At any rate for those who are interested on Monday at noon east coast time, I will be participating in a webinar on teaching Writing as Information Arts (sort of a way of thinking about teaching digital literacy).

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The Internet has fundamentally changed not only the means through which we communicate, but also how we communicate and how we think. It has, in turn, altered what others expect from our writing, what employers look for in applicants, and how we conceive of work that used to be private. One need only look at the blog explosion to see how the ability to disseminate our thoughts cheaply and quickly, and to develop a dialogue with others empowered thousands to believe their voice was/is worth sharing.

Teachers cannot ignore this communication shift. A Kindle is more than a paperless book: it changes how we read, how we define reading, and how we perceive intellectual ownership. As society continues down a path toward ever-increasing mobile communication, our conceptions of how we persuade will also change. I think few Rhetoric instructors would argue with the idea that students should be able to not only consume information, something they’ve been doing their entire lives, but also to produce it. But as it stands now, most rhetoric courses focus strictly on writing, and they limit assignments to the classroom environment – practices that devalue other rhetorical mediums, and the purpose of rhetoric itself. It is with this spirit in mind that I designed my special topics Fall 2009 freshman rhetoric course at the University of Texas at Dallas. I wanted to transform the traditional rhetoric class with its standard textbook into a more relevant, new-media oriented course that focused not only on writing and speaking, but one that also looked at rhetoric in film, photography and music.

To that end, I designed the course to include a live WordPress blog on which students could speak to each other and anyone else in the world who cared to listen. A website containing copies of their larger papers coincided with the blog. This made the assignments more communal in nature and reinforced that writing is meant to be shared. In a more traditional classroom environment, students write only for the teacher, an approach that makes assignments seem less relevant to the students and devalues the very idea of rhetoric. Requiring students to blog, contact people outside their classroom, and post writing on the Internet teaches them to engage with the community, gives their writing more significance, and supports rhetoric – a term that, by definition, implies community.

While this public exposure to their work can be intimidating for some students, it forces them to take more accountability for their words while teaching them the power of communication. If they embrace it, students can develop a sense of freedom and power that resides in someone who feels comfortable with both the tools of communication and also the arenas that currently dominate the conversation. Right now, a majority of the conversations are increasingly happening online. Students must know how to navigate these waters. It is a direction more and more university rhetoric departments are going toward, including Ohio State University, which has some excellent examples of class blogs.

A strictly digital approach is not for everyone. I will always prefer a paper book, believe memorizing grammar rules is essential, and don’t think everyone needs a blog. Nonetheless, these are issues students should be aware of. Creating work in a vacuum delegitimizes it. When the goal of your course is to teach students to persuade, and you don’t include what is now the most influential tool for disseminating your argument, you are crippling your students.
Writing and reading online is different than performing those same tasks on paper. We communicate differently on the Internet, and as more and more people read from their phones and portable e-readers, our understanding of communication will change further still. As technology shifts, so does our means of persuasion; if students do not explore this, they will find their skills quickly out of date. Rhetoric is more than just learning a standard structure for an argument. Students should be asking themselves: “How does what we write and what we think change when we know that in ten minutes we can create a blog and broadcast to the world? How does this change how we see and portray ourselves?” These are the deeper rhetorical questions students need to grapple with. It is this focus that will make them stronger readers, writers, and citizens.

The second media-based aspect of the course was centering the writing assignments around a film that the students would produce. My goal was that this would provide continuity between assignments, while reinforcing one of the fundamental ideas underlying this class: rhetoric is found in a variety of media, not just writing. Many rhetoric programs devote time to “visual rhetoric,” but it is often cursory at best and culminates in a short essay examining a film or piece of art. While I do not object to this method, I was always bothered that writing was still given precedent over the image. We tell students that pictures are a viable means of persuasion, and then we as them to write about it. This hardly reinforces the message. So I thought: “Why not have the students work with the mediums they study, including film?”

I “hired” each student for a position in the “company” based on his skills and interests with the idea that this would not only hold their interest, but also be quite germane to their course of study. Everyone had to apply for their job, writing a cover letter and resume, and having a personal interview with me. Students were never entirely on their own, as the positions were part of large groups: pre-production, post-production, marketing, and web design.

Throughout the semester we discussed the various rhetorical aspects that comprise a film – including text, images, music, and sound effects – focusing on how and why creators made the decisions they did. Always, the emphasis was on these crafts as rhetorical devices. The end result was a website and corresponding film, created by the students and comprised of their work throughout the semester. Overall, I have found it a fun, effective approach.

An added benefit of the film was that it captured the students’ interest, as did broadcasting their work on their website, www.rvuentertainment.com. They became so invested in the film that the writing pertaining to it took on new meaning. The first essay required them to identify an issue in their local community and write about it. From these, the students voted on which would be made into a film. The second major writing assignment was a visual essay in which the students each described how they would make the film, supporting their paper with images they found online or took themselves. In addition to these, smaller assignments were given to each student based on his role in the company, including reports, marketing letters, short essays on artists who inspired them, and storyboards. All students were also required to blog weekly. The students really took to the project and, barring the procrastination that is a given for many college freshman, they handled it well. Weekly student-run meetings in class kept everyone on the same page and let me know where things stood. There were also individual meetings in which I worked one-on-one or in small groups to help them with their respective roles.

I admit, I had my doubts. Coming from a traditional writing background, and considering the departments goals, I felt the focus of the class should remain on writing aptitude, and the one constant question rolling around my head all semester was: “Are you doing the students an injustice? Are you taking time away from writing skills to focus on film, sound, and these “alternate” methods of persuasion?” I think my fears were reasonable, but ultimately the class worked out well. Because so many rhetorical devices remain constant across mediums, teaching students how pacing working in screen cuts or music only reinforces how it could be employed in their writing.

Overall, I think the class was a success. It taught the students to work with a variety of mediums and to always consider their work as something to share. It is this final point that the entire course hinged on: community. The blog, the group film – everything the students – did was about engaging the world, establishing a presence, and utilizing the tools that the rest of the world is operating with, rather than limiting them to traditional print-based technology.

Here is an interview about the project with Barbara.

An innocent enough of a gesture one could assume. What I took Sybil’s point to be, was that Britannica is not a good scholarly source, and that the library should be encouraging other/more appropriate research practices (like, you know using scholarly sources, and judging credibility and bias). But what also struck me about this was the odd moment when librarians are encouraging students to use the encyclopedia as a source. And, perhaps I read too much into this, but I think the librarians gesture comes as a correction to Wikipedia, i.e. the subtext here is “Don’t use Wikipedia use Britannica.” This might be my bias, or my way of reading things, so fair enough I didn’t respond to Sybil’s tweet. But, apparently Britannica has a Twitter account, and the person who manages the account noticed Sybil’s tweet and decided to respond:

Shocked to see that Britannica was on Twitter I couldn’t resist and posted the following:

Well needless to say it was all downhill (or shits and giggles depending on your perspective) from there. I won’t recount the blow, by blow, mainly cause it gets really long, and the person who Tweets from @Britannica obviously feels passionate about defending Britannica, and at one point posted nine straight tweets defending the appropriateness of Britannica as a scholarly source.

A few notes might be worth making at this point: 1. I am not speaking for @SybilV here, these are my opinions, and I have a sense that my tone if not also my stance is more radical/ contentious than hers. 2. I have no idea if the account @Britannica is an official Britannica Twitter account. I looked at the Britannica page and couldn’t find it listed. So, the account might just be a Britannica fan, or an employee who unofficially Tweets from that account. I don’t know, but I think we can take the arguments that @Britannica makes as indicative of those who champion this encyclopedia and its format.

It seems to me that with all the tweets sent back and forth, with others in the Twitterverse adding to the discussion, the central issue was “What is the appropriate use/role for Britannica in relation to society and specifically academia?”

So here’s the thing: 1. It has none. 2. This is because of Wikipedia.

Don’t get me wrong I am not disparaging Britannica, not really. It had a role, and generally speaking it served it well, but:

Yes, Britannica is a pretty good secondary source. It has a lot of advantages as a secondary source. Articles are fairly thorough, contain citations, and are more or less accurate, but as a secondary source it doesn’t even come close to the value of something like Wikipedia. Thirty years ago, heck even ten years ago, Britannica was arguably the best secondary source around. If you wanted to get a quick overview of a specific subject Britannica was a good place to start, a good portal to gaining deep knowledge about a subject.

In a world of dead-tree based knowledge the central authority, hierarchically controlled way of organizing, was a good thing. When you only have so many pages, you can’t reprint frequently, and distribution is expensive, these are good decisions. But in a digital networked information structure these are not.

What you want from a secondary source is a good introduction to a concept, that is mostly reliable, up-to-date, entries for as many topics as possible, connections to where to go to learn more, and easy and ubiquitous (as possible) access. A secondary source is not an in depth analysis which upon reading one is suddenly an expert on said entry or topic, it’s not designed to be. It is just a good overview. No secondary source is going to be completely accurate, or engage in the level of detail and nuance which we want from students, or that is required to fully “know” about a subject.

This is why the Wikipedia banning by schools and professors has always struck me as a particularly stupid policy. The issue is not that Wikipedia is or is not reliable and thus should be banned in academic environments, rather the issue is that Wikipedia is a secondary source and thus should not be treated as a primary one. But, this also holds true for Britannica. Any syllabus which contains language about banning Wikipedia misses this point. Ban secondary sources from student work, not Wikipedia in particular as this confuses the issue. This doesn’t mean that students shouldn’t use secondary sources, indeed they should they are great ways to begin to learn about a subject. It just means they should not cite secondary sources, they should always look for primary ones, and that they should never take Wikipedia or Britannica as the final word on a subject. I don’t recall a single syllabus from my college days (pre-Wikipedia) that said “do not use Britannica as a source for your papers, doing so will result in failing the assignment.” Seriously, professors explained to us what reference books were for, and how to correctly use them.

Several semesters ago I wrote a piece defending Wikipedia and arguing that it was irresponsible to not teach students about how to use Wikipedia. I won’t rehash those arguments here, but I will reference one objection made in the comments of this article, which I often hear when I talk about Wikipedia:

MY guess is that the author wouldn’t want his doctor to base his latest surgery on a Wikipedia article.

Of course not, don’t be stupid, I wouldn’t want my doctor to be educated by Wikipedia, but I wouldn’t want my doctor to be educated by Britannica either. The role of Wikipedia isn’t to train heart surgeons how to perform a bypass, nor is it the role of Britannica, that is not the function of these objects. To hold Wikipedia to this standard is more than a bit ridiculous. Wikipedia doesn’t strive to be an object that teaches doctors how to operate (although it seems that Britannica might be trying to claim this ground).

We could argue about the accuracy of Wikipedia, although studies show that it is as accurate as Britannica, or about the policy that “any one can edit,” at least with Wikipedia I can view the editing history, or we could argue about the problems on Wikipedia, of which there are many (bland prose, serious debates between inclusionists and deletionist, its Western-English bias, an increasing bureaucratic control structure, among others). But what really isn’t arguable at this point is that as a broad overview of knowledge, a good place to start an inquiry, Wikipedia is a killer app.

When it comes to functioning as a secondary source, a reference guide, Wikipedia has substantial advantages over any prior encyclopedia model. In the same way that Britannica’s model of “get experts in a field to write specific articles” was a vast improvement over the prior model “get the smartest person to write the whole encyclopedia,” Wikipedia is a substantial improvement over Britannica. (Sorry folks at Britannica, this is just the way it is. P.S. While you are at it you might want to sell your stock in 8-tracks, newspapers, and scriptoriums.) The breadth of knowledge, its ability to be linked to other knowledge, its cost (free), its up-to-dateness, and its preservation of editorial discussions (it records not only the article but the discussion which produced said article) makes it far more useful. And that doesn’t even begin to address things like how much easier Wikipedia is to use for mash-ups and data extraction, repurposing the information for other reference works.

To illustrate this point I make the following challenge:
I hereby challenge any employee of Britannica to a game of trivial pursuit. You can consult Britannica Online for any question, and I can consult Wikipedia. Want to take bets on who will win? (I’ll even let you have all 15 print editions as well). We could also play “Who Want’s to Be a Millionaire?” of “Jeopardy” if you want.

So, this is the bind that Britannica is caught in. It can market itself as a secondary source: we are a great reference tool. But if it does this, someone can easily point out that Wikipedia is a better secondary source, and free (in other words libraries can spend dwindling resources on other primary materials). Or, it can claim to be a great primary source, a role it simply can’t fulfill. It simply doesn’t have a place anymore, there are better services doing what it did.

Now seriously, can we end this debate already. Instead lets talk to students about how appropriately to use secondary sources, how to understand how encyclopedias function, how all encyclopedias are biased, all knowledge is discursive, and focus on teaching students how to judge credibility and accuracy instead of outsourcing it to people at Britannica.

This weeks Teaching Carnival theme: The Future of Education.

Alex Halavis suggests that the future of education lies outside the walls of the university. After all, what are students paying for? an administrative function that they can perform themselves? Personally I am not that keen on ad supported textbooks or holding class in Panera, but I do think professors can start delivering their services sans the wall of the institution. Alex Reid also chimes in on the future of education, suggesting that we adopt the freemium model.

Mills Kelly opines about innovation in distance learning and more importantly about ways to foster that innovation. And, if you still need more convincing that Learning Management Systems (Blackboard etc.) are a bad idea check out Matt Gold’s, Against Learning Management Systems.

On the practical side of going edupunk Teaching for the Future covers how to turn compujunk to educational use (hint start with Ubuntu).

Over at The Future of Higher Ed Jim Moulton gives evidence from his recent trip to India that technology penetration is not yet what we assume it to be and reminds us that “there is no digital solution to a fundamentally human challenge.”

But perhaps we yearn to much for online distance learning, Howard Rheingold defends the importance of physical presence.

Generally I agree with @chutry, that there should be a ban on using the phrase “a spectre is haunting . . .” (completely overdone). So when you read or watch Mark Pesce’s keynote on education and digital citizenship you will just have to pretend the first sentence is not there, cause otherwise this is a good piece.

The best practical pedagogy post I saw this past week comes from Mark Sample and his American Postmodernism class using the network to create an annotated bibliography (results here).

This week saw the 50th Anniversary of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, which was not only an excuse to issue a 50th anniversary edition, but also a good reason to debunk the usefulness of this text, Open Education also piles on. (I am always a fan of going after sacred cows).

If you are thinking about mobile uses in the classroom, check out The Salt-Box‘s thought experiment on possible uses (again the pay off is in the comments).

And now that Oprah is on Twitter, even if she types in all caps, what teaching carnival would be complete without referencing a few twitter articles. Wired Campus covers a Professor at Penn State who uses twitter during class. (In fairness though I think I saw this a year ago, when @briancroxall was doing this (although it wasn’t in The Chronicle. (As always you should make sure that you read the comments on the aforementioned twitter article, even if for just the pure amusement factor.)

@mkgold recently used twitter to demonstrate to his class the power of the network. The result is not only a good demonstration of knowledge building, but a rather robust list of online education tools and how various professors use them.

To be fair to Facebook part of the momentum here is a general sense of angst about who owns what when it is stored in “the cloud” or on “social networking sites.” But, Facebook also has changed their language to reflect a pretty (in my opinion) ridiculous policy. So while Facebook has become the lightning rod here, they did bring it on themselves. To get a clear picture of different TOS read Amanda French’s rundown of different TOS (seriously go read it, its important).

• NetNewsWire: Clearly I have an RSS addiction. This is the way I track what is going on in the field, in academia, and the world at large. While there are several RSS reader options, I prefer NetNewsWire. The ability to sync across multiple computers, plus read while offline, and save clippings (which also sync) are crucial for my work flow. I would like the ability to share items (i.e. GoogleReader) but the other features make NNW my choice.
• Twittelator: Again no secret but I use twitter for a range of academic and personal functions. There are many iPhone twitter apps, but this is my favorite (I actually purchased the pro version). Others I know use Twitterific, or Tweetsville, but the copy and past feature for retweeting got me hooked on this one early, and just haven’t found a reason to change.
• TextGuru: I tried several “mini-word processor” apps for the iPhone and this one ended up winning the prize. Not that I intend to compose a chapter or article on the iPhone or anything, but having a way to type or edit a document does come in handy. This one handles a wide range of formats, and most importantly allows input in landscape mode, which makes typing a whole heck of a lot easier. You can also transfer files wirelessly between your computer and the iPhone.
• Snatch: Simple and exactly what I wanted. When the iPhone apps first came out I was disappointed to learn that Remote only worked for iTunes and FrontRow (stupid). Seriously, all I wanted was a replacement for that stupid IR remote that meant I had to stand behind my computer when presenting. Snatch allows you to use the iPhone as remote control for the mouse/trackpad, or just a clicker. I also gave StageHand a shot, and it has the added feature of providing your presenting notes to you on the iPhone, but really all I wanted was a clicker.
• Wikiamo: Of course I want access to Wikipedia anywhere. Again, I tried out several applications, and while I wish Wikiamo had collapsable sections like iPedia+, it is simply much faster, and remembers past searches.
• OmniFocus: Expensive, but syncs with OmniFocus on my computer and provides location aware contexts. GTD FTW.
• Evernote: I haven’t fully leveraged the power of this app yet, but I still use it to record, take quick pictures, and generally preserve things in the short term that I might want to access later.
• WordPress: Again not like I am going to be doing any long blogging from the iPhone, but since I use blogs to organize/run my classes, this app lets me update them from anywhere.
• SnapTell: This is one of those “magic” how does that possibly work apps. Take a picture of a book (DVDs and Video Games also work), the application accesses the internet, looks-up said book and tells you where it is for sale on the internet. Seriously, from just a picture it can “read” the title and look it up. I use this less for online shopping and more to take pictures of books I want to order later, check out from the library etc. Forget having to write down or type the title, just snap the picture.

What did I miss? Leave it in the comments.

• First up is an article by Michael Wesch, A Vision of Students Today (& What Teachers Must Do). The article appears on the Britannica Blog, an institution I do not always associate with progressively thinking about how technology changes knowledge production. Nevertheless Wesch’s piece is worth a read for he navigates the precarious but important middle ground between being a luddite and being techno-utopian, instead claiming that there is nothing new about the notion of playing the “getting by game,” even if the means by which this game is played is different. Ultimately he suggests a rather simple solution: Public Academia.
• Group Table: Group Table is another web application in the list of online collaboration/group organization tools. While there are many out there, most people I know prefer Bassecamp and Backpack, Group Table is focused on specifically serving the student population.
• Open Huddle: When I was searching for free online tools for hosting my virtual grad class, I looked into many (way too many) options. (I just needed chat function, so in the end ended up using a chat program but I digress.) But, Open Huddle was one of the better ones people sent me. Unlike Group Table (above) which is focused on organizing the group, Open Huddle’s purpose is to provide a set of tools for collaborating in real time. Open Huddle has video chat and a drawing board (think virtual white board) as well as allowing messaging and file sharing. My guess is in the future we will see a lot more of these types of sites for robust online learning and collaboration.
• Last but not least, watch Antonio’s presentation on using YouTube as a Classroom Resource.

Approaching Digital Literacy: Creating a Networked Culture on Campus (Texas Community College Teachers Association 2008). (You can download the high quality Quicktime Movie or the lower quality mp4.) Below are the references for this presentation:

• Mark Pesce on Hyperconnectivity: A lot of my thinking on what happens when we increase the speed at which people are connected comes from Pesce, particularly this presentation.
• Clay Shirky Here Comes Everybody: This is one of the best books on how organizing changes in the age of the network. Shirky’s book is both informed and accessible. He also did an interview for weblogg-ed which focuses on education.
• Micheal Wesch is well known in academia for his work on Web 2.0. In this presentation at the University of Manitoba he talks specifically about using Web 2.0 tools in the classroom.
• Axel Bruns’s book Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond is worth reading. His thoughts on how the industrial model of production is shifting to a “produsage” one carries implications for academia.
• In the presentation I talk about Sakai and Moodle which are free alternatives to Blackboard, WebCT etc. However, I prefer something like edublogs, as blogs offer one of the best alternatives to Course Management Software.
• If you are looking for more analysis, news, and tips on digital literacy and academia, Digital Campus (a bi-weekly podcast) is one of the best places to start.
• Finally this talk references MIT Open Courseware, Open Yale Courses, and Physics for Presidents.
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