Techno-Literacy Awareness

One main point that the Hawisher article discussed is something that has been referred to as essential for gaining techno-literacy throughout this semester: awareness. This is, in fact, the goal of any of these lesson plans we’ve read about and invented this semester. Stuart Selber, in the first article we read this fall, talked about building techno-literacy, and doing it through making students aware of technology’s reality. I’m beginning to see BGSU’s ENG 207 as a class in developing techno-literacy through building student awareness of technology’s faults and myths as well as its merits.
I really think that last week’s example lesson of analyzing computer advertising to challenge the myths about technology (the prime one being “e-spaces breed equality”) can build student awareness very effectively.
Hawisher’s article, which effectively challenged the myth of e-spaces as equal and ungendered, works to build awareness of technology’s reality, and in turn builds real literacy.

--eliz25

Students' Right to Their Own IM

Just recently, I saw a flier for a presentation entitled “Banishing Facebook 101: Making more Efficient Use of Computer Lab Time.” This title alone assumes that the writing done on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are pointless and should be avoided. But in fact, analyzing these alternative languages in the writing classroom can work to our advantage as teachers. In Banks’s Race, Rhetoric, and Technology, he states:
“Recreational spaces like BlackPlanet allow for a fuller, more organic view of African-American rhetorical production: vernacular sites like this provide the opportunity to see what patterns emerge outside the prescriptions used to prepare speakers for public communication” (73).
Banks discusses the necessity of valuing Black vernacular English to see how it can contribute to writing pedagogy. In a similar way, we as writing teachers need to value our students’ own vernacular and not abolish it from the classroom; as students’ languages can work to enhance our own teaching and the students’ learning of various discourse communities. Blackman offers several excellent ideas for how to do this. I believe that valuing online languages is vital not only so we are able to relate to our students, but also to analyze how their language is developing so we are better prepared to teach them other discourses. Blackman’s ideas are fascinating: I would love to use some of them if I get a chance to teach 207 (Intermediate Writing).

--eliz25

Predicting Obsolescence

I found Bolter's final claim concerning the future of MOOs in chapter 4 to be very interesting. He referred to a picture of The Palace MOO, and suggested that future MOOs would go further with video and animation in order to remediate film and television. It is interesting to note that not only have MOOs fallen out of favor, but its replacement--instant messaging and online chat--have gotten farther away from the visual and privelige the text, which is the opposite of what Bolter predicted in this chapter. Of course, I agree that visuals are incorporated more now on the Internet than ever before, but they seem to be in different areas. Visuals are prevalent in design and in hypertext, but other than image maps, do not seem to be interactive, at least to the extent Bolter predicts. The most interactive of internet spaces--chat rooms--rely almost exclusively on text. While graphics may shape and define the chat space, they are not interactive elements. One explanation for its obsolescence could be that the graphic MOO--like the one pictured on p. 76--was overly visual; perhaps graphics impeded the text communication. The MOO seems like a fascinating concept to explore; it would be interesting to question why its popularity never lasted.

A Hypertext on Hypertext

I was interested in Bolter's chapter on hypertext and the remediation of print--that if we consider hypertext in a material sense, we can respect the cultural work it does in getting rid of traditional hierarchy. I'm fascinated with the notion of hypertext as material--it seems that all new media is material, as well. Not only is new media concerned with the material and physical, but it does so to a greater extent than "traditional" forms of media and older technologies. New media forces us to be physically active; it encourages us to click on that link and be led to another site. We refer to hypertexts, as Bolter notes, in physical/material terms: we "visit" a site online (29). By clicking on hypertexts, we are forced to participate in the new medium and are then active learners/readers in it. Gunther Kress, in a lecture at the recent Watson conference, made the point that new media design forces readers to be active and to take control of their learning. Comparing the photo placement in a traditional, text-based book to photo, text, and sidebar placement in a DK (coffee-table) Guide book, Kress pointed out that the DK book's use of text alternately with photos and sidebars got rid of the usual hierarchy--or proscribed order--in which a book is supposed to be read. Therefore, the reader was implicated in constructing the order and was actively participating in the text, rather than just passively following along, reading each page in order from top to bottom, left to right. This shows that new media is an excellent starting point in order to get students to be active readers and writers, physically participating in the conversation.
--eliz25 (26!)

Hybridity and the Benefits of Journaling

As I was reading the articles assigned for this week concerning online writing environments, I kept wondering, what is so original or unique about web-based learning? As Danowski and others note on journaling, it is a practice that is valuable in any environment, not exclusive to online spaces. Reading further, I realize that it is two main aspects of web-based learning that make it special: (1) its hybridity and (2) its interactivity. First, it is a hybrid combination of types of writing--for example, this blog is neither exclusively personal or exclusively academic. This online writing environment, along with other distance and web-based learning spaces, hybridize writing into a mix of formal and casual. This hybridity more accurately captures the new media literacy that has come out of electronic media such as this. Second, the space's inherent interactivity is also what makes online learning unique. I would say that my students in our CMC are interacting more with their writing than previous traditional classroom formats. The reason is because spaces like Blogger encourage responses from others--responses that we often give and get in this class. This interactivity fosters students' active learning.

--eliz25

Computers and...

What I believe is so successful about Hawisher et. al.’s history of computers in the teaching of writing is its ability to integrate the technological aspect into the history of the field to the point that it is nearly transparent. Instead of privileging the history of computers over composition studies, or writing about them separately, in each chapter Hawisher et. al. expertly integrate both histories into one, being careful to balance the history of people with the history of machines. As Hawisher et. al. note in Chapter 4, technology has been becoming more and more transparent in comp studies since the early 90’s—as observed by the diminishing number of presentation titles beginning with “Computers and…” (186). It seems that Hawisher et. al.’s history demonstrates Inman’s concept of the cyborg era, in that the history has struck a balance between people and machines, and does not privilege the machine over humans (as was done early on in the history of computers). I think, though, that Hawisher et. al.’s concerns by the end of Chapter 5 are still relevant ten years later, with funding issues and training concerns—however, I wonder if application of Inman’s principle would help here? If we considered people’s needs and the site’s needs along with the technology requirements, common problems might diminish.

--eliz25

Community Technology

A main theme I noticed this week is one that continues to surface throughout the semester--that of community and networking. DigiRhet.org states that the real revolution in technology is not the machines themselves, but what they allow us to do: their connectivity and how they encourage networking, community, and easy feedback (238). Johnson-Eilola brings this up as well, noting that communication is key (214). This is of course an important point, but one that often is overlooked (especially to those super-techie people that work with computers, ironically). When most people think of technology, they imagine working by themselves without other's oversight or feedback. In fact, it is the community (of the internet, of blogs, of wikis, etc) that supports and encourages these new technologies. By acknowledging this reality, we can begin to understand the impact of digital technologies on writing, and on our students. Because certainly, with IM and text-messaging and accounts on MySpace, our students are highly literate with community-building technologies. The possibilities for these in the classroom are enormous.

--eliz24