BE: Composing the Digital Self

In case you didn’t catch this post from Lifehacker, I’m running it past you all one more time.  Here’s a link to the “get started” page for adding voice messaging to your online writing space at Blogger.  Be sure to let me know if you do give this a try – especially when your messages start coming in.

Some of you may be having difficulty including your audio recordings in blog posts. Follow these steps to post an Odeo player of your original recording:

1. Log in to Odeo and select “Record Audio” under the “Create” menu

2. Record your audio and select “Save Audio” when you are satisfied with the recording

3. From here you must return to the main screen in order to proceed (select your user name at the top right)

4. Under “Manage” select “Recordings”

5. From the list of displayed recordings, select your most recent work

6. The displayed player will allow you to select “HTML,” from which you can copy HTML code to insert into your post

technorati tags: Purdue English 106, podcast, Odeo

In class on Thursday…

We discussed equipment and online system for reservations available through the DLC – though we (I) did learn that it took a phone call to reserve a laptop.  I’ll mention again that the DLC is the place to go for hardware and software concerns as they relate to coursework on campus.  We spent a few minutes discussing Online Caroline¸ an experience with new media literature and the conflation of character through which the story its plot line.  A handout to the class guided students through the possibility of enhancing WORD documents with applications internal to the program: hyperlinking (linking inside and outside the document), inserting borders, highlighting, commenting, and watermarking.  Finally, we spent time again visiting selections of writing to edit for many of the items about which we’ve learned in the first weeks of class.  

I’d like to highlight the use of the dash here.  From C. Edward Good’s Who’s Whose Grammar Is It, Anyway? (386), “the dash is one of the most effective punctuation marks of all.” Good describes the dash as the biggest of punctuation’s pauses, able to demand attention of the reader in a variety of situations:

1. as an explanatory or defining phase: “Of the three punctuation marks producing a pause – the comma, the dash, the parentheses – the dash produces the most abrupt pause of all.”
2. as a parenthetical insertion:  “The dash can halt readers in their tracks – it makes them pay attention – as they read through your words of wisdom.”
3. as an introductory explanation: “Em dashes, parentheses, and commas – these are the major punctuation marks used to create a pause.”
4. as appositive phrases: “Pauses in sentences – explanatory phrases, defining phrases, parenthetical material, and introductory defining phrases – prompt many writers to use the dash.”
5. as a sudden break in thought: “The committee’s expansive logic – it went far beyond any previous decision – increased the available remedies rather dramatically.”

The last of these explanations seem closest to the sense of use we discussed in class.

A wrangling with the understanding of the use of “which” and “that” may have left us more confused than when we started, and the discussion sent me back to the books to get a better handle on the topic.  I’ll talk more about this in class on Monday.

We’ll be learning more about “wikis” in just a couple of weeks, but for those who would like to take a look ahead, I encourage you to visit PBWiki this evening, sign up, and publish a writing about PBWiki before midnight tonight. According to the promotion, those who link to PBWiki before the midnight hour tonight will receive double the server space for expanding your work online. You may not know what the service has to offer yet, but the link may be a great “just in case” move to make. You never know.

I’ve added more information below along with a link for getting started.

What’s a Wiki?

A wiki is a kind of free-form website that is easy to edit. On a pbwiki, any visitor with the site’s password can edit any page on the site. pbwikis can be made public to allow anyone to read a wiki, while still restricting editing to those who know the wiki’s password. But pbwikis can be private, too.

Edits are done in plain text and don’t require learning fancy or complex codes like HTML. Just start typing! It’s also easy to create new pages and make links to pages you’ve already made.

Why might you want a pbwiki?

• Sharing notes on Mayan culture for History class
• Brainstorming the new product design for Tuesday’s client presentation
• Taking notes to figure out which digital camera to buy
• Keeping track of the projects you’re involved with and your TODO list

It’s profoundly simple to make a new wiki with pbwiki. It’s totally free of charge and spam-free. With nothing to download, you’ll be sharing information in a jiffy!So go ahead and make a wiki! It’s fun!

technorati tags: Purdue English 106, PBWiki

On Monday we opened the door to Flickr – currently the most popular photo community online, we played a bit with Fastr, and we opened a door into social bookmarking with del.icio.us. I encourage you to practice composing yourselves in the communities you’ll find there: visit the photo collections of others, leave comments, upload and tag more of your own images, build a collection of bookmarks or follow the trail of current interest through the bookmarks of others you find on del.icio.us.

As a reminder: you need to have a wireless laptop in class on Thursday. The assignment for the day directs you to the DLC (The Digital Learning Collaboratory) in Hicks Undergraduate Library to check out a laptop. If you already have a laptop, you are certainly welcome to use your own; in that case, however, please go through the checkout process for one of the other pieces of equipment available. My effort here is to familiarize you with the amazing hardware, software, and academic support available to you at the DLC. While you’re there, see what else you can find. The printing service, and the fact that you can map a route to the color printer at the DLC is a particularly exciting feature. We’ll talk more in class on Thursday.

technorati tags: Purdue English 106, DLC

Folks, just a reminder: I should have received two URLs from each of you – one for del.icio.us and one for your Flickr account. Check your outgoing email to confirm sending the links. It is to your advantage that I have this information; if I can see your work online, I am more able to know the measure of your participation with class activity. It behooves you to make sure we’re connecting.

technorati tags: Purdue English 106, URLs

By now, most of you have a good start on your list of ten “rules” against which you will check your writing before you send it into the public. Right? Well, in class on Thursday we practiced with our sets of rules. Those of you who might be looking for a writing prompt might try returning to one or two of these passages and taking your hand at an edit. If you publish to your online writing space, be sure to include the original, the update, and your reasons for making the change. Tie your reasons back to your “rules of ten” list, and let’s see how you do.

Here are the passages:

After reading an article entitled Iran Said to Have Nuclear Warhead Plans, I pondered a question what has happened to the United Nations of not so long ago. What is the effectiveness of the U.N.? The U.N. has been the place that has had a major impact on global history over the past 50 years. This organization has seen its fair share of peeks and valleys.

Well that has stopped, time to get my butt back on track. Ok back on topic. I was on Lifehacker and I saw an article about iPods. It basically explains how to emancipate you iPod from the shackles of iTunes.

Hate is a strong word; maybe I shouldn’t have used that one. Loathe could be an appropriate word for how I view technology today. The website building, (while really not that much of a pain), left me frustrated and irritated yesterday. … Class has been interesting as of late however, I would like some time in class to apply the things we set up during the hour.

technorati tags: Purdue English 106, rule of ten

Because class discussion ran a bit thin on John Deely Brown and Paul Duguid reading, I thought I’d post a few of the not-to-miss highlights from this very important assignment. If you have not completed the reading, let me encourage you again to do so. I count this article as among the most important reads of the semester. Here are some ideas to watch for as you read (page numbers indicate those recorded by my printer – your printer may indicate differently):

• the “double life” of documents as both the creation of meaning and the creation of a community – often a reinforcement of the meaning by which it was, to begin, created
• documents as both structuring information and structuring the social space (2) “Seeing documents as the means to make and maintain social groups, not just the means to deliver information, makes it easier to understand the utility and success of new forms of documents.”
• new forms of documents allow for new forms of community – Strauss’s notion of “social worlds” (3)
• thoughts about what “authorizes” a document (4)
• an understanding for Anderson’s notion of “the imagined community” (5/6)
• “communities of interpretation” (8)
• an understanding of “intertexuality” and the writing act as provocation for more writing – the conversation in and between communities (9) How does hypertextuality and links speak to this point?
• an understanding of what Brown and Duguid call “intercommunal” and “intracommunal” documents – differences and examples (12)
• the importance of audience and “the economy of attention” (12)
• the mobility of documents – the issues of boundaries, the work of negotiation between formed communities, and the idea of “translation” (12-14)
• connections between the flow of information and “freedom” (responsibility) (15)
• the implications of form – what changes when the medium of information shifts? what becomes of the notions of “permanence,” “ownership,” and/or “producer/consumer”? (15-17)
• an understanding of the terms “ecology” and “economy” and how documents can be seen as a mediating force between the needs/drives represented by each (18-19)

These bullet points should guide those of you still reading to a better understanding of the material. For students striving to improve their writing, the challenge is to translate these ideas to an understanding of composition as a negotiation between multiple layers of meaning: information, social representation, permanent record, and, not the least, a statement – (real)ization – of SELF in the world.

In the ACT of word(ing), image(ing), and voice(ing) you are writing yourself and your world: in(form)agination – do your part well.

technorati tags: Purdue English 106, The Social Life of Documents

Lab on Tuesday addressed creating titles for your webpage composition, inserting images, and creating rollovers – all very cool stuff. Thanks again to James for his introduction to the technology behind the scenes, but do remember that “composing” a web page reaches beyond managing the technology to considerations of audience, purpose, and the conventions of message. Have you searched representations of your professional expression online? Would you be able to point to two or three examples of web pages composed so as to speak to an audience of those with whom you will one day work? If you have not, let this be the next move you make in composing your own web site.

Remember, every composition is a writing about you – who you are, how you see the world, and what you see yourself becoming. Your web page can serve as a “front page” to the overall composition and a great place to begin when presenting yourself to others.

For Thursday: “The Social Life of Documents” is one of the most important reads of the semester in helping us to see the double action of documents. Watch for an understanding of this idea (and others) to unfold as you read, and be reminded that annotating a document can go a long way in helping a reader work through the information. Think of annotation as an abbreviated re-write in the margins of a page that both clarifies what was read in the force of summary and marks the text for an easy return for citation. Text are consumable, and critical thinking often think along these lines.

Just for the fun of it…

technorati tags: Purdue English 106, Dreamweaver

Thursday, 6 Feb 2006: Technorati was the topic of the day, and discussion focused on the contribution to be made toward researching by using online applications such as Technorati, Alexa, and PubSub as sources of information for validating and/or substantiating information from online sources. We talked about “tags” and “tagging” last Thursday and again today as an emerging method for sorting information: folksonomy as opposed to taxonomy – information sorted in a bottom-up method that depends on the masses of people for assigning categories and waits for the “piles” to sort themselves out.

So now it’s your turn to assign tags!

Check your email for help with the html code, a template, and suggestion for its use.
technorati tags: Purdue English 106, tagging, Technorati