Lanham (Electronic) points to print of Marcel Duchamp's urinal that he just finished hanging on the wall.

Lanham (Electronic) grins and holds up a sign:

+----------------------------+
|                            |
|  QUALITY MATERIAL ---      |
|  CAREFUL INSPECTION --     |
|  GOOD WORKMANSHIP.         |
|                            |
+----------------------------+

Lanham (Electronic) says,

Flowerishes

Burke says, "To him, machinery was like a relative: you cussed it, and always gave it another chance.

Lanham (Electronic) says, "I have been suggesting that technology isn't leading into these new directions. The arts, and the theoretical debate that tags along after them, have done the leading, and digitization has emerged as their condign embodiment" (EW 51).

Lanham (Electronic) says, "It is the computer as fulfillment of social thought that requires explanation" (EW 51).

Berthoff says "There is an active resistance to apprehending the real character of the composing process because doing so would change everything we do: to teach composing as the kind of process it really is would upset us: it would transform, it would revolutionize our practice." (87)

Tuman says, "How we organize language instruction in part reflects our understanding of literacy.."

Fred (Bits vs Atoms) says, "Such learning environments are really virtual writing spaces that exist out there in "bit"-land that can be managed in ways that provide our students a nurtured writing experience. Such a learning environment can be supported by local-area network software, such as the Daedalus Integrated Writing Environment, which I had a hand in producing. Or they can be places for interaction in text on the Internet such as email discussion lists or MUDs and MOOs, which are places on the Internet for written conversation, or through the fantastic publishing medium of the World Wide Web. "

Krashen (turn the monitor off) says, "any reduction of the dominance of grammar-based methods will improve language teaching." (17)

Lanham (Electronic) argues "renewed interest in understanding all texts as events...concludes with the re-birth of rhetoric.

Rheingold (webbed) says, "Literate people think differently from people in nonliterate or postliterate cultures, and they think of themselves differently"

Krashen (turn off the monitor) says, "All human beings can acquire additional languages, but they must have the desire or the need to acquire the language and the opportunity to use the language they study for real communicative purposes." (17)

Burke (Wordman) says, "the way in which children learn to name things should be viewed rather as the translating of a logical or terministic consideration into its most likely narrative parallel (its quasi-temporal parable) rather than as a proof of our theory" (LASA 366)

TL (Da Lawd) says, "the human barnyard."

Jester_Guest holds up a sign.

+----------------+
|   So Why MOO?  |
+----------------+

Berthoff says, "When we write we are simultaneously naming, inferring, referring, recognizing, remembering, marking time, wondering, wandering, envisaging, matching, discarding, checking, inventing: all at once, we are carrying out these acts of mind as we are writing something down -- or up -- making meaning in the process." (86)

Tari (Netorical) says, "Perhaps most intriguing, MUDs could disrupt the hierarchy of the traditional classroom, giving students more power and responsibility and a chance to learn to use it wisely in order to accomplish their goals."

Beckster (glowing) says, "`Characters' play with gender and power roles in the carnival of the net."

Eric (intertwingling) says, "Be prepared to be disappointed and surprised. Joy and anguish await you. It's a lot like life, eh?"

Mike (rhetfretted) says, "This new world is about cooperation and collaboration, not competition. Especially in a writing classroom where for years now we have been teaching collaborative process writing. The world of work is no longer about getting paid to warm your seat for 8 hours a day five days a week, but producing things and adding value through collaboration."

Krashen (turn off the monitor) says, "The starting point in language instruction is to help acquirers understand what is being said to them. Some of the implications of this principle are that (1) the instructor always uses the target language, (2) the focus of communication wil be on a topic of interest for the student, (3) the instructor will strive at all times to help the student understand." (21)

Tari (Netorical) says, "People who hesitate to speak up in class use their MUD characters to talk about their ideas. Students learn to describe strategies that they use to communicate in the MUD and to apply those strategies to other writing."

Beckster (glowing) says, "On MOOs, we can build a connected virtual environment using only words: people can metaphorically "move about" and interact with you, others, or the environment itself."

Lanham (electronic 133) says, "Can we, in fact, continue to think of the curriculum in our customary linear terms--preparatory courses, intermediate ones, advanced, prerequisites, the whole big catalogue enchilada?"

Eric (intertwingling) says, "There are things to be learned here about the ways in which communities form with the aid of different media. The differences between print and net. There are things to be learned about changing cultural conditions and how media affect them: academic traditions and how they are being complicated, even rewritten, in netland."

Cherny says, " As the identification between code and typist decreases, so does the sense of responsibility and accountability that ones assigns to others in the virtual environment, making the establishment of community norms of behavior less likely. "

Tari (Netorical) says, "And, while commands for controlling students' behavior may seem efficient, they are also dehumanizing, robbing students of choices and suggesting to them that they cannot be trusted to behave appropriately on their own."

Berthoff says, "In composing, everything happens at once or it doesn't happen at all. We don't think somehow wordlessly and then pass our thoughts into language. We speak and see for meaning at one and the same time." (86)

Beckster (glowing) says, "I find all of these activities exciting, and I spend far too much time (at least according to most folks in my profession) playing with them. But when you think about it, the common denominator in all of these examples is language--and it's because I love language, because I find it fun, that I chose my profession: teaching writing (and teaching it with networked computers whenever possible)."

Mike (rhetfretted) says, "Its up to us "teachers" to structure things so students learn not only to write but to optimize the technology. Using the system to your advantage, especially in the business world, is highly rewarded in many places in this world."

Beckster (glowing) says, "But it's these threads that leave my head spinning and my heart racing, the gliding over the surface of a new topic at thrilling speeds and plunging in occasionally, connecting with others in a frenzied shouting match in a virtual room to the point of exhaustion, then getting up from my chair, looking around, and realizing that I'm the only one home. That's the future."

Mike (rhetfretted) says, "How will we deal (or how are those of you doing it now deal) with e-classes where you might never see the students write a paper? How do you KNOW the student who is registered for the class is the one at the other end of the net writing the papers you see? Couldn't they hire someone, give them access to their account and password, and never write a word themselves?"

Mike (rhetfretted) says, "I think we have to rethink what we want and are willing to reward, and structure things accordingly. That is our responsibility as teachers. I also think we should learn from wherever we can even from some smartass student in our class who uses our rules to meet assignments in ways that we may question."

Mike (rhetfretted) says, "'The rules have changed.' (and not for trucks.)"

Rheingold says, "One of the things that we "McLuhan's children" around the world who grew up with television and direct-dialing seem to be doing with our time, via Minitel in Paris and commercial computer chat services in Japan, England, and the United States, as well as intercontinental Internet zones like MUDs, is pretending to be somebody else, or even pretending to be several different people at the same time" (http://www.well.com/user/hlr/vcbook/vcbook5.html)

Berthoff exclaims, "Well, Charlotte, THAT will be remembered!" (152)

Rheingold says, "But the authenticity of human relationships is always in question in cyberspace, because of the masking and distancing of the medium, in a way that it is not in question in real life. Masks and self-disclosures are part of the grammar of cyberspace, the way quick cuts and intense images are part of the grammar of television."

Cherny says, "Although play with identity will always be an important part of a virtual system, transparent agency should be a built-in component as well; users should be able to rewrite their own character signifiers in whatever manner they like, but should not be allowed to manipulate other characters as if they were puppets."

Rilke (donning the mask of Malte Laurids Brigge) says, "Have I said it before? I am learning to see. Yes I am beginning. It still goes badly. But I intend to make the most of my time."

Cherny says, "Identity-shift, even to nonhuman or abstract discourse entities, is commonplace in the course of playful conversation in a MUD. Even in nonplayful conversation, the user is subjected to the split identity of being physical and corporeal at a terminal, and being an entity of code which can be manipulated by herself or other characters. Some manipulations are amusing, part of collaborative fun; others are more sinister, and raise profound questions about the ethics surrounding construction and use of bodies and the identification of the location for agency in interactive spaces. The self is constantly in question and open to redefinition in such an environment, even through the narrow bandwidth of text, and this experience may be exhilarating or terrifying."

Berthoff says, "We need always consider the relationship of the medium and the message. Marshall McLuhan's reduction of one to the other was a brilliant figure of speech about certain uses of language, but it is generally taken rather literally; that is often the fate of metaphors." (93)

Rilke (donning the mask of Malte Laurids Brigge) continues, "To think, for instance that I have never been aware before how many faces there are. There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several."

Cherny says, "Identities forced on a user by another user with spoofs or scripts disrupt the usual casual identification of a character and her typist.

Rilke (donning the mask of Malte Laurids Brigge) continues, "I shuddered to see a face from the inside, but still I was much more afraid of the naked flayed head without a face... " (12)

Obvious exits: out (to the hallway), room 1 (to room nne), room 2 ( to room nnb), trap door (to the Tavern ongoinglogue), teleport (to Seuss Booth),

Choose @quit to leave RoxMOO.

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