Jude and other dancers:
As a graduate student I can say that my brief tenure so far in the C&W
community has been amazingly swell. Heck, at the risk of starting another
brew about ownership, ;-) , I find the community a sort of home. *MY*
community. But more to your interest in a hypermediated dissertation. I
too am working a little against the grain, and haven't researched just how
much "message supporting medium" I can include, but the interactions and
the compilation itself of the research--pleasantly--is hypermediated
itself. That is, I'm really enjoying the process of bouncing, exchanging,
interchanging ideas for the diss from different perspectives, different
mediations, if you will. Keep the faith.
Stretchin, while dancing,
.Rich.
______________________________________________________________________________
On Mon, 15 May 2000, Jude Edminster wrote:
> My story of technological "daring" comes straight from my experience posting
> to the previous TOWNHALL discussion on graduate student issues.
>
> My desire to construct and publish a hypermedia dissertation to be published
> in the NDLTD (National Digital Library for Theses and Dissertations), and
> which I would like to be mentored by C & W faculty outside my university,
> was met with exactly two responses:
>
> The first discouraged me from writing anything other than a traditional
> print dissertation for the sake of my future academic career.
>
> The second announced that what I had to say in my dissertation was far more
> important than the form in which I chose to say it, and then bombarded me
> with a barrage of insultingly obvious questions, essentially about whether
> or not I had "done my homework" with regard to networking, publishing and
> preparing to compose my "daring" hypermedia dissertation.
>
> Disappointingly conventional thinking. Definitely not what I expected from
> this group.
>
> But I learned a valuable lesson: Even those who truly desire to help and
> advise graduate students are capable of constructing us as naive,
> uninformed neophytes who really don't have a clue.
>
> Jude Edminster
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Kafkaz <Kafkaz@kwom.com>
> To: <online2k@nwe.ufl.edu>
> Sent: Monday, May 15, 2000 11:30 AM
> Subject: Re: [online2k] TOWN HALL ONLINE #2: DANCING ON THE LIMBS
>
>
> > Thanks, Cindy, for your wonderful introduction of Town Hall #2, and thanks
> to
> > the invited participants for their contributions to what we hope will be a
> > growing collection of narratives and projects that illustrate, reflect
> upon,
> > and *define* technological daring--often in complementary ways, but
> sometimes
> > in seemingly contradictory ones. We hope everyone can take a few minutes
> to
> > peruse the materials we've already collected at
> >
> > http://personal.kwom.com/Kafkaz/townhall2/index.htm
> >
> > and perhaps take a few more to contribute a "dance" of their own, and/or
> to
> > join us in this discussion. Maybe we can lure people away from those last
> few
> > student papers (my own theory is that precisely four more essays *always*
> > remain, no matter the time of day or year--I've even turned in final
> grades
> > only to head back to my office barely ten minutes later and find the
> requisite
> > four under my door or perched on the edge of my desk, quite as if they
> > spontaneously generated there, "ex nihilo nihil fit" notwithstanding) or
> from
> > their gardens long enough to make this a lively forum.
> >
> > So, naturally, I've been thinking quite a bit about "limb dancing" lately,
> and
> > have collected bunches of little moments that I'm not quite sure what to
> do
> > with--maybe some of you can help me figure it out. Here are two--
> >
> > --We're in contract time here at College of DuPage. Bringing out the
> absolute
> > best in folks, as usual. One popular theory I've seen emerge and grow,
> mostly
> > unchallenged, on the faculty email is that the college's focus on
> technology
> > comes at the expense of teachers' salaries. Guess it probably breaks all
> sorts
> > of rules to talk about this stuff out loud, but I'll take the risk: even
> a
> > member of our bargaining team stood before the board to read a statement
> in
> > which he said, essentially (and I do have a copy of his remarks on my
> desktop,
> > but I won't make myself read them again), that since the various tech
> tools go
> > largely unused anyway, that money ought to be redirected into salaries.
> Well.
> > Then this morning I see an email in which someone asks, "would you rather
> have
> > excellent technology and so-so teachers, or so-so technology and excellent
> > teachers?" Both. I want both--excellent tools and excellent teachers to
> use
> > them with students. Turns out I can hardly even separate the two anymore.
> So,
> > I wonder--do others still encounter such entrenched resistance, *not* from
> > administration, but from fellow faculty who do not grasp and thus cannot
> value
> > the CAI efforts that surround them? Geez, suddenly I have some inkling of
> how
> > music and art teachers in the elementary school system must feel: when
> push
> > comes to shove what they do is too often considered superfluous.
> Listening to
> > Fred Kemp's CW keynote last year may have made my heart sing, but clearly
> I'm
> > not the one who most needed to listen. How best, then, to counter the
> > continuing misperceptions or undermining of CAI? My public objection, an
> email
> > suggesting that "solidarity" includes truly valuing each others efforts to
> use
> > tech teaching tools well, was met with only two replies: 1) "You spend a
> lot
> > of time online, doncha Kath?" (as in "poor thing") and 2) "I know you find
> real
> > community there, but it makes me feel all creepy and suspicious." Not
> > reassuring at all.
> >
> > --Attended a demo of a new web-based learning tool for students last week.
> > We'll be piloting the tool in our English classes in the fall. For the
> most
> > part, I was very enthusiastic: easy access, nice interface, intuitive
> > navigation, nothing to download, reasonable price. But, no synchronous
> > discussion tool. When I asked about that possibility in future versions,
> I was
> > told that the threaded discussion and the messaging *are* synchronous (and
> > indeed they are very fast, but they aren't really designed to support
> > synchronous discussion as most of us would picture it), and asked why I
> wanted
> > "chat" anyway. "Chat" being, of course, shorthand dismissal of the whole
> > idea. Chat couldn't be of instructional value. Chat rooms are for
> > teeny-boppers on AOL. Online conferences may be online, but they aren't
> > *really* conferences. Creepy and suspicious. Hmm. All of the same
> questions
> > as above, then, apply. As it stands, I can--with a little effort--win
> official
> > approval to use pretty much any tool I want to. But the *larger* sorts of
> > approval-- understanding, appreciation, and ability to coax others into
> joining
> > me in this great exploration--come much harder. How are others managing
> it? I
> > know I can't be the only one still ducking thorns on trails supposedly
> blazed
> > long ago.
> >
> > Kathy at C.O.D.
> >
> >
> > Cindy Wambeam wrote:
> >
> > > As the Ft. Worth Computers & Writing 2000 conference nears, we shift
> over
> > > to a preliminary discussion for the face-to-face Town Hall, "Dancing on
> the
> > > Limbs of Learning: Stories from Those Who Dare!"
> > >
> > > =======================================
> > > Town Hall Online, Part II, May 14 - 24, "Dancing on the Limbs of
> Learning"
> > >
> > > In his keynote address
> > > (http://english.ttu.edu/kemp/personal/works/cw99.keynote.htm ) at last
> > > year's C&W conference, Fred Kemp mentioned that if traditional
> educational
> > > methods are a kind of tree, there are teachers who will hug the trunk,
> and
> > > teachers who will go out on a limb to try out new strategies and
> > > technologies in the writing classroom. For this e-forum, we would like
> to
> > > hear the stories and discuss the experiences of "Those Who Dared" to
> > > innovate with computer and or Internet technologies with their classes.
> > >
> > > Chair: Kathy Fitch, College of DuPage
> > >
> > > Invited Participants:
> > >
> > > Eric Crump, NCTE
> > > Sally Henschel, Midwestern State University
> > > Corinna McLeod, PINTE Instructor, University of South Carolina
> > > Nancy Patterson, Michigan State University, and Portland Middle School
> > > Janet Sutherland, University of Bremen
> > >
> > > =======================================
> > >
> > > Our chair and participants have taken the time to develop narratives and
> > > post these to a web site:
> > > http://personal.kwom.com/Kafkaz/townhall2/index.htm (you are also
> invited
> > > to add your stories to the site)
> > >
> > > Please feel free to join in as several members of our community share
> their
> > > stories of innovation in the computers and composition field, and lead
> us
> > > in a
> > > discussion of the implications of their stories.
> > >
> > > Cindy
> > >
> > > ===================================================================
> > > Cindy Wambeam cwambeam@nmsu.edu
> > > English Department
> > > New Mexico State University
> > > Las Cruces http://web.nmsu.edu/~cwambeam
> > > ===================================================================
> > > Audiences expand the mythologies of a creator's world. (M. Groening)
> > >
> > > * Message sent from Online2K -
> http://www.furman.edu/~jinman/cw2k/elists/
> > > * Visit URL above to unsubscribe, read archives, and more!
> >
> > --
> > Kathy A.Fitch
> > Assistant Professor of English
> > College of DuPage
> > http://www.cod.edu
> > http://personal.kwom.com/Kafkaz/kfitch/
> > http://personal.kwom.com/Kafkaz/ptweb/
> >
> >
> > * Message sent from Online2K - http://www.furman.edu/~jinman/cw2k/elists/
> > * Visit URL above to unsubscribe, read archives, and more!
> >
>
> * Message sent from Online2K - http://www.furman.edu/~jinman/cw2k/elists/
> * Visit URL above to unsubscribe, read archives, and more!
>
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