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Articles Conference Reviews |
2007B28VieB.28: Public, Private, and Digital Self: An Examination of Professional Identity Matt Barton: “Negotiating The Identity Of New Media” Barton began by attempting to define new media, offering examples of definitions by Anne Wysocki, Cynthia Selfe, Jay David Bolter, and Grusin. He also offers Wikipedia as “probably the best example of new media we have.” Pointing out the difficulty of pinning down a definition of new media, Barton quotes Janet Murray, stating that “the term ‘new media’ is a sign of our current confusion about where these efforts are leading and our breathlessness at the pace of change.” Barton continues by outlining Lev Manovich’s principles of new media (numerical representation; modularity; automation; variability; and cultural transcording). Returning to Murray, Barton points out that she wants to move away from the term “new media” toward “digital media.” Now we have these binary juxtapositions: new media, multimedia, hypermedia, digital media. Thus, we can look at defining new media in a similar manner as defining postmodernism, an equally contested term, or as Frederick Jameson notes, “not merely contested, [but] also internally conflicted and contradictory.” Lanette Cadle: “Playing In Traffic On The Info-Highway” In this presentation, Cadle examines why digital identities enhance professional development for graduate students. She posits that participation in various online activities such as participating on electronic discussion lists, blogging as an academic, social networking and so on offer a variety of benefits for graduate students. Some of these benefits include reduced isolation, faster feedback on ideas, a wider variety of feedback from a diverse group of people, and the support of a virtual community. Establishing digital identities, Cadle insists, is something we are definitely moving toward as a field. To offer a specific example of how digital identity building has worked in her courses, Cadle described her incorporation of blogging into graduate classes and examines some specific situations, particularly a group blog using Drupal in a contemporary rhetorical theory class and a series of individual blogs within a group hub for a composition theory class for first-year graduate teaching assistants. She focused on the resistance that students in these different courses felt and works through thinking about how their resistance has changed her own classroom blogging requirements. Finally, she offers the example of a basic writing wiki book that her students have helped contribute to as an example of “real professional development” that incorporates digital identity building. David Gross: “Playing In Traffic On The Info-Highway” Gross was a student in Lanette Cadle’s English 526 (Modern Rhetorical Theory) course (referenced above). Gross described the “several epiphanies” he had during his life and his struggles to find himself as a person and scholar. Several of these epiphanies occurred during his time in the English 526 course. The blogging requirement, he says, was one way for him to work through his struggles to develop a personal and academic identity and negotiate the borders between them. When Cadle presented the blogging requirement, Gross notes, she strongly recommended students blog pseudonymously but this was presented as a choice. As such, Gross chose to blog under a pseudonym but immediately felt uncomfortable about that choice because, as he explained, blogging under a different name might encourage him to be sloppy and lazy as a scholar. Instead, he developed greater ownership of his writing, bought his own server space (www.rhetorix.net), and tried to be professional in his digital identity. Gross closed by noting that he still had some issues of resentment and ambivalence about blogging to work through, but he did see the benefit of blogging for academics. Robert Schafer: “Playing In Traffic On The Info-Highway” Also a former student in Cadle’s class, Schafer described his experience blogging in that course and how he has transferred some of that experience to his own teaching. He notes that though he does not identify specifically as a blogger, he was able to trace his own writing style through blogging—from “chatty” to scholarly. He worked hard to balance his perceptions of blogging (as “dumping one’s brain” about what happens on a daily basis, for example) with the scholarly expectations of the course. Now, Schafer says, he incorporates blogging and Facebook into his own composition courses in larger part because students “see blogging as commonplace.” Elizabeth A. Monske: “Taking Online Identity To The Workplace, And I Don’t Mean Phat2006@Aol.Com” Monske opened by describing her growing awareness of informality in student emails: no signature, no formal opener such as “Dear Dr. Monske,” and sometimes very inappropriate email addresses. “And these were graduate students,” she noted, “in an online class.” Perhaps this informality was a result of the online aspect of this technical writing course, she posited, or perhaps they were simply unable to apply what they had learned about audience awareness in earlier tech writing classes to this one. Curious about the impetus for such informality in this particular genre, Monske went back to earlier face-to-face technical writing courses and noted the same issues. Since she already had grown familiar with the face-to-face students as opposed to the online-only students (whose physical presence was unfamiliar), Monske found the informal emails from the online-only students initially more off-putting than those from f2f students. She ended by noting that technical writing classes seemed effective in teaching about audience issues in written documents and in face-to-face courses but were not in online classes and virtual environments. Thus, she said, we need to provide clearer guidelines for developing a professional identity in classes and give examples of inappropriate discourse in online communities. Comments? |