Changing Statistics

The sheer enormity of the number of people who contribute regularly to Web 2.0 sites suggests that we need to bring these social media into the classroom as both tools and objects of study. Since January of 2009, statistics on these sites have continued to grow, but Adam Singer (http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/01/12/social-media-web-20-internet-numbers-stats/), attempts nevertheless to present us with a recent snapshot.

1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) – approximate number of unique URLs in Google’s Search index

684,000,000 – the number of visitors to Wikipedia in the last year

112,486,327 – number of views that the most viewed video on YouTube has (January, 2009)

346,000,000 – number of people globally who read blogs (comScore March 2008)

150,000,000 – number of active Facebook users

2,482,745,762 – number of Tweets on Twitter to date (July 6, 2009, 9:45 CDT)

A moment ago, the tweets registered 2, 575,714, 89. Just in the two days since I first recorded the total number of world tweets, they have increased exponentially by almost a million. And not a day goes by without a cartoon, magazine, or newspaper article having something to say about the Twitter influence on our writing and lives.

Web 2.0 and “Minds on Fire”

As I wrote on Twitter, I spent much of the weekend crafting a foreword for a new book that’s supposed to be out in September (Liz Stephens and Kerry Ballast’s Using Technology to Teach Adolescent Writing). Liz, an NWP site director, and Kerry, an NWP teaching consultant (what you all will be after the institute), have really done a great job with the book and on every page you can see how NWP values inform their thinking. The theory or contentions are upfront and are followed by a thoughtful discussion of teaching plans. They have taken promising lessons and then have remade them, infusing them with appropriate uses of digital media. Here’s their argument presented as a question: “Since teens are reading, writing, and creating extensively on the web, shouldn’t educators explore how they are doing that?” We’re, of course, immersing ourselves in technology and writing this summer as well.

One of the features I really like about the book is the authors’ turn to Web 2.0 environments. Here’s how John Seely Brown and Richard Atkins define what they see as new 21st century web developments (from their “Minds on Fire” (http://www.johnseelybrown.com/):

The original World Wide Web—the “Web 1.0” that emerged in the mid-1990s—vastly expanded access to information. . . . But the Web 2.0, which has emerged in just the past few years, is sparking an even more far-reaching revolution. Tools such as blogs, wikis, social networks, tagging systems, mashups, and content-sharing sites are examples of a new user-centric information infrastructure that emphasizes participation (e.g., creating, re-mixing) over presentation, that encourages focused conversation and short briefs (often written in a less technical, public vernacular) rather than traditional publication, and that facilitates innovative explorations, experimentations, and purposeful tinkerings (my emphasis) that often form the basis of a situated understanding emerging from action, not passivity. (“Minds on Fire” p. 30)

Some of the experiences we’ve had this summer—YouTube, blogging, Twitter and more—would fall under the category of Web 2.0 tools. I love Brown and Adler’s notion of “purposeful tinkerings” by the way. In any case, as soon as this book is out, I will let you know. It would have been a wonderful addition to our reading in the institiute.

A Digital Press for the Times

Here is a great short film clip that we’re using to illustrate the need for Computers and Composition Digital Press (CCDP). (The authors are Jason Palmieri, Ben McCorkle and Ashley Miller). Do check it out and enjoy!

I should also add a description of the digital press:

Computers and Composition Digital Press (CCDP) is committed to publishing innovative, multimodal digital projects. The Press will also publish ebooks (print texts in electronic form available for reading online or for downloading); however, we are particularly interested in digital projects that cannot be printed on paper, but that have the same intellectual heft as a book.

We’d love to work with publishing the book that Judy is thinking about for all of us. Stay tuned for possibilities!

Remington

Here is 10-month old Remington, a lovely mutt that we retrieved from a house where there were seven cats and three dogs. All three dogs were being given away. His mother was a border collie/shepherd mix, and, more than anything, the border collie qualities seem to rule (we think). We were also told that his father was a Doberman Pincer and that he and his brother were the last of the litter.  Remy is supposedly the runt.  I am sure that this is far more information than you ever could want,  but I must say that it was quite a comedown for Remy to leave his impressive pack of dogs and cats to join our rather slim household of two humans.  Do know, though, that Remy is the first dog we’ve ever had that we didn’t retrieve from a shelter or off the streets.  We hope to be able to do right by him and will join our first training session tonight at Autumn Gold.

A-Twittering

Yesterday I began the adventure of twittering (using TweetDeck) and was startled to find that when I got home last night  I had 10 people following me. Now I know that these “followers” are friends but, nevertheless, when an email subject line reads”Kris Blair” or “George Rhinehart” is following you, I thought “oh, interesting–cool–but interesting too.” Then this morning I wrote for my 140 characters, “Running off to our NWP Summer Institute, wishing for California weather!” and saw that my followers were much more adept with their limited space. Karl Stolley, for example wrote “I love it when ‘goodnight’ appears as a trending topic…it’s a sign I should try and sleep” and this is only one of his many tweets within the past 12 hours. A New York Times article some months ago suggested that twittering was changing dramatically our relationships with friends and acquaintances–even strangers–in that we can know what others are doing always and, as a result, tend to act very differently when we finally meet up ftf. In other words, we have all sorts of background information about a person that wouldn’t normally exist as a basis for conversation. Should you so desire, you can download the Twitter software at  TweetDeck. Hope to see you all a-twitter soon! )

Opening 2009 UIWP SI

Hello world!

Welcome to my 2009 University of Illinois Writing Project (UIWP)  blog.  Hopefully, the opening act of this year’s Tony awards will reward us all for our efforts.  Such energy and exuberance!