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.