Who's been occupying my e-space?

I’m a bit confused by this idea of women not having a place in the world of technology since so much of my personal experience seems to contradict such an image. I work at a newspaper with a nearly-entire female staff, who all have significant computer experience. I have female friends who are graphic designers, computer programmers, CAD engineers, database operators, video editors and secretaries – who can do powerful, diverse and complicated things with computer hardware and software. (Not to mention being surrounded by women at BGSU who are highly proficient in their knowledge and teaching of technology.)

So, I have to question how this prevailing cultural stereotype connecting men and computers ever started. After all, women have a long, long history using technology especially around the home, so I’m not sure why venturing into the realm of computers should seem so daunting or so foreign. I have spent much of the past year teaching my 68-year-old mother how to use e-mail and Microsoft Word. She is somewhat hesitant about using the computer, often remarking that she does not want to “mess things up” by pushing the wrong button. I try to re-assure her that it just takes practice, and it’s really not much different than if I was learning to use the sewing machine or a double boiler. But the stereotype prevails.

With that said, though, I can understand how there is a desire to create a safe e-space for women’s communication and scholarship. Much of the negative or harmful interactions that take place in society – diminishing or silencing women’s voices – undoubtedly are carried over into cyberspace via technology. Hawisher and Sullivan propose the application of Foucault’s heterotopia onto spaces designed for just such a purpose – “countersites where culture is represented, contested and inverted.” (173). In my other class this semester, we have been reading women’s utopias in various genres (plays, sci-fi novels, etc.) I had not considered the power of a utopia, or heterotopia, created on a web site, and yet it seems highly appropriate especially if one wishes to reach younger generations of women. Sadly, the consensus from class is that the utopias created never seem to achieve the liberation, equality or success for women that they are attempting. But I don’t think that should stop us from trying to create more heterotopias on the Internet! It can only help in breaking down that myth that is preventing women’s voices from being heard in cyberspace.

And what do you think?

As a journalist, I have been sent many times on the dreaded "Man on the Street" assignment (sorry, it's still called that) where you go to a busy streetcorner, mall, post office, etc. and ask various people what they think about an issue. Although sometimes you meet well-informed, articulate people, most often the answers you receive are a clear indication of why higher education still has its work cut out for it in America.

So it is with this cynical attitude that I often approach forums such as public chatrooms, call-in radio shows, etc. Opinions generated so often do not have any research, let alone much thought, behind them. Thus, I was quite pleasantly surprised by the quality of postings in the Community Buzz section of BlackPlanet.com. Unlike many social networking sites that include superficial conversation (if not worse), I read some good discussion that took place about weighty issues.

Banks claims that "[such] can happen when students and other writers genuinely do have the right to their own language: they claim the right to speak, take the space to do it, and become invested in doing it thoroughly and effectively, and develop rhetorical savvy" (83). That is exactly what I witnessed on this web site. The Community Buzz section invites readers to post a link to an interesting news story, and then comment on it. Other readers will also read the article and comment on it. (You'd think this was a class assignment!)

The articles ranged from a story on the new black governor of Massachusetts to the top 10 myths about blacks to why black women date men who are "thugs". The responses were filled with words and phrases of African American language, as Banks noted. The interesting and informative postings covered topics such as stereotypes, social identities, political activism, images in advertising, roles of white people and more.

When we hear the call for instructors to encourage their students to be aware of the rhetorical actions taking place via technology, we can be assured that this web site is addressing that need. I would have liked to suggest that composition classes undertake a similar assignment of reading, posting and responding - but it looks like these people are already doing this for fun!

All that worrying for nothing

Attempting to answer Inman’s question of “What worries you about the computers and writing community, and why does it worry you?” has really helped me to work through some of my stereotyping of technology as cold and impersonal. I entered this class with serious concerns about the potential for technology to overwhelm the quality personal interchanges that take place in the classroom and make our pedagogy so successful.

But I was heartened to read Inman’s explanation of “the cyborg era” that he uses to explain our current techno-culture. Among the characteristics he notes are a foregrounding of individuals, and adaptability of technology for individuals’ purposes, an emphasis on the context in which technology operates, and the importance of activism by a cyborg.

And then, I was further encouraged in comparing these characteristics to James Herrick’s classic definition of rhetoric. His description of rhetoric is that it is: planned, adapted to an audience, shaped by human motives, responsive to a situation, and persuasion-seeking. I was surprised to find so many common links between rhetoric and technology! This lead me to consider whether the use of technology to foster rhetoric communication actually humanizes technology to a further extent. And that will be my focus for my reflective paper this week…..

You say tomato, I say to-mah-to

As we delve deeper into the high tech world of teaching writing, the obvious temptation for me is to continually compare the new with the old. The traditional classroom vs. the on-line environment. Face-to-face peer review vs. virtual peer review. The design of on-line documents vs. paper documents. The resulting question is always “which one is better?” (Better for our students, for ourselves, for the academy, etc.)

So I was struck by last week’s recommendation of Breuch to avoid comparisons of good/bad because they end up being fruitless in the search to determine which is better or worse. Instead she suggests asking critical questions about the differences. Keeping in mind that good advice, I was surprised to read Moran and Herrington this week asking us to take note of the differences between evaluating hypertexts and evaluating traditional papers. ‘We encourage you also to think about the nature of these hypertexts in relation to non-hypertext compositions. Reading hypertext with non-hypertext in mind… helps bring into relief our expectations for non-hypertext academic writing and some of the conventions and associated evaluation criteria that we take for granted” (253).

Their goal is to work toward establishing some sort of rubric for evaluating hypertexts, which is vital for the classroom. The nature of the technology beast is causing us to develop new criteria in evaluations. For instance, the use of graphics and links add dimensions that the traditional typewritten paper cannot provide. I can appreciate that they want to encourage self-reflection on evaluative methods for both hyper and non-hypertext. But immediately setting up this comparison in one’s mind seems restrictive as we look for ways to further expand our evaluative methods and criteria.

Moran and Herrington do conclude that hypertext will bring to light aspects that we have not previously considered. “Technology will have done what is seems always to do: It has made visible what was transparent, and has made us reflect on what we conventionally do” (256). The contrast between the two seems worthwhile to take note of, but I don’t think we should limit ourselves to focusing on the dichotomy.

Writing for the sake of writing? Technology for the sake of technology?

A statement in one of last week’s readings brought to mind a question posed by Doug Hesse when he was visiting campus recently: “Is it a writing class? Or is it a class with lots of writing?”

In “Characteristics of Peer Review,” Breuch notes that a primary difference of the interaction is that it entirely takes place on-line, instead of face-to-face. Immersed in a text-based environment, the virtual classroom becomes “a written classroom, not just a writing classroom” (quoting William Condon) and all exercises become acts of writing instead of acts of speaking. Breuch pulls out an excellent point here – the very essence of the writing class has been transformed, perhaps into something of a writing teacher’s dream (“All writing, all the time!” the radio commercial would proclaim). But even as the potential of an on-line class grows as the dynamics of communication are changed, both Breuch and Hesse likely would caution us that the sheer volume of writing is not necessarily helping us to meet our pedagogical goals. And it reminds me of the question of whether adding computers to the writing classroom is merely adding technology for technology’s sake.

Technology without the pedagogical elements of the traditional writing class, such as the practice of revision and self-critique, provides a lot of opportunity for writing – but not as much for learning about writing. Technology offers many conveniences and advances to the classroom, but simultaneously should remind us of the necessity of questioning whether we are meeting our goals as teachers, no matter what the medium. A class in which one spends hours writing on the computer can be equally as ineffective for the student who spends hours writing essays on paper at his desk. Neither is necessarily achieving what we want.

On the other hand, we cannot merely dismiss the on-line environment as merely just a class with lots of writing. Condon goes on to say that the on-line world of interaction through text “provides a powerful environment for helping students see themselves as writers” (47). Last week, in my Comp I class, I had my students complete a Techno-Autobiography, and I am anxious to read their response essays. To me it seems a vital part of the writing classroom for students to understand how they can become better writers, to practice those skills and work toward improvement, but also to come to realize how much technology is part of their lives as writers.

Would Marx have predicted this?

The essay by Johndan Johnson-Eilola brought back fond memories of my summer class on Literary Theory. He discusses the effect of postmodernism on intellectual property and copyright laws, and summarizes that, thanks to technology, scholars find themselves confronted with the economic impacts of what had been a theory fairly confined to the cultural and education worlds.

If one supports the idea of the fragmenting of text, then it raises the difficult question of how can the authors of such text retain their rightful ownership once it is sent in chunks, bytes, quotes and images in different directions throughout cyberspace. With such movement, I find the capabilities for the creation of new text to be unlimited and exciting.

The directions in which technology pushes scholars and students are very new, and now the law and economy is attempting catch up to those changes. Much like the tension found (and celebrated) in postmodernism, the result creates some odd juxtapositions. Johnson-Eilola describes the situation as “one in which we have to both participate and resist. We cannot just give ourselves over to maximizing capital or completely fragmenting the self” (212).

There are no easy answers to the questions arising, and Johnson-Eilola doesn’t paint a rosy picture for future developments: “I admit that I find the incessant commodification of knowledge a depressing trend” and he laments any moves “toward making text a terrain for profit and little else” (212).

I think his advice is worth heeding that scholars commit themselves to staying involved in the decisions made, and increasing awareness about the value of discussion on text as property.

More technology = more knowledge?

Teaching in a community college has given me a special perspective on the issue of students’ access to technology. While I encounter plenty of students with cell phones, laptops, iPods, etc., I also have students who take the bus to get to and from campus. Who see textbooks as their greatest luxury of the semester. Who live in households where they can’t depend on someone to pay the electric bill each month – let alone supplement their lifestyle with numerous electronic gadgets.

And while assuredly there is a problem in these scenarios with students having access to tools, I am struck by the note in the DigiRhet.org article that providing these students with access to publishing venues is equally as important. My teaching philosophy incorporates an element of empowerment of students, which access to opportunities and abilities for publishing digitally obviously creates.

Yet I think it’s essential to heed the authors’ warning not to reduce this to mere technological savvy. But instead, they describe the need for a strong sense of engagement with technology that invokes critical thinking. This “requires us to understand, criticize and make judgments about a technology’s interactions with, and effects on, culture” (236). I am glad to see cyberliteracy defined in a way that involves more than material possessions. Teaching students “the ways in which these technologies interpellate us – as viewers, users, consumers, and writers – and interrogate the ways in which these devices play a rhetorical role in our lives” (237) seems to be just as empowering as a gift card at Best Buy.

Perhaps some of these students might have more reason - from their social, cultural or economic status – to question their own relationships with technology because they could be highly imbalanced or oppressive. It’s heartening for me to see the opportunities that can be created for students – who haven’t always been the recipients of many opportunities – and the skills (beyond software proficiency) they can take away from our classrooms.