[NOTE:
These are veeeery rough notes from the first Town Hall Meeting.
Please excuse typos & whatnot. Any seemingly cryptic or foolish statements
should be ascribed to the scribe, not the speakers, who all performed eloquently
and wisely. I only aim to provide a glimpse of the event and cannot hope
to portray a complete record. --Eric]
The Way We Will Have Become:
The Future (Histories) of Computers
and Writing
Town Hall Meeting #1
Friday, May 29, 8 a.m.
Topic: "The Computers *in*
Writing"
Facilitator: John Barber
Participants: Hugh Burns,
Cynthia Haynes, Jan Holmevik, Claudine Keenan, Fred Kemp, Dickie Selfe,
John Slatin
Generative Questions:
-
What is the current mission
of teachers and scholars involved in computers and writing in light of
technological advances and shifts in worldview relating to the purpose
of education?
-
What areas have shifted that
may cause us to rethinkn our mission?
-
Where do we want to be?
-
How will computers help to promote
and promulgate current composition theory? Will new composition theory
develop in light o feducational technology?
JohnB: Cites Computers
and the Teaching of Writing in American Higher Education, 1979-1994: A
History by Gail E. Hawisher, Paul LeBlanc, Charles Moran, and Cynthia
L. Selfe as a starting point for this conversation. Purpose of THM: Response
to that. Look forward from there. Role of computers in writing classroom.
Effectiveness of using computers in composition classroom. Brief statements
in response to generative questions:
Claudine: pub school
teachers. more pressure few opportunities to teach with technology. school
board mandates to teach 'basics' to raise standardized test scores. building
isn't wired. federal funding at stake w/ test scores. as we broaded definition
of literacy to include technology we'll face disappointment. we should
strengthen bridges to pub schools. see nat'l writing proj.
Dickie: c&w should
be in forefront in establishing new venues for teaching and learning using
the tools we're exploring. include both structured and unstructured f2f
interactions as well. should we abandon tech rich f2f sites? (as DE advocates
would suggest) or make better use of combination of virtual and physical
sites for learning. build connex w/ 2 yr colleges. student demographics
changing fast. older. working. poor. be aware of and work to bridge gulf
between tech haves and have nots.
Fred: leaders in r&c
have long espoused collab writing over current/trad pedagogy. practitioners
have been not been profoundly affected. They look not to leaders but to
their peers in next classroom for guidance. lore. (north). our prognostications
about empowerment are bouncing off teachers, who seem to be bullet-proof
to real change. our real job: influence education? the hope lies with the
proles. (orwell) practitioners will change not because of reading CE or
going to CCCC but because the ground is literally shifting beneath their
feet. common sense approach. but teachers will revert when they return
to the classroom box. the problem is not with the eggheads or with the
teachersbut with the trenches. need to get teachers and students out of
those 180 yr old trenches.
Jan: needto rethink
our missions. we should be critical thinkers about technology and take
lead in the way technologies are shapedand constructed. one way is to become
developers of technologies. think critically about them. improve them.
the two cultures have merged into one, or we should at least facilitate
that process.
Cynthia: shift from
one model of ed to multiple models, to recognition of multiple intelligences.
shift pedagogical sensibilities. nothing is pedagogically sacred any more.
massive burial mound of student writing that we have builtin the name of
process pedagogy. from age of authority to age of ? we will leave conditions
that force our students to write for burial mounds.
Hugh: [I couldn't
hear Hugh very well & didn't trust myself to interpret. Perhaps he
can post something here to fill this gap? --EC]
JohnS: our mission
is to understand and articulate the impact of technology. as teachers,
must help students thrive in knowledge economy. students will bring new
literacies and practices into our classroom with them. they are developing
those notbecause of school but in spite of it. video arcades. difficult
for older colleagues to grasp, but it's not only for grayhairs that the
bell tolls. the classroom is no longer sovereign space. the walls are now
two-way glass. we are visible from the outside. no use fretting. cite zuboff.
distinction btw automated systems and tools for people. simple perturbations
in classroom are having large cascading effects.
JohnB: tying together
the themes presented: we must learn to build bridges using tools we have
that will release us from locked box of classroom to open autonomous realm
of rhetorical pings where we can learn to thrive in a new knowledge economy
of print/digital media
cindy selfe: one theme:
houghton institute. help teachers integrate technology in their classrooms.
mixed levels. mixed experience. disagree that public school teachers are
so caught in the system that they can't exert productive agency. learn
more from k-12 teachers. even though they have to answer to the tests and
don't get credit for profdev and don't have access to tech, they tell us
how to pay attention to the kind of action we want to take as teachers
and avoid overly focusing on technology which us college folks tend to
do. they are not dupes of the system. they have to contend with the system,
and they are contending very well.
Dene: works with middle
& sec schools. every teacher has computer in classroom but has no connection
to net and no training. sits on desk collects dust. training is desperately
needed. might be diff in texas.
Fred: not sayng they
are dupes of the system, but MTU gets selective participation. visited
40 schools. ourstuff has not filtered down. they aren't dupes, but they
aren't getting opportunities to learn from and enact new ideas.
Gail: elem teachers
and college teachers feel kinship not present between sec and col. we don't
think they are dupes. we think they are in a system that doesn't allow
them to act in productive ways. should work more with schools than we do.
Dickie: need to work
with students as colleagues. we're not capable of understanding new media
by ourselves. need to work with students. need to work on student-technology
assistance programs. students work with teachersto integrate technology.
John: we as university
teachers are astonishingly ill informed about what teachers do in schools.
texas will institute huge, new curriculum that amounts to radical change.
teacher educators aren't paying attention to changes. they know a lot more
about what we do than we know about what they do.
dene: as our colleagues
across curriculum move to computers, what happens to this group? we set
ourselves apart as innovators and we're not anymore the only ones.
gail: we're still
judged to be an innovative group by many. steve gilbert points to us as
leaders. steve ehrmann looks to us. we have some historical credibility
that I hope we'll carry into the future.
catherine smith: the
curriculum. might come from lots of places. but what do we want it to become.
liberal arts tradition? are there other traditions that are richer and
more relevant?
hugh: grammar logic
rhetoric (trivium) arithmetic geometry astronomy music (quad) word &
number. philos standing next to lib arts.
cindy: we need to
pay attn to students. we're awfully tied to text. but look at what students
are doing with an expanded notion of text. have to get past this limited
notionof text.
me: pay attention
to another powerful constituency: parents.
woman whose name I didn't
catch: some see technology as a smaller box than the classroom. think
of it as pre-packaged instructional software.
cynthia: recently
spoke to ap teachers. felt like a hostile witness. they wanted to prepare
students to clep out of courses I want them to take. disjuncture.
gail: we don't talk
with each other. have to get conversation going.
cathy null: process
approach brought me to C&W. did survey of faculty in other disciplines.
they aren't using email! this year, they have embraced technology. to them,
embracing technology means putting syllabus on web and publishing emailaddress
so students can make appts. gap here between what we think and what they
think. they missed something along the way. I feel like a convert. Now
I feel like I have to become an evangelist.
Ty: I've been thinking
about how far ahead we are in many ways compared to what's happening in
business and govt. some of those folks would like to know what we know.
what we don't see are the very things that are most needed in govt and
industry. we attend to classroom, to innovation, to pedagogy, but they
need help with learning how to communicate in new realms.
Fred: not sure changing
name of c&w is all that important, but changing the mission is. we
were cheerleaders in the 80s, not have to understand more and be able to
convey more to diverse groups.
Ty: but is it writing
any more? it's communication.
Fred: but "communication"
is a trap. to many people that means conveying information.
kate: who is the 'we'?
woman: fear of technology
has kept us back. we learned that it's not so much technical thing as social
thing. |