Overview/Summary
We must learn to build bridges (Claudine)
of mixed media (Dickie) that will release us from the locked box of the
classroom (Fred) into more open, autonomous realms of rhetorical "pings"
(Cynthia and Jan) where we can facilitate, through models drawn from the
liberal arts (Hugh), the competencies necessary to thrive in a knowledge
economy (John) comprised partially of print and partially of digital media.
Claudine Keenan
Claudine starts us off by saying that
teachers, on the K-12 front, face more pressure and fewer opportunities
to incorporate technology into literacy and language arts instruction.
But, she asks, as students in the next few years will have had more experience
using computers "what programs are in place to prepare public school teachers
for what we, as university writing teachers, expect students to be able
to do with computers?" The electronic writing classroom, like its predecessor,
the process writing workshop, may be heading for a pedagogical blame game.
To avoid this, Claudine says we may want to begin building bridges to our
public schools now more than ever, when the technology itself makes this
outreach even more convenient, even more feasible. Her conclusion: without
cooperation between public and higher education, computers cannot effectively
help to promote and promulgate current composition theory, nor can they
overcome the gap that inequity between the two systems is helping to widen.
Dickie Selfe
Dickie agrees with Claudine saying we
should/could be in the forefront of higher education in establishing creative
combinations of physical, virtual, synchronous, and asynchronous interactions
between all stakeholders in and outside our institutions, and those creative
combinations must value the building of a sense of learning space--both
physical and virtual--via a mix of media that includes both structured
and unstructured face-to-face interactions. He says we should be working
together at all levels to take advantage of new media rhetorics while working
hard not to exacerbate the gulf between technology haves and havenots.
Fred Kemp
What Dickie calls "media mix," Fred (drawing
from Steve North) calls "lore" and suggests that much of what many of the
K-12 teachers Claudine spoke about learn, accept, and practice regarding
the teaching of writing is done simply because what we university "eggheads"
come up with doesn't work in the trenches. He suggests that the problem
is with neither teachers or students but rather the trenches and promotes
a vision of how continued digitalization of communication and society will
release us from the "locked box" of the classroom into a "knowledge economy"
where what we facilitate will be of value, essential.
Cynthia Haynes and Jan Rune Holmevik
Cynthia and Jan take this notion further
by stating that "the mission of teachers and scholars in computers and
writing should be to rethink our missions with respect to technology, pedagogy,
and research." We should/will do this by becoming developers of technologies
in order to take the lead in how technologies are developed. They also
suggest the necessity of shifting to multiple models of education (as Fred
suggested multiple models of literacy and Dickie suggested multiple "media
mixes" of delivering this education, these literacies). The result: wresting
us from the authority of Mrs. Grundy, glowering at her blackboard, and
placing us in the open, autonomous age of rhetorical "pings."
Hugh Burns
Hugh calls for us to exploit the various
classical dimensions of network technology in specific writing programs.
We should be, he says, "steeped in the liberal arts tradition, inspired
by all nine muses, watched over by Apollo, and online."
John Slatin
John agrees with Cynthia and Jan and Fred
and Dickie and Claudine saying, "our mission . . . is to understand and
articulate the impact of technology upon literacy broadly conceived, both
through traditional scholarly activity and by designing technology applications
that instantiate and test our theory." Develop the competencies necessary
to thrive in a knowledge economy that includes print and digital media.
Students will bring these new literacies with them to the classroom and
they, as should we, their teachers, will begin to see more and more the
connection between what they do and the information system as a whole.
We must, he says, learn to see ourselves as working within a vastly complex
educational system. |