Writing Studies & the University Libraries

The task for this week? Find and clean up all those digital profiles that are lurking out there on the Internet. Chances are, you haven't ever really given it much thought, but you might have as many as twenty profiles collecting cobwebs in cyberspace. When someone finds you, do you want them to see outdated photos, website information, marital status, or job status? Heck no! Not only would that be unprofessional, but it might lead to some pretty awkward conversations.

Read more: http://teachingcollegemath.com/?p=1881

image by aliwest44

Posted by katep at 8:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Write or Wrong: Does Technology Benefit the Writing Process?
First Year Writing students at the U of M reflect on successful academic writing in the age of new media
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/grif0167/write_or%20wrong/

Posted by katep at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 19-23 is the first International Open Access Week.
Open Access is an idea, a movement, and an approach to distributing information and research. Open Access publications make their contents freely available online to all.

The University of Minnesota Libraries are marking Open Access Week with a public awareness campaign. Celebrate with us!

Posters
You will soon see orangey-yellow Open Access posters all over campus. They are aimed at students, researchers, creators, soon-to-be graduates, and everyone else, and are intended to get people thinking about how open access might affect them personally.
If you spot one of these posters out in the wild, let us know - or better yet, snap a quick picture! - we'll be collecting them to share with others celebrating Open Access Week around the world.

Visit the Open Access Week website
Watch Open Access 101 and "Voices of Open Access" videos; learn some myths about open access; read "Piled Higher and Deeper" comics, and more.

http://www.lib.umn.edu/scholcom/openaccessweek.phtml

Posted by katep at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We would all agree that we live in an Information Age. In fact it is a Too-Much Information Age. How are our skills for dealing with information going to need to change? And what skills do we need to be teaching students to deal with this?

Should we be teaching social media? Should we be teaching Twitter Literacies? Should we be teaching students to dip into the flow of information or how to be an information nomad?

Here are a couple things from Howard Rheingold who teaches Participatory Media/Collective Action at UC Berkeley's School of Information, Digital Journalism at Stanford University.

Social Media Classroom: http://socialmediaclassroom.com/

Here is a 40 minute presentation on teaching 21st century literacies. He talks about changes he made to his college courses.

Howard Rheingold's 21st century literacies:

* Attention- knowing how to focus and how to divide your attention without losing the ability to concentrate. It's more than multitasking; it's learning how to exercise attention.
* Participation- particularly the more constructive modes of participation that are useful to others
* Collaboration- being ready to organize together, and enable a collective response to emerge
* Critical consumption-aka "crap detection" the ability to spot bad info from good.
* Network awareness- the combination of reputation, social capital, "presentation of self" and other sensitivity to individual positioning within the network collective.

Literacies = skills + community

Now I just have to find some time to read more....

Posted by katep at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Diaz, Veronica, Tracy Mitrano, and Kathy Christoph. "Copyright, Fair Use, and Teaching and Learning Innovation in a Web 2.0 World" (Research Bulletin, Issue 15). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2009, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

"This ECAR research bulletin reviews some of the basic tenets of copyright in the digital millennium. Specifically, it discusses the ways in which copyright law, fair use provisions, and the TEACH Act interact with today's teaching and learning, especially the use of Web 2.0 tools by both faculty members and students."

Note: You may be asked to login but the University of Minnesota is a subscribing organization.

Posted by katep at 2:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What skills do we need to teach students to be both consumers and producers? Seems like the perfect intersection of information literacy and writing:

• judgement
• appropriation
• play to problem solve
• transmedia navigation
• collective intelligence
• visualization
• multitasking

Posted by katep at 8:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I have been reading a little bit about what might be next for blogs....have you used them in your teaching? Any plans to?

The comments in this post are very good...a little mind bending perhaps...http://www.steverubel.com/blogs-are-out-of-beta-but-bloggers-are-always

Posted by katep at 2:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Have you heard of how Google will be moving into the U of M? Here are some Q/As from the OIT site:

Why is the University moving towards using Google Apps?
Partnering with Google will give University students, faculty, and staff access to a suite of state-of-the art communication and collaboration tools that will enhance their ability to work together. In addition to increased productivity opportunities, Google Apps also will allow the University to save costs in the long run by reducing the need to buy and support software, hardware, and storage to maintain our own independent e-mail service.

What applications will be available?
The University will use the Google Apps for Education Edition, which includes the following applications:

* Gmail (e-mail)
* Google Docs (word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations)
* Google Calendar
* Google Talk (instant messaging)

Keep in mind that the project team still is investigating whether all of these applications will be available in the University Google space.

Read more at: http://www.oit.umn.edu/google-initiative/

Posted by katep at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I saw this on the Presentation Zen blog I read and wanted to share it. I think it is a great example of digital writing--of course there was probably a team of writers working on it. I wonder if this could be adapted to be a digital writing assignment....talk about the importance of word selection and order. Also this simple use of animation and speech is very effective in its simplicity.

Posted by katep at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)