GPACW 2007: Session 1

Attending GPACW today--might as well take my notes here.

Teresa Henning, "Preparing Students in the age of Distributed Work."
Nice contrast between Ford Era and Distributed Era.
Lists Spinnuzi's positive views of distributed work--more rhetorical skill needed.
Deleuze's list: wage fluctuation, deskilling, work is no longer centralized, distributed surveillance, "constant metastability punctuated by ludicrous challenges, competitions, and seminars."
Johnson-Eioloa: Symbolic-analytic worksers: materials (info and symbols), work products (reports,plans, proposals, videos), etc.
Literacy requirements: abstraction, system thinking, collaboration, computer proficiency.
Matches up symbolic-analytic work with rhetorical writing instruction. Strong connections here; good works cited page handed out; solid integration of scholarship. I wonder if the scholarship of distributed learning has taken into McLuhan's notions of job vs roles; distributed work seems likely to be a form of taking on a role.

John Nelson and Todd Quinn, "Writing Projects Under Glass: Librarians, Faculty, and Students Collaborating with Ongoing Writing Projects."
Todd functioned as information consultant for John's class and Dan Weinstein's classes in composition. Dan had groups of 5 working on wiki pages; John had students working with blogs. Todd acknowledges that this was a lot of work and that librarians cannot do this for everybody. Also suggested that wiki worked better than blogs; blogs too isolated (no RSS feed); being on the same wiki page = being on the same page (metaphorically as well as literally). Makes sense in another way; blog connotations for students are still often the personal reflection genre; wikis more obviously a work space. A bit more conversation with blogs; not so much personal interaction with wikis. RSS feed tracking essential for instructor and librarian; might need to consider an online reader that can be shared by class.

Phil Block, "The Online Writing Center and the Impersonality of Electrons."
Reflects on experiences as an online writing consultant. Strives for a movement from hypermediacy to immediacy, although does not invoke Bolter and Grusin. Lee-Ann Kastman-Breuch's work would be useful here. More problems than benefits, perhaps--lag time, processing time, meta-discussions, messenger window closes out, etc. Concludes with the possibility of free collaborative work tools outside a CMS that will be cross platform. Google Docs gets a plug.

Jade Faul & Nickie Kranz, "Computer-Mediated Communication Etiquette."
Context of netspeak in class; quickly changing conventions. Defining a discussion board as "informal" will likely result in informal language use. Could try to re-define "informal" as one strategy; seeking a middle ground--wants to be approachable, but also expects a greater level of academic or formal discourse.