Daniel Anderson is a professor of English at the University of North Carolina. He studies new media composing and instructional technology. He is also the Director of the Studio for Instructional Technology and English Studies and the Associate Chair of the Department of English and Comparative Literature.
This piece is a literacy narrative with a focus
on educational philosophies and the field of computers and writing. I
see computers and writing as a field that takes both of its focuses
seriously, a mixing field that embraces the technical (computers) and
the rhetorical (writing). This piece traces that mixing through Web
texts published in 1994, 1998, 2003, and 2009, as well as with some
class materials from 2010. But the piece also traces my educational
experiences, starting with childhood, so it is also a memoir; it's
personal and professional at the same time.
The composing process of the piece began with an impetus to capture
my experiences of the field of computers and writing. I knew I wanted to
think about these texts, so I sat down at my computer and turned on the
screen recorder. I opened up an image file, just to think visually for a
moment. I grabbed some music, choosing a band that had been playing on
Pandora earlier that day, and then selecting a random song from that
band on YouTube. While that song played, I played with the texts,
imagining what I might say about education and computers and writing.
When the song finished I had a roughly ten minute recording of an
interaction.
I then began the process of capturing that spontaneous session in a
form that might be clean enough to develop as a composition. Many times
I deleted sessions that weren't quite right. Time became relative as I
captured, recaptured, recaptured, and recaptured the screen, trying to
get it to perform the way I wanted. When I captured a session that was
reasonably clean, I would begin to script the voiceover. While scripting
the voiceover, I would realize I needed the screen to perform
differently, so I would go back and try to recapture a revised version
of the screen performance, and recapture, recapture, etc. The final
version of the piece was delivered live at the 2010 Computers and
Writing Conference, with me performing the voiceover. Here, I've
recorded a version of the voiceover and layered it over the screencast.
The last thirty seconds or so of the live performace features some
typing on screen that is not present in this version (Sources).
TRANSCRIPT (Note: there are a few variations between the video and the text below, as the transcript here reflects the live performance version of the project.)
So this is my memoir.
It's going to be pitched as a history of computers and writing. I'm
going to start just doodling here. And I think I'll also grab some
sound. I want to play some music. Like any history, this will be
partial. It covers certain times; and it's really just my perspective,
but it's good to lay these things out. Let me adjust this a little bit.
So I'll look backwards, but I hope the focus doesn't get too pixelated,
and I'm going to weave in some claims and questions as we go. I'm
playing with this image right here, just messing with what I want to say
with these random flows of material. Shapes. Layers. Words that launch
me into memory.
When I was about six I went to the Twelve Gates free school and this
was in 1968, '69, maybe, hippie school, and the only rule was that the
teachers couldn't tell you what to do. We wandered around downtown.
Hiding by hospital ramps. Asking coke truck drivers for samples.
Learning. But then I had to go to public school and this was in first
grade, my very first experience in public school, and the first thing I
did was say shit or some other word and had my mouth washed out with
soap.
My first question is personal. What one thing would you change about
education?
My computers and writing memories start with 1993. For that moment
there are two dimensions. One can be captured in an acronym: DIWE,
Daedalus Integrate Writing Environment and really the focus there is on
teaching with a LAN. But more important, I saw how DIWE had been built
by graduate students and faculty in a basement, driven by new faces,
formed in the bubble of what is possible when technology and teaching
converge.
So I'll toss out an observation: computers and writing is comfortable
being lead by new faces. And a question: Who are the new faces and what
can they tell us?
So, this is a piece from 1994 a time piece, if you will. It takes up
the second dimension to my early computers and writing memories,
hypertext. This is a hypercard project. Kind of a sad passing as I write
about it on the Web, but it leads to an affirmation. Computers and
writing is comfortable with tweak first, theorize later.
So, if we jump forward to 1998 we can see people talking about
notions like the cognitive dimensions of non-linear texts and now about
the democratizing potential of the Web.
Quick monday morning quarterback question: What do we make of these
claims now? And what new claims do we make about the human and the
machine?
And we also see in this piece the strong urge to make the early Web porous,
to make it writable, which brings us to another key element of computers
and writing, its do-it-yourself focus. Computers and writing is
interested in not only using but also building the writing tool.
So, my introduction to formalized education was rough. But I also had
some wonderful teachers. In second grade, on another first day in
another class, Mrs. Buchanon told me "stick to your guns" when you think
you're right. Looking past the ratty hair and backing the new kid, she
showed me that learning is about reinvention.
In computers and writing history this piece is 2003, and this is
multimedia taking root. This piece, this moment might best be seen
as a response to programs like imovie and the lowering of technical
hurdles. This is the prosumer push full throtle.
My best class ever was auto shop in high school. My teacher, Erwin
Schlaack, taught me to recognize the poetry in mechanical things. Lots
of hands on work, life lessons. Lots of fixing. So these
educational episodes (from soapy mouths to mechanical mentoring) lead me
to another question: What is the teaching philosophy of computers and
writing?
Computers and writing has been a place of experimentation. A place
where you can try something out. Who knows what will happen. I'm showing
a portfolio of work from a recent class. Every project should be a
revelation. It's okay not to know how to do something. It's okay to make
mistakes.
When I first went to college I brought my mexican mesh bag fully
stocked for the beach. Frisbee. Sandals. Sundries. Played percussion in
a band. When I took a second crack at university learning an English
Professor, Mike Fischer, taught me how to write about texts and ideas. I
thought I'd take on deconstruction. Felt like literature didn't dissolve
anything but generated being through insights and emotions. Thoughts too
deep for tears. Then I found the
transcendental in the sounds of Wallace Stevens.
Then I started teaching with computers and found transformation
in the bubble.
Here, my life memories merge with my recollections of the field. I
think of John Slatin who taught me the joys of technical work and the
poetry of people. We are the lab discipline of the core humanities, the
place where art, music, film, and word can be freely toyed with, where
found tools are poked and bent, reworked, refined, or tossed away, where
new tools are created in response to the material world. The river is
moving. OurField must be mixing.
We come to the connotational space still slick with linguistics. But I'm
talking about extending the beating in the veins and tracing it all the
way through software and symbol and sound and soundboard and keyboard.
I'm feeling still the need to push. We find in the connotational space
glowing image edges amid desktop under glass. We cast texts and songs
and lights and people. I'm rolling toward the final question of the
technopoet: O' do not ask . . . must we always manifesto? The question's
rhetorical. This moment is now part of the memoir. Should we use this
music? The question's rhetorical. How could we not? It's a part of me,
now part of the memoir.
This the twenty-third take of a live improvisation. Twenty three
takes among hundreds of unsaved instances coming and going like the
folding edge of time. This is me typing into the take. This is you
watching. This is me talking over the take. This is us listening. Me
clicking. This is me moving sound. Beating. This is us playing with the band,
imagining, reworking the twenty-third take of a ten minute moment.
I used to think that the prosumer agenda was important for students,
of course it is, but what computers and writing means to me is that the
prosumer is really all about teachers. I realize that. You don't create
the prosumer, you prosume. You don't study computers and writing, you
perform it. Must we always manifesto? Yes. The question is how now. Will
we see the word as material, akin to image, sound, and movement. Will we
see the faces, inventing anew the field. Will we build our own tools
focused on the tinkering and then zoom out to the theorizing. Will we bring our
hearts forward in philosophies that say don't watch your mouth. Watch
the bubble. Watch the bubble. And I'll type outloud.
Explosions in the Sky (2003). Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean,
Live in Austin Texas, October 31st, 2003. Retrieved May 1, 2010 from http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=Xbe8RKfaIjU
(If you have any trouble accessing any of these materials, please contact Daniel Anderson at iamdan@unc.edu.)
Over the course of the fall semester a group of people--undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty--have been working on an online journal. We want to create new mixings of readers, writers, texts, responses, teaching, and learning by collaboratively developing an online publication for undergraduate scholarship. Our initial group was awarded a curricular innovation grant through the Center for Faculty Excellence. We've put together a set of courses that will link assignments and activities with the journal. First year writing courses that participate offer insights into rhetorical concerns and composition pedagogy. Literature courses will feature sustained writing activities and professionalization opportunities. New media classes will extend the modes of review and presentation in helpful ways.
We have also recruited a core group of student editors and developers. We are working on a manifesto, for me a personal credo. I'd like the journal to bring an open source, collaborative mentality to the paper development process. I think of the boiled-down version of the response to the question so often put to the compositional arts: what do you teach? Reading and writing. So the credo is be both reader and writer. Participate by reading, responding, furthering the development of something started by another. If you bring a paper, read a paper. If you read something offer feedback, add a tag, leave your mark.
We're also taking the development of the associated technology to be an opportunity to experiment and teach. We're gathering a group with mixed skill levels. We're investigating and participating in the social and technical networks required to develop the project. We're thinking about how platforms and processes can emerge in terms of teaching approaches. Figuring out how social groups might be configured on- and off-line to participate in the project.
There still is much to do but it looks like we are fast approaching take off velocity.
Thanks for exploring my professional resources. Use the menus at the top to locate materials. There is some duplication and most things can be found in organized lists on my CV. You can find out more about some of my personal interests and get a window into my thinking about teaching and writing be looking over some of my blogs. Below I provide some samples to highlight a few things.
