Getting Ready...

'm greatly looking forward to the all-day workshop entitled "Writing Center Realities." Some of the presenters are involved with high-profile writing centers, such as Purdue's OWL, which in addition to serving the university community also is dedicated to serving the entire world. Tammy Conrad-Salvo will be presenting on how they have redone their website (owl.english.purdue.edu).

I also notice that Michelle Eodice will be talking about action research, which is a genre that I've learned a little about over the past several years. Action researchers want to work with teachers and tutors to implement new instructional strategies. In education this is getting more popular because of how people want to connect research to improved practice. Michelle Eodice co-authored a book about writing centers that draws on the theories of Etienne Wenger. Wenger described communiteis of practice as groups that have mutual engagement, shared repertoire, and joint enterprise. The community of practice can be a helpful lens for analyzing a group of learners because the theory emphasizes the negotiation of identity in social interaction. Writing teachers, for example, want their students to negotiate writerly identities through participation in activities.

I have a funny story about Wenger, though. In his book he includes an example about who participates in a family. (For Wenger, participation is big because it is through participating in communities that we can negotiate how we relate to groups.) He writes that the family dog can participate in a family, but a goldfish cannot. I have never forgotten that poor, non-participating fish.

ANYWAY...back to writing centers. This workshop will have talks on social justice, technology, tutor training, assessment of writing centers, and more. This is pretty normal for writing centers because people take up many issues....

Looking through the rest of the program, I find many many sessions on technology. Peoplare are talking about the teaching of composition online, how students use online sources, how we can develop new theories of hypertextual writing. I need a clone to go around to all these sessions...