Compared with the readings from last week, the authors this week seem more concerned with the affordances of computers and word-processing in the classroom than with the potential technical challenges students might face. Furthermore, they offer suggestions for how instructors might best utilize changing technologies, and take a slightly more critical view of <em>how</em> instructors might teach with computers than whether or not they should be. That said, these articles are still fairly vague in terms of theoretical foundations for teaching with computers and word-processors. But the discussions do look familiar, particularly Moran’s article, which discusses a networked writing classroom in which he tries to build a sense of virtual community, but in less explicit terms. Hult gets at this too by discussing ways instructors can adapt the way they approach teaching writing processes based on what emerging technologies facilitate. On the one hand, I’m tempted to claim that this type of scholarship is where Composition as a field begins to examine its relationship with writing technologies, specifically in terms of writing pedagogy (i.e. people began to recognize that writing doesn’t just happen with words on a page). But, I’m pretty sure Foucault, and anyone reading him, would challenge me on that and say it began earlier. Plus Moran cites Andrew Feenberg, so people were definitely aware. On the other hand though, Selfe and Selfe’s <em>The Politics of the Interface</em> wasn’t published until 1994. I’m curious to see what threads carry through to Thursday’s readings though, given that like Sherri, I’m still not sure exactly where to situate the readings for today.

I’m hard pressed to remember a time when I didn’t have a computer in my house. My dad is a lover of gadgets and really fostered my love for technology from an early age. I can remember him setting up a few programs for kids on the computer in the basement, but it took me very little time to track down solitaire and MS Paint. When we got the Internet, I would spend hours exploring, chatting, and learning everything I could about how computers worked.

It is probably a sign of my (relative) youth that I’m a little surprised at student reactions to computer-assisted composition. But then again, I shouldn’t be. There’s a huge barrier of entry when it comes to digital composition that I often take for granted; I had the luxury of growing up on the computer and I learned digital literacy at an age where my little brain was a sponge for knowledge. Some of the observations made sense to me: early word processors were not exactly user-friendly, and complain as I might about the changes MS has made to Word’s UI, it’s still fairly intuitive to use. But I was taken aback at the observation that the even the blinking of the cursor was a distraction to students trying to compose on the computer. I find myself distracted by the unrelenting notifications popping up on my phone and computer, to the point where I WISH the only distraction I had was the blinking cursor.

It was really helpful to read early best practices for introducing students to composing in a digital space—especially Dinan, Gagnon, and Taylor’s piece. I can see adapting some of their strategies to more complex computer tasks, such as photo editing or visual arrangement in inDesign.

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.

One thing that surprised me about these readings is how unsurprised I was by some of the content. In the Moore piece, for example, he noted his surprised that most of the students had some typing education and that they had so few problems using the computers. We see so many of these same assumptions about students these days, but in reverse: we assume students know basics and we can skip them. These continual assumptions, I’ve found, can be damaging, and I wondered if Moore’s attitude was apparent to the students, and if so, how that impacted their performance. After all, as we say in Dinana et al, that fear of failure (which I read as judgment) impacts students, something I continue to see in my own classes as I teach programs and methods that are unfamiliar to some. While the Moore piece was short, that question and others plagued me as I read the other two items. I want to go back and ask him, well, what about it? What did you really learn? What did your students learn? We see some of this: they learned technical skills they didn’t have before, maybe (we didn’t get a full breakdown of more than which students knew how to type), but as he pointed out, there was little impact on the writing… despite the use of techniques that remain useful in writing (particularly creative writing, as I well know!), such as hand-writing early drafts and editing in different modes until a final draft is created using a computer. I wonder if, in piloting this instruction, maybe other items got missed.

But, briefly, back to assumption. We assume, today, that our students are “digital natives,” but I’ve run into students of all ages who were unfamiliar with many aspects of computing beyond simply searching the web and using some rudimentary social media. We shuffle these students into labs and require e-mail and content management systems and more, and while I’ve wondered before how to better support those students besides through in-class instruction, tutorials, and peer aid, I find myself wondering now if that is impacting instruction.

I have much to say on this reading alone; I’ve eaten all my words, but I’ll have more for class. Lots to think about.

As several people have already touched on, one of the primary unifying factors that seems to tie today’s readings together is the fact that they were all written in the 80s, a time during which the use of computers in the composition classroom was a relatively new thing. Indeed, Dinan, Gagnon, and Taylor’s piece “Integrating Computers into the Writing Classroom: Some Guidelines” works off the assumption that this new situation is a fear-inducing—or, perhaps, something more like fear-intensifying—one, in that the use of the computer in the classroom, they argue, has the potential to compound the fears with which students may already enter, including “fear of exposure, fear of disapproval, fear of failure” (33).

This context and these assumptions have, of course, evolved a lot, and it is probably fairly safe to say that a good amount of our students grew up with these technologies both in the classroom and in their homes (and pockets). As such, the guidelines detailed by Dinan, Gagnon, and Taylor (and the insights that Wayne Moore highlights in “Word Processing in First-Year Comp” as well) may seem dated. But that also doesn’t mean that all of our students have grown up with today’s technologies in the same ways (or at similar levels), that the context has evolved as much as we might think, or that the insights we might glean from today’s readings, then, cannot be helpful for us when thinking about our own classrooms or our own considerations of computers and language.

For instance, one thing I’m struck by is Moore’s argument that “beginning writers stand to gain the most from the use of word processing” (55). Such a claim, whether true or not, has me thinking about the idea of the computer as some sort of hierarchical measuring device; do certain people have more to gain—or, conversely, more to lose—in the pedagogical use of computers? If so, what does this say about the computer and the manner in which it converses with our existing social and cultural structures? And how might this also expand the way we think about things like privilege and accessibility?

Perhaps Malachowski’s “Composing and Computing by the Writer with Head Trauma” lends itself best (for me, at least) to expanding the conversation about such questions. And at the risk of making things overly or unnecessarily personal (in which case, I apologize for my moment of self-absorption), this particular reading has brought my own mother to mind, since my mom had a stroke a few years ago at the age of forty-eight. Thankfully, she has recovered tremendously (which is something for which my whole family feels very lucky), but she does, at times, have difficulty with language and has lost a lot of the mobility in her right arm. Ultimately, though, I find that Malachowski’s piece converses with my mother’s situation not just because my mom had a stroke but because she had it while she was at school (and I mean this in both the literal and figurative senses because my mom had the stroke while she was at the writing center at the university at which she is currently an undergraduate student).

My mom, like Malachowski’s M.D., often becomes frustrated by the process of writing, by the extended amount of time this process now takes for her, and by the fact that she cannot call to mind certain words. It has, for me, been interesting to witness the manner in which she utilizes various technologies to accommodate her new processes, to help alleviate some of these frustrations, and to observe that such technologies have, in part, contributed to her ability to continue with her studies. Yet, such technologies do not necessarily eliminate all the problems my mom faces, including the fact that she often feels too embarrassed to ask for extra time or other accommodations in the event, for example, of a written exam. While my mom’s embarrassment stems from a host of different reasons, I wonder how her example—as well as how it converses with Malachowski’s discussion of head-trauma patients and writing as a discipline—might speak to systems of stigmatization and privilege, the manner in which such systems are augmented by technologies, and the manner in which our pedagogies can either uphold or disrupt these systems.

While it is intriguing to glance back on the perspectives of technology, namely of the computer and word processors, from the 80’s and especially that of Rhet/Compers (being that I’m in my hobbit hole: Second Language Studies), I found myself repeatedly stomping my feet at the authors (I am looking 29 + years back, using a MacBook to write a blogpost for an assignment) and second guessing my criticisms due to my lack of training in this field (again, my hobbit hole). The article I grappled with the most, though, was Moore’s.

Let me explain:

Moore (1985) 

I appreciate Moore’s attempt at investigating the effectiveness of microcomputers on the writing process and believing that “…with minimum instruction and some common sense approaches, beginning writers stand to gain the most from the use of word processing” (p. 55). I do. Yet, I found myself searching for a theoretical framework, a hypothesis, a clear methodology, an explanation of “common sense approaches”, an understanding of the learners’ profile (besides the fact that they’re “economically disadvantaged” and 83% of the class is Hispanic), what constitutes a “beginning writer” – I read none of that. What I did read came across as blaming: “In a more affluent school, I suspect the number of students with typing skills as well as the number of students familiar with computer keyboards would be higher, making instruction even more effective” (p. 57). Where was the discussion on accessibility? Were these students second language learners ( being that TSC, now University of Texas at Brownsville, is only 400 meters away from the border), or bilingual? Were they working while also going to school? Was their education primarily in the States or in Mexico (I’m just going to make the assumption that Hispanic = Mexican here)? Hypothetically speaking, if these students were learning English as a second language or even bilingual, perhaps there are other factors that contributed to the lack of improvement in their writing performance (aside from the fact that maybe there just wasn’t enough time for them to develop those computer skills along with their language skills or maybe Moore’s instruction was faulty in some way). Side note: What constitutes as writing performance here?  

Perhaps the hardest question: How much has really changed these 30 years in terms educators’ views of multilingual writers in FYC and the instruction of technology (and language/writing skills)?

After I got over the humorous nature of the readings for this week, due to the dated nature of their general treatment of computers as unfamiliar objects, I found that treatment to be among the most interesting things about them. They remind me of a concept entering a discourse through a metagame: they stick out awkwardly through the way they are discussed because they are so noticeably outside the mainstream, accepted practices, and their use hasn’t been normalized by incorporation into the center–computers are on the very edge of the periphery of composition instruction in these readings. As such, they have to make arguments where they can, and stress the value of the novelty and the practicality together, since the two can’t be separated. The Dinan and company piece, I feel especially, often exemplifies and cautions in the same breath. It’s doing the hard work of acknowledging and making visible the extra layer that computers add to writing in the 1980’s, that is now either invisible or nonexistent in our present, now that computers have moved into the central discourse of our writing metagame.

As such, the articles are devoted mostly, in my recollection, to describing how to get students to use the computers. I was also struck, as I read the Dinan and co piece, at how the fears the students have of the machine, are still with us and are still as grave: “losing words” ( which I assume means work disappearing into thin air) and breaking the machine. Our terms for these have changed as has the means, but these were the primary concerns of non-traditional students I tutored in Florida, and were definitely concerns of mine in college ten years ago. I don’t think undergrads would use these terms anymore, but I think these concepts are still big motivating fears, they have just either been accepted as necessary risk that can be significantly minimized, or have taken on new forms.

When reading the Moore piece, in particular, I was reminded of some of the things I go through when teaching my students to use Minecraft for their game composition assignments in my 106 class. So much class time gets devoted to helping them learn the processes for opening maps, locating them on drives, moving them, using the controls of the game, debugging networking problems, and learning the quirks of the Minecraft game system, that I was happy to be reminded what a big part of bringing experimental technologies into the classroom that is. It also made me appreciate his “findings” that, while the introduction of computers didn’t significantly increase students’ ability to write, it didn’t decrease it either, proving the parity of computer-inclusive composition is on par with the tradition, and that means a whole heckuva lot in the scheme of things on its own.

[your name]

August 27, 2015

ENGL 605

Hello world!

I <3 technology.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

<a href=”http://www.google.com”>This is a link</a>