The Writing Spaces crowdsourcing Writing Sprint event is over, and Web Writing Style Guide Version 1.0 is now published. This open textbook was created with undergraduate writing students in mind, but Web Writing Style Guide could also be useful to anyone wanting to learn how to write for the web. Topics in this lengthy guide include--but are not limited to-- 

• strategies for effective blogging, tweeting, and wiki writing
• an overview of visual design and photo manipulation
• how to write effective links, page titles, and headings
• basic copyright and fair use principles important for the web
• an introduction to HTML and CSS
• lots of links within the text to additional resources

As with other Writing Spaces' texts, the Web Writing Style Guide is Creative Commons licensed (CC-BY-NC-SA). In addition to the HTML version currently available, over the next couple of weeks, Writing Spaces will release print-friendly PDF and EPUB versions of the text. 

Good news. Writing Spaces, an open textbook for writing classes, is in the midst of manuscript review for the 3rd volume (it's going well, and we hope to publish in December 2011). And now we have a call out for the 4th volume. While we would love to see proposals on a wide range of topics, there are some specific emphasis areas for this volume:

During this year's Computers and Writing Online Conference, Collaborvention 2011, Writing Spaces is sponsoring a "writing sprint" to create a Web Writing Style Guide for undergraduate writing classes. From The Writing Spaces Web Writing Style Guide Writing Sprint CFP, 

It’s becoming a common feature in open source project conferences and unconferences alike: the code sprint. Open source unconference attendees get together and produce a much needed programming resource for their community by the end of their conference. Digital rhetoricians can do this, too, by focusing on building teaching resources we could use in the classroom. Instead of a code sprint, we can conduct a writing sprint.

Over the duration of Collaborvention 2011, Writing Spaces will host a collaborative writing event to produce a Creative Commons-licensed web writing guide for undergraduate writers. We invite all writing teachers--graduate students and faculty alike--with experience incorporating writing for the web in their classes (e.g., first year writing, business communication, web design, multimedia writing, etc.) or who write for the web regularly themselves, to participate in the construction of this open educational resource.

The first stage of the writing sprint will involve a "garage band style jam via Google Docs" to produce a solid draft. Then, using Google Docs' new discussion features, the conference participants will review and refine the manuscript. Following the f2f Computers and Writing 2011 Conference, we'll do a quick copy editing phase and publish the Web Writing Style Guide in HTML, PDF, and epub. 

Whenever I think about the OER movement and principles that could be important to it, I keep coming back to how open source might inform our understanding of OER development.

In fact, I believe it’s possible to see two different approaches to OER commons growth underlying most OER initiatives (although, sometimes there is a mixture of both):

1. Emergence. When teachers are encouraged to simply release the materials that they produce into the commons under CC licenses, whether through posting their materials online themselves or in some institutional repository, this seems to depend more on an organic evolutionary development model for expanding the OER commons. The principle seems to be that when content is released into the commons, new variations will emerge that improve upon the original, either through increased content development or improved adaptability, modularity, or usability. Plant enough seeds, and mutations will enventually occur in subsequent generations. 
2. Community-Based Development. When groups of people come together with common interest to form communities for building OER, then I believe we start to see stronger commons-based-peer-production benefits, such as exemplified in the success of large open source projects (e.g., Linux, Firefox, Drupal) and the Wikipedia community.