My Second Annotated Bibliography

Barrios, Barclay. “Reimaging writing program web sites as pedagogical tools” Computers and Composition v.12 i1, March 2004. 73-87

Barrios examines the Rutgers Writing Program web site as a model of a central pedagogical tool for writing programs in general. The web site was designed in the context of what Selfe identified as an “agenda of technological literacy.”

Brooks, Kevin. “Reading, Writing, and Teaching Creative Hypertext: A Genre-Based Pedagogy” Pedagogy v2 n3, 2002. 337-356

Brooks argues for a pedagogical approach to slowly integrating teachers and students into hypertext through a multi-genre approach.

Gresham, Morgan. “The new frontier: conquering the World Wide Web by mule” Computers and Composition v16 i3, 1999. 395-407

Gresham discusses how using html in the classroom can shift student priorities from writing to coding. She discusses ways to help students balance these priorities.

Harris, Pamela C.; Harris, Michael H.; Hannah, Stan A. “Confronting Hypertext: Exploring Divergent Responses to Digital Coursework” The Internet and Higher Education v1 n1, 1998. 45-57

This is a study of courses that are completely based on hypertext instruction delivered over the internet and how students react to it.

Johnson-Eilola, Johndan; Kimme Hea, Amy C. “After hypertext: Other ideas” Computers and Composition v20 i4, December 2003. 415-425

Johnson-Eilola and Kimme Hea discuss the history of hypertext in three tropes: hypertext as kinship, hypertext as battlefield, and hypertext as rhizome. They use these tropes to discuss hypertext practices. They call hypertext a “heuristic for thinking through our relationships to technology, literacy, and one another.”

Mauriello, Nicholas; Pagnucci, Gian S.; Winner, Tammy. “Reading between the code: the teaching of HTML and the displacement of writing instruction” Computers and Composition v16 i3, 1999. 409-419

These authors discuss the ways pedagogy in the composition classroom and policies in the department need to change as html is assimilated into the classroom. The reason is that writing is no longer the sole focus. HTML is like a new language and you also cannot assume students have all the necessary skills at using technology. So we no longer just teach writing; we teach writing, a second language, and technology skills.

Rea, Alan; White, Doug. “The changing nature of writing: prose or code in the classroom” Computers and Composition v16 i3, 1999. 421-436

Rea and White focus on how to evaluate the new styles of writing that come as a result of html and multimedia. They list several new issues that must be considered in evaluation, such as: contextualized hyperlinks, navigability, color schemes, and image, audio, and video integration.

Rice, Jeff. “Writing about cool: Teaching hypertext as juxtaposition” Computers and Composition v20 i3, September 2003. 221-236

Rice discusses how events in the fields of writing, technology and cultural studies provide a model for electronic research and influence writing in a networked writing classroom. Then he discusses how students using hypertext can learn to write about cool, as well as write cool themselves!

Watkins Jr., James Ray. “Hypertextual border crossing: students and teachers, texts and contexts” Computers and Composition v16 i3, 1999. 383-394

Watkins Jr. explores the actual creation of a collaborative hypertext in a first year composition course called E.A.R.

Wickliff, Greg; Yancey, Kathleen Blake. “The perils of creating a class Web site: it was the best of times, it was the…” Computers and Composition v18 i2, 2001. 177-186

The authors study junior-level undergrads who are skilled at printed academic writing as they are asked to author a web site. The study suggests that these skilled writers perform much like basic writers as they try to acquire the new visual and technological literacy skills of the web.

Progress report on my Hypertext project

Originally, I was assuming that this project would solely focus on pedagogy that incorporates the reading and discussion of hypertext in the writing classroom. I have found all kinds of information on that, as well as being inspired by some of our class discussions. But I have also been led to some information regarding class assignments that require students to develop hypertext of their own.

That was something I hadn't considered, which seems strange considering that we are allowed to create this project as a series of hypertextual links. Visual rhetoric is also being cited as integral to this type of study. That was put into greater context for me after Allison's book review.

I found this type of hypertextual assignment interesting because of the inevitableness that students must end up creating something that does not allow for one privileged interpretation. The assignments that I looked at took a possible topic/question, then asked students to create a hypertext with links to everything they could discover that related to the topic. Each web page had to deal with one idea. After all the raw data was collected, the students (a collaborative project) got together and discovered patterns in the information. Using those patterns, the students then used all the skills in visual rhetoric that they had learned in the class to create a complete hypertext linking these patterns into cohesive "arguments".

I haven't found a ton on this assignment usage of hypertext, so I'm not sure how much will be incorporated into my project. I wonder, though, how I might be able to use this knowledge even though I am not in a high-technology classroom. How much can I expect my students to already have in computer knowledge? How much can I expect them to do out of the classroom? How adept am I at the technology that I might create an appropriate assignment for my class? I'm thinking I should attempt the project myself before I ask any student to do it.

Right now, it is looking like my project will go into the reading and interpretation of hypertext, the use of hypertext assignments for students, the incorporation of visual rhetoric and how all this can fit into a pedagogy. I'm not sure if this is too much. Feel free to make your own comments and suggestions. I could use the advice!

My Annotated Bibliography

Dwight, Jim and Garrison, Jim. "A Manifesto for Instructional Technology: Hyperpedagogy" Teachers College Record v105 n5, June 2003. 699-728

Dwight and Garrison address the assumption in current pedagogy that suggests text within classroom curriculum must have a beginning and a foreseen ending. They analyze postructuralism, which rejects the notion of a fixed ending and apply it to hypertext; then, further, to hyperpedagogy.

Lawless, Elaine J. "Ars Rhetorica en Communitas: Reclaiming the Voice of Passionate Expression in Electronic Writing" Rhetoric Review v16 n2, Spring 1998. 310-326

Lawless discusses the classroom use of technology (e-mail, websites, hypertext archives for class listservs) and the need for classroom community, encouraging teachers to use technology to bring the passion of speech back into writing.

Anson, Chris M. "Distant Voices: Teaching and Writing in a Culture of Technology" College English v61 n3, January 1999. 261-280

Anson discusses the development of teaching and responding to student writing in the context of virtual interaction (multimedia technology, e-mail, WWW) and distance education.

Lanham, Richard A. "The Electronic Word: Literary Study and the Digital Revolution" New Literary History v20 n2, Winter 1989. 265-290

Lanham discusses many of the ways that the interactivity of electronic text will change how people will view and respond to literature, going into things like the ability to manipulate text, add or subtract from text, reformat, dynamic vs. static literature....

Selfe, Cynthia L. and Selfe, Richard J. Jr. "The Politics of the Interface: Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones" College Composition and Communication v45 n4, December 1994. 480-504

The Selfes go into the electronic "borders" created by computer mediated environments and give advice as to how to create a pedagogy that incorporates the electronic media but is also inclusive of the entire community instead of marginalizing the minorities.

Griest, Gary. "English in Its Postmodern Circumstances: Reading, Writing and Goggle Roving" The English Journal v81 n7, Nov. 1992. 14-18

Griest recognizes the presence of electronic media in the English classroom, whether the classroom is "unplugged" or not, and calls for teachers (secondary, mainly) to change pedagogy to fit the electronic times that students are already participating in, regardless of our participation or endorsement.

Salaberry, M. Rafael "Pedagogical Design of Computer Mediated Communication Tasks: Learning Objectives and Technological Capabilities" The Modern Language Journal v84 n1, Spring 2000. 28-37

Salaberry discusses the fact that changes in pedagogy associated with interactive media may be quantitative rather than qualitative when it comes to learning. He discusses this in the context of learning a second language.

Wilson, Linda J. "Using the World Wide Web in English Classrooms" The English Journal v85 n6, Oct. 1996. 118-120

Wilson uses the example of a high school teacher from Massachusetts who put his English class up on the web to show how the World Wide Web has made its way into the classroom.

Stroupe, Craig. "Visualizing English: Recognizing the Hybrid Literacy of Visual and Verbal Authorship on the Web" College English v62 n5, May 2000. 607-632

Stroupe suggests that hypermedia has incorporated the visual into traditionally non-visual textual/literary study and that, as a result, this visual element needs to be accounted for in pedagogy through methods that deal with visual discourse and information design.

Bass, Randy. "Story and Archive in the Twenty-First Century" College English v61 n6, July 1999. 659-670

Bass researches the way hypertext/media changes the way we, and our students, will view the English canon. He discusses the way the new media has changed our curriculum from hierachal to rhizomic structure. He talks about what happens when the entire text from Paradise Lost becomes a footnote to Frankenstein- what, then, is central? What is ancillary?

How will hypertext change the pedagogy of the composition classroom?

Hypertext is an incredibly diverse medium that allows readers experience with text that cannot be accounted for with current composition pedagogy. Instead of students sitting down to read the same piece of literature, in the same format, sharing the same storyline, using the same words ;students can now sit down with hypertext and follow a completely different storyline connected to the same theme of a site (ie. Victory Garden).

Originally, I thought that a classroom analyzation and discussion of a hypertext experience might not diverge so greatly from a discussion of a printed literary experience. After all, though we all sit down with the same text, each of us carries our own experience and thought into the mix. Why would there be argument about text ownership if everyone's experience with the same text wasn't a unique one? How could the Nazi's, Nazi sympathisers, and French Resistance all believe that the French remake of Sophocles' Antigone was supporting their position over that of their enemy? It seemed to me that we would be dealing with the same disparity that we currently have- the disparity that delivers seven completely different interpretations from literary critics of Robert Frost's poem "In a Snowy Wood".

However, further research into the possibilities of hypertext has made me rethink this theory of hypertext. Hypertext changes the individual and group experience so drastically in some cases that it will take entirely new pedagogy and heuristics to find any type of common ground to discuss.

In hypertext, you completely change the individual experience of a text through interactivity. Each individual reader may connect to completely different links throughout the course of the text. These links have no established beginning or ending. It is more like a peek into the window of someone else's story for a short period of time, than the record of a specific event beginning here and ending there. In that case, you may have every student in your class having experienced a completely different story, different words, different visuals, different soundbites, though those stories may all align with the same theme (such as being set in Iraq during the current war.) One student may come into class ready to discuss a love story, while another may come expecting to discuss the experiences of a ten-year-old Iraqi that has recently been orphaned when his home was bombed.

In addition to these problems of common ground, hypertext also includes the ability to incorporate visual, multimedia into its presentation. Instead of written words telling the whole story, some links may lead to short movies that show, rather than tell, the story. A critical discussion of a movie or TV show already contains much different elements than a critical discussion of a book.

Hypertext is available. It's a fascinating form of literature. The question is, how can we create a common ground in our classroom to account for discussion of such an enormously varied experience? I think I'm going to find that there will have to be changes in our ideology, as well as our activities, to allow the use of this medium.

My Very First Blog Ever- Yay for Me

Not really sure how this is going to work, but kinda cool for a chic pursuing a masters in writing.