Fall 2001|

The Cyber Odyssey Continues
Computers and Writing 2001 Conference
Ball State University
Muncie, Indiana

Conference Review by Megan Hughes

A few days after returning from Computers and Writing 2001, I dropped by the weekly Tuesday Café meeting on Connections MOO. Several quick greetings, affectionate cyberhugs, and an @who later, I realized that I knew everyone present. The other café inhabitants were no longer simply names on the listservs where I mostly lurk; they were people whom I had met and spoken with at the conference. This single event, of meeting many of the people I see online, would have made the five days in Muncie, IN, at Ball State University worthwhile. Of course, meeting the faces to match the names was only part of a conference that included a variety of sessions, speakers, and awards. Most significant to me, though, was the insight I gained from the conference experience into a major life decision.

Currently, I am an undergraduate at a small, liberal arts, Catholic university on Chicago's South Side. I have spent two years in teacher training courses to become a high school English teacher; my program culminates with sixteen weeks of student teaching this fall. When I first learned that technology can be used to facilitate a more student-centered practice, I was excited to work in my own classroom engaging students in such activities.  However, the time I spent in schools teaching and observing revealed that the institutional pressures upon teachers are great, especially with the ever-increasing standardized testing.  For six months I had been thinking of entering graduate school rather than teaching high school, and I hoped that speaking to graduate students at this conference would inform my decision. I assumed that I would transition easily from teacher education to graduate school, but attempting to think of myself as a graduate student only served to demonstrate the ways that the process of becoming an English teacher has heavily shaped my thinking. I realized that certain reifications have taken place, which almost force the following comparisons upon me as part of my conference experience and my ultimate decision.

Participating in the Graduate Research Network, I heard several research projects involving teaching and technology. I was surprised to learn that many graduate students in this field use their assistantship undergraduate courses to conduct qualitative research for their own scholarly projects. Though the degree of freedom for graduate teaching assistants certainly varies from program to program, I found that most have control over their methodology if not their content. Many of the graduate students that I saw and heard presenting, in the GRN and elsewhere, were working to align their scholarship with their pedagogy. They made efforts to include technology in creative ways and to design thoughtful reading and writing assignments. In the whole of my teacher education I have never been given this type of pedagogical freedom--lesson planning is controlled by the expectations of my university professor, the mentor teacher, the students, the school administration, and the state of Illinois Learning Standards. Having become used to justifying lessons through the language of objectives, goals, and standards, I was shocked by the graduate students' use of their classes for scholarly research. Graduate students research to become published members of the academic community; high school teachers shut their classroom doors.

I get a sense that I, as a high school teacher, would never have the kind of freedom enjoyed by these graduate students. Consider my GRN proposal: I hoped to integrate MOO use into my student teaching because the Cooperating Teacher has warned me of the students' tremendous apathy. My group at the GRN showed me the wide variety of ways that teaching the MOO on the high school level would be far more challenging than my experiences teaching it on the college level because of a wide variety of limitations: lab availability, student behavior and expectations, and the structure of high school itself make it more difficult to teach with technology in the K-12 classroom. For each success story I hear on the NCTE listservs, several other listmembers sigh over lack of computers, experience, and administrative support. In the future, I would like to see a K-12 Teacher Research Network, in which teachers can discuss the teaching/technology problems unique to their grade level and teaching atmosphere.

Following the GRN, I attended the Teacher Preparation Forum. Like the GRN, the Teacher Preparation Forum provided insights into the academic life, this time as it occurs after graduate study. But while the GRN sessions presented a picture of the teaching/scholarship life of a graduate student, the Teacher Preparation Forum showed the life beyond graduate study.  From this perspective, the life of a high school teacher seems all the easier, for in spite of institutional and bureaucratic pressures upon high school teachers, there is simply not the pressure of scholarship that is placed upon college professors. Michael Salvo encouraged all participants not to enter into college teaching unless there was something about it that they could not live without. Salvo's advice resonated throughout the weekend in my conversations with people who had made a variety of educational choices. I realized the challenging life of the academic: working on scholarship, seeking tenure, making professional connections, maintaining a professional attitude and behavior on public lists, and making personal decisions.

For someone who has not read any critical theory and who is relatively new to this field, I found the conference sessions surprisingly accessible. The best sessions were those that had a panel of colleagues presenting on different aspects of a topic. A session on Artificial Intelligence presented historical, fictional, analytical, and practical applications of AI, providing enough background for beginners and raising engaging issues. Several presentations engaged the participation and debate of audience members. The collegial atmosphere of this conference was such that I learned from presentations without needing to be previously versed in each topic. When I mentioned my dilemma of graduate school vs. high school teaching, people were adamant that there could be room for both in my life, and that there would be a place for me either way within the C&W community.  The variety of presentation topics speaks to the truth of this statement, and the atmosphere of this conference is such that interested participants can find, or create, a niche for themselves.

My advice to first time attendees? Sign up for everything: meals, speakers, and events. Introduce yourself. Bring an umbrella. Go bowling. Ask questions. And look for me there, because whether I am packing to leave for graduate school or counting the days until summer vacation, I will certainly attend the Computers and Writing conference.

Megan Hughes
Saint Xavier University
hughes@english.sxu.edu

For more on the conference, see Meet the Computers and Writing Chairs MOO or view the CoverWeb.

vol. 6 Iss. 2 Fall 2001