Maureen’s Report

 Maureen Fitzpatrick presented “Ignite and Play – Thinking in a Gaming Habit of Mind (or WPA Framework: The Video Game!),” on Friday, March 21, at the annual CCCC convention. Slides and handouts can be found at http://blogs.jccc.edu/mfitzpat/.  Her report follows:

Since the last time I attended 4C’s in 2010, something monumental has happened—I got a smartphone. Why is this such a big deal? Because in the past, someone would recommend or even passingly mention a book and I would write it in my notes, and—later, when I would go looking for the reference, I often found I had left key words out of the title, was unable read my own handwriting, or couldn’t even find where I had written the note in the first place. But this year—armed with a Kindle account and free hotel wifi, in the time it would take a panelist to finish a paragraph, I had looked up the book, read the reviews, and ordered or downloaded it! So just consider that fair warning for the dangers of 4Cs in the future.

So what kinds of things was I downloading and ordering with such abandon? The theme this year centered on plays with the word “open,” so as you can imagine, there were a number of sessions on open source technology, MOOCs and gamification (2 books, 4 article downloads). The definition of literacy is expanding in exciting ways, and while many of the students are tech savvy (and many are not) they all need instruction on applying rhetorical knowledge to this emerging field.

There was also a strong presence of programs doing innovative things (sometimes from inspiration, sometimes desperation, and sometimes under political duress) with basic writing (ALP, stretch courses, studio courses, self-directed placements which, whether we want to accept it or not, has produced 250% more students going on to complete comp1 and comp2 on many campuses compared to the traditional required developmental classes–2 books, 1 article). In his chair’s address, Howard Tinsberg noted that the end of basic writing as we have known it has begun. Don’t doubt it.

Another important thread relating to open access was focused on our need to change our thinking about distinctive populations in our core courses—particularly populations that learn differently; in other words, populations who are capable of meeting composition I & II competencies but who may benefit from alternative teaching strategies to foster the abilities they do legitimately possess, populations that include English language learners as well as students with a range of physical and learning disabilities (3 books, 2 articles).

My favorite quote came on day 1 from Cynthia Selfe who, along with Gail Hawisher, received this year’s exemplar award. In her remarks, Selfe noted that digital tools allow us to “escape the gravity of the printed word.” That’s not to say that all or even most words should be untethered from that gravity—just noting that new media explodes writing into another dimension.

The last two books I bought impulsively: de/Compositions: 101 Good Poems Gone Wrong. The author literally screws up classic poems and puts his and the original side by side so students can see, for example, why William Carlos Williams line breaks really do matter. And finally The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime. I feel a special topics course coming on!

Finally, the call for next year’s conference (theme Risks & Rewards) is here: http://www.ncte.org/cccc (pdf here http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Groups/CCCC/Convention/2015/2015_4C_CFP.pdf)