lecture1 san sebastian 2007: internet, electronic genre and writing

Internet, electronic genre, and writing

Multiliteracies and the changing landscape of communication when we are the arbiters of what gets published

Lecture 1 in Writing in a Multiliterate Flat WorldMultiliterate approaches to writing and collaboration through social networking

Vance Stevens, Petroleum InstituteAbu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

XXVI Summer Courses of the University of the Basque CountrySan Sebastian, Spain, 11th-13th July 2007

July 11, 2007 Vance Stevens in San Sebastian Spain

2

Perspective: Three Lectures• Lecture 1 – an explication of Web 2.0 and multiliteracy,

– Impact of Web 2.0 on the nature of learning in general, – and on writing in particular.

• Lecture 2 - writing and collaborating online– Motivation and the need to communicate a point, – The importance of an audience– The nature of that audience, both from the point of view of

• collaborating 'writers' • and commenters on their blogs.

• Lecture 3 - more technical. – Taking the concepts laid out in the first two talks, how do we do it? – Writingmatrix and what we have learned about aggregation and tagging– Similar work by Barbara Dieu, Rudolf Amman, and Aaron Campbell on

http://www.dekita.org – Tricks of newsmastering as shown me by Robin Good

http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/ppot/2007/basque1.htm

http://www.dekita.org/


3

Course Components

• A portal at– http://www.vancestevens.com/writing.htm – Mirrored at:

http://www.prof2000.pt/users/vstevens/writing.htm

• A Moodle here– http://www.opensource.idv.tw/moodle/course/view.php?id=46

– Please register!The key is thewebisflatIntroduce yourself

– Please take the survey at the Moodle– Add your picture to the Frappr map


4

Web 2.0 and MultiliteracyNew-age Expectations for Writing

• Several analogical literacy practices have migrated to Internet. Now common genres of writing are – Emails and instant messages– Wikis and blogs, – Web pages, and more.

• As we increasingly read on screen and write with keyboard and mouse, we are faced with new expectations– to understand, find, analyse, critique, organize, and assimilate

information from numerous other media besides. – to create and communicate appropriately in numerous and often only

just emerging media genres.

• From Shift Happens: http://www.glumbert.com/media/shift – We are training peole for jobs that haven’t been invented yet 4:16– Using technologiies that haven’t been developed yet 4:07

http://www.glumbert.com/media/shift


5

Writing in the New Age

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE&eurl=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE&eurl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE&eurl=


6

Multiliteracies: Raising new-age questions

• New questions– How has Internet changed literacy practices? – Which are the most relevant electronic genres in L2

learning in general, and writing in particular – How can we use them?

• I address these questions and the multiliteracy issues involved in an online course I teach annually for the TESOL Certificate Program: Principles and Practices of Online Teachinghttp://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/ppot/portal2007.htm

http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/ppot/portal2007.htm

http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/ppot/portal2007.htm


7

TALO Swap Meet

http://talo.wikispaces.com/swapmeet07a

A good example of online collaboration through a wiki




8

Basic Precepts: Prensky• Twitch

generation• Digital

natives – digital immigrants

• Enrage me or engage me


9

Basic Precepts: Larry Lessig

• The 20th century was the only read-only century in human history– Totalitarian– Centralizing– Controlling

• The 21st is the return to read-write

http://www.wizards-of-os.org/programm/panels/authorship_amp_culture/keynote_the_read_write_society.html


10

Read-write Web: Conversations• In most good web sites today,

there are numerous ways you can interact.– leave a comment, – take a poll, – rate the site, – review it

• use a service that tells you who else is on the site at the same time you are

http://www.cluetrain.com/book/index.html


11

Sean FitzGerald observed• teachers are into

– email,– blogs, – del.icio.us ...

• students are into – texting, – IM– MySpaces

Unconference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference


12

Multiliteracies (per Selber)• Functional - use technology fluidly,

to the point where you use it comfortably, seamlessly, and control it rather than it controls you,

• Rhetorical - you know how to communicate with others about how you use, develop, and repair technology

• Critical - you are able to understand and articulate the many impacts of technology on our lives and those of others in other walks of life and economic strata


13

Example multiliteracies• RSS in very simple terms (video by Lee and

Sachi LeFever) http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english

• My Blip.TV Antwerp presentation • Terry Freedman's

(2004-2007) project Coming of Age– eBook– Podcast– RSS feed

http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english


14

Video• Host videos• give you script to

embed players in your blogs and web pages

• Some services– blip.tv, – Google Video– YouTube

http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/ppot/2006antwerp/2006update.htm


15

Web 2.0

• Tim Berners-Lee: “Web 2.0 is, of course, a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along."

• trend on the Internet for tools to be created and shared for free at web sites which – allow users to create web artifacts – upload their own files – produce web artifacts which might be even hosted on

the site, seemingly forever


16

Writing on the Internet

• Writing

• Internet– Print publishing– Vs. Internet publishing

• The Long Tail


17

Digital Storytelling

• http://www.storycenter.org/index1.html

• http://electronicportfolios.com/digistory/

• Wesley Fryer– http://www.speedofcreativity.org/category/edte

ch/digitalstorytelling/– http://teachdigital.pbwiki.com/digitalstorytelling

http://www.storycenter.org/index1.html

http://electronicportfolios.com/digistory/

http://www.speedofcreativity.org/category/edtech/digitalstorytelling/

http://www.speedofcreativity.org/category/edtech/digitalstorytelling/


18

Webpresence of ‘You’

• Time's Person of the Year: You.Time Magazine, Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2006http://tinyurl.com/3chjkb

• YOU can– create a blog– start a wiki– post photos on Flickr– create freely accessible and creative online

presentations with those photos or with your PowerPoint slides.


19

YOU and others: Collaboration

• Share via creative commons, non-commercial, share and share alike, license (another significant break from traditional publishing).

• Collaborate on – spreadsheets to manipulate data necessary to your work– charts made in Gliffy – concept mapping tool

• talk with collaborators in real time, not just text chat• record your conversations using free tools (like audacity,

and virtual audio cables which you need to get both sides of a Skype conversation, or use Powergamo)

• Manipulate and embed recordings that others have made


20

What do you lose? Quality?Encyclopedia or Wikipedia

• currency is better with Wikipedia• scope (something like 750,000 articles in

Wikipedi• Retrieval - words in those articles are machine-

searchable vs. relatively crude index. • integrity and bias of that information?

– article in Nature– Heavy metal umlaut

http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/umlaut.html


21

Conversations in Web textInterchanging roles of readers and writers

• reading and writing resemble conversations with – Text– Thought– wording, playing with words– anticipating an audience reaction, a real or

imaginary one.

• Wikipedia• Blogs


22

For next time (tomorrow)

• Start a blog if you don’t have one already– http://www.vancestevens.com/blogs.htm – http://www.homestead.com/prosites-

vstevens/files/efi/blogger_tutorial.htm

• Create a post– TAG the post thewebisflat

Tomorrow, we’ll learn how to find and what to do with your tagged posts

See you tomorrow

Vance Stevens

http://www.vancestevens.com/vance.htm

lecture1 san sebastian 2007: internet, electronic genre and writing

Technology