Response 9 4/10/08

I have come a long way in terms of writing and technology. Throughout high school and the first part of college I had to hand write all of my papers first, before ever even turning on the computer. I felt that by typing, I was loosing the direct connection and communication between my brain and my hand. I was also a horrible typer! However, due to endless papers and projects a switch was forcibly turned on in me to start my papers from scratch on the computer. And now, I rarely write more that a few notes for anything I have to create before sitting down at the computer. I was in what I tell my students was the "cusp" generation. The Internet was announced and made available to everyone when I was in middle school, so I didn't exactly grow up with technology but pretty close. Sullivan in "Taking Control of the Page" talks about technology making writing more complicated because we are more aware of what we are putting on the page, how it looks, which graphics we use, is the font readable, etc. I think this awareness continues to grow as writing becomes more and more complicated. It isn't just words on a page, so to speak, we are much more conscious of how things appear because we are now in a visual age. What is even more fascinating is that this article was written in the 90's, Sullivan's call for the acceptance of electronic word publishing to be added to the rhetoric is now all the more relevant. 

Two of the questions she posed really had me thinking, "As electronically produced texts become more and more intensely visual, can an anti-visual text maintain power and effectiveness?" (60). The answer to that is no, students now have grown up in a visual age, we as educators have to provide them with video clips, photos, and art to help give them a picture of what they are reading. Unfortunately, there is a huge resistance to this at all levels of education, for two reasons. One, teaching is becoming more and more difficult having to provide visual aids in addition to all the other responsibilities can be a lot of work. What educators don't realize is that if you do some of this work upfront they will be saving time in the long-run because they won't be struggling to teach the concepts. Two, many educators are not of the digital age and feel that it isn't necessary to incorporate technology into the classroom. Sullivan's other question that caught my attention was "When writers try to take control of the page, do they end up spending more composing time on production details?" (60). My response to this is yes, but this is not a bad thing if scaffolded correctly. What I mean by this, is that we first have to focus on the actual text itself, emphasizing the importance of writing, drafting, revising and then having them focus more on the format and visuals once a solid text is produced. 

I finally found a true camaraderie in the readings with Harris and Wambeam. Their article expressed what I am all about, letting students "play" to explore, having them communicate regularly with each other to gain alternative viewpoints and to learn, all the while incorporating technology. If I didn't love my current job so much, I might just pack up and go do research with these girls! And I'm just getting started! It was so inspirational to see professors wanting to make writing a positive experience that went beyond the student-teacher traditional writing process. The study itself was well presented, I think having a control group and analyzing their findings strengthened their argument and gave it weight that can be carried beyond the composition classroom. 

"Often this ability to see beyond one's initial reaction is central to successful communication; it is also central to complexity of thought. The more fully writers are able to understand various perspectives on an issue, the better they can incorporate others' perspective's into their own, and the more fully they develop as thinkers"(355). I could not identify more fully, as educators, our first goal should be to broaden the minds of our students. Through the LISTSERV and MOO, students are able to share their ideas in a comfortable, non-confrontational atmosphere where they can ask questions and learn without feeling threatened. This was observed in the study with the cited conversation about homosexuals (368), students were able to open their minds and express their lack of knowledge or frustrations. This is a great way to tap into students and to teach them how to put their thoughts on paper and develop ideas. I also really enjoyed this article because it will be a great addition to the research for my final paper. 

Grammar is a mere afterthought for me, I never teach it isolation unless absolutely necessary. By constantly reading, writing, and revising students will pick up most of the rules so that they eventually become innate, this is true for some students, however, with an exploding ELL population, we have students who don't pick up on these rules so quickly and who do need intervention. McGee and Ericsson made me think of the full scope of implications that the auto correct in MSGC can have on students, particularly ELL students. As they state, students do not have the background knowledge of grammar to identify if the changes that are suggested are right or wrong. Especially since MSGC was not designed with them in mind (457). The students not being "expert" writers, take MS Word at its word, making changes that alter the point they are trying to convey or even jumbling up their words to the point of incomprehension. I further identified when McGee and Ericsson mentioned that only expert writers can and know to ignore certain warnings or green squiggles (462). I also agree with their calls for change. Teachers should know their subject and the technology they are using, as well as using students as experts in technology. And displaying for students that MSGC is not the end all, be all of editing and revising that the student must first make the changes they can and then call upon the other resources available to them . 

Slattery slaughtered some of my ideologies of writing and technology as he laid out his examples of technical writing at DSU. It was collaboration to the extreme or rather uncollaborative working because the communication and knowledge were so widespread as Slattery often points out. Throughout this creation process the individual writer is lost and knowledge is limited to only specified topics. For me, this article pointed out the extreme differences between distributed work in the business world and collaboration in the education world. Not that I thought they wold be one and the same, however I figured some similarities would exist. Especially considering that education is a growing business. Furthermore, it brought to my consciousness the realization that technical writing and writing and technology are not the same thing. Rather they are on the opposite ends of the same spectrum. Is it possible that the use of collaborating with writing and technology leads to the undistributed field of technical writing?