The_Meta4

New Round of Interviews

I am going to do another round of interviews in the end of May and the beginning of June. Back to Skype.

Chugging Ahead.

I have decided to concentrate analysis as well as the structure of the project around ebooks and authorship. This has helped me focus quite a bit on a measly thousand or so pages of data.

I have some follow-up interviews to do, but they are mostly done and transcribed.

Next up is the Cs presentation. Here is a description of our panel.

Beyond "Kitchen Tables": How the Extracurriculum of New Technologies Enables Waves of Emerging Literacies
Session: J.37 on Mar 13, 2009 from 2:00 PM to 3:15 PM	Cluster: 106) Information Technologies
Type: Concurrent Session (3 or more presenters)	Interest Emphasis: not applicable
Level Emphasis: all	Focus: not applicable
This panel aims to develop perspectives on the complex relationship between literacy and technology through research in three sites where new technologies are fostering emerging literacies. The rise of communication technologies associated with the computer has accelerated both the creation of new spaces of composing and the literacies required to compose in those spaces. Before composition studies absorbs and disseminates these new literacies in institutional settings, we must understand how they function in these situated contexts. Based on ethnographies of online communities and interviews with participants, the first two speakers characterize the kinds of writing and incentive systems that motivate individuals to join informal communities of practice. We conceptualize these communities where people are learning new literacies as viable and vibrant alternatives to formal education, much like Gere's "kitchen tables and rented rooms." Working from a theory of literacy that frames computer programming as "proceduracy", speaker one shares how individuals develop and trade on this literacy in several online spaces. Speaker two examines the distribution networks and incentive systems that enable college-aged poker players to write strategy materials for each other. Moving from extracurriculum to curriculum, speaker three considers how some of the vibrancy and currency of these new composition spaces can be integrated into formal education in a new school that borrows from the powerful incentive systems of these communities. Collectively, our papers examine how "waves" of new literacies might shape composition studies' relationships--both informal and formal--with technologies of literacy.

Defense

The proposal defense is over, and I passed through. I am elbow-deep in data collection at the moment, and thankful to everyone who has done interviews thus far. Next up is the University Fellowship application.

Spencer Abstract

Here is the abstract I sent as part of my Spencer foundation fellowship application.

In this study, I examine the literacy and writing practices of college students and young professionals who author instructional materials for online poker. Working from the perspective of writing studies, I investigate the ways in which their work acquires cultural and economic value, concentrating specifically on how internet technologies reconfigure relationships among authors, publishers, and readers. I use connective ethnography and grounded theory analysis to theorize how this reconfiguration, and the accompanying shift in authorship and labor distribution embedded in it, advances our knowledge of the writing and learning college students and young professionals do in the networked, information society. This study contributes to education by documenting and theorizing a non-institutionalized site of online teaching and learning, but one in which participants have an opportunity to deploy complex literacies and numeracies.

Watson

I'll be giving a talk at the Watson Conference about my dissertation. I plan to focus the paper on the work of a number of e-textbook writers.

The Dissertation Blog

I am a PhD student in writing studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I am at the proposal stage of my dissertation, tentatively called "A Case Study in Writing, Value Creation, and the Internet."

Broadly speaking, I am studying writing, literacies, and value creation in a networked, e-conomy of textual production. I want to theorize the  dynamics of three processes that operate in this setting: 1) the literacy practices of those who regulate, profit from, and manage online writing spaces; 2) the writing of semi-professional, free-lance writers; 3) the literacy practices of recreational and leisurely reader/writers; in this context I feel only mildly comfortable talking about this group as “prosumers.” I am hoping to see how these dynamics are shifting notions of authorship, as well as cultural and economic valuing associated with writing.

To be sure, I am coming at this project from the perspective of someone who studies mass literacy--not economics. Interestingly, in many texts I have read about networked e-conomies, writing remains invisible. What I want to do is render the processes of writing visible and figure out how it is operating in a situated context.

As for the context, I am studying the writing of professional and semi-professional poker players. Some of the things these players do with online writing, teaching, and learning is incredibly interesting--and in some ways unprecedented, although there are certainly parallels in the open-source software community, video-gaming communities, and online learning communities. I also hope to show that what they are doing is taking part in complex, rich literacy practices associated with their profession.

Data comes from archiving and analyzing public discussion threads, websites, skype interviews, and face to face interviews. I am currently following the ethical guidelines created by the AOIR. The project has been approved by UW institutional review board.