Rhetoric, Technology, Culture Spring 2011

Louise,

Thanks for your musical podcast – very relaxing and thought-provoking!

My first thought addresses your comment on the computer and the ways it enables and impacts writing practices. I have a co-worker who likes to assert that her computer written documents are “written in pencil.” Describing her work this way, she’s opening up the document to changes and edits that people are often resistant to offering, seeing that the document “looks complete” already. How we are so influenced by form! Thinking through the hesitation people have and the mindset that what is printed from a computer or what is written on a computer screen must be formal or finalized, I realized this likely has to do with the ways in which computers are used and what they are used for. Recalling my high school English classes, we were trained to pre-write by hand and then, on occasion would take our pre-write to the computer lab and type. By this model, the pre-writing is what is done on a pen and paper, or perhaps with a pencil. And, most frequently in these circumstances, we are working alone. In my experience, the computer in the classroom or at home was where I did my final work. Even as we exchanged our edits during the peer-editing phase, we wrote those by hand. Understanding this, we are able to respond to this conditioning of computer as a place to demonstrate final work.

At this point, your emphasis on the “later” “later” “later” of editing seemed to both help remind us that the work on the computer is editable, yet I also felt that the act of writing cannot be fully separated from the act of editing. As someone who writes a lot in my head before I move to the page, I am very much aware of the decisions that take place as I am writing. Embracing this constant editing, rather than pushing it off, might make the blank page friendlier as students are beginning to write. I think last week’s readings on games here are informative about the types of consequences and how we structure, pursue, and reward the mastery of certain skills. An attitude shift away from “fear” of writing can be furthered by a greater emphasis on the ambient structures that inform our thinking, learning, seeing, being at all times. When citations, as we read this week, are emphasized as distinct from student thoughts and when the focus is on whether a student plagiarized rather than if they used (remixed) old information to answer a different question and new context, we reify the idea of universal genus and discount our environment. Steven Johnson, Kevin Kelly, Thomas Rickert, and others would certainly agree that the context of the work impacts greatly the work done. Finding myself in agreement as well, I am called to return to the way the ownership of writing and work has developed. Allison mentioned this in her podcast too and it’s incredibly relevant to any conversation about plagiarism. How did copyright emerge? (Kathy Temple in our department has a great book on this.) But in order to do this effectively, we must also remind our students of the way that history functions and how ideas are overwritten and naturalized. The suggestion that I draw is this: to improve composition learning we need to emphasize the great intellectual battles of history (and especially what has been cast out) because history is in many ways, written in pencil.

Great musical additions! It really is fascinating to consider whether writing instruction is affected if it is composed on a computer versus handwritten. I know that I have to write my ideas down (with a pen) before beginning on a computer; however, I grew up as computers evolved, expected to hand write ideas for the first half of my education. I wonder how this would be different with students that have always had access to computers. Would they prefer to start by typing ideas? Conversely, my parents are just now learning to interact with their computer, so I doubt it would be their first choice to use when writing. Maybe this is an example of how our brain/thinking processes must evolve to keep up with technology?

I don’t know that I agree that using the computer takes away the fear that accompanies writing. Essentially you are still beginning with a blank page that you must manipulate to get your thoughts across. While I do agree that there are more visual choices when using a computer (font, color, size, etc), the writer must still overcome the fears associated with writing.

Teaching should definitely NOT be only the English teacher’s job—I completely agree! I appreciate that you knew this and forced your students to write in their History class in addition to their English class. Too often English teachers are blamed for the lack of writing ability we too often see in our students.

Your comment that using someone’s ideas to build knowledge is learning seems correct, but I think the problem is that we have to draw a line to make sure students do not take that to mean they can copy an already existing paper and use it as their own. If they actually internalize the material they are reading (for those students that actually read it) and then remix the material then I agree that the practice would be acceptable. Additionally, while I think academic papers are mostly just a regurgitating of prior written works, I still think that students should acknowledge where their ideas came from.

Thanks for sharing your insights and providing a couple of different questions for me to ponder.