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Twittering About: The professional and pedagogical Implications of Social Computing and Networking in Technical Writing Christie Daniels University of Texas at El Paso

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Page 1: Twittering About

Twittering About:The professional and pedagogical

Implications of Social Computing and Networking in Technical Writing

Christie DanielsUniversity of Texas at El Paso

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OverviewThe traditional workplaceModernization

HardwareSoftware and networking

Pedagogical implications for technical writing

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Traditional WorkplaceFaber, discussing the banking industry,

describes a traditional workplace which “was a lasting, usually lifelong, employment, and it provided a comfortable, secure standard of living through salaried wages and regularized increases based on longevity with the company (45).

Task-centered

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ModernizationBegins with the rise of the personal computerLaptops and mobilityPDAs and Smartphones

Always connected/interconnectedIncreasingly multimedia-drivenExtends the boundaries of the workplace

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The Changing WorkplaceDependent on information - specifically the

ability to obtain and use information Drucker, argues that “the typical business

will be knowledge-based, an organization composed largely of specialists who direct and discipline their own performance through organized feedback from colleagues, customers, and headquarters. For this reason, it will be what I call an information-based organization” (45).

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Spinuzzi, in his white paper on knowledge work writes, “These connections lead to more flexibility and collaboration within networked organizations, but also more communication problems: workers from historically separated activities suddenly must interact, collaborate, and learn enough of each others' social languages and genres to work together.”

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In describing the distributed nature of the workplace in the information age, Spinuzzi explains, “Distributed work is the coordinative work that enables sociotechnical networks to hold together and form dense interconnections among and across work activities that have traditionally been separated by temporal, spatial, or disciplinary boundaries” (268).

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Social TurnEmergence of sites like Myspace for personal

social networking is well-knownBenefitsProblems

Blurring of division between professional and personal life

FacebookTwitterLinkedIn

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Pedagogical ImplicationsTeaching students mundane, standardized

tasks cannot be the focusStudents must know how to communicate in

rhetorical situations which we may not even be able to envision in the classroom

How do we do this?

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Current examplesPersonal tools – professional applications

Facebook Academic and professional presence

Twitter Presidential campaign Pundits News channels Within RWS program at UTEP

Graduate students share resources Professors in the program also have twitter

accounts

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These examples demonstrate the molding or utilization of tools to the purposes/goals of the user.

Our students need to be able to do this with new and emerging technologies

How does this play out in the technical or workplace writing classroom?

The answer: uncomfortably

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Personal experienceStudents like answers; do not like uncertaintyParticipation is a challengeStudents are used to the teacher telling them

what they need to knowIn order to foster, the skills these students will

need in the actual workplace, students need practice doing.

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They need practice in inquiry and problem-solving skills

In short, rather than always providing a stringently structured writing environment, they need one conducive to inquiry

Ultimately, students need a pedagogical experience which approximates the workplace where communication is not simply relegated to plugging information into the memo format but may take one of a myriad of forms designed to satisfy a given goal or purpose.