Wow… I haven’t tended this garden in a few weeks. Looks like it needs some weeding. In the meantime, here are a couple of links to some of my recent goings-on to keep my reader(s?) happy:

• My review of Scott McCloud’s Making Comics just came out in the latest volume of Enculturation.
• The new volume of Composition Studies is coming off the presses as we speak; an article detailing the course design of my blogging-themed Basic Writing course will be included in the contents. The piece will be online as well as in the print edition (but it’s not yet there as of this writing).
• Just got back from the gorgeous and sublime Rocky Mountain National Park (with some quick detours to Boulder, Estes Park, and Nederland).

Not to toot my own horn or anything (okay, maybe a little), but yours truly is the recipient of this year’s Michelle Kendrick Award for Outstanding Digital Scholarship, which I received a couple of weeks ago at the Computer & Writing Conference at Purdue University. The award was granted for my piece “The Annotated Obama Poster,” which was published in last spring’s issue of Harlot. More here. Yay me!

Just a couple of quick updates to tide over those of you who specialize in the collection of Ben-orabilia:

• I was recently profiled in OSU’s OnCampus publication, talking about my literary and scholarly reading tastes (the good and the bad). More here.
• I’ve taken on a new side-gig as a semi-regular (one hopes) poster over at Harlot’s blog. Hey, I’ve even started drafting my first post!

Later.

Fans of the series, take note: the latest installment of the Visiting Scholars in DMAC series is up on Youtube, and this one showcases University of Findlay’s Christine Tulley. Lots of smart, practical advice here, so give it a gander, won’t you? Also of note, Tulley will be giving her Visiting Scholar lecture, “Multimodal Composition and Classical Rhetoric,” on Monday, April 19, starting at 3:30pm in Denney 311.

LINK

[Yeah, I know; one day when I have time I'll actually dig around in the back end and fix the broken embed code thingy.]

Just a quick plug for an upcoming conference: tomorrow and Saturday at the OSU Blackwell Center, academics and professionals interested in the role of digital technologies in teaching, training, reading, writing, etc. will be gathering to attend the CRR Unconference (The CRR is for “Compose, Read, and Research”), sponsored by the OSU’s Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing and coordinated by director Dickie Selfe. I’ll be personally interested in seeing how the “unconference” structure plays out in real life (informal discussions, schedule determined on the fly, netbook-enabled notetakers for each session). Should be fun…

In case any of you were wondering (and I’ll bet that you were), here’s my itinerary for this year’s CCCC:

I’ll also be helping out with the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives on Friday morning, so if you’re around and so inclined, stop by the booth and give us your story.

‘Cause I worked really hard on this flyer:

ENG 269: Digital Media Composing
M/W 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm

5 credit hours. Fulfills GEC requirement for: Arts and Humanities, Analysis of Texts and Works of Art, Visual/Performing Arts. Meets group elective requirement of professional writing minor.

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
Web 2.0. The Cloud. Social Networking. Twitter. Podcasting. Ten years ago, we would have been scratching our heads trying to figure out the meanings of these cryptic terms, but today, they are becoming increasingly commonplace for us. More and more, we have a hand in actively shaping the landscape that creates such terms: the Internet. For this course, we will focus on the issues associated with creating digital media content (in other words, using computers to make meaning by combining words, images, and sound). In addition to examining the formal properties and social implications of digital media texts (the various genres of online discourse and how they circulate through the web), we will also investigate the practical , rhetorical, and ethical dimensions of composing in a digital world. No experience with digital media is required for this course, but during the quarter, you will develop a digital portfolio that includes a variety of larger and smaller projects using different combinations of images, audio, and animation. Texts TBD.

Fans of Darwin, the history of science, digital media studies, open source software, and electronic textual editing should take a look at Ben Fry’s fantastic animated text of On the Origin of Species, which accounts for textual changes across the six editions of the book that were published during Darwin’s life (from 1859 - 1872). The text was assembled using an open source animation program  called Processing. As Fry himself says, one big advantage of seeing the text evolve over several editions at once is the ability to illustrate shifts in Darwin’s scientific thinking, both large and small:

We often think of scientific ideas, such as Darwin’s theory of evolution, as fixed notions that are accepted as finished. [...]  In the changes are refinements and shifts in ideas — whether increasing the weight of a statement, adding details, or even a change in the idea itself. [...] Using the six editions as a guide, we can see the unfolding and clarification of Darwin’s ideas as he sought to further develop his theory during his lifetime.

THE CORNFIELD REVIEW is a quarterly publication of poetry, prose, art and photography. Submit your invention by Feb. 14th, and your creative talent could be captured for posterity between its pages. For the brave and reckless among you who seek fame and glory, send your ponderings and creations to mccorkle.12@osu.edu. Limitations on submissions are 20 pages prose, 8 individual poems, and 12 photographs/artworks. There is no work that does not fit–it’s all just one more piece of the evolving puzzle.

[copy and image courtesy of students from my ENG 662 ("Literary Publishing") course.--bm]

For those of you at OSU interested in the digital media goings-on in the various areas of our university, you may be interested in attending the following meeting of the Digital Media Collective (re-posted from the site wiki—login/password needed—at: https://carmenwiki.osu.edu/display/digmedcol/Home):

First Public Meeting of the Digital Media Collective

Where? Thompson Library Room 150A&B

When? January 27, 2010,  10:30 am - 12:00

Agenda:

Introduction: Who we are and what we want to do

Fire Hose Session (introduce yourself, what you do, and a challenge that you face –in 2 minutes!)

Put Yourself on the Map (org chart and physical campus map)

Refreshments and networking