Response to Why Teach Digital Writing
Since I've been teaching in the digital classroom for two semesters, I felt like the part of this site I could respond to best was the section on resistances to teaching digital writing.
Some of the resistances include
1. “We already have too much to do in the first-year composition class. We can’t add MORE.”
2. “We are writing experts, not computer experts. Computer specialists should teach technology, not writing instructors.”
3. “Students have problems writing for print environments. If they write poorly in print, I don’t see how moving them online is going to help their writing abilities."
4. “Students won’t learn how to write for academic or disciplinary contexts if we teach them writing online.”
My responses are
1. In my composition classes, technology has only enhanced my students' learning experiences, not encumbered them. Some students seem very comfortable in a technological environment and prefer to be looking up information on their individual units as opposed to viewing the information I pull up on the overhead projector. Other students prefer to bury their nose in their notebook. I don't mind whatever approach they take, but I do think that providing them the option of technological connectivity is important.
2. In this day and age it is hard to separate spheres of involvement and expertise. Just because we are writing experts does not mean we cannot become equipped to handle new technologies. With the rapid pace of development in the world, it seems silly to be stubborn about keeping up.
3. and 4. I completely disagree. I feel that students are able to absorb more by being able to look up information quickly and comment on other students' thoughts via our blog. They learn things like building connections between different texts and formats, and I've taught them to research information online. The important part is teaching them to validate their sources and make sure that what they are quoting is a reputable source, but this is a skill that they need to develop as they go into other disciplanary writing endeavors.
Having argued for these points, is there something else I may be missing?
Some of the resistances include
1. “We already have too much to do in the first-year composition class. We can’t add MORE.”
2. “We are writing experts, not computer experts. Computer specialists should teach technology, not writing instructors.”
3. “Students have problems writing for print environments. If they write poorly in print, I don’t see how moving them online is going to help their writing abilities."
4. “Students won’t learn how to write for academic or disciplinary contexts if we teach them writing online.”
My responses are
1. In my composition classes, technology has only enhanced my students' learning experiences, not encumbered them. Some students seem very comfortable in a technological environment and prefer to be looking up information on their individual units as opposed to viewing the information I pull up on the overhead projector. Other students prefer to bury their nose in their notebook. I don't mind whatever approach they take, but I do think that providing them the option of technological connectivity is important.
2. In this day and age it is hard to separate spheres of involvement and expertise. Just because we are writing experts does not mean we cannot become equipped to handle new technologies. With the rapid pace of development in the world, it seems silly to be stubborn about keeping up.
3. and 4. I completely disagree. I feel that students are able to absorb more by being able to look up information quickly and comment on other students' thoughts via our blog. They learn things like building connections between different texts and formats, and I've taught them to research information online. The important part is teaching them to validate their sources and make sure that what they are quoting is a reputable source, but this is a skill that they need to develop as they go into other disciplanary writing endeavors.
Having argued for these points, is there something else I may be missing?
posted by Annie Nguyen at 2:51 PM
5 Comments:
After two months in the computer classroom, I consider it a more pleasant and better focused environment than the traditional classroom. Once I overcame the basic familiarity-with-the-equipment obstacles, teaching in that room became quite pleasant. I don't consider it more work. On the contrary, it's much easier to connect with each student and come up with activities that keep them engaged. When the conversation takes an interesting or unexpected turn, anyone can turn to a computer and do a quick Google search. If someone asks what a multi-genre assignment looks like, I can pull up examples. ( was interesting to my students, though it incorporates fiction and poetry to a greater degree than I would hope to see from their future assignments.) And I find it useful to get them to fully participate in group discussions if those discussions can continue online, via our class blog, between classes. We start the work in class, and it carries over nicely.
I like the fact that I'm little more computer-literate than many of my students. In fact, I'm far from the most computer-literate person in the room. That seems to raise everyone's confidence level.
But, as I said, it's the change in the physical space of the classroom (the shift from conventional forward-facing grid to something more like a circle of peers) that makes the biggest difference. As an aside, the setup reminds me a little of meditation in a zendo I once visited. The students can face the center of the room at times, and they can turn and direct the focus of their attention away from the group. Different approaches, different ways to use the class time. Not that we meditate in my class. Not that I meditate ever, anymore.
Enough for now.
Learning to “produce documents appropriate to the global and dispersed reach of the web” could easily be the task of an entirely different class.
I agree, yet I can't help thinking that the act of writing is inherently technological. I suppose there's little or no technology involved if you're scratching in the sand, but as soon as you introduce a pencil you're engaged in a technological act. Today's students will never use a typewriter to compose a paper, an editorial, a letter, an E-mail. While I doubt it's "necessary" to teach writing in a computer classroom, it makes sense to me the same way that teaching drawing in an art studio with paper and pencils makes sense. You might not do all your work there, but doesn't it help to do some of your writing in the classroom with the same tools (more or less) that you would use on your own?
I have lately been wishing that my class were held in a digital classroom. The romance of dry erase markers has lost its appeal.
At first I was resistant to the idea of computers in the classroom, the distraction of the internet, the ephemermal nature of digital writing, but from a practicality standpoint, it makes sense. If I'm expecting the freewriting my students do with paper and pen to somehow be incorporated into their inquiry projects, why not have them writing directly into a word processing program? If I want my students to do research that delves beyond the scope of Google, why not be able to take them through the library's electronic resources remotely? If I want my students to put time and thought into the reading, why not have them "publish" their ideas prior to the discussion. More and more, the DWC seems to me a more efficient way to facilitate learning. The traditional classroom still exists within the digital classroom afterall. People are still gathering together in a room to learn about words, sentences, paragraphs.
Perhaps if I were a more experienced teacher, my charisma and grace in front of the classroom would win the students over, and they would respond eagerly to my in-class activities without the sex appeal of computers. As it is, it turns out that the snickering I heard all through class whenever I turned around, was do to a stripe of yellow chalk all along my backside.
Reason #1 for DWC: No chalk in sight.
Anonymous equals Molly "Chalky" McDonald.
I've just stumbled upon this discussion again years later. It's a good one. And now that I've read it I wish I could teach again in a similarly sized and arranged computer classroom. That was a fruitful writing lab.
Is it still there?
Is anyone still here?
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