Started this as the status update on the Fb page on the right, but ran out of space. So, here are some more thoughts:

At CCCC this year, I heard an excellent presentation by a business professor from a small college in Indiana about using an online game to teach students about running a business and writing earnings reports. The key to success in this game was that students were playing with other students, via a computer interface, not playing against a computer. Some of the chapters in the book seem to either directly argue or indirectly suggest that games where players interact with one another via an interface rather than playing against a machine are better teaching tools. Now, I am wondering what a writing/rhetoric/communication game like that might look like. I am a writing teacher, after all.

Comments and musings are welcome.

Just back from CCCC in Louisville. A couple of quick impressions. Given the theme of the conference (Remix, etc.), it is not surprising that a lot of the sessions dealt with copyright, authorship, and intellectual property. It is also perhaps not terribly surprising that the conversation in our field is shifting more and more towards defining what we do as "composing" rather than "writing." John Logie's presentation on what it means to "compose." was very interesting. His argument (one of them anyway) is that we create using different media. This transition would be especially interesting applied to the teaching of first-year composition, where the traditional emphasis has been on "composing with words." Which brings me to the excellent presentation I heard from the folks at UTEP and their composition program which includes a documentary film assignment. After watching some of the documentaries created by their students and thinking about them, I cannot help thinking about the amount of writing (invention, arrangement, etc.) that went into those pieces.

I have missed the last two CCCC gatherings, so I am quite excited to finally be going this year. My presentation will be on innovative and sustainable models of academic and professional publishing and will detail the work we have been doing on Writing Spaces. For the panel, I am in the distinguished company  of Charlie Lowe, Dave Blakeseley and Jim Porter. I am excited--this is an excellent group to be a part of.

On a related note, getting a hotel room for this CCCC has been next to impossible. Don't know about other institutions, but we had not been authorized to book travel until mid-February, by which time all three "conference" hotels appeared to be sold out. As a result, I am staying in Indiana. Luckily, it is only a couple of miles from the conference. :)

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.

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.

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...