HU520 The Rhetorics of a Print/Digital Culture

Online Introductions

-- Start log: Monday, November 30, 1998 3:04:16 pm Isle of the Net time --

Jenny says,

"I am a first year PhD student and a first time resident in the great state of Michigan. One of my primary interests is in the way electronic technology is changing the way people 'read' and 'write'. I recently completed my Master's thesis on how hypertext and multimedia in particular are altering what it means to be literate. For a case study I looked at Outside Online's website relating to the climbing disaster on Mt. Everest in 1996 and Jon Krakauer's print book about it called _Into Thin Air_. I explored how illustrations, audio, video, background patterns, navigation structures, and on-line discussions are affecting the way people understand the events on Everest. I also looked at how electronic discussion groups influence how an author's authority can be challenged or reinforced in this forum. For the future, I would like to investigate how these technological changes can be used to teach a broadened notion of composition."

PEricsson says,

"Sorry that I sent an introduction that was unfinished. Well, for the last 12 of those 17 years I was teaching in an environment in which use of digital technology was mandated. So, I started being interested by mandate. By 1994, my students were creating Web pages as part of composition classes. I think of hypermedia as part of the creation of texts--part of composition. Secondly, I think our students are coming to us with very different technologies--different knowledges--that we don't acknowledge or understand. I think that the print/digital investigations in this class will help me discover more about what they might know and help me discover more about what they know. I'm also very interested in assessment. I wasn't interested in assessment because I wanted to be. It was forced on me and my first reactions (and still much of my reaction) were angry ones. I think our attempts at assessing what we can do, what we have done, and how we can improve what we do are impossible without a better understanding of who our students are and what kinds of abilities/knowledges they are coming to us with. And unless we understand all of this print/digital stuff better, we are going to be even worse at assessment than we are right now. And I think we're pretty pathetic at it now. Because of this interest, I am thinking of taking a look at what ETS is doing with assessment in a digital form. I took the GRE's online. I can't believe that the online version can be equal (??) to the paper form because of way it's porgrammed. So I'm interested in that, as well as in how testing companies are looking forward to assessing digital literacies."

Kathryn says,

"I'm interested in this course partly because it will be an introduction for me to issues that arise out of concerns about print and digital cultures. More specifically, I am interested in poetry as it moves from print to digital forms. This is partly because when I first started my masters program I was focused on creative writing and writing and studying poetry. I feel that I've lost this interest as I've focused on composition and literacy and I would like to return to it. The difference is that now I'm interested in looking at how the attention to form in print-based poetry has changed or not changed as poetry becomes presented and created in digital forms. "

Maura says,

"This course seems like it will bring together several things I really love! Since I'm not exactly a spring chicken, I seem to have accumulated lots of experiences--textbook editor (when we didn't have computers in our individual cubicles and worked on things like page design in addition to editing concerns), technical editing (working for one entire year on a huge project that focused on the wonders of sludge), science writing--especially medical and biological areas, and science editing. I am especially interested in visual thinking and in cartography and mapping of all sorts. In a previous life I was pursuing a PhD in literature (19th and 20th century Irish and American) where my main interest was in the way the metaphor creates visually certain things for certain readers and fictional characters in novels and on stage. I'm also very interested in literacy theories, having directed a writing center for 12 years, and in the visual thinking of some students with some kinds of learning disabilities. I think that for my project I'm inclined to investigate something that has to do with imaging systems and MAYBE medicine or science writing. I want to learn more about the way that one can represent information visually and in layers and how that kind of visual representation is produced and read differently in different cultures. I guess that is about it for now."

LindaSigel says,

"Hi! The name's Linda Sigel. I'm a first term MS student in RTC. I'm taking HU520 because I'm hoping to study, among other things, how technology (this digital culture of ours) has affected the tradition of oral history. Learning how we've changed from an illiterate people to a literate culture to a print culture and now to the highly electronic/digital culture that we seem to be fascinates me."

Dawn says,

"I am a PhD student at MTU. My interest in print-digital culture stems from my interest in visual representation/communication and teaching in a computer assisted classrooms. Currently I'm working on a project to create two web sites for NASA Tech Briefs-- Electronic Tech Briefs and Photonics Tech Briefs. I am particularily interested in studying and using hypertext as an educational tool. I see digital literacy as an increasingly political aspect of education. And I am particularily interested in how marginalized peoples in the classroom react and interact with technology. "

magda says,

"Hi. I'm Magda, a PhD student in Rhetoric and Communication here at Michigan Tech. The question that most fascinates me is the (re)presentation of self and other. This question has always interested me because I grew up at the intersection of different cultures and languages (in the Southwest of Germany close to the Swiss and French and Austrian border; a Protestant in a Catholic region; a speaker of a non-official dialect, etc.) and have always been intrigued by the ways we construct ourselves and others, and how we are constructed by them through the "languages" we speak. Another interest of mine and one which was radically renewed when I first came to the US after having lived and taught in Europe, is the ways in which we use/abuse technology. I am still struck by the differences in attitudes toward digital technology in the US and Europe. So I'd say I'm interested in anything related to the area(s) circumscribed by the terms identity * culture/language * communication/dialog/exchange * and technology (the ways in which technology ties into and influences these other terms/actions/phenomena."

PEricsson thinks this is hard to read, but this is all pretty interesting.

PEricsson Guest says, "Magda--how are the US and Europe different as far as technology attitudes are concerned?"

Diane says,

"I'm Diane, I work in the Design/Publications department here at Tech, and I've been out of the academic circle for over a dozen years, working as a graphic designer. I am interested in expanding my understanding of communication processes to include the content of the communication as well as the visual presentation of it."

Powers says, "Powers - ancienne professeur - I have taught at Tech for many years, generally in literature and in composition, more particularly in American literature and in recent years in print and literature. Over the past two or three years I have presented five or six papers having to do with print, literature, and art, and I am now reworking those papers either as one long paper or as a small book. I am also unsophisticated in web use and in electronic classroom work, and I look forward to that learning."

Who says,

"Hi!I am in fact Lisa Valdez, a masters student. I have been observing print, particularly in its visual forms for many years, even when I was a little kid. The history of print is very interesting to me, and now the very recent history of the digital culture. Cross-cultural stuff like Magda is talking about is pretty interesting too. "

tatiana says,

"My name is Tatiana Shabelnik. Originally I am from Belarus or Belarussia (former Soviet Union), came to United Stated in 1994 as an exchange scholar to study Library and Information Science at Louisiana State University. My one year exchange program was extended to 3 years of graduate school: I managed to get a scholarship for two years from LSU, which gave me an opportunity to get my Master's Degree in Library and Information Science as well as Advanced Certificate in the same area. Before coming to United States, I taught for five years at the Department of Librarianship at the Belarussian University of Culture. As for my education in Belarus, I went to the Belarussian University of Culture, the Department of Library and Information Science.Before coming to US I had very limited knowledge of computers. While doing my graduate studies, I got interested in computers, in particular, with the development of the Internet, in Web technologies, Web publishing, hypertext, digital culture, graphic design. Certainly as an information specialist, I am very interested in information technologies, the influence of information technologies on information retrieval. On my current job as a Web team manager, I have to deal with the issues of Web design on the daily bacis. Thus, my interest as well as the job brought me to the idea to take this class. It will be very interesting to learn about the history of print, about all the developments in this area. Particularly I am interested in issues of digital print. "

LindaSigel says,

"I think I should also admit that I have a lot to learn about the theories to which so many of you have casually referring. For example, just what IS a Social Constructionist? What does it mean to be determanistic? I'm eager to read Walter Ong's book so that I may catch up on some of the terminology being used here."

-- End log: Monday, November 30, 1998 3:25:14 pm Isle of the Net time --