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The pages of this multimedia big book of literate activity argue that a 'big text' perspective involves more than using multiple materials and means for making text and more than a wider canvas on which to work (as the tree story implies, a canvas as big as the world). Specifically, I am arguing that it involves taking up a writing research perspective, asking students to not only compose texts, but to analyze, understand, and articulate what our core text calls “the rhetorical dimensions of all activity.” Here I believe the CHAT-oriented approach we articulate in this webtext, especially the revised canons of our core text, can help. Just as the various authors in this collection have highlighted the need for researchers to interrogate the shifting relations among production, representation, reception, and distribution, both in process and in final texts, I feel we need to consider how such an interrogation could become a core principle of a first-year writing program. In considering how to build such a program, we must incorporate the full range of academic resources for research, the available technologies for composing, and the nearly endless range of possible writing assignments.
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