Varieties of Connecting

As my students know, I'm constantly trying to drive home how critical it is to connect, and that this is perhaps the most critical element in the digital literacy triad of consume/create/connect -- or at least, that it represents the strongest departure from print-based literacy with its isolated modes of thinking, pseudo-audiences, and delayed distribution.

So I'm thinking a lot about connecting, watching my students work through these concepts, and trying it out myself in various ways. The tricky thing here is that in the digital age, much of the casual and informal connecting that we take for granted in social settings is extremely important. To succeed with more professional or academic kinds of connecting, we have to be more observant about social connecting generally (and sometimes independent of things digital). One area of connecting that I have found important is to think of media or content as a pretext for social interaction. I've talked about this previously in a post ("Consume to create"). It's the sort of thing I'm watching happen among my family right now while we are driving across the country.

A Term in Review: Spring, 2011

Another whirlwind experiment in teaching advanced writing has just concluded. Whew! It was invigorating. I've just completed teaching English 295, Writing about Literature in the Digital Age, at Brigham Young University (during May-June, 2011). Wanting to be true to my own principles about iteration and reflection, I'm setting down my observations here.

Academic blogs
Each student kept a research blog (here is the index). We used the blogger platform (with one exception), and this was more than adequate for new bloggers, which most of the students were. Beyond setup and platform-specific help, the students required instruction in blog rhetoric -- basic matters such as the frequency, length, and tone for blog posts. I urged them to draft publicly, to include a full record of their research and thinking, interspersed with matters of personal interest. The informal nature of the blogging, plus the regularity and brevity of the posts, combined with the way this accomodated interaction among them, between them and the instructor, and with the world at large -- made a huge difference in their concept of what writing is today, and in their idea of how literature can be relevant beyond the classroom to many diverse audiences.


eBook project
Together we created an eBook, Writing About Literature in the Digital Age. This was a great success. Students each contributed a chapter, derived from their research blogs. We divided into teams (editing, design, publishing, visual art, marketing, and education teams) and formally launched the eBook on June 15th. We skinned our knees a bit, but it met my goal of being an authentic project. It addresses current and important issues about the study of literature today, and it was published and marketed to people who were selected because students had researched the relevance of our content to those potential readers.

webinar
Using LearnCentral.org's platform for hosting free educational webinars, we conducted a webinar as our final exam, with each student briefly presenting about his/her chapter in the finished eBook, and then the various teams reporting on their aspect of creating the book. About 32 people attended (half being our students), and the chat stream was very lively as students interacted among themselves and with the diverse guests who attended. Now that it's been done once, we'll know now to schedule the webinar earlier so that it can be publicized along with LearnCentral's other free educational webinars to a large list of educators. Taylor Gilbert was the student who organized and moderated the webinar very successfully. I've embedded a one-minute video clip showing us in action during the webinar.

Webinar Invitation: Writing About Literature in the Digital Age

Please join us for the launch of Writing About Literature in the Digital Age at a free webinar taking place Wednesday, June 15th, 2011 from 5:30-6:30pm MDT (you can sign in using LearnCentral's site, or simply click here at that time).

Writing about Literature in the Digital Age is a free eBook by students at Brigham Young University who are pushing boundaries of traditional literary study to explore the benefits of digital tools in academic writing. This collaborative effort is a case study of how electronic text formats and blogging can be effectively used to explore literary works, develop one’s thinking publicly, and research socially. Students used literary works to read the emerging digital environment while simultaneously using new media to connect them with authentic issues and audiences beyond the classroom. As literacy and literature continue their rapid evolution, accounts like these from early explorers give teachers and students of literature fresh reference points for the literary-digital future.

The table of contents for Writing About Literature in the Digital Age can be browsed here.

During the webinar, we invite you to hear the authors discuss their work and the making of their eBook. You will be able to download your free copy of Writing About Literature in the Digital Age during or following the webinar launch on June 15th, 2011.

Contributors: Alymarie Rutter, Amy Whitaker, Annie Ostler, Ariel Letts, Ashley Lewis, Ashley Nelson, Ben Wagner, Bri Zabriskie, Carlie Wallentine, Derrick Clements, James Matthews, Matt Harrison, Nyssa Silvester, Rachael Schiel, Sam McGrath, Taylor Gilbert, and Gideon Burton.

Marketing our Writing eBook

Today went great. We are now getting lined up to launch into the marketing of the eBook, which is only hours away from getting published.

My students did a crowdsourced editing of the galley proofs for Writing About Literature in the Digital Age today. We actually used paper for the first time all term, with two copies for each piece getting read by the author's and by fresh eyes. The design team entered the edits as fast as the papers were handed to them. It took just over an hour.

Meanwhile, our publishing team (Bri Zabriskie and Derrick Clements) pinned down the details on how and where we can post our eBook for distribution. To our disappointment, it appears our free, creative commons-licensed eBook is not welcome on the Kindle store at Amazon (though it can still be downloaded and read on Kindle devices). Should we have really expected a commercial enterprise to allow us free distribution of a free book? Bri gives details about each of the outlets she and Derrick researched on her blog. Importantly, Derrick got instructions from librarian Elizabeth Smart about how to archive our eBook in BYU's institutional repository, ScholarsArchive.

On to marketing...

I have long stated to my students how critical it is that we not simply complete our eBook, but that we make a good faith effort to get it into the hands of those who would find it valuable. So, in the last few days of our term, marketing is our focus. This has two components: 1) advertising the eBook through an email campaign; and 2) showcasing our eBook in a free webinar.

eBook galleys and finalizing for our webinar

What a weekend!

I was burning the midnight oil in order to complete my chapter for Writing about Literature in the Digital Age. Found an awesome illustration project on Moby Dick with great images I'd love to draw from for my chapter. Hours after sending the request to use his Moby Dick illustration, Matt Kish gave enthusiastic permission. Cool!

The editing and design teams worked pretty much through the weekend doing copyediting and formatting each chapter into inDesign.

Design team Ben Wagner, Annie Ostler, and Sam McGrath

What's left? Today's class agenda:

• Crowdsourced / group edit of eBook galley proofs (editing team, design team)
• Finalize marketing list on wiki for eBook and webinar (all)
• Write category-specific email invitations for eBook/webinar (marketing team)
• Presentation from publishing/distribution team on how and where our epub will go out
• Finalize archival copy of eBook for BYU's ScholarsArchive (publishing/distribution team)
• Prepare for Wednesday's webinar on Classroom 2.0, including how to participate, media to submit to presentation team, and how to advertise to invitees and social graph (Taylor Gilbert), 
• Final two blog posts
• Narrative of eBook collaborative work (what did your team do, what tools did you use, how did this coordinate with the overall effort, what went well or could go better?)
• How did you / we meet the stated learning outcomes for the course?

Phew!

Taking Our eBook to its Audience

Now that my students' chapters for Writing About Literature in the Digital Age are completed and submitted to our editing team, we are concentrating on making our project anything but an academic exercise; I've asked students to identify specific people who might find our eBook of value. That's right, this isn't going to be a launch into the void; we're going to take our eBook to its audience.

I'd like to formalize this audience discovery process into an assignment for my students, and then give them a number of starting points. As I tried to convey to them yesterday in class -- this is where things can really become a lot of fun. Why? Because when you connect people and content -- meaningfully, not spammily, that's when the sparks start to fly. (Did I, an English professor, just turn spam into an adverb? I think I did!)

Assignment:
Using this "Potential Readers" page in our eBook/course wiki, record the names and contact info for 20 people. Important note: names will not be used if you do not provide a legit rationale for why that potential reader might find value in this eBook. We are not spamming the Interent with our intellectual work; we are targeting people who could truly find this of value. I think some of my students will choke at the idea of finding 20 people, but I hope they will think differently after reading through my many suggestions for finding appropriate potential readers:

Webinar: Because Digital Writing Matters

Just as I'm urging my students to find ways to reach out and connect with others who are dealing with writing and literature online, I got an email from Classroom 2.0 announcing this event, a webinar with Troy Hicks, author of Because Digital Writing Matters.

I'm hoping many of my students will be able to attend: 

• for the content (which is right in line with our course on Writing about Literature in the Digital Age); 
• for the chance to mingle online with other students and teachers who are likely to attend (for networking purposes); and 
• for experiencing the webinar format so that they will consider sharing their own content through such a means.

I told my students yesterday about LearnCentral's educator network and how they make it possible for people to organize, for free, their own webinars. Would they like to host a webinar featuring the content of our eBook? I think that would serve as a wonderful wrap-up event for our class and a great way to launch our free eBook. Marketing team, how about it?

Anyway, if we participate in the upcoming webinar on digital writing it will help us several ways at once.