Call for Papers: SIGDOC 2007

The 25th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication will be held in El Paso, TX on Oct. 22-24, 2007. Participants are encouraged to submit research papers, workshop proposals, and experience reports concerning processes, methods, and technologies for communicating and designing communication artifacts such as printed documents, online text, and hypermedia applications.

At SIGDOC 2007, researchers and practitioners will exchange information in areas relevant to the design of communication:

Dear Colleagues,

Please consider joining us for the ACM SIGDOC 2007 conference in El Paso, Texas this Fall. If you've never been to SIGDOC before - our acronym stands for Special Interest Group for Design of Communication - I think you might be surprised at the mix of disciplines and the global participation that SIGDOC draws.

You can see what I mean by looking at last year's: program.

Colleagues,

Please feel free to circulate this announcement and to send along questions. Thanks!

-Bill H-D

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WRITING ASSESSMENT AND PLACEMENT POSITION

Assistant or Associate Professor in Rhetoric/Composition, Department of
Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures, beginning August 2006. Ph.D. in
Rhetoric, Composition, Education, or related field. Primary specialization
in placement, assessment, and evaluation of writing (at the individual,
course, and program levels). Experience in one or more of the following
areas highly desired: electronic systems for placement/assessment (e.g.,

Jim Porter and Martine Rife have authored a position paper in response to the MGM v. Grokster decision handed down yesterday.

Read and comment here: http://www.wide.msu.edu/widepapers/grokster/

Here's a snippet:

MGM v. Grokster: Implications for Educators and Writing Teachers

This post on Many to Many tells a rather chilling tale of an instructor who was not only asked to cease and desist supporting blogs & wikis in her classroom, but also to stop commenting on the CMS sanctioned by her university!

I have heard of a few other cases where folks are being muscled into using one of the big nasty course-management packages for reasons ranging from IP issues to 508 compliance. Both are red herrings, of course, but the notion that a CMS is more like the buildings we teach in than the pedagogy we teach with...well that's obviously a problem.

Just when you thought your pedagogy was cutting edge...

Read more at

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020403/od_nm/english_dc_1&cid=573

If you haven't seen it, you should check out the TC Library. I was reminded of just how valuable it is again today as I went looking for a recent article and, sure enough, found it among the collection there! Nice work Geoff & crew!

TC Library

From the Eserver About page:

"The EServer Technical Communication Library is the most comprehensive site for students,

professionals and enthusiasts. We offer more than 1,250 links to articles, academic

programs, journals, professional organizations and materials of importance to the field.

This site was designed by Geoffrey Sauer, Sally Abolrous, Marria Rhodriquez and Roy Turner. It is served from the EServer, a website dedicated to accessibility issues based at the University of Washington's Department of Technical Communication. We carefully select content and employ the advice from some of the most esteemed professionals in the field."

"A group of Canadian engineering students took the art of cheating to its logical conclusion by plagiarizing an essay on ethics, embarrassed academics said on Wednesday."

Read more in the Yahoo! News Story

From http://www.NewsFactor.com

"A British telecommunications company has suffered a setback in its controversial attempt to claim a patent on the ubiquitous Internet technology known as hyperlinking."

"British Telecom (BT), the former UK telecom monopoly, is suing Prodigy Communications, claiming that the U.S. ISP's use of hypertext technology -- which lets Web surfers connect to Web pages via colored "links" -- infringes on a patent BT filed in the 1970s. If successful, BT could demand that all U.S. ISPs begin paying a fee to license the technology."

The complete article is available here.