https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ViURnzhwYFyw3fD5tsrMo6nliWHmS2JcxBYRspCRKMY/edit?usp=sharing

Unfortunately we spent most of class last time trying to find a MOO that was still active that we could actually navigate in and around. We eventually did find one, but by the time we had it half way figured out to the point where we could start doing things with it, class was over. That said, I saw a few interesting pedagogical implications of what we did and how we were doing it.

1. I’m about to start the second unit in my tech writing class which is going to be the technical description. It could be kind of cool to given the students an assignment to provide a technical description of how to actually do something with a MOO. The documentation that Amelia and I were dealing with was helpful, but not super helpful. So that could be an interesting assignment/activity for 421 students.
2. In retrospect, the struggles we went through to figure this thing out are kind of a metaphor for the writing process. (Or learning anything, really.) You struggle, it doesn’t make sense, you think pretty much everyone else is doing it better than you. Then, when you finally think you’ve got it figured out and you’ll be able to start actually doing stuff, time is up and you have to “turn it in.” But the difference was this felt more like a game and less frustrating than the writing process often feels. So why does the writing process feel so much more frustrating? Why can’t we approach it more like a game and have fun with it? Ideas to continue teasing out, I suppose.
3. Honestly, I’m still not sure I totally understand MOOs. I think there is actually a much more direct pedagogical implication into how we use them, and maybe I would have gotten it had we figured things out more quickly and actually gotten into the MOO, but for now I think I’m still on the outside.

One thing that I like to do when having students write an argumentative paper (researched, non-researched, OpEd, etc.) is have everyone get in a Google doc and I have them write their tentative thesis on separate lines. Then I have them write underneath each others’ theses contrary arguments. I encourage them to be as antagonistic as possible in order to highlight the counterarguments. Because the workspace allows for anonymous feedback and posting, they can be as free as they want. And since everyone is participating they can see it as a fun and not a hateful enterprise. This facilitates more thorough discussion of counterarguments, as well as discussions of the ethics of web-based, anonymous writing.

“Only a small amount of text fits on the screen, and the entire text is relatively inaccessible until a printout is made.” – Christine Hult, pg 32

At first I dismissed Hult’s complaint that the screens were too small so students couldn’t access the whole text and were thus hampered in their ability to view a composition as a “whole” entity rather than a combination of parts. I figured that she was talking about old word processor machines like this:

but which we had largely moved past. I mean, have you seen the size of some of the screens that computers have? Then I realized that I was reading the article on a 13.7 x 9.5 inch screen. In realizing this I thought back to writing my answer for the 7 day prelim question just a couple weeks ago. I had written the whole thing out and was trying to revise it when I realized that I wanted to see the whole thing all at once. I wanted to make sure that it was organized nicely and that the ideas flowed well from one to another, but my little laptop screen wasn’t allowing me to do it. So I drove to campus, printed out the draft and laid the 15 pages out over several tables in HICKS and proceeded to read over and revise it pen-to-paper. This is exactly what Hult is describing when she says, “Many writers who use word processing have learned to compensate for their difficulties reading on-screen by relying on frequent printouts” (32). While I didn’t/don’t print frequently, it has been a problem for me in the past and so I have.

While I don’t agree with Hult entirely that computers have necessarily fostered and reinforced in me (or in students) a view of writing as a series of parts rather than a whole, I do see how it is difficult to actually work with a whole composition that goes beyond a few pages because of the affordances of the technologies that I have access to.

My first reaction in reading these articles, as others have noted, was to say, “Wow, we’ve come a long way.” But as I got to thinking about them, especially the Dinan, Gagnon, and Taylor article, I decided that even though the direct context of their discussion isn’t necessarily applicable today – I can’t think that there are any students who get distracted by a blinking cursor these days – the way they approach thinking about and dealing with the students fears and apprehensions of technology can serve as a pattern.

I appreciated that before discussing how they went about integrating the new technologies they talked about the various fears that students were facing, mentioning specifically that they had to deal with the usual “fear of writing itself” as well as fears about using computers. They didn’t elaborate on this fear of writing (possibly assuming that it was such well-covered ground in other venues that they didn’t need to), but in when talking about fears associated with technology, it’s important to recognizing this layering of fears because they probably tend to intensify one another.

In dealing with and trying to alleviate these fears there was one section that particularly stood out to me: “Some of our instructors have even developed amusing exercises that challenge the students without intimidating them” (36).  It’s important that we allow students to play with technologies before they’re being evaluated on how well they use them. We need to find ways of letting them get comfortable. I think all too often in the past when I have asked students to use technologies that they aren’t familiar with (usually software), I don’t provide enough of that safe space for them to get comfortable with it before I’m evaluating the work they do with that technology. I’m specifically thinking about asking my business writing students to use InDesign for their white papers and proposals.

Inherent in this focus on alleviating fears and providing “amusing” challenges that help students get comfortable is the idea that we (and by that I mean “I”) often overlook: the emotional side of teaching and learning. You can’t really teach a Dragnet-style “just the facts, ma’am” class that ignores the emotional state of the students. And when there are technological concerns that arouse fear, we need to be that much more aware of how that emotional state is possibly negatively affecting students’ ability to actually learn things.