CW2001 Program - Computers and Writing

9:45 — 11:00 Session A.3
Assuming an Audience Exists
RB 107
Cynthia Selfe, moderator
Chidsey Dickson
Archives and the Multiple Uses of “Local Knowledge”:
The Short, Happy Life of Student Knowledge Production
Unless teachers acknowledge at the very least the difference
between “local knowledge” (or students’ native rhetorical strategies)
and academic discourse (aka expository writing), it will not be possible
to argue that the kind of writing students produce has value outside
of its resemblance to the ideal discourse of the academy. It will be
impossible, in short, to argue that this work should be archived.
Liz Rohan
presenting during session B2 instead
Constructing the Public Sphere:
(Web) Publishing as Pedagogy in the 21 st Century
The imagining of community through shared texts not only accelerates
students’ motivation to communicate their own experiences and values
through words and images, but it potentially transforms student writers’
relationships to one another beyond the virtual world. Moreover, this
sharing of texts situates the classroom as part of, and extending into,
the public sphere. The classroom is thus made visible as a site for texts
that shape identities in this sphere, undercutting the common prejudice
that college writing courses are sites of “preparation” for writing in the
world, and its writers can’t yet act upon or shape this world.
Jeffrey Grabill
Community Computing, Local Literacies, and Citizen Knowledge
The last decade has seen the dizzying adoption of advanced
information technologies throughout the economy, in schools, and
in many people’s personal lives. One result is the much discussed
“digital divide” that describes a complex division between the
technorich and the technopoor. My presentation works in this divide
and describe a movement and a specific project designed to help
bridge the digital divide.
Computers & Writing 2001
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