Skip to Content

The New White House Site Runs on Drupal

Fri, 11/20/2009 - 09:48 — pz

Here is the news article
from, you guessed it, the Drupal site. At the risk of sounding like
someone whose enthusiasm for open source content management and web
design platforms is off the charts, I am guessing that whoever is
responsible for White House's IT needs, might have seen something in
Drupal than more traditional web packages did not have. To
contextualize this a bit, Blackboard had been on a blitz crieg arguing
that ope source systems are just "not as secure" as commercial ones.
Well, I think they probably had a thought or two about security over at
the WH when making this move.

Graduate Student Symposium on Communication at JMU: Spread the Word

Mon, 11/09/2009 - 10:25 — pz

An update on the graduate symposium: we now have a functional website, www.communicationsymposium.org. While some content is still being added to it, it is is now possible (and desirable) to submit proposals and via the website. Coming soon are links to online symposium registration and other online goodies.

Here is the call for proposals. The website is now being designed by the graduate students themselves and will be up and running in the next couple of weeks.


Call for Proposals

Graduate Symposium on Communication James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA
“Communication in the 21st Century: Obstacles and Opportunities” Friday, April 16, 2010

The School of Writing, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication at James Madison University welcomes proposals from graduate students in any discipline for a one-day symposium.

The symposium will explore all facets of communication; from the way it is taught in the classroom to the way it shapes our society. Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

  • applications of communication theories to 21st-century communication practice
  • communication and new media
  • communication and media convergence
  • visual communication
  • multi-modal and multimedia communication (visual, verbal, and audio)
  • 21st-century theory and practice of web communication
  • intercultural communication in a globalized world
  • 21st-century technical and scientific communication: issues, problems, perspectives.

Formats for presentations will include 15-minute panel papers, research posters, and multimedia displays. A website providing more information about the symposium and serving as a repository for abstracts and presentations will be available by the beginning of November (a URL will be provided in subsequent calls).
The keynote speaker for the symposium is Dr. James Dubinsky, Director of the Center for Student Engagement and Community Partnerships at Virginia Tech and the former director of their professional writing program. He is the president of the Association for Business Communication and the editor of the volume Teaching Technical Communication.

Proposals for presentations must be submitted electronically as an attachment in .doc or .rtf format by Monday, December 7 to kleinmj@jmu.edu. Please indicate which type of format presentation your proposal addresses.

Pirate

Sun, 11/01/2009 - 09:23 — pz


Google Ads Have A Split Personality

Thu, 10/15/2009 - 09:47 — pz

This is almost as good as a suggestion for a "spam casserole" recipe that appears after you open your spam box in Gmail. So, should I self-publish or not? Hmm...


Responding to Student Papers with Audio

Thu, 10/08/2009 - 09:00 — pz


Over the years, I have intermittently used audio to comment on student writing. I have used it in both face-to-face and in online classes. The students seem to like it, and there seems to be substantial research that supports the benefits of this way of responding, as opposed to scribbling notes on the margins, or even typing on a draft. The main benefit, according to this research, seems to be that student writers tend to see such aural feedback as more "holistic." They look for a "general impression" about their writing on the part of the instructor rather than getting stuck on mistakes and comments on writing's minutiae. Of course, there are stages in the writing process when you _are_ looking for them to pay attention to those minutiae, but not always. On the instructor's end, audio comments allow for more extensive and detailed feedback than typing or writing by hand would typically allow.

But how to do it technically? In the past, I have used drop.io, which is a free service which allows you to uploads large media files and then send the link to a an e-mail address. That worked file but I felt like the process of responding and sending the mp3 file links was sort of separate from the process of reading and seeing the paper online.

This time, I have been experimenting with Riffly, a Drupal module which allow to embed audio and video content into Drupal posts. I think I am going to respond to the next batch of student papers using Riffly right there, on my Drupal-powered class site. I am sticking with audio for this one, so no talking heads.

On the Design of Collaborative Learning Spaces

Thu, 09/24/2009 - 13:19 — pz

The second presentation today is by Scott Pobiner who is talking about designing for collaboration. So far, his argument seems to be that we need 3D spaces for effective collaboration, which is ironic because, through no fault of his own, he is speaking from behind a 2D interface of Adobe Connect. We are now looking at a picture of his face, Powerpoint slides, a chat box with a bunch of people chatting, and an interactive poll he created for people to chime in while he is talking.

This is pretty cool: he is analyzing different ways in which people create "physical interfaces" for work and collaboration, by using their bodies (hands, gestures, etc). I wonder if he is moving towards asserting that computer interfaces are too flat. Second Life anyone? I know, I know, it is fake...

So, yes, back to the thesis. It was that (that traditional interfaces are too "flat." But it was also that the physical spaces in which people learn matter. This may not be a new assertion to many readers of this post, but it will be new for some designers of educational buildings that I have worked in.

There is Something Weird....

Thu, 09/24/2009 - 12:12 — pz

I know that this is probably Twitter material rather than a blog post, but I do not tweet, so here goes. There is something weird about those live/online events where a group of people gather in a room and watch/hear a presenter with a bunch of Powerpoint slides glide in front of them on a big screen. I am currently at the Educause ELI focus group conducted here at JMU through Adobe Connect. I am hoping for some lively face to face discussions with the people in the room, after the presentation is over.  I am wondering whether a better way for these types of events would not be a live video conference via Skype of some such application, rather than the sound/Powerpoint combination. Oh, and by the way, the topic of the current presentation is assessment of student work online. Also, it seems to me that people who give talks about, essentially, online instructional design, should design more engaging visual presentations than slide after slide of bullet point lists.

Now, to the substance of the talk. A significant part of the talk was dedicated to building trust among collaborating learners. I think this is a topic that is often overlooked in literature, with many scholars, especially in rhetoric and composition, tending to think about collaboration as this "warm and fuzzy" process in which everyone agrees on everything and things go smoothly. I am glad that this speaker mentions the notion that collaborating learners and writers "do not have to like one another" and still get the work done. Conflict and conflict resolution are important parts of the collaborative process. What is even more timely, that one of my graduate students who is also present at this session, jut blogged about this on our class's website.

Preparing for the Spilman Symposium

Wed, 09/23/2009 - 09:15 — pz

It is Spilman time again! Every fall the folks at the Virginia Military Institute hold the Spilman Simposium on Issues in Teaching Writing, on whose Advisory Board I sit. It is a great event which always features nationally and internationally recognized writing and rhetoric scholars in a small workshop-like setting. This year's theme is "Teaching Genre" and the featured guests are Cindy Selfe, Chris Anson, and Paul Heilker. Should be a good one, as usual. Also, this year, the program is augmented by Cindy Selfe's "Literacy Stories" presentation.

Last but not least, I have an added task this year--to promote the open access composition project Writing Spaces. My goal is to attract the participants' attention to the project, both as readers and classroom users and as potential contributors to future volumes.

A Review of The Handbook of Research of Virtual Workplaces Published in Technical Communication

Mon, 09/21/2009 - 16:18 — pz

Just about a year and a half after Kirk St. Amant and myself published The Handbook of Research of Virtual Workplaces and the New Nature of Business Practices (IGI), the journal Technical Communication published a review of the book, written by Gary Hernandez, a communication manager for BP and frequent contributor of book reviews to the journal. The review is generally positive. Here is a passage from it:

Considering the speed of business and the pace [with which] technological innovations continue to progress, Handbook of research on virtual workplaces and the new nature of business practices runs the risk of depleting its relevancy in a few short years. For the time being, it is bound to prove a great resource for students and practitioners of communication.

While we cannot do anything about the fast pace of the development of technologies, I am pleased that Hernandez thinks that at least for the time being, the book is a good resource.

The Excitement is Growing...

Fri, 09/18/2009 - 10:22 — pz

Gotta love the "marketese," by publishers. Since I contributed a chapter to the book mentioned in the excerpt from a publisher e-mail below, they sent me this:

As you may know, the excitement is growing around the release of Cases on Successful E-Learning Practices in the Developed and Developing World: Methods for the Global Information Economy, which includes your excellent research contribution.  This book has just entered its production stage and we are projecting a release date of November 2009. On behalf of the staff at IGI Global, I would like to be the first to congratulate you on this admirable achievement. We are all very eager to see the IT Education community’s response to this exceptional publication.

The excitement is growing, no doubt...

Syndicate content


Theme by Dr. Radut.