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.