Class 8 Response
Betsy Gitelle
7/22/09
ENWR600
Prof. Melinda Knight
Response to Part 3 (chapters 9, 10, 11, and 12)
Herrington, A., Hodgson, K., & Moran, C. (2009). Teaching the New Writing: Technology, Change, and Assessment in the 21st-Century Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.
FROM MK:
"One question to consider would be how much has really changed."
At the very end of the book, when the three editors are wrapping up in the final chapter, I really was thinking for a minute that absolutely nothing has changed. The primary force of pure rhetoric, the attempt to communicate clearly to an audience, is still the organizing principle behind all of the teachers’ and students’ compositions, whether “multimodal” or purely “alphabetic.” At the same time, technology obviously has transformed the practice of composition at the highest level (the narrative) and the lowest (the placement of the period). I guess I believe we are ultimately trapped by the facticity of our bodies, and the desperate need we have to connect, using as many means as we can possibly afford. The challenge is to use these multiple channels to clarify and elucidate, not to create more static.
In Chapter 9, Mya Poe and Julianne Radkowski Opperman discuss the impacts of technology on science writing at both the high school and the college level. Science writing, whether in the form of a tri-fold Science Fair project board or a scholarly article, always has been concerned with making and proving a hypothesis. This goal has not changed. What has changed is that technology makes it easier to visualize data, to access research, to engage in process-based, peer review, and to iterate quickly. The compositional, technology-based tools have made better scientists and science writers at Greely High School and at MIT. The basic premise of the inquiry is the same, but the methods have changed, and, based on this article, I would say the resulting work is becoming better as well.
Peter Kittle, in Chapter 10, uses a really creative approach to explain the way he integrated technology and multimodal composition into his teaching: Fast-Forward/Rewind/Play/Pause/Record/Freeze-Frame. He discusses how his students became identified in very personal and psychological ways with the multimodal compositions they made in his class. In each case, the student created an autobiographical, multimedia study on an expository topic – how to play guitar, how to do Yoga, how to go on Spring break on a budget. It doesn’t surprise me that the students wound up loving what they created. They each assumed a powerful role as a composer and figured out how to edit using new tools to connect with others about a topic about which they felt expertise.
Finally, in Chapter 11, Stephen Smith writes “…our greatest strength [is our] greatest weakness – a reliance on print media to make meaning.” In this chapter, three teachers with a combined 48 years of experience in the classroom throw themselves into the process of infusing technology into the composition process as a response to Kathleen Blake Yancey (p. 181). They convey a kind of push-me/pull-you feeling about their need to join in. These teachers can see the advantages of using the technology to help students externalize process, do peer review, assume the dual roles of composer and editor, but ultimately they all know that they are focused on teaching students: what they always have: “Tell them what you’re going to say; say it; then tell them what you’ve said.”
All of the authors see assessment as a tool that is evolving alongside the multimodal ways of composing – a mirror image distorted by the standardized, state-mandated, arbitrary measures, and made clearer by peer-review, self-evaluation, and externalized process.
In the conclusion of the book, the editors agree “with Gunther Kress (1999) that the activity of design needs to move to the center of our pedagogy.” (p.199) Design is a process in which a problem is solved in the most perfect and economical way based on a set of parameters. When I contemplate what has changed in the process of teaching writing, based on my experience of this course, my interactions with the technology, and the readings so far, I see that while the technology pushes us to do more, see more, connect more, it ultimately has to get out of the way so we can figure out what we really want to say.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Betsy:
ReplyDeleteIt's clear that at least one of the themes throughout your analysis of this week's readings is the need to want to connect through writing. Applying that need through technology is, as you said, just another way--certainly no one wants to suggest that using technology is better way to connect. In fact, as you note, we must be careful that are connections are muddled by all the bells and whistles technology often brings.
It seems few people, including you, are interested in the traditional means by which we determine a student's writing abilities a la standardized testing. Certainly technology affords a way for students to express themselves using various literacies. In fact, not only does this help the ever-touted "differentiated instruction" mantra that's on the tips of tongues of countless pedagogues, we are, of course, better preparing our students for the future. As I commented on Katie D.'s blog, we would be remiss if we didn't try to teach writing as the vehicle to express oneself outside the English classroom. What remains, I suppose, is for our traditional view on writing to shift in a way that allows for learning how to write whilst using these great technologies. A self-evident point, I know, but nonetheless mentioned often in our class discussions.