options

Potential names for wireless learning environments dedicated to writing instruction could be carried over from f2f and wired academic experience, such as lab(oratory). Or we could generate new metaphors and names to describe these settings. To better understand how those meeting for writing instruction in wireless places refer to them, I observed and interviewed participants teaching in, learning in, or administering a room, Heavilon Hall 124 [1], outfitted with a wireless laptop cart at Purdue University during fall 2003 and spring 2004. This group includes four administrators [2]; nine ENGL 106i students [3]; and eight ENGL 106i instructors.

Heavilon 124 has no official title that differentiates this room from the traditional classrooms that surround it. Internally, there are a few departures: rows of individual chairs with built-in desks have been replaced by ten 24” x 54” tables arranged into a rectangle that mirrors the perimeter of the room. A cart containing 20 wireless Gateway 450sb laptops resides in the far corner of the room.During interviews, I tried [4] to allude consistently to the place using the building name and room number only—“Heavilon Hall 124”—so as to influence participants’ discursive choices as minimally as possible. When, toward the close of my interviews, I directly asked all participants if they thought of the site as a computer lab, students, instructors, and administrators were largely divided. It quickly became clear that the name of this wireless setting had not yet been codified.

Read a few conclusions.

[1] building name and room number

[2] One of these administrators, the director of another sub-discipline within the English department, is not directly involved with the administration of Heavilon Hall 124. I included his comments because he is currently in the process of establishing a similar wireless instructional place for his own program.

[3] First-year composition course for non-native speakers of English

[4] Upon reviewing the recordings, I did occasionally slip and refer to Heavilon Hall 124 as the “classroom.”