Ideologies on Digital Literacy and Communication

Ideas and Ideologies on Technology, Digital Literacy and Communicaion. On this blog, I will discuss the ideas that are surrounding the constantly evolving ways in which we read, write, speak and deliver messages. In the process, we will also explore how race, gender and other demographics impact said technological literacy.

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Prospectus for Final Project

Overview

The digital literacies that students use help develop their social, political, academic and personal identities in ways like never before. As today’s youth have grown up in a digital age, they also learn with and from digital literacies and can therefore manipulate them much more effectively than previous generations. As such, teachers should develop pedagogies that are much more student-centered in this regard. This anthology that I plan to compile for my final project will bring together a group of essays that will collectively argue my contention that incorporating the use of digital literacies in the classroom will be much more productive for teachers and students alike, especially African Americans and other minorities. I will divide the anthology into four different sections. The first section will consist of essays discussing digital literacies in the 21st century and how, because of said literacies, the digital divide while still very present is much narrower than it has ever been. The second section will focus on the influence that digital literacies have on students’ social identities in the 21st century; these identities can range from those created from online gaming and social networking communities or those impacted by everyday social factions like family, peers, school and the media. The third section will also look at how digital literacies influence identities but rather academic, political and intellectual identities. Understanding these types of identities from a digital age perspective would help reveal how students today are crafting a self that would allow them access into social politics. The concluding section will consist of essays that take into account possible pedagogical approaches (or at least ideas that could lead to them) that could serve as a model for classroom protocol.

Scholarship

Digital Literacy and Narrower Divide

Brown, Abbie, and Patricia J. Slagter van Tryon. "Twenty-First Century Literacy: A Matter of Scale from Micro to Mega." Clearing House 83.6 (2010): 235-238. Print.

Mills, Kathy Ann. "A Review of the "Digital Turn" in the New Literacy Studies." Review of Educational Research 80.2 (2010): 246-271.

Horton, Jacqueline. "Is the Serpent Eating Its Tail? The Digital Divide and African Americans." Journal of Technology Studies 30.4 (2004): 17-25.

Social Identity

Li, Stephanie. "Performing Intimacy Using "Race-Specific, Race-Free Language": Black Private Letters in the Public Sphere." South Atlantic Quarterly 109.2 (2010): 339-356.

Drew, Rob. "‘Once More, With Irony’: Karaoke and Social Class." Leisure Studies 24.4 (2005): 371-383.

Foster, Derek. "“Wii're Here for a Good Time”: The Sneaky Rhetoric of Wii-Themed Parties." Journal of American Culture 33.1 (2010): 30-39.

Intellectual, Academic, Political Identity

kaar, Håvard. "In defense of writing: a social semiotic perspective on digital media, literacy and learning." Literacy 43.1 (2009): 36-42.

Robertson, Scott P., Ravi K. Vatrapu, and Richard Medina. "Off the wall political discourse: Facebook use in the 2008 U.S. presidential election." Information Polity: The International Journal of Government & Democracy in the Information Age 15.1/2 (2010): 11-31.

Pedagogy

Sandler, Kevin. "Teaching Media Convergence." Cinema Journal 48.3 (2009): 84-87.

Rationale

Students are developing their identities is much different ways in the digital age. As teachers, we need to understand these new identities and how students use them. Since classrooms are becoming more diverse than they have ever been, many of these essays will focus on the identities of African Americans, women, senior citizens, members of LGBT communities and other minorities. In that regard, teachers and instructors can use the essays that I will gather to further develop more student-centered pedagogies. In the routine and traditional modes of teaching that many English teachers have become accustomed to and comfortable with, the student is left at a disadvantage. Learning to develop arguments and precisely articulate them undeniably must be a key goal of all composition (and most literature) courses. Yet, teaching a student that much only completes half the task. Writing is much more than composing thoughts on paper. I (as I am quite sure other scholars) believe that writing is heavily influenced by a sense of self. The best pieces of literature, from novels to essays to poems, are written by authors who deal with their subject from a unique perspective. That said perspective is impacted by who the author is and how he or she came to be that way. That being said, teachers must know how to get students to incorporate their different identities into their composition and eventually their critical thinking. If we are to engage in a student-centered pedagogy, then we need to see what is going on in the world of the student, which is highly technologically advanced and multi-faceted. For this reason, we need to shift away from traditional modes of composition because neither students nor society use these traditional modes outside of the classroom to the extent in which we devote our time to them. If we can see how digital literacies shape our students’ identities, then we can understand how to use those literacies and those identities to better serve our students in and out of the classroom.

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Response to Students Who Teach Us

Reading Response 9

Cynthia Selfe in the nail on the head in her article “Students Who Teach Us” when she discusses why more teachers are (or at least should start) turning to new media texts. More teachers are turning to new media texts because they are more readily available. Anything from a movie to a cartoon to video game to a commercial can be considered a new media text, and I am almost certain that students would rather study these types of texts rather than a composition textbook. New media texts are also more encompassing and wide-ranging than ever, and as such students themselves are more interested in them since they have grown up with them and can manipulate them more easily. This is why, as Selfe makes clear, we as teachers SHOULD incorporate these texts into our classrooms. Since classrooms are trying to become more student-centered anyway, this approach to composition is most suitable for students in the digital age. At this point, I’d like to point out that I as well as many others have driven this point home ad nauseam. Still, Selfe makes a more compelling claim but including the story of a student named David.  While his story is not necessarily unique (many other black kids have had tough upbringings but have become successful), it is one that we can learn from. Even though he grew up in a turbulent household during turbulent times for black people (the crack epidemic and Reaganomics among other things), literacy was always driven as a main aspect of life to focus on. This harkens back to earlier points that I have come across. Despite the troublesome time that many black Americans have faced, for the most part subsequent generations have been pushed to read more, make good grades (preferably straight A’s but B’s will do so long as the effort is there) and go to college. This is the stuff my mother and uncles pushed on to me, and as most of my friends have told me, other black parents also have pushed their children academically. Consequently, black students today are on an equal playing field with other students as far as digital literacy. However, the problem is not solely with the student. Many teachers honestly just don’t know how to approach new media texts and therefore new ways to approach literacy in general, either that or they are simply so stubbornly trapped by traditional modes of teaching that they just won’t change their pedagogy. Still, as Selfe argues, it may be difficult to start but we must start somewhere. New media texts can help in identity formation and social codes as well. Social networking is changing the game of communication; for black people and other oppressed minorities, this is especially important since they (we) can now create the identities that have always been undermined for a more mainstream—white and capitalistic, that is—identity. Students can be who they want to be with new media texts. Combine this with the scholastic identity that students are creating in the classroom can be highly beneficial. To me, it seems like most students realize this, but teachers are the one that really need to recognize what is going on in the world of students.

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Extra stuff to look at

Mills, Kathy Ann. "A Review of the "Digital Turn" in the New Literacy Studies." Review of Educational Research 80.2 (2010): 246-271.

In this article, Kathy Ann Miller discusses much of the legwork that has been done in New Literacy Studies over the past decade. The article looks at practical, theoretical, and methodological stances within the genre and concerns itself with how digital communication has transformed literacy practices and thus has transformed the way we communicate in our everyday lives workplace, recreational, and community contexts.

  kaar, Håvard. "In defense of writing: a social semiotic perspective on digital media, literacy and learning." Literacy 43.1 (2009): 36-42.

This article draws attention to the academic advantages of written communication in an age when the digital media is becoming more multimodal than ever. The author makes an interesting claim that even though we are more liberated in our digital media and now have more comprehensive ways to produce, reproduce and distribute information, digital technology also allows us to avoid doing semiotic work.

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As we discuss new ways of teaching and approaching composition in a digital age, I went to the probably easiest accompaniement: video. With Videocue, you can create professional video presentations full of graphics and texts with little to no video editing experience. You type it, you read it, you say it, you record it. Simple right? Well if my lame attempts at advertising have not won you over, take a look at the tutorial.

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Additional Texts

 Beach, Richard, and Candance Doerr-Stevens. "Learning Argument Practices Through Online Role-Play: Toward a Rhetoric of Significance and Transformation." Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 52.6 (2009): 460-468.

  I felt like since many connections have been made between gaming, learning and rhetoric, I felt that this article would be very suiting this week. The article discusses how role-playing games online work to help students expand upon the ways in which they develop arguments. The authors of the text explain how students are more stimulated by things like games and are thus more likely to learn rhetorical significance if they deal with topics that are more appropriate to student interests. The article works best in recognizing the things that are important to students and can assist them in coming up with better techniques for arguing.

Li, Stephanie. "Performing Intimacy Using "Race-Specific, Race-Free Language": Black Private Letters in the Public Sphere." South Atlantic Quarterly 109.2 (2010): 339-356.

Stephanie Li spends the majority of her essay exploring Toni Morrison’s 1997 essay “Home” to figure out how she attempts to create a type of language that is void of race. She contends that Morrison uses language that encodes race without racism to illustrate a new way to talk about race publically and politically. Because I always attempt to find how notions of race, class and gender relate to whatever text I am studying, I felt like this essay would be a good way to look at how online public discourse is embedded in ideologies about race when it comes to language.

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Response to Rhetoric Online

Barbara Warnick’s text, Rhetoric Online, does a couple of significant things in general and a few things for me specifically. In the text, Warnick argues that critics and scholars need to consider online public discourse as a serious aspect of communication and discussion for its contributions to the socio-political public sphere and its art of persuasion. Because the internet is constantly being shaped and exploited by the general public, it is perhaps the one cultural text that has given the public the most freedom, control and sense of cultural or social identity. As such, the internet is without a doubt the most significant American artifact of the 21st century. But the old every-that-glitters-ain’t-gold adage keeps popping into my head. Warnick makes clear, to me at least, why so many people fear the internet: it’s too open to the public. She does a good job of laying out her ideas and she uses several different case studies to make her point. I think that it is a little ironic that had she waited two more years until after the 2008 Presidential Election to write her book, she would have had so much more to talk about. At any rate, the book’s content is still important. With access to the internet being within arm’s length to most people worldwide thanks to Wi-Fi and wireless phones, the freedom of what one can do on and with the internet is limitless. In this regard, Rhetoric Online really got my brain turning about some stuff.

True enough, with many different online communities, you get a richness of diverse discourse from an online public sphere that is nearly impossible to find in books, newspapers and even public rallies. When certain bloggers and readers who are passionate about social politics hit the web, the content can rival some of the greatest of American speeches, literature and criticisms. There is a downside to that however, one that cannot be avoided no matter the medium. Too many valued opinions can be a bad thing when it comes to online social politics, especially when you consider how the freedom to say pretty much whatever the hell you want to can backfire in many different ways. By definition, there is no one author in an online community. As such, one can never really know exactly where a piece of questionable information came from. This becomes hugely problematic when one is trying to find who to blame for misconduct or misinformation. If nothing else, Warnick’s text warns us that we must be particularly careful today when we concern ourselves with internet content political or otherwise because there is never any surefire way to make sure that the content is credible.

Even if the site one is looking at is viable, you still don’t know exactly who typed the information in the mainframe, thus not truly know who or what to cite. Now, any random person can put bullshit into a book by that same logic. But people have trusted books for a reason. They have always been around and, for the most part, require heavy scrutiny if the book is scholarly or at least critical. With the internet, that is usually not the case. To put it bluntly, you can never really trust the internet, not at this point in time at least. Look at sites like Wikipedia. You would never cite Wikipedia (this value is so serious that freshman comp students are literally being taught this). But Wikipedia is a great start to finding sources that will further readings or to learn common knowledge that would not necessarily even require citing. The internet as an online community should be treated in the same way. With all of the freedom that comes with the internet comes responsibility. With that responsibility comes the privilege of anonymity. And like most privileges, they are usually abused by certain members of society. Rhetoric Online does more than just persuade scholars to think about online discourse; it shows the general public that the internet, while great in many ways, can be very misleading and should still be treated with caution until we have a surefire way to regulate it.

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Response to Sound Recording by David Morton

            I know that I was supposed to read Sound Recording by David Morton as a history lesson because that is what it is: a historical look at how the way in which listen to stuff in our culture. And for the most part, that is what happened. I learned about all of the pioneering aspects that went into sound production. For the most part, when I think about sound technology and the history of it, I always consider only music. As a film student though, I know that is not the case. Dialogue in film, compact discs, Dolby Digital and everything else from realistic dog barks and the controversial and (un)popular use of the Auto-Tune—a technology that allows any to be (or appear to be) a good singer—each require a different set of advancements and innovations. At any rate, I say all that to say that I acknowledge that sound goes beyond music. When you really thing about it, all facets of technology and culture need sound to progress in some fashion or another. Sound has everything to do with almost every feature of popular culture. Yet, styles have changed, mediums have changed, and formats have changed. I am somewhat comfortable with the history of sound as I have studied it generally once before. So while I appreciate what the book is attempting to do, I feel that it left me with more questions than answers. I’m sure everyone is tired of hearing me say that my age factors into what and how I think about our culture, but it is true. I was born and live in an age where society is changing more rapidly every day. Nothing that I used as a child it seems like I am still using now. We can see where sound recording has brought us, but my main concern is where is it taking us now? What’s the next step beyond mp3s, iPods, and radio internet? Even beyond music, where is the way that we use sound going next? We constantly try to get our sounds to be as realistic and natural as possible. But I am always skeptical of how I discuss technology because there is really no surefire way to know what is to come. What we are working with now could be obsolete within the next few years (how many of you still have an 8-track, a Walkman or a Zune?). It seems to me, as the book somewhat hints at, is that practicality is becoming more and more important. That is not to say that it has never been important but today it is more recognizable. When Morton goes through the history of sound, he highlights this emphasis. When he discusses the arrival of different mediums (boom box, phonograph, mp3 players, etc.), it’s clear that they were developed to make the way we use sound much easier and sensible. The content may stay the same (if not many followers would just drop off) but the context in which it is delivered as well the social and political context that it is in is what makes the difference. Everything has had to do with sales, which is why such restrictions are placed, but today it is harder than ever to control how music is distributed. This is where my concern lies. Morton does a great job at laying out the history, and knowing how difficult it is to predict the future of our technology explains where my questions come from. Yet these are the things that we must think about if we want to know how to handle the constant change that technology has on us.

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Supplemental readings

King, Andrew. “Home Recording 2010.” Canadian Musician 32.5 (2010): 49-56.

American music has a nice sound to it. If it didn’t, who’d listen to it? And every genre has a distinct style for every listener, most of which are distinctly, or at least mostly, just that: American. But I like to think about things like this so I have a question to pose. Can American music still be considered American if we were to go to Canada a record it to get better sound? Sure, the lyrics and the concepts would still be ours but if sound is such a vital part of music, can it be ours if we get the quality or our concepts of sound from somewhere else? This article looks at how musicians go about getting better sound recordings in Canada. I posted this article because I am interested in the conversation that it could possible bring up about originality, music and sound recording in general.

Sharp, Holly M. “The Day the Music Died: How Overly Extended Copyright Terms Threaten the Very Existence of Our Nation’s Earliest Musical Works.” Emory Law Journal 57.1 (2007): 279-310.

I know I have already talked about copyright before, but it is a constant issue that still needs addressing. This article exposes the risks created by overly extended copyright terms to the musical works of early America. Interestingly, Sharp brings into focus how far copyright has gone: she notes that American copyright law extends protection to sound recordings up until 2067. As such, early American sound recordings could possibly not be available to the general public as those owners have sole will over what to do with it. You can’t help but to wonder what could happen to our cultural icons, included recorded sounds and music, if one person has a say-so on how we use it. Can something truly be a part of Americana if all of America can’t use it? Mickey Mouse is Americana but copyright laws are altered thanks in large part to Disney, which explains why no entity besides Disney can use him. While this is not a sound issue per se, it all ties back into who has the right to own what, why, when and for how long.

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Don't you just hate it when you watch a video and the audio is all out of sync? It can be very distracting and pretty damn annoying. The need for quality sound software is inevitable in the 21st century. Luckily there are software developers attempting to ease this problem. While there are plenty out there, I think that CamStudio is one worth a glance.

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Response to What VIdeo Games Have to Teach Us by Gee

I have managed to find something funny in everything that I read as I look at discourse on technology and digital literacy. And when I opened James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy I chuckled once again. I love that the book opened up with references to the Playstation 2, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Gamecube. Literally in the very first paragraph. The only thing I can think was “Damn, this book is old.” I then saw that the book is not even ten years old, realizing that we as a culture become bored with our outdated gaming consoles very quickly and want new or variations of old models ASAP. Once I was past this and dived into Gee’s main ideas about the positive outcomes that video games can have towards progressive learning tactics while still being an entertainment staple. In a rough paraphrasing of Gee’s arguments, video games require you to learn and think in new ways and necessitate gamers to use new combinations of critical thinking skills and an ability to strategize.

The one thing that I did find problematic was his definition, as opposed to his use of, semiotic domain. By saying that semiotic domains use more than one modality to communicate a message, anything can be fit into that category since just about everything in 2011 requires more than one modality. Aside from that, I really like how Gee manages to defend video games in the name of learning. We often overlook the new technology, or more specifically technology used for entertainment purposes, as frivolous and irrelevant to academia and the learning process as a whole. Even film and television as a discourse is often limited in the way most instructors approach it (for example, classic films like Gone with the Wind and The Color Purple are constantly dissected for their implications about race but reality shows like Flavor of Love and The Real Housewives of Atlanta are hardly being touched by academics despite the potentially rich discussions they can bring to the table). But his point that even though video games are getting harder and making gamers think more they continue to sell, beyond movies in fact, is point worth breaking down. His suggestion that the reason behind this is that a good video game must have learning principles, to which I took as a principle that can help gamers learn anything whether about themselves or something else.

The most significant point that I came away with—one that I am willing to incorporate into my pedagogy—is how video games allow gamers to incorporate or reinvent their identity in virtual realities. Gee’s correlation between identity and learning—which in a nutshell is the idea that what someone brings to a new learning experience (who and how they came to be) highly affects they way in which they handle the subject—is dead on. And in his defense of video games, he muses that learning to play video games serve as a “crucial example of how identities work in learning.” And especially since identity is a multi-faceted concept, it works even better. I can learn science by putting on my scholastic hat and I can play World of Warcraft as a green haired dwarf with one earring and a chain mail suit and still feel like the character is me. Not only can video games work in the name of learning; it can work in the name of sociality, which all on its is a learning experience that highly incorporates and influences identity traits. This would explain the rise in Wii-themed parties (see my additional reading suggestions for the week). I think that what video games have to teach us is that we can learn from them, simply and plain. We have to learn that we can learn from more things than books and articles. In a finger-pointing culture like ours that blames school shootings on Grand Theft Auto and other games of the sort, it’s nice to see video games given a positive stance.

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Some gaming articles I think are worth a look

Foster, Derek. "“Wii're Here for a Good Time”: The Sneaky Rhetoric of Wii-Themed Parties." Journal of American Culture 33.1 (2010): 30-39.

I wonder if Nintendo really knew what the hell they were doing when they developed the Wii. I don’t mean anything about the product itself because I still have a burning desire to own the new red one (damn you grad school debts). What I am referring to is the Wii subculture that developed because of it. I actually chuckled a little when I saw this article because it thought that it was pretty lame to have Wii parties (it could be a tinge of envy because I don’t have one but hey that’s not important). But then I thought about the implications of this phenomenon: a gaming device has once again changed the way we use technology and entertainment. Derek Foster examines how social gatherings based on the popularity of the Wii draw on the commodity narratives so partygoers can be able to develop their own personal narratives. At these said parties, attendees adhere to certain themes but most importantly emphasize the rhetorical performance in the sociality of the partygoers and interactive fun among gamers. The author also explores how the Wii and Wii-themed parties are shaping our cultural and individual identities. As I dissect my ridicule/jealousy of these parties, I have to wonder why I felt that way in the first place. Whether it because I am mad that one is not in my budget right now or secretly desire to be a part of a larger cultural trend or just simply admire how technology is changing the world we live in, I cannot deny the fact that the heart of whatever these feelings are is the Wii, which to some seems like just another video game but to others is a virtual reality all on its own.

Green, Mary E., and Mary Nell McNeese. "Factors That Predict Digital Game Play." Howard Journal of Communications 19.3 (2008): 258-272.

But of course I had to find an article that had to with race and gender. I live for that kind of talk. The study conducted by Mary(s) Green and McNeese of the University of Southern Mississippi examines how race, gender, and social gratification work as indicators of how many hours per weekday and weekend are spent engaged in digital game play. One thing that I found particularly interesting is the fact that their study revealed that white and Asian students actually had a smaller amount of time devoted to digital game play as compared to some of their African Americans counterparts. More obvious was the finding that digital game play is still gendered as the need for social gratification and being male is associated with gaming. While I am 1 for 1 on my gaming stereotypes, I wonder what other implications this reveals. More importantly, how do these results pan out against the others, the ones that say white and Asian kids play more video games?

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There are plenty of ways to watch movies nowadays. There’s Redbox. There’s movie theaters (Movie Tavern actually has a bar, FYI). There’s still a few surviving video stores around. But all of these mean you have to go out, maybe even put on decent clothes to be seen, which can be a hassle. There is DVR and OnDemand but those are boring. Why not watch movies on a game console? It’s 2011, why not? Here’s how to do so on a Wii.

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Readings on Digital Divide and the importance of Facebook and our social and political worlds

Horton, Jacqueline. "Is the Serpent Eating Its Tail? The Digital Divide and African Americans." Journal of Technology Studies 30.4 (2004): 17-25.

I am really starting to have a love/hate relationship with discourse about the Digital Divide and its impact on African Americans and all other marginalized groups. While I am kind of tired of seeing the same arguments about divide (minorities don’t have as much access and need it), I recognize the importance of keeping the conversation going. That being said, I present another essay on the Divide. This essay by Jacqueline Horton offers a study for examining the racial dynamics of Internet access. She proposes that African Americans should have a particular program that will thrust them onto the same digital playing field as White and Asian counterparts. She places her arguments in a historical context by noting that the Information Age began when people to develop products and machines to process information rather than manufacture goods. Yet, she points out that several writers have paid special attention to how African Americans have not been as advanced with computers and the Internet due to burdens that are beyond their control. Horton also places emphasis on internet content as a stepping stone to getting people to return to using the Internet and the anticipation that the Digital Divide will disappear once prices for computers decrease and alternate methods of accessing the Internet become more readily available.

Robertson, Scott P., Ravi K. Vatrapu, and Richard Medina. "Off the wall political discourse: Facebook use in the 2008 U.S. presidential election." Information Polity: The International Journal of Government & Democracy in the Information Age 15.1/2 (2010): 11-31.

I, as a first time voter in the 2008 election, can vouch for the fact that the Internet had a huge part in how voters of my generation got politically involved for the first time. With sites like many blogs and social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, the one discussed the essay at hand, many first time voters were able to engage in social politics like never before. In this paper, the authors examine two years worth of posts on the Facebook walls of the three major contenders for the U.S. Presidency in 2008: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain. By doing so, they evaluated the participation patterns, frequency of usage and content of post as a way to interpret them under the guise of working within an aspect of the “public sphere”. As much research has revealed, candidates and voters increased their use of the Internet for political usage as many internet tools, including social networking websites, have been used to communicate with voters in order to speak with the community, engage in political dialogue, share information, collect donations, plan events and ultimately gain votes. While this may not fit squarely in with Digital Diaspora, it is relevant to our social, political and technological discourse.  

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Response to Digital Diaspora by Anna Everett

This response here might be one of the most interesting ones that I have written for a few reasons. Digital Diaspora does a lot for me. It makes me want to know and do more as far as black communities and technologies. Anyone that knows me knows that I like to talk about race and gender all day long in any context that is worthwhile and interesting. So when I picked up Anna Everett’s book, I was jumping for joy about the class discussions that would go along with it because I could show off what I know about being black and what I know about being black and using technology. Then I cracked open the book and everything changed.

I must give Anna Everett some credit though. Her arguments are valid and well put. I found myself particularly attracted to chapters 1 and 3 and the arguments that she presented there about the need for powerful black public spheres. In the first chapter, she contends for a need to forge a digital black public sphere for African Americans to express themselves and to continuously strive for racial uplift. She uses these chapters to acknowledge that there have many numerous early black adopters of media technology are ignored in the historical context of internet progression. Blacks have helped shape the information superhighway, a fact that I was not necessarily shocked to see but glad to see presented. She contends that the new media that is out now can “erect new possibilities for concretizing” a “powerful trope of black ‘double consciousness’” in black public spheres and digital diaspora. This statement alone is one of the ones that had me all giddy with academic joy.

I also loved how she muses that “our possessive investments in racial communities…are less secure than ever because the fact of virtual bodies and their troubling manipulations in cyberspace destabilizes our presumptive knowledge of people and institutions in new manifold ways.” The migration of black presses to the Internet proves that the struggle is continuing; even the connotation of “migration” adds on to the historical, political and social discourse of black journalism’s progression. In these regards, I feel that Everett was more than on point in her contentions. But then, I take issues in other areas.

            My main one is this: the book is way too dense and boring. I know that as a graduate student that this should not be a concern, but hear me out first. Everett writes in that dread “academic” style. Not academic style but “academic” style. You know the kind where you stretch a bunch of words out and use Microsoft Word’s thesaurus to find big ole, nice collegiate words that goes over many people’s heads? I’m not going to lie. A lot of what she was talking about in this book went over my head. Does that mean are arguments are any less valid? Of course not, but in my opinion it does take away from the points she tries to make. This could say more about my personal bias towards what and how I like to read, but nonetheless my interest in the material diminished as I read further on. Still, I would not say that Everett loses me completely in her writing. By making contentions that state that a black presence is infused within technological history and that a technological presence is much needed if black history is to progress any further, Everett grabs me by the horns. If only she could have just said it as simple as I have….

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There is plenty of website design software programs out there. From Dreamweaver to to Creative Suite to Intuit, its fairly easy to figure out how to build a website. Yet, I think I have found one that may be easier than others that are out there. Meet Xsite. While the program is over two years old, this is the first time that I have heard of it and I gotta tell ya, it seems pretty cool. Check it out for yourself.

[ohcassanova-blog]

Response to Remix

As much as America tries to act like we only do so when absolutely necessary, we love to go to war. We like feeling like we can fight something and win. But, we have been sadly mistaken. This goes beyond Vietnam and Iraq mind you and don’t even get my started on the War on Drugs. No, the war I’m talking about this time is the one that Lawrence Lessing discusses in Remix in which he dissects our society in regards to copyright law’s presence and history and offers quasi solutions for how to reform them. Lessing contends that we citizens must “add to the culture they read by creating and re-creating the culture around them” yet we are punished by the law for doing so (28). Lessing muses that there are a lot of factors that contribute to this phenomenon including the economy and the readily available resources. All of Lessing’s arguments however trickled down to one basic fact: we need to reform our copyright laws. I wholeheartedly agree with Lessing in his idea that we should create a hybrid of R/O (consummation only) and R/W (consummation, creation and re-creation) culture for better copyright laws. Lessing also includes the notion that we must find where exactly the finger of blame should be pointed. I have always believed that the only time copyright laws should step in is when money is not being allocated to the right person. Royalties should be copyright law’s main concern and once that is regulated then the laws should loosen their grip. As he states, the main function of copyright law is “to protect the commercial life of creativity” (262). He also contends that “if the owner can’t control the use [of material], then the misuse is not the owner’s responsibility” (257). That being said, I think Lessing’s solutions could work if they are given a more practical application. The finger of blame can be pointed for any reason at any time at any person with our current copyright regulations so the responsibility then should be shifted from not the original producer but said user of the material. If the material is a remix, and not an original, then there should be some type of disclaimer that releases all others aside from the creators of the remix from liability. That way, blame can be put on who deserves it. Copyright hinders the preservation of our culture, both pop and elite; creativity is not the only thing that is affected in this war. By moving the responsibility to where it belongs, this war could actually have a better outcome.

[ohcassanova-blog]

This article, written by Eastern Kentucky University professor Russell Carpenter, discusses the ways in which writing centers around the country can keep up with the ever evolving digital culture that we live in. Russell states specifically that writing center administrators can “integrate new media and technology into their operations” and “must continue to invent and articulate theory that informs the development of virtual spaces.” The article talks about how writing centers have always been a place of intellectual discussion, that the “noisiness” that people hear coming from them informs them that there is some learning going on. I find this piece of writing intriguing in that they address a main factor of the society we live in: we like visual appeals and we like interaction, especially virtual. As such, this is something I think writing centers nationwide should take a look at.