Some more tidbits to whet your appetite:

• I'm a quote from Conversations. Click me! . . . I would say that I entered into the technological "experiment" with a theory based upon personal experience and that this "experiment" bore out that theory. As practitioner inquiry, the project was a success. Because the practical results were so positive, I would not hesitate to use similar pedagogical approaches in future classes (as I indeed have done). As a matter of fact, I can hardly imagine teaching writing again using the traditional, monological approach.
• I'm a quote from Conversations. Click me! Writing is a social activity only insofar as we are willing to see it as an artifact of the genuine social activity, the conversation of humanity. Our pedagogical strategies should be any which promote, in writing, real dialogical/multilogical activities.
• I'm a quote from Conversations. Click me! It just so happens that this communication we are studying takes place in writing, but I will insist that writing exists as an artifact of the conversation.
• I'm a quote from Conversations. Click me! For Elbow, dialogue (conversation) is a published analog of talk; for Bartholomae, it's "theoretical talk." Notice that in neither case is it really talk. Ultimately, both scholars invite students to think of writing, whether as monologue or dialogue, as an object in and of itself.
• I'm a quote from Conversations. Click me! A writing pedagogy based on a conversational model would focus neither on a subjective/romantic pole (as exemplified by Elbow) or on an objective/modern pole (as exemplified by Bartholomae); it would rather focus on the actual unfolding of discourse as it occurs naturally in continuous human interaction.

Interested yet? If so, read on!

Overview(s):

Beth Baldwin's dissertation combines conversations with her "inter-course" collaborator Bob King and textual evidence from their class's electronic conversations. Between the conversational chapters lie the chapters of interpretation, as she suggests it should be - conversation being the primary material of knowledge-making. Therefore, the conversations both frame the dissertation and reoccur at crucial points, nicely combining form and content. Beth argues that a conversation-based pedagogy should replace the academic essay as the central concern of composition classes. Her students' conversations are written, computer mediated, and are considered to be an "authentic," "genuine," and "natural" form of communication which she contrasts to the "monologic" essay. Yet other voices in composition conversation have for a decade or more taken issue with the same adjectives in analyzing expressivist philosophies and in offering insight into orality and speech genres. We suggest that these voices are too important to leave out of the mix. We also suggest that conversation needs a concise definition. Conversations has been published on the world wide web in hyptertext format. Heeding Eric Crump's call, we offer ideas for the use of hypertext style to help with the presentation of documents on line. We find ourselves in strong agreement with Beth's assertion of the great power of conversation to make meaning.

We've tried to stay conversational in both the form of our review and in our creative process, following Beth's lead. We want our review to show a formal embodiment of our ideas - lots of linking back and forth between us, melding conversations, some of the section jointly done perhaps, with linking back to the document and to other documents.

You can tell who we are easily if your browser supports colors and images, especially if you are using Netscape 2 or above (highly recommended):

Something Morgan says is purple and is aligned left. There's also the nifty image of Morgan's name.

Something Mike says is green and is aligned right. And he's got a nifty image of his name too.

StartingPoints:
• Here's Eric Crump's Editorial Introduction to Beth Baldwin's dissertation.
• Conversation about the meaning of
• Conversation about in the presentation of writing.
• Conversation about monologic, dialogic, natural, genuine, and other used.
• Our of turning our own conversations into writing.
• Another Conversation about Conversations: News Forum comments on Beth Baldwin's Conversations
• Contribute your conversation about our Conversation: Mail Us!