Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 
Online Conference: Thursday, May 6, 2010 – Thursday, May 13, 2010 (setup starts April 15)
Onsite Conference: Thursday, May 20, 2010 – Sunday, May 23, 2010
Proposal Due Date: October 31, 2009 (before midnight EST) The proposal submission window is now closed.
Program Invitations: December 15, 2009
Conference Registration Opens: January 4, 2010
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Overview

As mobile communication takes hold, Web 2.0 matures, and serious gaming and virtual worlds offer us more enticing opportunities for communication, instructors in Computers and Writing are being challenged to integrate these technologies into writing classrooms in ever newer ways. So, too, are scholars of writing technologies challenged and inspired by online participatory cultures to forge new meanings for composing in these virtual worlds. Such integrations and their challenges have pushed the boundaries of composition.

Topics

Computers and Writing 2010 solicits proposals for conference presentations, panels, installations, workshops, talks, posters, webinars, and other interactive sessions that discuss the ways that virtual worlds and their rhetoric(s) have emerged and now inform and transform composition instruction, electronic scholarship and digital publishing, and Computers and Writing as a field. We particularly invite presentations that address these questions, though we also welcome significant mods, mashups, and plug-ins based on these ideas and inquiries: 

• Social Media and Writing: how are the virtual worlds we construct through social media sites, games, virtual environments, and so on, mediating our communication, learning, teaching, and scholarship? how do (or might) social networks sustain collaboration and community in the worlds of open source?
• Gaming: how does gaming inform and change definitions of composition? how does gaming expand and address epistemological expectations? how does or might it impact learning?
• Virtual Worlds: what do we value about virtual worlds, and what do they offer us as teachers, researchers, citizens? how does agency change in virtual worlds?
• Emerging Writing Technologies: how do new online technologies affect student writing in terms of learning goals? plagiarism? conducting research? how are emergent writing technologies helping or hurting writing instruction, scholarship, social networks?
• Technologies and Literacies: what new literacies are developed through engaging with new technologies? what literacies are writing instructors addressing, teaching, and learning as a result of their interactions with virtual worlds?
• Digital Rhetorics and Texts: how do digital texts change the way we conduct research and scholarship? how and why do they affect composition, production, dissemination, collaboration, publication, assessment, and professional development?
• New Media: how are grassroots media, and their aesthetics, reshaping our conceptions of media, genre, and composing? how do new media change our conception of writing, and with what consequences?

Presentation Formats for the Onsite Conference

Participants may propose individual presentations, complete panels, workshops, posters, mini-workshops, webinars, or “Deliverator” talks. Although traditional presentations are acceptable, we encourage participants to create formats that go beyond the read-aloud academic paper and make innovative uses of technology in sessions. 

• Individual Presentations (20 minutes; 250-word proposal)
• Panels and Roundtables (90 minutes; 3 or more presenters; 500-words proposals)
• Poster Sessions (250-word proposals)
  • A poster session--with creators standing by to talk with visitors--will be held during the conference for the display and informal discussion of innovative pedagogy and research. Research projects, game play, software, videos, or other media may be featured. 
• Half-Day or Full-Day Pre-Conference Workshops (1 or more presenters; 500-word proposals plus schedule of activities)
  • Pre-conference workshops are intended to involve participants in a technology or issue set that rewards intensive work, giving them opportunities to learn new applications, assessment, and integration of emergent technologies for writing, learning, and collaboration.
• Mini-Workshops (1 or more presenters; 500-word proposals)
  • Mini-workshops, a new format, show participants how the presenters have used technology in a writing course as a way to extend the pedagogical reach of new or less universally used technologies. Proposals for mini-workshops should describe topics, content, participant activities, and objectives.
• Deliverator Talks (30 minutes; 1 or more deliverators; 250-word proposals)
  • Deliverator Talks, a new format for Computers and Writing, focus on topics and technologies of broad interest and will be captured for broadcast on the Internet as representative of key issues and developments in Computers and Writing. Deliverator talks will be short, inspiring events with a precise focus and should energize an audience around new, exciting ideas (see http://www.ted.com for many examples.) Deliverators may also be selected from among all submitters and encouraged to present in this format. Deliverators will be coached prior to the conference in presentation methods that will ensure enthusiastic audience response.

About the Online Conference

The online conference takes place in the weeks preceding the onsite conference. Here's the schedule:

April 15, 2010: projects, hypertexts, installations and other content posted by presenters. Presenters may publish their work on their own sites, at the CW 2010 Drupal site, in Second Life, or in some other venue. The CW 2010 team will provide support as needed.

April 15 - May 6, 2010: The C&W community reads and responds to previously posted content. All posted content will be linked to from the main C&W 2010 website. Each presenter responds asynchronously to audience questions during this period, with moderation help from the conference planning team.

May 6 - 13, 2010: C&W Online kicks into high gear, with daily "live" presentations, synchronous discussion, scheduled events in Second Life at the Purdue Island (meetings, live online exhibits, readings at the coffee house, and more), and Adobe Connect sessions.

Presentation Formats for the Online Conference

Participants may propose presentations in a number of formats: individual presentations, webinars, installations, hypertexts, video, group encounters, improvisations, RPGs, and asynchronous happenings that provide sustained opportunities to use, discuss, interpret, or transform emergent technologies in virtual worlds and social and gaming networks. Online sessions may also carry over into the onsite conference. The conference hosts will facilitate use of technologies like Second Life, Adobe Connect, Drupal, Twitter, Drop.io, YouTube, FlickR, Facebook, del.icio.us, Google Maps, and Podcasting. (Please ask if you don't see the technology you want to use listed.) For all formats, a short 250 to 500-word description is requested. Proposals were accepted up to October 31, 2009, so the submission window is now closed.