Building Authentic Communities in Virtual Spaces


An Alliance for Computers and Writing Project

Under Construction Wear Your Virtual Hard Hat!!
WELCOME! to the web site for the collaborative writing workshop about computers and community to be held at the Computers and Writing Conference. (El Paso, May 18, 1995). This is one link in the web of resources that compose C&W Online 95.


Please join our conversation...

The Online Conference for the 11th C & W is designed to extend collaboration and increase participation in this project beyond the lab we'll be using on May 18. We invite you to engage in this project through MOOs, online discussions and through this homepage. Below is a list of facilitators' focus questions to which you have a chance to respond. Some of the ways you can participate include:

  • Attending MOO sessions

    These MOO sessions offer participants wys to join in our collaborative venture even if they can't make it to El Paso. The MOO sessions will be logged and saved as part of the project archives. In Computers and Community: Teaching Composition in the Twenty-First Century (Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 1990), Carolyn Handa responds to fears about damaged social interaction among students when teachers infuse technology into their classrooms. Carolyn Handa will join us in a conversation May 10, 8 p.m. EDT, on Diversity University MOO (telnet address: moo.du.org 8888) to discuss computers and communities as part of the online component to "Building Authentic Communities in Virtual Spaces."

    Read the transcripts of the May 4 MOO Session

    Read the transcripts of the May 10 MOO Session

  • Responding to workshop focus questions

    Here are some of the questions we will be bantering around on Daedalus Interchange on May 18. Feel free to add your comments by using the "Forms" template accessible wherever you see the phrase: *Add your own response*.

  • Responding to the ACW-L discussion list

    The ACW-L discussion list will be dedicated to computers and community-building topics May 8 through 11. Please add your comments to the list. We will be logging discussion, each day led by a different workshop leader, and attempt to create a polyvocal "essay." Dawn Rodrigues has volunteerd for May 8. Marcy Bauman will be on for May 9. More volunteers to be posted soon.

  • Here are some sample responses from ACW-L responding to the focus questions posed above about Mary Louis Pratt's Theory of Contact Zones and community building in the classroom and elsewhere.

  • Workshop Facilitators

    These leaders will bring an abstract of their idea related to computers and community to the pre-conference workshop. In an Interchange session, combined with voice communication, a joint text will be undertaken. The process of producing a joint text will focus the group not only on the ideas but on the process of doing this with the most commonly-used writing software that, in itself, is a strong community-builder. The goal is to produce not only the text, but to identify the process following the conference to carry the project to completion.

  • MOO logs

  • ACW-L Discussion Logs

  • Reading Lists on Computers and Community

  • Links to Other Sites on Culture and Community in the Electronic Age

    Know of a site related these themes? Send it along!

    Please let us know if you experience any problems with these pages.
    Thanks for visiting the project!
    Come back soon!

    Judy Williamson
    JWillia9@gmu.edu

    Randy Bass
    rbass@guvax.georgetown.edu