An article in the Minnesota Daily about the University's National Day on Writing participation features quotes from Writing Studies' Heather Mendygral, Tim Gustafson, and Tim Dougherty.
Read it here: University's Center on Writing hosts first National Day on Writing
Bernadette Longo, was recently interviewed for a story in the Daily about how University faculty are using Facebook, a social networking site.
Faculty frequently use Facebook for networking, but not many have brought the site into the classroom. Associate Professor Bernadette Longo, who teaches in the Department of Writing Studies, is an exception. This semester, she integrated a Facebook group into her Information Design class and asked her students to join.
The group, called “First Step Initiative,” is centered around an organization by the same name, which works with women entrepreneurs in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The group has 109 members globally. Longo’s students are able to share information with people around the world via Facebook, but the site’s other opportunities are still unknown, Longo said. Since Facebook is still relatively young, teachers are still figuring out how it can be used to educate students, Longo said. “Who doesn’t love Facebook?” she said. “We don’t exactly know yet the full potential. It seems like it has a good structure for working with people in the whole world.”
Read the full article: http://www.mndaily.com/print/50589
Professor and Chair, Laura Gurak, was recently interviewed for a story in the Star Tribune about words that haven't kept up with evolving technology.
"We press buttons to make a phone call, yet we still call it "dialing" a number.... It's similar to a concept called "semantic bleaching" in the linguistic world.
"What they mean is that the original concept gets bleached out from its original meaning.... The word is rooted in a literal meaning, and that's the way we become used to describing it. So when the technology changes and automates some of that or takes it away from some of the hands-on experience, those phrases or words become metaphoric."
Read the full article: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/38828717.html
Associate Professor John Logie was recently interviewed by KARE 11 for a story about free speech and readers' comments on websites.
"Polite society depends on people not necessarily saying everything that pops into their heads," says professor John Logie, who studies the internet at the University of Minnesota.
Logie notes there's no easy solution for dealing with such rhetoric.
"I'm torn," he says. "On the one hand, there's the sort-of libertarian impulse to say, 'The more discourse, the better.' On the other hand, I wouldn't return to a site that is filled with that kind-of rhetoric.
Anonymity may be one reason people behave this way, although Logie argues it's just the perception of anonymity. Powerful search engines make it easier to uncover commenters' identities."
Read the full article and watch the video at kare11.com.
Prof. and Chair Laura Gurak was recently interviewed for a story about teens and cell phone use.
Teen Tech Experiment: Can teens survive without their cell phones?
The history of the Boys and Girls Clubs goes back about 150 years. ... "I don't
know what they're going to do with their time," says Laura Gurak, a professor at
the University of Minnesota. ... "They're increasingly mobile, they increasingly
want immediate communication and they want to use multi-media technologies,"
says the U of M's Christine Greenhow.
KARE - TV
To view: http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=524397&catid=2
Professor Carol Berkenkotter was featured in the latest issue of "UWomen," a special section in the Minnesota Women's Press.
The University's Writing Initiative was recently featured in an article in the Washington Post. Balancing Academic Tradition and Skills Employers Demand
Radiohead ushers in a new era of music distribution
Broadcast: Midmorning, 10/12/2007, 9:06 a.m.
The recording industry may have won a victory when a Duluth woman was found guilty of illegally downloading music, but critics say the record companies are clueless when it comes to the future of music distribution. Radiohead's new album may be a sign of things to come.
Guests
John Logie: Associate professor in the department of writing studies at the University of Minnesota, and author of "Peers, Pirates, and Persuasion: Rhetoric in the Peer-to-Peer Debates."
Jim DeRogatis: Pop music critic at the Chicago Sun Times and co-host of Sound Opinions.
Cara Duckworth: Director of communications at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Listen at http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/10/12/midmorning1/
Writ 3562W was recently featured in an article about business writing skills on MinnPost.com.
Email 101: Shouldn't the generation raised on email know how to write one? Employers, colleges offering classes
Read the Minnesota Daily feature on the nearly $1 million grant the University received from the Bush Foundation. The grant will fund a Writing Enriched Curriculum program to ensure all students have writing-enriched courses at the University.
The MN Daily recently featured a story on the Department of Writing Studies, Center for Writing, and the University's new first year writing curriculum.
Laura Gurak, Chair of the Department of Writing Studies, was interviewed yesterday for a WCCO "Good Question" piece on the reliability of W ikipedia. The story can be viewed online at wcco.com.
Mary Lay Schuster was interviewed last Friday for a WCCO TV piece on communication between women and men. If you'd like to see it, go to http://wcco.com/video and search for "Women Complain: 'Men Don't Listen,' Could It Be 'Yes Dear' Syndrome?" dated 11/10/2006.