Category Archives: Computers and Writing

Call for Nominations: 2015 Technology Innovator Award

24 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by in Academia, Calls for Nominations, Computers and Writing

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TECHNOLOGY INNOVATOR AWARD

Deadline for nominations: 26 April 2015

The CCCC Committee on Computers in Composition and Communication will honor an innovator in our community at the 2015 Computers and Writing Conference at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, and we need your help to identify a person who has pushed our field regarding excellence in teaching, more rigorous scholarship, and deeper levels of service.

Among other qualities, this year’s innovator will be the person whom you recognize as having done the most to help other teachers use computer-mediated learning and teaching and has served as a mentor to those new to computers and composition.

This year’s recipient should be a person who pushes the envelope, who moves us beyond the cutting edge to the bleeding edge, who is willing to open the technological Pandora’s Box knowing full well that the challenges and work that we’ll meet as that Box is opened will strengthen our community and make our classes better. The recipient of the Technology Innovator Award might be referred to as an outstanding leader or an electronic pioneer who calls our assumptions into question, urging us to engage in an active search for new and exciting ways to accomplish our pedagogical goals in the composition classroom.

Nominees for the award can be of any academic rank (student, contract, staff, tenure-line or tenured faculty, etc.) as well as independent scholars.

CRITERIA FOR THE AWARD

The recipient of the Technology Innovator Award

  • has made a significant groundbreaking or foundational contribution to the field of computers and composition
  • demonstrates outstanding teaching achievements with computer technologies
  • provides on-going support and encouragement to the community, in particular to those who teach with computer technologies
  • contributes to the field through scholarship and publication in print and electronic media (including such media as journal articles, discussion lists, webtexts/hypertexts, text/book authorship, and editorial work)

NOMINATION PROCESS

While we ask that you keep nomination letters to 750 to 1000 words, we do encourage you to include or link to CVs and supplementary material. Do keep in mind that the more thorough the nominations are, the better the individual’s chances. Stated another way: Nominations consisting of only a name, a few sentences, and a link to a CV may not stand up against more formal, detailed nominations. We encourage single letters of recommendation crafted and signed by individuals or groups instead of multiple letters for a single nominee.

  • Nomination letters should be kept to 750-1000 words.
  • A nomination should consist of an email that includes specific details on the nominee’s award qualifications. Nominations should contain information on accessing materials that demonstrate the nominee’s work. Attachments are acceptable.
  • Nominations can be submitted by an individual, a group of individuals, or a professional organization (e.g., the Assembly on Computers on English, the Council of Writing Program Administrators, the CCCC Caucus on Intellectual Property and Composition, etc.).
  • Self nominations are encouraged.

NOMINATION PROCESS

Beginning in 2007, the 7Cs elected to keep nominations for this award in a two-year rotation. The judging committee, comprised of previous winners of this award, will consider all nominations from last year (2014) in addition to any new nominations for this year. We recognize the work you put into the nomination process and want to recognize that by considering deserving individuals without repeating the paperwork. If you want to nominate someone and you aren’t sure whether they were nominated last year, please contact John Walter at johnpwalter [at] gmail [dot] com for clarification/confirmation.

Please title the email: Tech Innovator Award: NOMINEE’S LASTNAME

Send nominations via email to John Walter at johnpwalter [at] gmail [dot] com.

Deadline for nominations: 26 April 2015

PAST WINNERS

The following outstanding members of the computers and writing community have already received the Technology Innovator Award. (Past winners should not be re-nominated.)

The judging committee is typically comprised of the five most-recent-years’ past winners.

2014: Dan Anderson

2013: Angela Haas

2012: Cheryl Ball

2011: Charlie Lowe & Michael Day (tie)

2010: Nick Carbone

2009: Dànielle DeVoss & Will Hochman (tie)

2008: Janice Walker

2007: Kris Blair

2006: Mike Palmquist

2005: Richard Selfe

2004: Carolyn Handa

2003: Charles Moran

2002: John Slatin

2001: Lisa Gerrard

2000: Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe

1999: Fred Kemp

Please send questions, comments, and nomination submissions to John Walter, 7Cs Technology Innovator Award Coordinator at johnpwalter [at] gmail [dot] com.

Day of DH: Making and the Physical-Digital Interface

08 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by in Computers and Writing, Digital Studies/New Media, Making, Media Ecology

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An Arduino with BOE shield

Parallax BOE Shield and Arduino – the brains of our BOE robot.

I’ve been meaning to write for some time about my growing interest in making, specifically in Arduino, Processing, and paper circuits. While I’ve tinkered with coding over the years, I’ve never had an interest in electronics, at least not until last summer. I bought an Arduino last September, sponsored a high school making club during the fall, designed a Making and Writing course before I decided not to teach at the high school this spring, and introduced Arduino-based robotics and Processing into our homeschooling curriculum. (Oh, btw, as of this fall I’ve been co-homeschooling a 9th grader. I really should be better about blogging.) I’ll post more about my making activities and how they fit into my academic endeavors soon. In the mean time, here’s a post on making and the physical-digital interface I’m cross-posting from my Day of DH blog.

As a technorhetorician, a media ecologist, and a digital humanist, I’m becoming increasingly interested in the physical-digital interface of physical computing and interactive programming.

A lot of this interest is playing out in my exploring both the Arduino microcontroller and the Processing programming language. As the Arduino programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) are based on Processing, the two work quite well together.  For instance, there’s the example project that interfaces an Arduino with Processing to creating an RGB LED lamp, the color of which is based upon word frequency within an RSS feed, or the much more simple example of simply turning on an LED by mousing over a Processing-created image, which I was able to do in just a few minutes. You can see the results in this Vine. Apologies for the shaky video – I held my phone with my weak hand as I used my better hand to control the mouse.

And then there’s these digitally interfaced physical books, from the basic MaKey MaKey + graphite + Scratch to Jie Qi’s Circuit Sketchbook

to Waldek Węgrzyn’s Elektrobiblioteka that uses conductive paint-based silk screen printing and a small embedded microcontroller to create touch-sensitive illustrations that call up and interact with digital content.

While I’m still learning both Processing and Arduino, as a digital humanist I’m often thinking of the ways in which we might use a visualization and generative art program like Processing to process and interact with text. For instance, there’s this fairly straightforward visualization of Goethe’s Faust and this “tube map” that’s created by inputting  text. More interesting, however, are things like the codeable objects Processing library and the potential for interactive books making use of paper circuit technologies and embedded microcontrollers.

Three tasks I’m working on today is organizing a session on making, making pedagogy, and critical making and design for CCCC 2015, brainstorming a possible DIY craft and making workshop for the same, and figuring out if I’m ready to propose a paper circuits workshop for THATCamp DC at the end of this month.

And later today, as a last-minute addition to today’s home schooling (as in decided about 10 minutes ago), we’re going to have our first go at programming an ATiny85 chip and using it to make this paper-based microcontroller:

You can find the tutorial at Jie Qi’s The Fine Art of Electronics.

Collin Brooke’s Twitter Summary of Lingua Fracta

06 Monday May 2013

Posted by in Computers and Writing, Digital Studies/New Media, Memory, Rhetoric and Composition

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Twitter Summary of Lingua Fracta On May 3, 2013, Collin Brooke (@cgbrooke) took up the challenge of summarizing his book Lingua Franca: Towards a Rhetoric of New Media in a few tweets. The three tweets are as follows:

  1. Tweet 1: @kristinarola New media require us to acknowledge that technology and rhetoric are inextricable. #LF
  2. Tweet 2: @kristinarola A rhetoric of new media attends to interfaces (vs objects) that manifest ecologies of code, practice, and culture. #LF
  3. Tweet 3: @kristinarola The classical canons of rhetoric are an ecology of practices that help us map the affordances of all media. #LF

Collin then captured the three tweets in the pic you see above.

I’m particularly struck by the third tweet which is a nice summary of what I’m doing when I’m working to tease out various conceptions and practices of memoria.

A Fundraiser Worth Supporting: Ride to Computers and Writing

27 Friday Apr 2012

Posted by in Computers and Writing, Conferences

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Among the reasons I love the computers and writing community and the Computers and Writing conference is the strong sense of mentoring and support and its DIY hacker spirit. Case in point: Some years ago the community decided to create the C&W GRN Travel Awards, available to graduate students and non tenure-track faculty who participate in the Graduate Research Network, a pre-conference works-in-progress workshop. (The GRN is itself another example of the mentoring spirit of the community.) The Travel Grants were originally funded through direct donation and an Ebay auctions of donated items. For the third year in a row, the travel grants will be funded by Ride to Computers and Writing, a pledge ride in which various attendees of the conference will travel all or part way by bike, roller ski, or foot in order to help raise money for the travel grants.

As both past recipient of and a contributor to the GRN Travel Grants, I ask you to consider joining me in making a tax-deductible cash donation to help fund this year’s grants.  [Ride to Computers and Writing web site.]

Call for 2012 Technology Innovator Award Nominations

26 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by in Calls for Nominations, Computers and Writing

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The CCCC Committee on Computers in Composition and Communication is seeking nominations for the 2012 Technology Innovator Award. Deadline for nominations: 23 April 2012. From the call:

The CCCC Committee on Computers in Composition and Communication will honor an innovator in our community at the 2012 Computers and Writing Conference at North Carolina State University, and we need your help to identify a person who has pushed our field regarding excellence in teaching, more rigorous scholarship, and deeper levels of service.

Among other qualities, this year’s innovator will be the person whom you recognize as having done the most to help other teachers use computer-mediated learning and teaching and has served as a mentor to those new to computers and composition.

This year’s recipient should be a person who pushes the envelope, who moves us beyond the cutting edge to the bleeding edge, who is willing to open the technological Pandora’s Box knowing full well that the challenges and work that we’ll meet as that Box is opened will strengthen our community and make our classes better. The recipient of the Technology Innovator Award might be referred to as an outstanding leader or an electronic pioneer who calls our assumptions into question, urging us to engage in an active search for new and exciting ways to accomplish our pedagogical goals in the composition classroom.

Nominees for the award can be of any academic rank (student, contract, staff, tenure-line or tenured faculty, etc.) as well as independent scholars.

The full call for nominations can be read at the computersandwriting.org site.

Living in the Age of the Status Feed: Then & Now

23 Thursday Feb 2012

Posted by in Computers and Writing, Coolness, Media Ecology, Reading, Technology

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A picture of Samuel Pepys.Samuel Pepys just tweeted me.* His commentary on Charles II’s return to English soil landed in my idea-box from a distance of 350 years: “Infinite shooting off of the guns, and that in a disorder on purpose, which was better than if it had been otherwise.” [Read more.]

So begins Lisa Schamess‘s essay “In a Disorder on Purpose: The Diary and the Status Feed,” originally published in the Summer 2011 issue of Creative Nonfiction and now available for free online, just in time for Samuel Pepys’ birthday, which is today. I’d be telling you to read it even if I wasn’t her fiancé.