Call for Webtexts: Kairos CoverWeb 9.1

The Rhetoric and Pedagogy of Portable Technologies

Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, Pedagogy, an online, peer-reviewed journal, is seeking submissions for the Spring 2004 CoverWeb issue on Rhetoric and Pedagogy of Portable Technologies. Including technology in our lives and our classrooms used to mean being tied to a wire and an outlet. As one television commercial implies, communicative tools with wires are becoming outmoded and valueless to many users, and they are losing ground to portable technologies, such as laptop computers, wireless Internet connections, PDAs, and cell telephone text and photographic messaging. As these portable technologies enable greater flexibility of communication, they also push us rhetorically and pedagogically.

For example, some universities provide and/or require laptops and PDAs for their students and faculty. Some schools are trying to move entirely to wireless systems and entire classes with wireless cohorts. Some students come to these environments very facile with such tools, while others must climb both a learning curve and, quite often, a financial access curve. Teachers, as well, face challenges when their institutions ask them to use these technologies in their classrooms. We all know of times where our colleagues or we have hit a technological wall, perhaps crying out to the wind: Why? How? Now what am I supposed to do with this thing (e.g., laptop, PDA, text messaging phone)? Such questions concern not only our teaching plans and expected outcomes, but also our understanding of rhetoric and how to represent and relate rhetoric to students and the world at large.

This CoverWeb seeks to explore both the potential and challenges that influence our understanding of rhetoric and our pedagogical practices when portable technologies are incorporated into our lives. We seek theoretical, as well as highly practical, web and new media texts that address these concerns. Example questions that authors and composers might consider are:

• What is/are the "rhetoric/s" of portable technologies?
  
• What underlying rhetorical principles remain stable when technology becomes portable or when it changes rapidly?
  
• With the addition of portable technologies, at what point are we simply teaching one experiment to another, semester to semester?
  
• How do we decide what to teach about technological tools versus what to teach with those tools?
  
• How can we effect strong online training—beyond technological "how to" and into sound methods—for orienting teachers to these portable online contexts?
  
• What challenges and concerns arise for students/teachers who are forced into using technology when they have not used it before?
  
• When an institution requires portable technologies of students, who should pay? How are electronic tools different from textbooks or other learning tools?
  
• How do we judge student preparedness for technological literacies, and how do we level the learning playing ground for those who lack comfort with them?
  
• When text-messaging language arises in a classroom, such as that which has evolved through instant messaging, how do we address it with students?
  
• How do portable technologies affect distance learning?

  We invite authors to consider these questions, as well as to propose alternate approaches to portable technologies.

  Kairos accepts submissions designed specifically for web-deliverable media. Submissions may be designed in alternative modes such as Shockwave, Flash, and digital video, as well as HTML. We will not accept texts created in Microsoft Word, and Web pages created with themes in FrontPage will not be accepted without prior approval from the co-editors. For a full description of submission guidelines, please see the Kairos website. The deadline for CoverWeb submissions is January 1, 2004.

  If you have questions, please contact the CoverWeb co-editors, Beth L. Hewett and Cheryl E. Ball at kcoverweb@cfcc.net.