As teachers of writing, it is our responsibility to prepare students to enter the workforce ready to succeed, which now includes teaching students to write electronic documents as well as the traditional print documents. However, many teachers have not changed their pedagogy to adapt to the many forms of electronic writing being produced. These electronic documents are different from print documents, and our teaching needs to reflect that difference.

Producing rhetorical spaces in the electronic environment is not the same as doing so in the print environment. There are different aspects in the electronic environment: the size of screen is not the same as the page, graphics can be movie clips or animated graphics and not just static images, there can be sound, and there can be much more interaction between the text and the reader. Therefore, traditional theories of document design and writing are not necessarily applicable and these different aspects must be taken into account when creating rhetorical spaces in this new environment.

Teachers need to re-examine their pedagogy to determine objectives and goals and adapt their pedagogy to accomplish them in a new environment. The concept of smooth and striated rhetorical spaces (from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari) is one way of incorporating electronic technology into pedagogy because it allows:

1. the incorporation of the dynamics of electronic technology;
2. the convergence of multiple media; and
3. the analysis/instruction of that convergence to be treated as a whole.

This presentation discusses a model for teaching writing in electronic environments that allows for the different aspects of the electronic environments. By using this smooth/striated writing spaces model, students can increase their writing flexibility for all types of electronic writing environments.