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.