Tech Musings: Using What You've Got

"DISCOVER the archives of your life," Melissa Goldthwaite urges her readers, the majority of whom are first year composition readers and students, in "This Too Is Research" (On Writing 401). She suggests using personal experience and interests as a means of encouraging students to see the research they do every day and therefore not to be intimidated by research projects assigned for class. Having grown up with computers, my students already do research constantly, even if they don't know it as such (rather as "Googling," "Facebook stalking," and the like). Although I am not the most technologically savvy girl on the block (in the high-tech computer sense), I am excited by the possibilities of using these available technologies in my classroom to inspire personal discovery through writing.

Throughout the summer, I am using this key term blog as a technology to explore and develop my own pedagogy for the fall, tracing the idea of discovery in our weekly class reading. Writing itself is a technology for expression and to work through ideas, in the process finding a unique voice. High tech options for ENC 1101, like Blackboard, Wiki pages, and Blogs, are good ways to meet students on familiar territory and push them in their writing and thoughts. My mentor accomplishes this task though analyzing film trailers on You Tube and then moving on to discuss reading assignments; in the transition, students discover that they already have the vocabulary for the discussion.

I may not be as immediately comfortable with digital technology in the classroom as many of the other TA's are (or as my students are), but I still plan to use it when I can to push students in discovering their own voices and style. In her article on the necessity of using current technology in the classroom, Cynthia Self argues, "We need to recognize that if written language and literacy practices are our professional business, so is technology" (415). I do not believe that teaching technology is my "business," but using available technology well to help students become better writers is critical in any classroom, just as the use of the pencil was two hundred years ago (Baron).

Both Clark and Yancey join this argument for the use of new technologies in composition classrooms. Yancey acknowledges the writing students already do online through blogs, email, and chatting as a way that students access the process without institutional instruction, as they have "a rhetorical situation, a purpose, a potentially worldwide audience, a choice of technology and medium" (302). Students already use online technologies to write; using them in the classroom is another way to have them "discover the archives of their own lives."





This week's reading:

Baron, Dennis. “From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies.” Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies. Eds. Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 1999. 15-33.

Selfe, Cynthia L. “Technology and Literacy: A Story about the Perils of Not Paying Attention.” College Composition and Communication 50.3 (1999): 411-436.

Yancey, Kathleen Blake. “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key.” CCC 56.2 (2004): 297-328

Clark, J. Elizabeth. “The Digital Imperative: Making a Case for a 21st Century Pedagogy.” Computers and Composition 27 (2010): 27-35.