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Reviews

 Jennifer Stimson & Rich Rice
co-Reviews Editors, kreviews@cfcc.net


Remediation: Understanding New Media (Bolter and Grusin)
According to this reviewer, "Remediation: Understanding New Media is an important, perhaps even great book." Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin define "remediation," "immediacy," "hypermediacy," and "mediation" with regard to computer-mediated teaching. You might also check out Ron Burnett's Cultures of Vision: Images, the Media, and the Imaginary, and Anne B. Keating and Joseph Hargitai's The Wired Professor: A Guide to Incorporating the World Wide Web in College Instruction
Conversation and Community: Discourse in a Social MUD (Cherny)
Lynn Cherny’s Conversation and Community: Chat in a Virtual World investigates how online conversation in a multi-user dimension (MUD) creates, modifies, and maintains community among users. This participant-researcher ethnography offers a richly detailed case study of a self-selected in-group in the process of crafting a social identity. You may also be interested in reading Elizabeth Reba Weise's Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace. And for more on MOOs, see Jan Rune Holmevick and Cynthia Haynes’ MOOniversity: A Student’s Guide to Online Learning Environments.
The Emerging Cyberculture: Literacy, Paradigm, and Paradox (Gibson and Oviedo)
Stephanie Gibson and Ollie Oviedo's edited collection, The Emerging Cyberculture: Literacy, Paradigm, and Paradox, investigates how communication technologies impact our understanding of literacy. These essays include examples from the past, the present, and future, as well as changes in literacy across the curriculum. If you're interested in literacy studies, be sure to read reviews of Cynthia Selfe's Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention, Ronald Sudol and Alice Horning's The Literacy Connection, and Geoffrey Nunberg's The Future of the Book
The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology on the Internet (Goldberg)
Science and technology has had a huge impact on literacy in the last few decades. Editor Ken Golberg's The Robot in the Garden: Telerobitcs and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet explores how telerobics, interacting with computers at a distance, affects society. This gets into telepistemology and where science, philosophy, and technological literacy converge. You might also be interested in Manuel Castells' work. Or, perhaps, check out Stephen Doheny-Farina's The Wired Neighborhood or Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon's Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet
From Web to Workplace: Designing Open Hypermedia Systems (Gronbaek, and Trigg)
Kaj Gronbaek and Randall Trigg’s From Web to Workplace: Designing Open Hypermedia Systems is intended for hypermedia system designers more than it is for writing or even technical writing teachers. Web-based system design, however, is itself a form of writing. As such, the authors explore possibilities for more user-centered hypermedia models--possibilities that may prove interesting to writing teachers who see system design as part of teaching hypermedia writing. The reviewer recommends Johndan Johnson-Eilola’s Nostalgic Angels: Rearticulating Hypertext Writing for an examination of the relationship between system design and writing. See also editor Ken Goldberg’s The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet.
Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies (Hawisher and Selfe)
Computers are more than tools. They shape our culture and learning institution. Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies, edited by Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe, is an excellent series of essays which explore notions of literacy, feminist concerns, and our postmodern selves in our electonic world. If you're interested in this subject, consider reading Lynn Cherny's Conversation and Community: Chat in a Virtual World, Eric Hoffman and Carol Scheidenhelm's An Introduction to Teaching Composition in an Electronic Environment, or Tim Jordan's Cyberpower: The Culture and Politics of Cyberspace and the Internet
Cyberpower: The Culture and Politics of Cyberspace and the Internet (Jordan)
Tim Jordan's Cyberpower: The Culture and Politics of Cyberspace and the Internet explores power and agency online and offline. Jordan often relies on theorists like Focault to prove his points. This is a good text for a seminar in digital environments. Other texts which may be of interest include Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe's Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies, Mark Warschauer's Electronic Literacies: Language, Culture and Power in Online Education, Stephanie Gibson and Ollie Oviedo's The Emerging Cyberculture: Literacy, Paradigm, and Paradox, and Ronald Bettig's Copyrighting Culture: The Political Economy of Intellectual Property
Race in Cyberspace (Kolko, Nakamura, and Rodman)
Editors Beth Kolko, Lisa Nakamura, and Gilbert Rodman's Race in Cyberspace is a much needed text which investigates race and cultural identity in new media presentation. This is a new collection of essays on cultural studies and digital culture which questions ethnic and racial representation within wired communities of cyberspace. You might also be interested in reviewing http://www.studentaffairs.com/ejournal/Summer_2000/art14.htm, Lance Rose's Netlaw: Your Rights in the Online World, and Tim Jordan's Cyberpower: The Culture and Politics of Cyberspace and the Internet
Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention (Selfe)
In Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention, Cynthia Selfe argues that narrow definitions of technology as "tool" and technological literacy as "familiarity with computers," and the view that increasing the quality and quantity of technology in our schools will solve educational and societal problems, are shallow and dangerous. For more on technological literacy, see Christina Haas’s Writing Technology: Studies on the Materiality of Literacy or Sven Birkerts’ The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age.
Coming of Age: The Advanced Writing Curriculum (Shamoon, et al.)
Coming of Age: The Advanced Writing Curriculum, edited by Linda Shamoon et al., collects essays by rhetoric and composition scholars who reflect upon the history of composition in the university, theorize the need for growth, propose advanced writing courses, and suggest strategies for implementing an advanced writing curriculum. This "print-linked" publication appears partly in print, partly on CD-ROM. For more on designing curricula, see Susanmarie Harrington, Rebecca Rickly, and Michael Day’s edited collection, The Online Writing Classroom, or Eric Hoffman and Carol Scheidenhelm’s An Introduction to Teaching Composition in an Electronic Environment.
The Literacy Connection (Sudol and Horning)
The Literacy Connection, edited by Ronald Sudol and Alice Horning, explores conceptions of critical literacy from a decidedly sociolinguistic perspective. The chapters of this eclectic book explore literacy in various forms and situations. For a further discussion of literacy, the reviewer recommends Cynthia Selfe’s Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention, also reviewed in this issue. You may also be interested in Lynn Cherny’s ethnography of an online community, Conversation and Community: Chat in a Virtual World.
Network-Based Language Teaching: Concepts and Practice (Warschauer and Kern)
Editors Mark Warschauer and Richard Kern’s Network-based Language Teaching: Concepts and Practice questions whether network-based language teaching is compatible with current educational theory in general and second language acquisition theory in particular. The chapters are organized around three areas of inquiry: context, interaction, and multimedia networking. See also Warschauer’s Electronic Literacies: Language, Culture and Power in Online Education.
Literacies and Technologies: A Reader for the Contemporary Writer (Yagelski)
Robert Yagelski's Literacies and Technologies: A Reader for Contemporary Writers is, in many ways, a follow-up to Julie Bates Dock's The Press of Ideas: Readings for Writers on Print Culture and the Information Age. In these readers, the critical issues and concerns raised by the use of technology become themselves relevant to the the classroom and subjects for discussion and writing assignments. You might also be interested in Donal and Christine McQuade's Seeing and Writing or Shamoon, et al.'s Coming of Age: The Advanced Writing Curriculum


Kairos 6.1
vol. 6 Iss. 1 Spring 2001