Electronic Writing & Publishing

English 8121

11/26: Resources to check out

• Watchfire WebXACT: http://webxact.watchfire.com/
• Microsoft vides of accessibly case studies: http://www.microsoft.com/enable/casestudy/default.aspx
• Screen reader simulation: http://www.webaim.org/simulations/screenreader.php
• Blind Date Game (works with speech synthesis or without): http://rnibblinddate.nomensa.com/
• Vischeck offers two color for web site designers concern with making their sites usable to those who are color blind. The Vischeck tool stimulates how web sites look to people with various types of color blindness and the Daltonize tool is a color blind image correction algorithm. http://www.vischeck.com

MOO info:

• Login: http://moo.engl.ttu.edu:7000/ (note you must have JAVA and some firewalls can cause problems)
• Brief Guide to TTU MOO: http://english.ttu.edu/tc/moo/

Eley 10/2 Podcasting Lecture Announcement:

Here is information on Eley's lecture on 10/2. It should be fascinating and highly relevant to class. I hope you can make it!

[announcement posted to the English department listserv on 9/25 by Lee Anne Richardson]

The Department of English Speakers Series is sponsoring a lecture this coming Tuesday, October 2, at 2:00. Stephen Eley will speak on the topic of "Podcasting in Education and Publishing."

Stephen Eley is the publisher of the short-story science fiction podcast "Escape Pod," which has had short stories by Hugo winners, and he has earned a good reputation locally and nationally for podcasting. NPR’s program “Day to Day” featured Eley in a report on fiction podcasters, which you can access at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5182721

The lecture will be held in the GSU Welcome Center, located in room 134 in Alumni Hall.

Although you may never have entered Alumni Hall, you’ve certainly seen it. It is at the corner of Gilmer and Courtland Streets—across from Hurt Park; next door to M Deck parking; kitty-corner from Sparks Hall. The -easiest- way to get to Alumni Hall from GCB: go out the door of GCB onto Peachtree Center, walk down to Gilmer (the first street) and make a right; when you get to Courtland (the first street), Alumni Hall will be on the far side of the street on your left. Once you go in, the Welcome Center is easy to find. It is, after all, a Welcome Center. The -most direct- route is to walk through the plaza to Courtland street, and then make a left to walk down just past Gilmer. Alumni Hall will be on the right.

Class Discussion Prompts for 9/4

Here are the questions and issues for our online class discussion that is replacing today’s class. Please use our class time tonight (9/4) to write a 30 minute (or so) response to one of these issues or questions and post it to the forum by noon tomorrow (9/5). Then respond to one of the reading responses or one of these 30 minute class discussion responses from one (or more) of your peers (or me) by next class (and don’t forget, of course, to also post your reading response for next class).

• What do you think of Bolter’s suggestion that we are living in a visual culture?
• Do you agree with Bolter’s argument of remediation?
• Bolter discusses in several places how the visual is replacing the textual. He also discusses how hypertext and other forms of electronic writing have more in common with orality than text (print).  How do you see the three, orality, text (print), and visual, working in hypertext and other forms of electronic writing? Which is or should be favored? How does Bolter’s argument hold up six years later with the changes online and elsewhere?
• Here’s a big question: what is writing? What can we count as writing and what shouldn’t count? For example, Bolter argues that reorganizing files on our computer counts as writing (page 62). Do you agree? How have computers, hypertexts, other forms of electronic writing impacted our concepts of what counts or doesn’t count as writing? Or have these new media and technologies made no difference?
• Bolter states, “The electronic literary forms constitute perhaps the most important and visible avant-garde in our contemporary, and otherwise conservative, literary culture” (122). Do you agree? Why or why not?
• Bolter discuses the library and changes to the library due to these new electronic forms of writing. What impacts do you see the web and other forms of electronic writing having on the libraries of today and the future? Do you see a day with libraries without print books? Or a day without brick-and-mortar libraries? Or something else entirely?
• Related, perhaps to the last question: Coover discusses the end of book. Is this the beginning of the end of print book? Do you see electronic writing and other new media taking over the place books once had? What do you think the future will hold for print books and various form of electronic writing and new media (like say e-books, podcasts, and so on)?
• Analyze the hypertext(s) you choose to read applying concepts from chapter 7, such as hyperbaton, contradictions, frames, repetition, paths and story lines, role of reader as author, role of author, fixity, displacement, ornamentation, old and new, authority, and use of visuals.

Our class meeting on 9/4 has been cancelled!

(The text here is a copy of an email I sent the morning of 9/4)

I am canceling our class meeting tonight due to illness. However, since the readings cover such great material and since we only meet once a week, I do not want to lose a full class. So instead of meeting with a sick professor, I thought we would have an online discussion about some of the key concepts from the readings. By 4 pm this afternoon I will post some key questions and issues. Please use our class time tonight to write a 30 minute (or so) response to one of these issues or questions and post it to the forum by noon tomorrow. You are still responsible for your normal reading response today. Then respond to one of the reading responses or one of these 30 minute class discussion responses from one (or more) of your peers (or me) by next class (and don’t forget, of course, to also post your reading response for next class). I will also do this, so we can have the voices of everyone in class in this discussion. This way we will still have a rich discussion of the readings and issues for this week, which we can easily blend into our class next week.

Don’t forget your seminar presentation email is due today (by midnight). I’ll get back to you over the next few days about this and put the new schedule with these presentations online by next class.

Also, if any of you are on campus today I’d greatly appreciate it if you could run over and put a sign on the classroom door saying class has been cancelled and to check emails for more information. Feel free to reply to us all to let us know that you have done this, so several of you don’t needlessly make the trek over.  I’d also appreciate it if each of you could let me know that you received this email and know that the class meeting is cancelled for today.

Let me now if you have any questions and have a good day!