Writing and Open Everything

I have been writing down some ideas for a upcoming panel presentation for the New Jersey College English Association spring conference in late March. NJCEA is an organization of college English instructors and graduate students interested in language, literature, pedagogy, and other aspects of the teaching and study of literature and writing.

The panel is on "Writing and the New Media: Composition in a Digital Age." My friend from NJIT, Norbert Elliot, is the convener and joining me on the panel are Mary E Zedeck and Mary Balkun, (Seton Hall University) discussing "Exploring Literary Texts through Virtual Worlds," and Chris Funkhouser (NJIT) talking about "Making Selections: Processes in Writing and Reading Digital Poems."

Combining a current interest of mine with work from the past five years, I'll address "Open Everything: How the Open Source Movement Will Change Writing."

I know that I will use my NJIT graduate course for some examples and I'm considering talking about Moodle, blogs, wikis, collaborative editing software, instant messaging and even podcasting as tools that change, as the word processor did, the way we write.

I'm still formulating the mix on writing for the web, and how we now "publish" and present our writing. That process has always been recursive with the publishing/presenting changing how we write.

When I did a search on the extended use of the open source movement and philosophy in other fields, I did not come up with anything of substance related to writing.

As I generally do while working on a presentation, I'll reach out here (and through the traditional methods) to those of you who write using open source tools or concepts, or teach using them.

I'm also going to use the Disposable Web Page that I wrote about yesterday to reach out to those of you who write using open source tools or concepts, or teach using them. I even posted a link on my Facebook profile.

Can you contribute anything to answering these questions (or come up with ones of your own)?

• What open source writing tools do you use?


• Has it changed HOW you write?


• Has it changed WHAT you write?


• Has it changed how you teach students to write?

I welcome comments here, but would love to see contributions to the disposable wiki page which I hope to use at the conference itself. Go to the page at http://disposablewebpage.com/turn?page=Et1s0SIZEw and just enter the editing master key openwriting and please add a name for your edits whether it's your real name or a pseudonym. Please share this post and the information to others who have an interest in writing and technology.

And remember, the page will expire on April 6, 2008.