conclusions
The laboratory metaphor, one of the most popular choices to describe wired instructional areas on campus (e.g. "computer lab"), is losing ground in wireless territories. And while six of the twenty-one participants I spoke with articulated that the wireless place in which they wrote with portable technologies is "not a lab," they did not volunteer an alternative name; the question of what to name wireless instructional areas has not been resolved. Further, it is a local question that demands local answers because historical, pedagogical, metaphorical, pragmatic, economic, social, cultural, political, material and spatial frameworks influence the reception of any name, and these frameworks are determined largely by local circumstances. In some ways, the present study is limited by its small sample size. But it does emphasize the value of local voices by responding to initiatives on one particular campus. If larger studies are to be conducted regarded naming wireless writing places, they would benefit from retaining this focus. While my conclusion may prove somewhat unsatisfying in that it denies the possibility of an ideal name for any given wireless writing environment on any campus at any time, it also opens the door for several questions in the form of a heuristic that help guide those grappling with naming places on their own campuses. I offer this heuristic not as an easy way out of endorsing one metaphor or name over all others but rather in the hopes that it will guide those seeking to accommodate local complexities. The point of this webtext, then, has been to encourage those in a position to do so (a) to thoughtfully name wireless writing places and (b) to thoroughly contextualize potential names for these settings. Understanding the ways in which naming practices precipitate the status of writing on campus can help define the character of these places and enables the selection of names for these sites that best showcase our efforts and talents.
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