Lazy Virtues

Robert E. Cummings

Description

Winner of the MLA's Mina P. Shaugnessy Prize for an outstanding work in the fields of language, culture, literacy, or literature with strong application to the teaching of English.

Focusing largely on the controversial website Wikipedia, the author explores the challenges confronting teachers of college writing in the increasingly electronic and networked writing environments their students use every day. Rather than praising or condemning that site for its role as an encyclopedia, Cummings instead sees it as a site for online collaboration between writers and a way to garner audience for student writing.

Applying an understanding of Commons-Based Peer Production theory, as developed by Yochai Benkler, this text is arranged around the following propositions:

-- Commons-Based Peer Production is a novel economic phenomenon which informs our current teaching model and describes a method for making sense of future electronic developments.

-- College writers are motivated to do their best work when they write for an authentic audience, external to the class.

-- Writing for a networked knowledge community invites students to participate in making knowledge, rather than only consuming it.

-- A plan for integrating networked writing for an external audience helps students understand the transition from high school to college writing.

-- Allowing students to review and self-select points of entry into electronic discourse fosters "laziness," or a new work dynamic where writers seek to better understand their own creativity in terms of a project's demands.

Lazy Virtues offers networked writing assignments to foster development of student writers by exposing them to the demands of professional audiences, asking them to identify and assess their own creative impulses in terms of a project's needs, and removing the writing teacher from the role of sole audience.

Sujets

• Writting
• Disciplines
• Language Arts
• Popular Culture
• Sociology
• Education

Informations

• Publié par: Vanderbilt University Press
• Date de parution: 27 mars 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780826592521
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

W r n g i t i n h i g c i a n e t T h e A g e o Lazy i f W k i p e Virtues d i a

 Robert E. Cummings

Lazy Vîrtues

Lazy Virtues

Teachîng Wrîtîng în the Age o Wîkîpedîa

Robert E. Cummings

Vanderbilt University Press • Nashville

© 00 Vanderbilt University Press Some rights reserved. is work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-No Derivative Works . Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visitcreativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc-nd/3.0.

    9

    4 5

is book is printed on acid-free paper. Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cummings, Robert E., 967– Lazy virtues : teaching writing in the age of Wikipedia / Robert E. Cummings. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978--865-65- (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978--865-66-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) . English language—Rhetoric—Study and teaching (Higher) . Academic writing—Study and teaching (Higher) . Internet in education. 4. Internet publishing. 5. Wikipedia I. Title. PE44.C87 8 88’.47—dc 8

his book is dedicated to Jack, wo saw me all te way ome. Rest in peace, my loyal friend.

Contents

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Acknowledgments  ix Introduction  1 Commons-Based Peer Production and te Composition Classroom  11 A Wikipedia Writing Assignment for te Composition Classroom  53 CBPP in te Composition Classroom: Case Studies  88

Inserting CBPP into Composition and Retoric heory  123

he Origins of te Lazy Work Etic and CBPP  162

Conclusion: Digibabble Digested 185

References  191 Index  195

Acknowledgments

I give many thanks to Anita DeRouen, who helped me so much in con- ducting the focus group surveys. I owe a debt of gratitude to Christy Desmet for being such a patient mentor and telling me what I needed to hear—always in no uncertain terms. Steve Ramsay has my thanks for being a man who not only embodies an amazing passion to share cool ideas but also has a lot of them to share (for him, I trust this book became something more than “Wikis, rah-rah!”). I thank Ron Miller for backing me when no one else would. I remain grateful to Cindy Selfe for her immediate and enthusiastic support of this project, and her will- ingness to serve on my committee—though it never came to pass—and her great service to the computers and writing community. Betsy Phil- lips at Vanderbilt University Press also showed immediate enthusiasm for this text and supported me throughout the process of seeing it to print. Ron Balthazor remains my inspiration for embodying the ideal: a great passion for the humanities with asgreat a knowledge of coding, and a spiritual patience to supply equal servings to the frantic masses. I thank Nelson Hilton for visionary department chairmanship, and his acerbic agreement with De Gaulle that graveyards are indeed îlled with indispensable men. Alexis Hart has been, for all who know her, a great inspiration, and she certainly was for me during the starting days of this project. I’d like to thank Charlie Lowe for providing valuable criticism of an earlier draft of this work. I credit Jay Watson with helping me prepare for this day by serving, years ago, as my advisor.

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