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.
Anderson, Daniel. (1994). Not Maimed but Malted: Nodes, Texts, and Graphics in Freshmen Compositions. CWRL: Computers Writing, Rhetoric, and Literacy 1(1). Retrieved May 19, 2010 from http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/cwrl/v1n1/article1/notmaimedbutmalted. html
Anderson, Daniel. (1998). Hybrid://Literature/Cognition/Design.Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy 3(2). Retrieved May 19, 2010 from http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/3.2/binder.html?features/anderson/ index. html
Anderson, Daniel. (2003). Prosumer Approahes to New Media Composition: Consumption and Production in Continuum.Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy 8(1). Retrieved May 19, 2010 from http://endora.wide.msu.edu/8.1/binder2.html?coverweb/ anderson/index.html
Anderson, Daniel. (2009). Yes and Yes-and: Time in the Compshop. Currents in Electronic Literacy, John Slatin Memorial Issue. Retrieved May 19, 2010 from http://currents.dwrl.utexas.edu/2009/yes-and-yes-and-time-in- the- compshop
Cross, Zach. (2010). My Final Portfolio. Retrieved May 1, 2010 from http:// teachmix.com/ibranding/content/my-final-portfolio
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.)