In The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich asks, “What kind of space is virtual space?” (254). This seemingly
simple question will pose a number of challenges for writing centers as they develop services that transcend
physical space. As writing center administrators integrate new media and technology into their operations, they
must continue to invent and articulate theory that informs the development of virtual spaces. In Heuretics,
Gregory Ulmer poses a related question: “What will research be like in an electronic apparatus?” (32). Ulmer
explains that the notion of spatiality has changed since the development and widespread adoption of the
computer (Heuretics 36). Indeed, it has, and the cultural and political landscape of the university has changed
as well, as educational technology and virtual spaces are often at the heart of many academic institutions.University Writing Cente

Carpenter, Russell

English

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Praxis: A Writing Center Journal (2003-2011)SectionsFocusColumns andReviewsConsultingTrainingNews &AnnouncementsArchivesBrowse pastissues of PraxisAbout UsAbout UsSubmissionsSubmit anarticle to PraxisHome » Archives » Spring 2010 (Volume 7 Issue 2) - Professionalization and the Writing Center,Part IIWriting with Pictures: Immersive Technology and 21st CenturyProfessional DevelopmentSpring 2010 / Focusby Russell Carpenter, Eastern Kentucky UniversityKeeping pace with digital culture in the writing centerRussell CarpenterA Culture of LearningIn The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich asks, “What kind of space is virtual space?” (254). This seeminglysimple question will pose a number of challenges for writing centers as they develop services that transcendphysical space. As writing center administrators integrate new media and technology into their operations, theymust continue to invent and articulate theory that informs the development of virtual spaces. In Heuretics,Gregory Ulmer poses a related question: “What will research be like in an electronic apparatus?” (32). Ulmerexplains that the notion of spatiality has changed since the development and widespread adoption of thecomputer (Heuretics 36). Indeed, it has, and the cultural and political landscape of the university has changedas well, as educational technology and virtual spaces are often at the heart of many academic institutions.The culture of an academic environment should inform how writing center scholars develop practices for virtualspace. “Put differently,” Manovich writes, “to develop a new aesthetic of new media, we should pay as muchattention to cultural history as to the computer’s unique new possibilities to generate, organize, manipulate, anddistribute data” (314). Therefore, virtual spaces should take into account the “learning culture,” as Anne EllenGeller et al. describe it, of writing centers (53). The culture of the writing center is one where students andconsultants discuss writing-related issues as peers, one on one.Writing center scholars will face the challenge of building digital communities in bothphysical and virtual settings.Historically, writing centers have provided social spaces for intellectual discussion. Elizabeth Boquet, in Noisefrom the Writing Center, conveys the “joyful noise” that emanates from her writing center (1). In the prologueto the book, Boquet finds herself explaining to “Dr. PC,” a professor whose office happens to be located near thewriting center, that the loud disturbance that he heard coming from the writing center was not a “party” but anacademic meeting where productive intellectual work was taking place. On any given day, you can walk into awriting center and notice that they are often bustling places where “noise,” as Boquet says, fills the air. Aproductive writing center is a “noisy” writing center. In addition, they have also served as home to technologicalinnovations of many kinds. The International Writing Center Association’s 2008 conference theme, forexample, invited participants to consider where writing centers have been and where they are going. It shouldnot be a surprise that many presenters focused on the innovative use of technology in their writing centers.Several sessions even proposed further exploration in immersive environments like Second Life, “a 3D onlinedigital world imagined, created, and owned by its residents,” as Michael Rymaszewski et al. explain (4). SecondLife, at this unique time in the development of academic spaces, serves as a valuable intersection between ourdigital culture and the learning culture of the writing center.According to Thomas Horan, “the key to building vibrant digital communities is to understand the differencesand intersections between communities of place and communities of interest” (62). Writing center scholars willface the challenge of building digital communities in both physical and virtual settings. However, immersivevirtual spaces hold great promise for writing center work. The immersive virtual space allows students toengage one another with many of the humanistic and interpersonal connections that are significant to face-to-face work. Through immersive virtual spaces, writing centers can also create communities of place and interestby offering visual elements of the physical environment that serve to enhance experiences online. In manycases, these elements are not readily available in purely textual spaces–like IM chat or e-mail. The move we areseeing could be to visually-oriented writing spaces.Picture Writing and the Virtual SpaceVirtual museums, galleries, and installations offer perhaps the most compelling examples of what writingcenters might ultimately look like and offer in virtual spaces. Suzanne C. Baker, Ryan K. Wentz, and Madison M.Woods contend that one of the advantages of teaching with (or in) Second Life is that students can travel toarchitectural sites, visit art galleries, and attend performances (61). Furthermore, Julia Gillen, in her discussionof Schome Park, the first European enclosed island on Teen Second Life (59), argues that a student’sparticipation in this environment is a hugely literate activity (72). Gillen makes the point that students mightlearn new literacy practices in virtual spaces by expanding their notion of literacy beyond linear print-basedconcepts. Writing centers and OWLs might serve the important role of developing multiliterate studentsresponsive to the “ongoing conversation about the special responsibilities of humanities teachers in a digitalage,” as Stuart Selber says (23). The writing center can, therefore, serve as a member of the universitycommunity not only for traditional print-based literacy practices but multimedia practices as well. The writingcenter can serve as a hub for developing new literacy practices indicative of student needs in the 21st centuryworkplace. Horan notes that “local communities can play a crucial role in defining the nature and types ofelectronic-community services available to their citizens” (81). In fact, writing centers and virtual academicspaces can also assist students in the composition and production of digital media texts. The important conceptof immersion can best be demonstrated through electronic environments.Technologically sophisticated academic spaces should be responsive to a digital culturewhile embracing new methods, even if experimental or provisional.Kathryn Farley, Michael Nitsche, Jay Bolter, and Blair MacIntyre, in “Augmenting Creative Realities,” “blend theworld of Second Life with real world artistic practices and their expressive range” (96). They call the artisticpractices re-iterations of the interface in which users make artistic statements and express opinions in virtualspaces (96). Writing center scholars interested in developing virtual spaces responsive to the interests ofstudents will want to prepare for visual forms of building and production. W. J. T. Mitchell, in Picture Theory,uses Habermas’s notion of the public sphere to pose his prescient question: “How should we picture the publicsphere and the place of visual representation in it?” (363). As writing centers continue to decipher their spacesand rearticulate the role of technology within them, Mitchell’s question should continue to drive our scholarlypractices. The virtual spaces in which we build have social foundations and goals. New forms of digital texts areinherently visual and will serve as the center of virtual spaces, augmenting, to recall Manovich’s work, spacewithin digital environments.Electronic Monuments as Digital Artifacts and Picture WritingWhile we will certainly face many challenges in constructing new virtual spaces for serious academic work, thereare also examples of scholarship already taking place within spaces like Second Life. This work, in its highlyvisual, interactive, and personal form, can serve as a starting point for the ways in which these spaces are usedin the writing center. It is, at least, worth taking a historical look at how these spaces have been used so thatwe can attempt to rethink our methods of composition. Tim Guest, in Second Lives, provides a number ofvaluable examples of very serious work taking place online. Guest describes 9/11 monuments erected in SecondLife shortly after the tragedy:In 2005, Second Life residents constructed hundreds of 9/11 memorials. Most avoided controversy: Theybuilt virtual memorial gardens, or virtual memorial plaques, or virtual memorial statues of New Yorkfirefighters raising the American flag. One man, ‘Rusty Vindallo,’ listed the names of all who had died thatday. But another resident, ‘Sexy Casanova,’ bit the bullet, and constructed a much more detailed replicaof the World Trade Center. (16)SL residents saw the virtual space as a place where they could show their emotion. Residents erected powerfulvisual displays to pay tribute to the many people who lost their lives that day. While the monuments took manyshapes and sizes, they had one thing in common–they were visual reminders. We might also consider them“electronic monuments,” as Ulmer calls them. Like public announcements, these electronic monuments remindpeople of personal or cultural sacrifices or tragedy. Guest and Ulmer articulate a cultural and political shift–amove, as Ulmer says, to “electracy.” Ulmer offers insight into rearticulating the role of technology in anacademic space, depicting visual forms of composition and scholarship in electronic environments.Ulmer articulates the power of catastrophes to “motivate collective as well as individual reflection on themeaning and purpose of life” (Electronic Monuments x). He explains that the “disaster of 9/11 occurred at atime of apparatus shift–the emergence of a global electrate world out of a modern literate society” (x). Virtualspaces played host to many profound architectural developments. Ulmer and Guest depict important culturalchanges taking place in virtual spaces. Everyday citizens are performing a new composition–one concerned,perhaps, with visuals more than words.In much the same way, consultants might learn to compose in these new ways through the use of virtual spacesand new media technologies. I use the electronic monument as an example of multimedia composition and thepotential for the serious and meaningful academic work that is taking place within virtual spaces. Consultants atmany institutions are prompted to show a knowledge of new forms of digital composition, especially whenworking with digital media majors. When prompted to consult digital artifacts, such as a video, consultants candraw on their experiences with(in) technology to inform their strategies. Technologically sophisticated academicspaces should be responsive to a digital culture while embracing new methods, even if experimental orprovisional.Second Life offers a rich academic space for discussing and critiquing what we know and think we know aboutworking in virtual space. During the spring 2009 semester, consultants at the University of Central Floridaexplored the virtual space of Second Life along with several significant building projects. The goal was forconsultants to discuss race, culture, and gender within this immersive space. However, consultants were alsoasked what it means to “[l]earn not only how to write about images, but also to write with images,” (11). Basedon talks with digital media students, I offer several exercises piloted at the University of Central Florida asprofessional development and digital praxis.ExercisesConsultants visited Emerson College and toured “Imaging Place,” a place-based virtual reality project thatcombines panoramic video and three-dimensional virtual worlds to document situations where the forces ofglobalization are impacting the lives of individuals in local communities, as John (Craig) Freeman explains(“Imaging Place”). Consultants discuss this project and what it means for students to write with/in digital mediaand images.Consultants conducted a scavenger hunt in Second Life to explore some of the rich and interesting academicspaces now offered online. As part of their weekly training, they visited a list of libraries, museums, andcampuses constructed in Second Life and asked questions of the scholars they found working there.Consultants were asked to interact with other people (avatars) in Second Life. During the seminar, theyconnected experiences in the virtual space with issues of gender, culture, and online persona.Consultants discussed writing at the Second Life University Writing Center (SLUWC), a virtual space originallydeveloped at the University of Central Florida as a prototype writing center in an immersive virtual space. At theseminar, consultants discussed the significance of having an avatar present in their interactions along withsimilarities and differences between the immersive space and text-based space.Works CitedBaker, Suzanne, Ryan Wentz, and Madison Woods. “Using Virtual Worlds in Education: Second Life as anEducational Tool.” Teaching of Psychology 36.1 (2009): 59-64. Print.Boquet, Elizabeth. Noise from the Writing Center. Logan: Utah State UP, 2002. Print.Geller, Anne Ellen, et al. The Everyday Writing Center: A Community of Practice. Logan: Utah State UP, 2007.Print.Farley, Kathryn, Michael Nitsche, Jay Bolter, and Blair MacIntyre. “Augmenting Creative Realities: The SecondLife Performance Project.” Leonardo 42.1 (2009): 96-97. Print.Freeman, John (Craig). “Imaging Place: Place-Based Virtual Reality.” Imaging Place. Institute for Liberal Arts andInterdisciplinary Studies, n.d. Web. 6 June 2009. <http://institute.emerson.edu/vma/faculty/john_craig_freeman/imaging_place/imaging_place.html>.Gillen, Julia. “Literacy Practices in Schome Park: A Virtual Ethnography.” Journal of Research in Reading 32.1(2009): 57-71. Print.‹ Writing Center Administration: Learningthe Numbers Gameup Fall 2009 (Volume 7 Issue 1) -Professionalization and the WritingCenter, Part I ›Guest, Tim. Second Lives: A Journey through Virtual Worlds. New York: Random House, 2007. Print.Horan, Thomas A. Digital Places: Building Our City of Bits. Washington, D.C.: Urban Land Institute, 2000. Print.Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT P, 2001. Print.Mitchell, W. J. T. Picture Theory. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1994. Print.Rice, Jeff, and Marcel O’Gorman. “Introduction.” New Media/New Methods: The Academic Turn from Literacy toElectracy. Ed. Rice and O’Gorman. West Lafayette: Parlor, 2008. Print.Rymaszewski, et al. Second Life: The Official Guide. Indianapolis: Wiley, 2007. Print.Selber, Stuart. Multiliteracies for a Digital Age. Carbondale: SIU P, 2004. Print.Ulmer, Gregory. Electronic Monuments. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2005. Print.---. Heuretics: The Logic of Invention. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1994. Print.____________________Russell Carpenter is Assistant Professor of English and Director of the Noel Studio for Academic Creativity atEastern Kentucky University. Carpenter’s research focuses on the development of technologicallysophisticated academic spaces that promote creative and critical thinking.    Praxis is a project of the Undergraduate Writing Center at the University of Texas at Austin     Editor login

Writing with Pictures: Immersive Technology and 21st Century Professional Development

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Writing with Pictures: Immersive Technology and 21st Century Professional Development

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