Tag Archive for webtext

"Sound in/as Compositional Space" [Video]

October 27, 2009 Columns, Designs Comments Off on "Sound in/as Compositional Space" [Video]

citation
Designer/Producer. (2006). Sound in/as compositional space [Video + website]. Computers and Composition Online. http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/sound

abstract sound-intro
I designed this website and introductory video for the Sound special issue in C&C Online, which I guest-edited (with Byron Hawk). The video is a 2-minute mash-up/remix of the webtexts contained in the special issue and serves as our “letter from the guest editors” in a multimedia format. (Note: The video is hosted on my server because of space issues on the C&C Online server.)

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see also

"Constructing a Tool for Assessing Scholarly Webtexts"

October 27, 2009 Designs Comments Off on "Constructing a Tool for Assessing Scholarly Webtexts"

citation
Designer. (2007). For Allison Warner [Author], Constructing a tool for assessing scholarly webtexts. Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, Pedagogy, 12(1).
http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/12.1/binder.html?topoi/warner/index.html

abstract
This webtext presents a tool for assessing the scholarly value of online journal publications. It is part of a larger study that uses Kairos webtexts to investigate the scholarly nature of online texts. The goal of this larger study is to deliver a rubric as an instrument to facilitate the acceptance of online texts within English Studies as evidence of scholarship for professional advancement. In order to understand more fully how an online text can be recognized and valued for its scholarly legitimacy, it is crucial to explore the nature of successful (published) online scholarship. The assessment tool presented in this webtext is comprised of questions that help to reveal commonalities and deviations in the function and value of traditional (print) scholarly conventions toward defining an emerging genre of online scholarship. This webtext is designed using a web browser interface that should be familiar to many web readers. Web browsers enable readers to view web pages and provide a gateway to finding information online. This webtext was intentionally designed to draw attention to the interactive ways in which readers can approach texts that are created in or remediated for the Web. This design is mimetic to my thesis, that scholarly webtexts need both familiar and new assessment tools in order to be valued by academic stakeholders.

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"Review of NMEDIAC: The Journal of New Media & Culture"

October 20, 2009 Reviews Comments Off on "Review of NMEDIAC: The Journal of New Media & Culture"

citation
Ball, Cheryl E. (2002). Review of NMEDIAC: The Journal of New Media & Culture. In Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, Pedagogy, 7(3).
http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/7.3/binder.html?reviews/ball/index.html

abstract
NMEDIAC: The Journal of New Media and Culture is an online, peer-reviewed journal housed on the ibiblio server. The site is “a collaboration between the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill’s MetaLab, formerly known as SunSITE, and the Center for the Public Domain” (“about ibiblio“). The premise of NMEDIAC (pronounced inmediacy) is to publish “papers and audiovisual pieces which contextualize encoding/decoding environments and the discourses, ideologies, and human experiences/uses of new media apparatuses.” It is the journal’s intention to approach writing about new media through a “Cultural Studies and ‘critical Internet Studies'” lenses. When the inaugural issue hit the Web, I hoped the journal would fill a gap in scholarly new media studies. It does prove to do so — if in fits and starts — based on the first two issues.

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"States of Digital Scholarship: Review Essay"

October 20, 2009 Reviews Comments Off on "States of Digital Scholarship: Review Essay"

citation
Ball, Cheryl E. (forthcoming, Jan. 2010). States of digital scholarship: Review essay of Scholarship in the digital age by Christine Borgman and Planned obsolescence by Kathleen Fitzpatrick. Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, Pedagogy, 14(2).

abstract
A multimodal review essay of two prominent “books” about digital scholarship, Christine Borgman’s (2007) Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet and Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s online, CommentPress version of her forthcoming book with NYU Press, Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy.

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  • to come

Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy

October 20, 2009 Journals, Edited Comments Off on Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy

title/status

  • Editor, 2008-present
  • Co-Editor, 2006-2008 (with Beth L. Hewett)
  • Section Co-Editor (CoverWeb, with Beth L. Hewett), 2001-2006

description
Kairos, which began publishing online in 1996, is an internationally recognized, peer-reviewed journal in digital writing studies. It has a readership of over 45,000 readers a month from over 180 countries and an acceptance rate of 10 percent. The journal publishes three sections of full-length scholarship (Topoi, Praxis, Inventio) and three professional development sections (Reviews, Interviews, Disputatio), which are editorially reviewed by their respective section editors. Issues are openly available on the Web at http://kairos.technorhetoric.net, and are published twice a year, in August and January, with special sections occasionally occurring as a third issue in May. In December 2008, Kairos was recognized by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals for its redesign (the journal’s third look in 13 years), which garnered the CELJ Best Design Award.

small-logoKairos has a longstanding reputation for theoretical and technological innovation, collaborative authorship, editorial mentoring and outreach, and collaborative review processes, all of which support the unique scope and practices of the journal: publishing digital media scholarship that incorporates web-based media to make meaning. The majority of the scholarship Kairos publishes cannot be printed because these web-based articles (i.e., “webtexts”) use interactivity, multiple media including video and audio, and other nonlinear elements to make their scholarly arguments.

see also

"The New Work of Composing"

October 20, 2009 Books, Edited Comments Off on "The New Work of Composing"

citation
Journet, Debra; Ball, Cheryl E.; & Trauman, Ryan. (Eds.). (in press). The new work of composing [Digital book]. Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press. http://ccdigitalpress.org

nwc-coverabstract
This “book-length” collection entitled The New Work of Composing examines the complex and semiotically rich challenges and opportunities posed by new modes of composing, new forms of rhetoric, new concepts of texts and textuality, and new ways of making meaning. In particular, this multimodal, digital book will explore how digital media are shaping our understanding of scholarly projects within composition studies. In so doing, it will address the need to re-think what constitutes the “book” in an era of “born digital” scholarship.

status

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Special Issue: Manifestos!

June 7, 2008 Journals, Edited Comments Off on Special Issue: Manifestos!

citation
DeWitt, Scott Lloyd, & Ball, Cheryl E. (2008, May). Manifestos! [Special issue]. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 12(3).  http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/12.3/

abstract
Wrought with connotation, politically and emotionally charged, manifestos call us to action and demand change—in the streets, in the workplace, in our classrooms, in our minds, and in the virtual spaces we inhabit. Put the manifesto in a mediated space that typically features scholarly work, and it provokes different change-actions. The form of a manifesto seeks sizeable response and has the ability to move an argument quickly to the forefront of a conversation (and keep it there). The manifesto’s typical dense state and its sometimes confrontational approach make it easily susceptible to critique yet can quickly facilitate invention for new scholarly conversations and directions. If our scholarship seems too cutting-edge, too in-your-face, despite its having been deeply considered, then it is reserved for discussing around conference-hotel bars, on listservs and blogs, or over dinner and wine in the backyard patio. We don’t often make the leap to publishing it in scholarly journals. Why? Because these ideas often don’t take the shape of traditional scholarship—even with respect to the different traditions of scholarship in a journal like Kairos. The Manifesto Issue is our answer to these questions.

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"Converging the ASS[umptions] between U and ME"

February 17, 2008 Articles, Peer-Reviewed Comments Off on "Converging the ASS[umptions] between U and ME"

citation
Ball, Cheryl E., & Moeller, Ryan M. (2008). Converging the ASS[umptions] between U and ME; or, How new media can bridge a scholarly/creative split in English studies. Computers and Composition Online [Special issue: Media convergence]. http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/convergence/

abstractconverging
Authors of new media texts regularly draw on both scholarly and creative genres to construct their arguments. In so doing, they bridge disciplinary boundaries that have split English departments in the past. These boundaries are discussed in our text using the following binaries: high :: low, literature :: composition, and popular :: academic discourse. In this article, we examine, then complicate, the binary form :: content through a popular and academic YouTube video (Wesch, 2007). We then situate new media texts within the historical split between rhetoric and literature using Berlin’s social epistemic rhetoric as a bridge. Our argument concludes by showing that new media texts can provide a convergence between binaries in English studies, particularly the one found in tenure guidelines suggesting that research is either scholarly or creative. New media is both/and.

accompanying materials

"Reinventing the Possibilities"

December 24, 2007 Articles, Peer-Reviewed Comments Off on "Reinventing the Possibilities"

citation
Ball, Cheryl E., & Moeller, Ryan M. (2007). Reinventing the possibilities: Academic literacy and new media. Fibreculture Journal, 10. http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue10/ball_moeller/index.html

abstractfibreculture
This webtext demonstrates the possibilities of using new media to teach students critical literacy skills applicable to the 21st century. It is a manifesto for what we think writing scholars should be teaching in general-education “writing” classes like first-year composition. In order to answer the question of what we should teach, we have to ask what kinds of academic literacy, if any, we value. We argue here that rhetorical theory is a productive way to theorize how meaning is made among new media texts, their designers, and their readers. We use the Ancient Greek concepts of topoi and commonplace to explain how designers and readers enter into a space of negotiated meaning-making when converging upon new media texts. That negotiated space offers a new-media space for learning critical literacies by means other than research papers. As examples, we discuss two student texts and the literacies they demonstrate.

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"From 'They Call me Doctor?!' to Tenure"

April 10, 2007 Articles, Peer-Reviewed Comments Off on "From 'They Call me Doctor?!' to Tenure"

citation
Arola, Kristin L., & Ball, Cheryl E. (2007, Spring). A conversation: From ‘They call me doctor?!’ to tenure. Computers and Composition Online. http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/doctor

abstractdoctor
This webtext was invited by the editors of the Professional Development section of Computers and Composition Online, and it represents the professional and personal issues that often occur for new faculty members as they transition from being graduate students. The purpose of this webtext is to invite conversation, collaboration, and mentorship between the authors, the collaborators who contributed advice about this transitionary period in academics lives, and by readers of the text.

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award note
This webtext was the Finalist for the 2007 Kairos Best Webtext Award.

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