Back on the Block

Back from Texas and I have to say that it was odd thinking that the 90 degree temperatures that I returned home to felt remarkably cool! I have more pictures to post from Saturday and Sunday, but they need to be edited and resized first. But for now I can give you the rest of the notes that I have.

The conference was great overall and Rich did an awesome job with organizing it but there were some dissatisfactions:

Meal dissatisfaction- I know...I live with a chef, but d*#n, do Texans eat vegetables? I guess meat goes well with beer.
alcohol dissatisfaction- TX has some of the dumbest alcohol laws. No hard liquor sales after 9 p.m.. Lubbock is dry. Filling out cards to drink beer at a steakhouse and to buy wine at a winery (after being limited to the equivalent of 1 glass)
multimedia dissatisfaction- Please don't come to C&W and read a paper with no visuals if you are talking about multimodal stuff!
access dissatisfaction- Super slow connections in the dorm and no wireless on Sunday??? I was going through withdrawl!
weather dissatisfaction- Only an oven should go over 100 degrees!
accommodation dissatisfaction- fighting for sheets, no blankets, constantly running shower, overflowing trash cans, in the bathroom, stupid swipe cards, no food service at normal times
townhall dissatisfaction: see below

I have to find my notes from Saturday since I seemed to have written them out * gasp *. I know, shocking isn't it???

Sunday's notes are below the fold. I only made it to one session since I was boycotting (theoretically) the townhall for it's obvious omission from the program. Call it a conspiracy theory but it felt like more of the same ol' same ol'.

I.5 To Blog or Not to Blog Is No Longer the Question

Amy Hanson- Assignment: Blogs

• Blogging is becoming a more important corporate communication tool.

• How is it different from writing reports? Transmitting vs. Engaging

• Goals: Information (Out and In), Relationships (Consumer Evangelists), Knowledge Management (Getting Information Out to Folks when they need it)

• Basic Blogging Skills: Listen to the conversation, understand what is being said, value the audience and the conversation, interpret and evaluate what is being said, contribute to the conversation, listen some more.

• Key rules of blogging success: be real; post often; link freely; be generous in praise and attention; comment on other sites; don't be long-winded, remember that paragraphs and punctuation are your friends; avoid profanity, feuds, and flame wars; keep titles short, easy to remember and meaningful

• What Makes Professional Blogging Hard to Teach? prof. and personal blogging are not the same thing; blog readers expect the same sense of the blog community that they find in personal blog (voice, honesty, and authority); blogs must engage readers and not just transit information

Aaron Barlow- "Quick Response Teams"

• Community blogging and using blogs in the classroom.

• The Simpsons

• Notions of Audience and Responsibility

• Students code-switching

• He just used the phrase "bad english"

• Is it just me or is it difficult to listen to people read at me without at least having some sort of multimedia presentation to keep me remotely engaged? This must truly to be effect of multimodal/multimedia dissatisfaction.

Devon-What's Blog Got to Do With It?

• www.indigitalcircles.com/cw06 (She blogged the process)

• How does blogging impact student writing

• Research project (talking about the process from IRB to fruition(?))

• Had students use pseudonyms

• Student Wendy M. Darling- Wrote all of her blog assignments as letters to Peter Pan to continue the Barrie metaphor.

• Screaming silently writes in an aggressive tone, but has a blog that has a muted green background with flowers. Devon claims that the background is "feminine" but the student is male.

• The class did not have to share their pseudonyms with other people in the class and many of then chose not to. There was a point at which they were begging her, as teacher, to disclose the identity. She used that as an opportunity to talk about privacy and identity.

Jim-Public vs. Private Blogging in Computers and Writing Classes

• He loves Drupal! :-)

• public and private blogging offer different classroom opportunities

• blogging is not a genre and assigning it like a genre doesn't work (at least for him)

• Private= putting it behind a password protected space

• Needed to maintain community over a two week gaps so he used Drupal

• Problems? Teachers had so much fun with the blogging that they wanted to do it with their students, but they met resistance from their administration

• Private blogging wasn't enough (for Jim) it needed a public face. So they made their own journal and wrote reviews of 5 resources that they found (each). (twt.cas.ilstu.edu)

• (def.) genres emerge out of the interaction between the affordances and materiality of a particular mode of communication with social context, rhetorical purpose and content.

• some blogging genres: journaling, serial autobiography, archiving/databasing, project management, community building, research resource (combo project management and database)