M-L Craven (mlc@yorku.ca)
328 Calumet College: 736-2100 ext. 77812 (with voicemail)

Office hour: Tuesday 9-10. (or by appointment; contact via email)
Please note: Normally, all Tuesday classes will be held in the Computer lab - 530 Scott Library. THIS IS A CHANGE FROM THE CALENDAR. If changes to rooms, readings, etc. are required, they will be announced in advance in the Thursday meeting time, and online in our FirstClass conference. ALL course print-outs will also be available online in FirstCLass; a course web site will also be utilized.

1. Course description:
This course builds on the ideas of orality, literacy and secondary orality as presented by Ong (1982). We examine theories about the cognitive and social effects of chirographic-based and print-based literacy on different societies. In this electronic era (or period of secondary orality) we examine the challenges to the conventions of print-based literacy from advertisements, television and hypermedia. Defining the term “text” broadly, we look specifically at the ways texts are presented (issues of typography, etc.), how texts are organized (issues of genre, etc.), how texts are interpreted (for instance we look at what content analysis research and audience response research tell us about finding meaning in texts), and how a consideration of the media themselves influence the text.
This class is held on two different days; one day each week the class will be held in the computer lab. In the lab, we will be using a conferencing system to exchange ideas and work on small in-class assignments, Netscape to access the Web for research purposes, and WORD and Dreamweaver to edit texts for our class web nodes.

2. Some quotations to help frame our discussions about orality, literacy and the electronic era (others to be added as course progresses):
“Information has no natural topography” / “information has no natural typography.”
“Literacy is extremely tricky to define and to measure.” (Finnegan, 1988, p. 39)
“To be literate it is not enough to know the words; one must learn how to participate in the discourse of some textual community. And that implies knowing which texts are important, [and] how they are to be read and interpreted. . . .” (Olson, 1994, p. 273)
“Postman [in Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 1985] suggests that the habit of literacy contributes to the formation of a filtering mechanism through which information must pass. Those who. . . have cultivated such a mechanism end up with a typographic mind.” (Karl, in Images in Language, Media, and Mind, 1994, p. 195; emphasis added)
“The effects of literacy on intellectual and social change are not straight-forward. . . . it is misleading to think of literacy in terms of consequences. What matters is what people do with literacy, not what literacy does to people.” (Olson, Hildyard, & Torrance, 1985, p. 14)
"Advancing technology, with its increasing ability to provide fast and natural communications of text, voice, and graphics, has simplified the literacy skills essential for commerce and domestic life." (Tuman, 1992, p. 4; emphasis added)
Ong (in a blurb on Tuman's 1992 book) writes: "...the authors [in Tuman's anthology] show how computers, far more strongly than writing or print, call for critical literacy." (Emphasis added)
"Hypertext rhetoric must take into account more than just the ordering of language into structures and genres inherited from orality or print literacy. It must also address a more complicated met-management in which the user modifies ordering processes themselves...a secondary literacy." (Moulthrop, 1991, Beyond the electronic book: A critique of hypertext rhetoric, Hypertext '91. New York: Association of Computing Machinery, 291-98; emphasis added).
“the medium is the message/ the medium is the massage” (McLuhan)

3. Information about Server Accesses:
You need a Laurence (the name of the server in the Writing Centre named after Margaret Laurence) account to access the FirstClass conferencing system. You get a Laurence account by accessing Passport York (formerly called MAYA). You can do this from http://apps.yorku.ca.. If you never accessed MAYA before you need your student number and birthdate; if you forgot your password you can ask them online to change your password.
Once you’re logged onto Passport York, you need to click on Laurence CAWC and apply for a Laurence account. You’ll get an account if you’re officially registered in the course. (If you want your own webspace, this is available through Passport York as well).
Come to the first computer lab in 530 Scott Library WITH the Laurence login and your password. If you forget your Laurence password the monitor in the Writing Centre can change it for you—if you forgot your userid + your password you’ll have to go to the Steacie CNS Helpdesk and get them to do it.
Once you successfully log onto Laurence, please change your password. From Laurence you’ll access FirstClass. During our FirstClass orientation, FirstClass userids and passwords will be handed out.
In brief, go to Passport York to get Laurence account. You need the Laurence account to access FirstClass in the lab. You can access FirstClass (once you’ve got your userid + password) from home at http://fc.yorku.ca.
The Writing Centre monitors are there to help you. You have access to the Writing Centre whenever it is open and can use Word and other programs, not only for this course but also for all your courses.

4. Grading Scheme
Portfolio of conference work: (evaluated at the end of second term; students select from their own topics + topics I assign from the two terms and then organize them* separate handout will be available online) 15%
On-line and seminar participation (attendance is kept) 10%
Seminar work – short written reports and oral presentations 15%
contributions to class hypertext documents 20%**
(see last year’s work at http://www.yorku.ca/mlc/4318/projects/index.html)
Research project/paper (early in 2nd term; topics will be online) 20%
Final Take-home Exam 20%
(**marks available before drop date in Feb. 2003)

5. Information about portfolios (worth 15% of final mark)
Your portfolio assignment includes both written work from both terms done in our computer lab sessions as well as “original” entries with topics chosen by you. Once you have chosen from all your year’s entries, you must organize the material into some coherent form and turn it into me for marking by the last day of classes. The mark is based on the insights in the entries and on your organization of the material.
The ideas below are for the “original” component of the portfolio: at the end of the second term, you’ll pick some online entries to include as well. The portfolio will, thus, be a selection of the best of your year’s online work + a selection of short pieces about items that you choose to write about. In total the portfolio will include a minimum of 10 pieces (8 (or 7) from the class work + 2 (or 3) “original” items).

Suggestions for your own “original” entries:
1. come up with ideas for a narrative video commercial... (using Budweiser ad as the model)

2. write a piece to be submitted to the Arguments page of The Globe and Mail or the page in The Star where readers submit a text—extra marks if they actually publish it!

3. convert a previous ‘academic’ persuasive piece of writing to a hypertext...(it doesn’t even actually have to be done: just indicate where the links would be and what “node” the links go to.)

4. Exchange a piece of persuasive writing with another student in class. Maybe get them to critique it.

5. Decide what’s the best piece of writing you read this year on this course (why?)

6. write a piece of satire....(a challenge indeed!)

7. read that book you’ve always wanted to and write up a review.

8. contribute some of your own graphic designs—or “revise” some less than adequate designs that you find in your readings.

9. suggest that we all watch a particular rock video (or movie) and then provide an analysis (based on your choice of methodology)

10. keep a course journal integrating some of the ideas of the theorists we’ve looked at.

11. collect a list of “neat” web pages and provide a rationale for their success...(involve us in your critique!)

12. write a book or movie review focusing on the idea of the genre, or the audience reaction or something vaguely related to some theory we have looked at.

13. record your reactions to a current event that has some tangential relationship to our course.

14. find another piece of persuasive text that works as well as King’s letter—or one that completely fails—and explain why it works (doesn’t work)

15. Decide what is the most important book(s) you read at university so far (why?)

16. Decide what is the most influential movie you've ever seen (why?)

17. What is the most important thing you learned about writing or reading—or both.
ETC. (remember these are my ideas—entries that I might want to write about....but I’m not you!)

6. Schedule for first 4 weeks
September 10 --> Intro to course; handout of short article – write up a short response to the article for Sept. 12 class

September 12 – bring response to class: discussion of responses.

September 17 - IN COMPUTER LAB for FirstCLass orientation – 530 Scott Library;
For Monday’s class: print out King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”-write a SHORT essay answering these 3 questions: What does King try to persuade you? Does he persuade you?How does he persuade you? – bring to class on Thursday, Sept. 19.

September 19 – discussion of King’s letters and students’ responses.

September 24 - Computer Lab – writing topic TBA

September 26 – read Ong’s chapter in kit on orality and note his use of word “rhetoric”

October 1 – computer lab – topic TBA

October 3 - Ong on “literacy” – article in kit)
(to be continued)

7. Reading Materials
Reading Kit – available in Bookstore; you will NOT need the kit till week of Sept. 24. (It may not be available first week in any event). Additional readings as needed from the Web; please be prepared to have these printouts when needed for class.