Call for Papers: Computers and Writing 2009

at UC Davis

Submission Deadline: Friday, September 19, 2008
Submit Proposals (2000 characters or less) at http://writing.ucdavis.edu/cw2009/proposal_sub.htm

Themes for Computers and Writing 2009
Ubiquitous and Sustainable Computing
@ School, @ Work, @ Play

@ Schools: How have recent advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) impacted the teaching of writing in elementary, middle, high school and postsecondary environments? How have ICTs been incorporated (or excluded) from writing assessment? How have first-year college composition programs changed because of new ICTs? At your institution, has first-year composition begun to include more multimodal forms of writing or has first-year composition become more focused on alphabetic literacy? How do educational institutions sustain faculty expertise to engage students in creating these contemporary compositions? What about open knowledge and academic publishing? How is the professional writing and publishing environment changed for faculty because of the ubiquitous web? To make this question concrete, we will recycle a question that has appeared on WPA-L: Do you put your academic blog on your c.v.? Computers and Writing has often focused discussion on students’ use of software delivered via desktops or laptops: What other computing devices are being used in composition courses? What other devices will be used in the next five years? the next ten? How do we shape the development of these technologies?

I bolded the points I think are most interesting to write about.

@ Play: Students’ lives are often full of music and games. While Napster has died, iPods and pod-casting are rich cultural areas of inquiry. Is a playlist on an iPod a composition? Is it a reflection of identity? How does playing World of Warcraft or other multiplayer online games shape a player’s sense of self? Outside of the classroom, students and faculty upload photos to flickr, play in SecondLife, and maintain Facebook profiles. These forms of composing identities and sharing aspects of our lives engender questions: Where are the boundaries between private and public spheres? What sorts of responsibilities do academic researchers have toward their research subjects and their subjects’ privacy when those lives are revealed online? How do playful uses of ICTs change academic literacy practices? Does play (e.g., txtmsging) negatively impact school literacy (e.g., spelling on an in-class essay)? If so, does it matter? Do the interfaces of Wiis, PlayStations, and Xboxes suggest other ways in which we might compose texts? Do some forms of play suggest that the keyboard could go the way of pen-and-paper (not extinction but into a second-class citizenship of a sort)?

Again bolded most interesting.

Question: Which of these do I think are most important and which ones could I present a paper on next summer?

The proposal is 2000 characters. I don’t have to write the paper yet, so I could use my classrooms to try out some different ideas, including cross-pollination of a classroom blog from two schools.