas: SPC tech professor gives his textbooks for free: "Basham views the price of learning Cisco as a manifestation of class and status. Information shouldn't be accessible only to the well-off, he said.

The folks at lulu.com understand.

'It's the open source philosophy,' said Stephen Fraser, spokesperson for lulu.com. 'Open source is sort of a computer geek thing, but a lot of academics share this conviction that hoarding knowledge does nobody any good. The best way to leverage knowledge is to share it.'

"

Things I am going to do differently next term:



1. give more credit in class for peer feedback--make it a bigger part of the course



2. spend more time on sentence construction and organization



3. continue readings/discussions through the end of course



4. require 1-page blog entries every single darn day



5. get my responses returned more quickly



6. start an email list for the class



7. quit using webct, perhaps.

Jack Feeny reviews: Deep Purple: "Given the length of time Deep Purple have been together it has become common practice to divide the band into three different, distinct entities. The three ages of Deep Purple, if you will. There was Deep Purple mk I, a somewhat unsuccessful sixties hippy band; Deep Purple mk II, an innovative and influential hard rock band; and Deep Purple mk III, a derivative and wholly uninteresting hard rock band. I'll give you four guesses to work out which era I've concentrated on. Yep, Deep Purple mk II, but then you knew that anyway, didn't you?"

Jack Feeny reviews: Deep Purple: "Given the length of time Deep Purple have been together it has become common practice to divide the band into three different, distinct entities. The three ages of Deep Purple, if you will. There was Deep Purple mk I, a somewhat unsuccessful sixties hippy band; Deep Purple mk II, an innovative and influential hard rock band; and Deep Purple mk III, a derivative and wholly uninteresting hard rock band. I'll give you four guesses to work out which era I've concentrated on. Yep, Deep Purple mk II, but then you knew that anyway, didn't you?"

Getfitnow.com Fitness and Health Forums: Is it really safe to do shoulders on days 2&5?:





"I'm doing the 14-day workout 2. When doing chest, triceps, biceps etc. on days 1&4 there is always going to be an amount of load on the shoulders, eg. when doing the bench press. I'm afraid my shoulders aren't getting any rest, as there is shoulder involvement 4 days a week. I know it's possible to partly isolate the chest muscle when doing the bench press, but I believe there is still some involvement of the shoulders"

The weird thing I saw in the past week:



In Hawaii, they have these little scooter cars with one rear wheel and two front wheels. They're red, and egg shaped, and have a little black rollbar. As I was waiting for the airport shuttle outside my hotel I saw one of these come whining up the street with two really big, sunburned American tourists hanging out of it. I wept because I didn't get a picture.



The other weird but cool thing was seeing 60+ surfers with long, graying hair, heading down to the beach, walking through the waves of tourists, carrying their boards.

How Websites Learn | Acts of Volition: "A look at how Stuart Brand’s classic work of social and architectural criticism, How Buildings Learn, applies to web design and development."

Ask MetaFilter | Community Weblog



An interesting thread on grammar vs. editing. You may find it useful.

Clay Spinuzzi's Reading List: "What really struck me about the book, though, was that the author seems so preoccupied with authenticity. He talks in great detail about how artificial scents and smells are formulated, about how kids in Colorado Springs no longer wear cowboy hats as the 'real' Coloradans did, about how chains actually got started compared to what is said in their literature. Maybe it's because I'm GenX, but I really don't have the preoccupation with authenticity that Schlosser does. Of course these restaurants are selling a brand, a mood, an experience. So do universities and churches, often with the same level of conscious cultivation. "

jrice: "Why does this need to be online? Is there a difference between the assignment (blog a reaction, follow these questions for guidance as you shape your reaction) and what you would find in a print-textbook? No, of course not. Here is a very good example of what I always draw attention to regarding blogging. This assignment really has nothing to with using the weblog for pedagogical purposes. Take away the blog, have students do the work on paper, and the result is the same."

Stupid Undergrounds

Collin vs. Blog

Network(ed) Rhetorics: visualizing conversation

gladwell dot com / The Coolhunt: "One day last month, Baysie took me on a coolhunt to the Bronx and Harlem, lugging a big black canvas bag with twenty-four different shoes that Reebok is about to bring out, and as we drove down Fordham Road, she had her head out the window like a little kid, checking out what everyone on the street was wearing. We went to Dr. Jay's, which is the cool place to buy sneakers in the Bronx, and Baysie crouched down on the floor and started pulling the shoes out of her bag one by one, soliciting opinions from customers who gathered around and asking one question after another, in rapid sequence. One guy she listened closely to was maybe eighteen or nineteen, with a diamond stud in his ear and a thin beard. He was wearing a Polo baseball cap, a brown leather jacket, and the big, oversized leather boots that are everywhere uptown right now. Baysie would hand him a shoe and he would hold it, look at the top, and move it up and down and flip it over. The first one he didn't like: 'Oh-kay.' The second one he hated: he made a growling sound in his throat even before Baysie could give it to him, as if to say, 'Put it back in the bag-now!' But when she handed him a new DMX RXT-a low-cut run/walk shoe in white and blue and mesh with a translucent 'ice' sole, which retails for a hundred and ten dollars-he looked at it long and hard and shook his head in pure admiration and just said two words, dragging each of them out: 'No doubt.'"

gladwell dot com / The Coolhunt: "One day last month, Baysie took me on a coolhunt to the Bronx and Harlem, lugging a big black canvas bag with twenty-four different shoes that Reebok is about to bring out, and as we drove down Fordham Road, she had her head out the window like a little kid, checking out what everyone on the street was wearing. We went to Dr. Jay's, which is the cool place to buy sneakers in the Bronx, and Baysie crouched down on the floor and started pulling the shoes out of her bag one by one, soliciting opinions from customers who gathered around and asking one question after another, in rapid sequence. One guy she listened closely to was maybe eighteen or nineteen, with a diamond stud in his ear and a thin beard. He was wearing a Polo baseball cap, a brown leather jacket, and the big, oversized leather boots that are everywhere uptown right now. Baysie would hand him a shoe and he would hold it, look at the top, and move it up and down and flip it over. The first one he didn't like: 'Oh-kay.' The second one he hated: he made a growling sound in his throat even before Baysie could give it to him, as if to say, 'Put it back in the bag-now!' But when she handed him a new DMX RXT-a low-cut run/walk shoe in white and blue and mesh with a translucent 'ice' sole, which retails for a hundred and ten dollars-he looked at it long and hard and shook his head in pure admiration and just said two words, dragging each of them out: 'No doubt.'"

If you'd like a little extra credit, read the above article and write a few paragraphs in response on your website.

How Websites Learn | Acts of Volition

this is a bold sentence



Italics have nothing to do with Italy. Or do they



titles should be underlined or italicized



tag + body + closing tag

UVSC Online Writing Lab Resources: "The following handouts were created by the UVSC Writing Center and are available for all educational purposes (classroom instruction, tutoring, web links, etc.), as long as source information is given.

"



A link to APA style guides and other good handouts.

Hello class,



I hope that your weekends were productive and fun. No, really.



Currently your final draft of the current assignment is due this coming Friday. Some of you haven't posted your outlines and rough drafts to your weblogs, so be sure to do that as soon as possible. Also, I haven't seen much evidence of responses to each other's drafts, in part because not all of the drafts have been posted to your respective weblogs.

Please take advantage of this time to get as much writing done as possible

The Open Source Portfolio Initiative - The Open Source Portfolio Initiative is a community of individuals and organizations collaborating on the development of the leading non-proprietary, open source electronic portfolio software available.: "he Open Source Portfolio Initiative (OSPI) is a community of individuals and organizations collaborating on the development of the leading non-proprietary, open source electronic portfolio software available."

Preface of Small Pieces - David Weinberger

Face to Face with Alan Kay

Squeakland interviews Alan Kay.

Free Culture

Awlcheck explained

Moulthrop - Computers And Writing 2004

EMMA's XML Potential

Face to Face with Alan Kay: "Q: You often say that the computer revolution hasn't happened yet. What do you mean by that?
A: If you look with a squinty eye at most of personal computing today, you'll see we're basically just automating paper—using digital versions of documents and mail. But as was the case with the invention of the printing press, the interesting thing about the computer is that it allows you to have new ways of representing things, new ways to argue about things, and new kinds of fluencies.


Most schools define computer literacy as being able to operate Microsoft Office and maybe do a little web design. They're missing the point. That's like saying, 'If you know which end of a book to hold up, and you know how to turn to Chapter Three, then you're literate.'


Literature is first and foremost about having ideas important enough to discuss and write down in some form. So you have to ask, 'What is the literature that is best written down on a computer?' One answer is to make a dynamic simulation of some idea that you think is important, a simulation that you can play with and that you can learn from.
"

Electronic Portfolios Resources

AAHE's resources, as suggested by Mday.

Electronic Portfolio Learning at Northern Illinois University

Young scholars,



I'm about four time zones away and so I'm a little late with posting instructions for today. Essentially, I need you to do two things today:



1. post the roughest of drafts of your current assignment to your weblog. Please try to get at least four pages up there. Please have those submitted by 5pm. You can try to build on the outlines and informal writing you've already put on your "blog" (short for "weblog")





2. Sometime before Monday, please respond to at least two papers, through using the weblog links on this page. Try to respond to someone you haven't read before. You might consider asking and answering the following questions:



a. What is the strongest, most interesting part of this draft, and why?

b. Sometimes rough drafts contain portions that look really interesting, but need more description and examples. For example, someone might write, "Ever since I was released from prison, my opinion of school metal detectors has changed." A sentence like this begs for examples of the author's new attitude, and for more background info on their prison time. Ok, lame example. Tell your author what you would like to hear more of.



3. What portions of this draft do you find less-than-clear or difficult to follow?



Thanks, and please post comments or email me: craniac@gmail.com with your questions.

Learning Record Online Guided Tour for Teachers : page 4

Notes from the Learning Record Online session.

As I mentioned last class period, I am away at an academic conference. In order to receive credit for coming to class today, you need to complete the following before 5pm Wednesday evening.



1. Freewrite for 10 minutes or 500 words on your blog, about possible paper topics.



2. Read each other's blogs and comment on their possible paper topics, telling them what you thing looks the most interesting.



3. Read chapter eight, "the exploratory essay" including the essays. Tell me what you think of the included essays in the comments link below this post. Be expansive, don't just write, "it was ok."



4. Post a rough outline of your next paper to your weblog



5. Extra credit: figure out how to put an image in a weblog entry. Then do so. And tell the class how you did it.

An update from The Straight Dope to an earlier decapitation story. Creep city.



The Straight Dope: Does the head remain briefly conscious after decapitation?: "In one early series of experiments, an anatomist claimed that decapitated heads reacted to stimuli, with one victim turning his eyes toward a speaker 15 minutes after having been beheaded. (Today we know brain death would have occurred long before.) In 1836 the murderer Lacenaire agreed to wink after execution. He didn't. Attempts to elicit a reaction from the head of the murderer Prunier in 1879 were also fruitless. The following year a doctor pumped blood from a living dog into the head of the murderer and rapist Menesclou three hours after execution. The lips trembled, the eyelids twitched, and the head seemed about to speak, although no words emerged. In 1905 another doctor claimed that when he called the name of the murderer Languille just after decapitation, the head opened its eyes and focused on him."

Assignment #4: Four ways of looking at a mandatory composition essay



To recap what we discussed in class--this is sort of the equivalent of those "choose your own adventure" books. Work through the following steps, one at a time:



1. choose one of four possible essay topics



a. A fun activity that I enjoy doing

b. Writing about a place or event

c. Writing about a song

d. Describe your life ten years from now. Use research to describe current trends and how they might evolve in the future.



2. After you have chosen one of the above categories, choose a more specific topic (for example, if you chose "fun activity" then you should narrow it down to "soccer" or "wakeboarding" or something specific).



3. Once you have your topic narrowed down, your essay will be composed of three sections.



Section I: You will write about your subject from a personal perspective



Section II: You will look at your subject from a research perspective, providing background information, a historical perspective, the role of your subject in culture at large, etc.



Section III: Final analysis: in this section, you will try to make connections between your personal experiences and the research/historical perspective. How does your perspective differ from the historical/research perspective? How is it the same? What other insights have you learned from your experience and research regarding this subject?





The entire paper should be at *least* six pages, hopefully more.



The first rough draft is due by 5pm June 11th, submitted to Webct.



The Final draft is due 5pm June 18th, submitted to Webct.



Your final draft should include 2-4 sources, in APA style. More on this later



Your final draft should be intentionally designed, with appropriate font and layout decisions, and at least two photographs or illustrations.





Please draw upon our in-class discussion as well for ideas on how to complete this assignment.

Interview with Chuck D & Hank Shocklee of Public Enemy: "How Copyright Law Changed Hip Hop



An interview with Public Enemy's Chuck D and Hank Shocklee"

My over conservative VIEWS: "It weaves a dark thread

And it knows its way

Its narrow figure hides its deep vine

But dammit it's a pencil

Heh. That's it. A Pencil."

English 1010 Class: "The watch

1. I looking at the time to see

when I get out of here. With the second

hand moving aroud the watch.



2. The stainless steel shines from

the class rooms lights above

the watch.



3. Throughout the day he is my best friend

and my worrest enemy."

1010 Journal: "The computer sits on the desk.

I type on the computer.

It takes up time.



I am talking with Jon.

The computer sits quietly.

I don't know what I am doing.



The teacher comes in.

He sits at his desk.

The shadow of the computer.

Rests on his shirt.



You walk in the classroom.

The computer sits with its friends.

They outline the wall.

Oh, what a day! "

Me: "Flying through the air,

Smashing into the ground and bouncing,

like a volleyball.

The volleyball floats up out of my hands gracefully,

then a hand converges on it and slaps it,

so is my dating life.

Being knocked around without control,

feeling like I have no where to go,

is the life of a volleyball.

Bump, set, spike is how we do things,

in volleyball. "

A hiker is alone.

A hiker with a gps unit

is a mobile node in a satellite network

made of muscle, blood and oxygen



Sailors once died

for lack of longitude

now we pay thousands

for the gift of being lost

My attempt





The sun shone brightly

as we drove our minivan

over the deeply-rutted clay road

led by my Etrex

we found echoes of someone's life

and a metal ammo box full of hot wheel cars

Today in class:



1. Read and respond to Wallace Stevens poem on weblog

2. Talk about deadlines and online participation

3. Discuss portfolios and the joys of revision

4. Brainstorm about next paper. Some constraints. It must:

• be somewhat fun
  
  
• 6+ pages
  
  
• Incorporate using at least two sources
  
  
• be personally interesting
  
  
• be academic, loosely defined
  
  
• incorporate a little design and visual elements
  
  

A poem by Wallace Stevens:



Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird



                     1

           Among twenty snowy mountains,

           The only moving thing

           Was the eye of the blackbird.



                     2

           I was of three minds,

           Like a tree

           In which there are three blackbirds.



                     3

           The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

           It was a small part of the pantomime.



                     4

           A man and a woman

           Are one.

           A man and a woman and a blackbird

           Are one.



                     5

           I do not know which to prefer,

           The beauty of inflections

           Or the beauty of innuendoes,

           The blackbird whistling

           Or just after.



                     6

           Icicles filled the long window

           With barbaric glass.

           The shadow of the blackbird

           Crossed it to and fro.

           The mood

           Traced in the shadow

           An indecipherable cause.



                     7

           O thin men of Haddam,

           Why do you imagine golden birds?

           Do you not see how the blackbird

           Walks around the feet

           Of the women about you?



                     8

           I know noble accents

           And lucid, inescapable rhythms;

           But I know, too,

           That the blackbird is involved

           In what I know.



                     9

           When the blackbird flew out of sight,

           It marked the edge

           Of one of many circles.



                     10

           At the sight of blackbirds

           Flying in a green light,

           Even the bawds of euphony

           Would cry out sharply.



                     11

           He rode over Connecticut

           In a glass coach.

           Once, a fear pierced him,

           In that he mistook

           The shadow of his equipage

           For blackbirds.



                     12

           The river is moving.

           The blackbird must be flying.



                     13

           It was evening all afternoon.

           It was snowing

           And it was going to snow.

           The blackbird sat

           In the cedar-limbs.

Ok, I got several of your number three papers responded to late, but they should all be up. If you are one of those who got your paper late and would like a little more time for your portfolio, please let me know.

If you managed to get your third paper uploaded to webct, then I've responded to it.



Third paper responses



If your third paper is stuck on your blog still, then it will take me a little while longer to respond. I will post my comments directly on the blog, so keep changing. Right now I'm hiding out, responding to these, but my wife will be awake soon (she is feeding our new daughter all night and is exhausted) so I need to get home and try and find the time to respond later today during the kids naptime.



[currently listening to: The Ghost of Tom Joad]

My responses to your second paper, doubting/believing.



click here.



For the most part I left comments as footnotes within the body of your paper. Please let me know if you have any trouble reading them.

Momaday, Scott. The Way to Rainy Mountain.



A single knoll rises out of the plain in Oklahoma, north and west of the Wichita Range. For my people, the Kiowas, it is an old landmark, and they gave it the name Rainy Mountain. The hardest weather in the world is there. Winter brings blizzards, hot tornadic winds arise in the spring, and in the summer the prairie is an anvil's edge. The grass turns brittle and brown, and it cracks beneath you feet....At a distance in July or August the steaming foliage seems to writhe in fire. Great green and yellow grasshoppers are everywhere in the tall grass, popping up like corn to sting the flesh, and tortoises crawl about on the red earth, going nowhere in the plenty of time.

Michael B?rub? Online



"Interestingly, when I went to graduate school and, toward the end of my first year at Virginia, started playing with Michael Dean and Todd Wilson in a band called Baby Opaque, I never felt a moment's anxiety about performing; I was so consumed with graduate-school anxiety that I didn't have any anxiety left over for music. I would show up for gigs, set up, sound check, play, pack up, and go home, all as if I were fixing sinks or something. Then when Nick was born, when I was 24, I was so consumed with new-parent-anxiety that I didn't have any anxiety left over for my dissertation, and . . . you get the idea. By the same logic, surely one of the reasons that I didn't have too many assistant-professor tenure-track anxieties in the early 1990s was that I was far more worried about how to take care of a newborn with Down syndrome.



Blog anxiety . . . what a silly thing. Maybe I'll go play some music instead."

A recap of today's class:

For next class period please closely read pages 518-530 and bring all of your work to class for revision.

today in class:



1. donuts and juice

2. review second essay

3. discuss use of detail

4. discuss transitions

5. work on second essay revisions in class

6. move all deadlines back

7. make presentation assignments for rest of semester.