Inspired by Fred Kemp's
CW99 Keynote Address: "Battle Beyond the
Millennium: the Internet
Versus the Teacher Culture: Are You Ready to Rumble?"
As teachers standing on the limb that we always stand on, we tend to have a death grip on the tree trunk. Whoever climbs out on some distance on the limb tends to make the rest of us loosen our grip on the trunk and follow, if only a few inches. I'm suggesting that a death grip on the tree trunk while the rest of society -- and indeed the global society -- is provocatively engaged in exploration and risk, largely through the overwhelming influence of communication technology, may represent a death grip in the literal sense.
Computers and Writing Conference, 2000
Town Hall Meeting #2: Dancing on the Limbs of Learning: Stories from Those Who Dare!
Sunday, May 28, 2000, 8:15-9:45 a.m.
Coordinators: Michael Day, Sharon Cogdill, and Kathy Fitch.
As Fred Kemp observed in his keynote address at the Fifteenth Computers
and Writing Conference, if exploring technology in education is like climbing a tree, then
there will always be some teachers hugging the trunk, clinging to the familiar and the
traditional; some carefully testing each limb along the way of their ascent before
tentatively sidling out upon it; and some willing not only to clamber far out onto the
limbs, but to make a joyful dance of their experiments (including their experiments gone
awry) with new strategies and technologies in the writing classroom.
The coordinators of Town Hall #2, "Dancing on the Limbs of Learning: Stories from
Those Who Dare!" invite you to share your stories of technological exploration and
innovation in your schools, departments, and classrooms. As any current or former tree
climber knows, few can manage the fluid precision of a polished balletic performance every
time: splinters, calluses, awkward gropings for that sturdy trunk, and stunned moments of
thumping back aground are at least as common as moments of grace and transcendence. With
that in mind, we encourage you to submit narratives of struggle and frustration as well as
success or
success-in-progress.
Potential Topics/Questions:
--Climbing Without a Net: Have you been among the first in your institution or discipline
to integrate technology into the classroom? How have you negotiated the demands of that
integration among students and/or colleagues who are reluctant to explore the
possibilities?
--Students Grow in the Trees: Have you encountered students whose technological enthusiasm
and ability far outstrips your own? How has embracing their expertise altered--maybe even
challenged--your view of your role as a teacher, your definition of what it means to be a
student, your concept of what a classroom can or should be?
--"Leaves are all my darker mood.": Often, the fall is far more spectacular--and
instructive--than the climb. What have you (your students, your colleagues) tried that
most assuredly *didn't* work out exactly (or even remotely) as you envisioned it? How did
that fall impact your next attempt? Do the bruises still show?
--Branching Out: Some say the world can be divided neatly into leaders, followers, and nay
sayers, but many of us cycle through those roles with some regularity, by turns playing
the uninhibited enthusiast, following gratefully along the paths others have blazed, or
revelling in the role of incisive critic. What has your course through the mazelike
branches of technological innovation been like so far? What sorts of relationships and
networks have you formed with others along the way? What sorts do you hope for?
--The Forest and the (Charlie Brown) Trees: Not every teacher, class, or student enjoys
regular, up-to-date access to technology. Are you one who must work to create a technology
enriched environment with limited resources? How do you and your students make the best
possible use of, say, those one or two days a week in a lab, or that handful of computers
in your classroom? What have you learned about how to make the most of the access you *do*
have? Conversely, what have you learned about how to go about securing more and better
access?
--The View From the Treehouse: Finally, what *is* the view like up there, for those of you
who've settled so comfortably into teaching with technology that it's hard to envision
teaching any other way? When you do venture back into traditional classrooms, how is your
return colored, positively or negatively, by your experience with technology? Is it
possible to get stuck, as it were, up a tree?
Arboreal metaphors are distinctly out of fashion in this age of the rhizome, so we'll
abandon them for now in the hopes that they have served the purpose of suggesting some
possible directions for the narratives we seek. As Eudora Welty explains in One
Writer's Beginnings, "I am a writer who comes of a sheltered life, but a
sheltered life can be a daring life as well, for all serious daring comes from
within." We have much to learn from attending to each others' accounts of such
daring.
Daring wears many faces, takes many forms. For some, it is an act of
serious daring to enter a computer classroom for the first time, and to contemplate the
inevitable evolution of their teaching, their relationships with students, and their
definition of learning. For others, fighting for access to electronic tools still
constitutes daring, especially when colleagues, administrators, or students themselves
don't support or fully understand the urgency of that struggle. For still others,
daring means pushing beyond the (for some, at least) routine and familiar incarnations of
instructional technology to envision and enact something new. The stories collected
in these pages represent the full range of possible incarnations of "Dancing on
the Limbs of Learning." Whether you are just beginning to loosen your
"death grip" on the trunk, or are already an accomplished "swinger of birches," we hope you find these stories inspiring,
enlightening, and generally thought provoking. Moreover, we invite you further to
enrich our sense of both the risks and the benefits of daring by contributing
a work of your own to this collection.
Title: Of Mesquite and Computer Labs
Author: Sally Henschel
Organization: Midwestern State University
fhensels@nexus.mwsu.eduTitle: Encountering Technological Resistance in the High-Tech Freshman
Author: Corinna McLeod, PINTE Instructor
Organization: University of South Carolina
MCLEODFREN@aol.com
Title: Different Limbs, Different Risks
Author: Nancy Patterson
Organization: Michigan State University and Portland Middle School (English Department Chair)
patter@voyager.netTitle: The Real Value of the Net: A Playground for Hopeful Monsters
Author: Eric Crump
Organization: NCTE
eric@interversity.comTitle: Forgetting Beginnings
Author: Kathy A. Fitch
Organization: College of DuPage
Kafkaz@kwom.com or FitchK@cdnet.cod.edu
You can add your story to this collection by simply sending it, via email, to Kathy Fitch at Kafkaz@kwom.com, then check http://personal.kwom.com/Kafkaz/townhall2/ in a day or two to find it added to what we hope will be a growing (branching, fully leafing, maybe even fruit-bearing!) web.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Kathy A.Fitch
College of DuPage · Liberal Arts Division · IC 3129 B · (630)942-3367
FitchK@cdnet.cod.edu · Kafkaz@kwom.com·