Computing As Writing

A complete update to a classic, respected resource Invaluable reference, supplying a comprehensive overview on how to undertake and present research

This book examines the common metaphor that equates computing and writing, tracing it from the naming of devices (“notebook” computers) through the design of user interfaces (the “desktop”) to how we describe the work of programmers (“writing” code). Computing as Writing ponders both the implications and contradictions of the metaphor. During the past decade, analysis of digital media honed its focus on particular hardware and software platforms. Daniel Punday argues that scholars should, instead, embrace both the power and the fuzziness of the writing metaphor as it relates to computing—which isn’t simply a set of techniques or a collection of technologies but also an idea that resonates throughout contemporary culture. He addresses a wide array of subjects, including film representations of computing (Desk Set, The Social Network), Neal Stephenson’s famous open source manifesto, J. K. Rowling’s legal battle with a fan site, the sorting of digital libraries, subscription services like Netflix, and the Apple versus Google debate over openness in computing. Punday shows how contemporary authors are caught between traditional notions of writerly authority and computing’s emphasis on doing things with writing. What does it mean to be a writer today? Is writing code for an app equivalent to writing a novel? Should we change how we teach writing? Punday’s answers to these questions and others are original and refreshing, and push the study of digital media in productive new directions.

In Language and Learning in the Digital Age, linguist James Paul Gee and educator Elisabeth Hayes deal with the forces unleashed by today’s digital media, forces that are transforming language and learning for good and ill. They argue that the role of oral language is almost always entirely misunderstood in debates about digital media. Like the earlier inventions of writing and print, digital media actually power up or enhance the powers of oral language. Gee and Hayes deal, as well, with current digital transformations of language and literacy in the context of a growing crisis in traditional schooling in developed countries. With the advent of new forms of digital media, children are increasingly drawn towards video games, social media, and alternative ways of learning. Gee and Hayes explore the way in which these alternative methods of learning can be a force for a paradigm change in schooling. This is an engaging, accessible read both for undergraduate and graduate students and for scholars in language, linguistics, education, media and communication studies.

How the theoretical tools of literacy help us understand programming in its historical, social and conceptual contexts. The message from educators, the tech community, and even politicians is clear: everyone should learn to code. To emphasize the universality and importance of computer programming, promoters of coding for everyone often invoke the concept of “literacy,” drawing parallels between reading and writing code and reading and writing text. In this book, Annette Vee examines the coding-as-literacy analogy and argues that it can be an apt rhetorical frame. The theoretical tools of literacy help us understand programming beyond a technical level, and in its historical, social, and conceptual contexts. Viewing programming from the perspective of literacy and literacy from the perspective of programming, she argues, shifts our understandings of both. Computer programming becomes part of an array of communication skills important in everyday life, and literacy, augmented by programming, becomes more capacious. Vee examines the ways that programming is linked with literacy in coding literacy campaigns, considering the ideologies that accompany this coupling, and she looks at how both writing and programming encode and distribute information. She explores historical parallels between writing and programming, using the evolution of mass textual literacy to shed light on the trajectory of code from military and government infrastructure to large-scale businesses to personal use. Writing and coding were institutionalized, domesticated, and then established as a basis for literacy. Just as societies demonstrated a “literate mentality” regardless of the literate status of individuals, Vee argues, a “computational mentality” is now emerging even though coding is still a specialized skill.

A technology book for kids! Learning how to code can be like learning a foreign language.This book serves as an excellent guide to help you start writing in the odd-looking languages that make the web work. Follow simple steps as you work with real code to build your own web robots. Create your robot—write code that builds your robot's body and structure Give your bot some style—add code lines that customize your robot's color and shape Get your robot moving—finish off your robot with code that teaches it how to dance Technology Requirements: Hardware – PC or tablet with Internet connection running Windows 7 or higher or Mac with Internet connection running Mac OS X 10.7 or higher Software – Web browser to access JSFiddle.net: Google ChromeTM, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Microsoft Edge, or Microsoft Internet Explorer version 9.0 or higher

Sixth-grader Emmy tries to find her place in a new school and to figure out how she can create her own kind of music using a computer.

This book grew out of the Fourth Conference on Computers and the Writing Process, held at the University of Sussex in March 1991. The conference brought together a wide variety of people interested in most aspects of computers and the writing process including, computers and writing education, computer supported fiction, computers and technical writing, evaluation of computer-based writing, and hypertext. Fifteen papers were selected from the twenty-five delivered at the conference. The authors were asked to develop them into articles, incorporating any insights they had gained from their conference presentations. This book offers a survey of the wide area of Computers and Writing, and describes current work in the design and use of computer-based tools for writing. University of Sussex M.S. October, 1991 Note from Publisher This collection of articles is being published simultaneously as a special issue, Volume 21(1-3), of Instructional Science - An International Journal of Learning and Cognition. Instructional Science 21: 1-4 (1992) 1 © Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht Introduction MIKE SHARPLES School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BNl 9QH, United Kingdom.

This second edition of Jay David Bolter's classic text expands on the objectives of the original volume, illustrating the relationship of print to new media, and examining how hypertext and other forms of electronic writing refashion or "remediate" the forms and genres of print. Reflecting the dynamic changes in electronic technology since the first edition, this revision incorporates the Web and other current standards of electronic writing. As a text for students in composition, new technologies, information studies, and related areas, this volume provides a unique examination of the computer as a technology for reading and writing.