Conference Registration

For questions about the conference, please call 650-723-0360 :: For questions about registration, please call 650-723-2631

C&W2005 Conference Home Page

Thursday June 16

I. Building and Programming in MOOspace. 9.00 am to Noon.
Dr. Keith Dorwick, Dept. of English, UL Lafayette
Tari Fanderclai, Bedford/St. Martin's
Judy Kilborn, St. Cloud State
Dr. Kevin Moberly, North Carolina Wesleyan College

Too many people think of a MOO space as a glorified chat tool, a space exactly analogous to Yahoo Chat or IRC, but with better logging facilities to produce transcripts of classroom discussions and other scholarly activities. The presenters in this workshop would argue, instead, that while talking is an important function, perhaps even more important is the MOO object, which allows students and teachers alike to turn a blank generic object (such as the "Generic Thing") into objects with specific and concrete descriptions and verbs (or scripts) that provide new functionality. Thus, a blank room with the generic description, "You see nothing special," can become a classroom or a stage or the House of Commons or the Forest of Arden, changes that can illuminate the reading and writing our students do; we can also use such objects to talk about ethos of the author: what objects ought not to exist in a decent, humane electronic environment?

Participants will need no programming experience and need not have spent any time on MOOs. The first part of the workshop will allow participants to work with pre-existing generics; the second half will focus on the ways in which programming can work well within the needs of our composition classrooms.

II. Design and Assessment of Digital Media Assignments. 9.00 am to Noon.
Victoria Szabo, Introduction to the Humanities, Stanford University
Jeremy Sabol, Center for Teaching and Learning, Stanford University

This workshop will explore the design and evaluation of digital media assignments. Using basic technology tools to chart story lines and to design media projects, participants will explore the use of media as an argumentative tool. In doing so, participants will explore the different processes and stages involved in the development of media assignments. This workshop will explore the ways in which we can clearly articulate goals and criteria with our students and with a thorough knowledge of content driven media projects. Participants will leave the workshop with evaluation criteria that is useful not only for evaluating student projects but that may also be used to critique existing media productions.

III. Using Video to Teach Writing. 1:30 pm to 4:30 pm.
Carlos Seligo, Freshman and Sophomore Programs, Stanford University

In this workshop we will review how Stanford Introductory Seminars were enhanced with video, then discuss briefly the technical and pedagogical challenges involved in this production. In this hands-on workshop we will build on assignments from our own classes and discuss how they might be enhanced with video. Because video can be both the subject of an assignment, and the actual medium of a student writing project, we will take care to distinguish between these very different applications of videos by asking, first: how should students write about video differently than they write about traditional texts? And second: what are the pedagogical goals of an assignment in which students make videos themselves, in comparison to traditional essay writing assignments? Because I have experience both as an instructor teaching a class and as a technology specialist supporting a class with video, I will address questions about production as well as pedagogy.

V. Using Drupal to Create Virtual Classroom Communities. 9:00 am to 4:30 pm (Lunch: Noon to 1:30 pm)
Charles Lowe, Purdue University
Jim Kalmbach, Department of English, Illinois State University
Tim Lindgren, Boston College
Samantha Blackmon, Purdue University
Bradley Bleck, Spokane Falls Community College
Jeff White, University of Alaska, Anchorage

If you subscribe to techrhet or attended Computers and Writing in Hawaii last summer, you probably heard us sing the praises of Drupal. Drupal is an open source content management system that techno-rhetoricians are using to create virtual classroom communities. Drupal integrates many popular features of content management systems--weblogs, collaborative tools and discussion-based community software-- into one easy-to-use package. Drupal is particularly appealing to writing teachers, because unlike Blackboard or WebCT, it is totally customizable. Using Drupal you can build a virtual classroom that suits your pedagogy and your values. From there, you can learn to configure Drupal as a departmental website, searchable online archive, personal weblog, ejournal, and many other online site applications.

The power of Drupal is, however, its biggest problem. The great flexibility means making many choices in initial site setup in order to configure a site to meet your particular needs. And as with any open source software, finding support can be difficult. At this full-day workshop, you will learn how to install Drupal on a server, how to set up individual classes, how to customize an installation to fit your class, how to modify the site theme and install optional modules, how to configure Drupal for non-class sites, and most importantly, how to integrate Drupal into your pedagogy or other rhetorical situations.

The workshop will consist of an introduction to Drupal features, brief how-to presentations, reflections on using Drupal effectively, guided explorations of basic features, and lots of one-on-one support when creating your own Drupal sites.

We will set up a live Drupal installation for each participant to work with during the workshop. At the conclusion of the day, you will receive a backup copy of the sites that you created.

Workshop space is limited to 20 participants. For questions and more information, or to provide input on your particular interests so that we can contextualize the workshop for your needs, please contact drupalworkshop@cyberdash.net

To learn more about Drupal, visit http://drupal.org/about