Douglas Eyman, George Mason University
Eyman focused his article by looking back before moving forward, and by discussing not what he thinks should change as far as writing pedagogy but what should remain the same. Eyman argues that while technology is moving forward at a fast rate, he believes that the perception of such is more so driven by the social uses of specific technologies. He says that the literacy practices people are developing are what is changing most rapidly. Eyman argues that forecasting large-scale technological or social changes is a best guess situation, because future developments depend on current practices and the social, technological, and legal systems already in place to support (or undermine) continued development (328).
Eyman cautions making predictions of future radical changes by way of making the comparison between flying cars to writing pedagogy; he says flying cars exist, but ?they certainly aren?t available. It?s not because we don?t have the technology to make them work?what we don?t have is an appropriate infrastructure ? to allow that technology to be put into use and to flourish. We can imagine equally possible technologies for writing and communication in a digital age, but we should also remember that ? our imaginations should be tempered by an awareness of the kinds of infrastructures and social changes such technologies will require? (328).
Eyman says for years there have been central questions related to technology and writing pedagogy, which will remain relevant even moving forward:
- How can we ?provide equitable access to technology for all students??
- How can we ?prevent plans to use computers as inappropriate and ineffective teacher substitutes??
- How can we ?ensure adequate and competent preparation for teachers who will be using computers??
- How can we ?fulfill the promise of hypertext??
- How can we ?meet the challenges presented by the changing nature of literacy in the electronic age?? (329)
Eyman says he sees these questions as being concerned with probabilities rather than certainties and approaches them as a rhetorician, as he draws on rhetorical theory and methods in an attempt to answer these questions. Eyman says he also sees the primary interest for the field of writing is ?digital rhetoric?the application of rhetorical theory and practice in and through digital media. He makes the distinction between digital literacy, ?being able to effectively use semiotic resources to accomplish particular tasks,? versus digital rhetoric, ?making use of semiotic resources in the process of invention?not just using, but actually making digital texts? (329).
Eyman suggests working from the three following questions when considering the future of writing instruction:
1. ?What is ?writing?? How do we define it and ? what should we consider outside the purview of writing instruction as writing itself takes advantage of multimedia and multimodal semiotic resources??
2. ?Where is writing? And how do the contexts and networks within which writing takes place structure affordances and constraints of writing practice and rhetorical action??
3. ?What does writing do? How does our understanding of rhetoric-as-persuasion and writing-as-action shape our pedagogical goals?? (329)
Eyman says that writing involves making informed rhetorical choices (what writing is), will likely become more mobile and independent of the Internet (where writing is), and is designed to accomplish a task (what writing does) (329-330). Eyman says he also believes there will be more of a movement toward collaborative composition (collective action), not only driven by networked platforms for ease of collaboration but also because of the large amount of research showing the value of collaborative writing (330).
Fred Kemp, Texas Tech University
Kemp cites Clay Shirky?s mention of the change in information distribution after the Internet, where data is no longer physically restrained by the mode of its publication. Kemp says, ?The idea of knowledge itself becomes less a pouring forth from some initial generative portal and more a kind of cloud of understanding that emerges from communities (330). However, this makes me wonder how Kemp is using the term ?communities,? in that with the removal of the physicality of the information/text, how is this community bound up? Where does the cloud of understanding begin and end, to define a particular community?
Kemp makes the huge point that, ?Most any individual in society now has a new agency of access to almost everything anybody has ever thought or written? (330). While I would argue that ?most? and ?everything? are very subjective terms in this context, Kemp?s assessment of agency is rather insightful. He even takes this concept of agency further than just access to information, into the notion of agency in self-publication. Kemp however notes the problems associated with these new agencies, such as information overload and the accuracy of the information. Kemp says this new agency of access has created a necessary shift in instruction from ?what? content students should know to ?how? they should know. Kemp is arguing for a ?make sense of? approach in writing instruction to help students cope with an information-saturated society (331). He argues that the ?Internet is the most appealing and expressive technology that humanity has ever encountered; the point for teachers is not to push that round peg into our square hole, but to make the Internet a productive technology for what people inherently want to do, make sense with each other? (331).
Mike Palmquist, Colorado State University
Palmquist is advocating for the quality and collaborative merits of open-access publishing projects, which are ?transforming scholarly publishing in ways that will lead to the wider and more timely dissemination of our work [and] would require relatively small changes to our publishing practices? (331).
Bill Hart-Davidson, Mike McLeod, Jeff Grabill, The WIDE Research Center
The authors are making the case for robots being the future of writing, in saying that computing will become ?not something that people do but rather the medium that supports what people do? (333). They make the correlation between computing and writing by saying, ?Writing is where the action is but isn?t what the action is about? (334).
The authors then present a robot they have implemented that tracks successful workflow habits of behavior that bear repeating, and that collectively will ?represent successful team strategies, [that] over time, become noticeable as stable patterns of written communication? (335-336). They say the robot aggregates these habits by monitoring communications including discussions, text messages, pictures, emails, et al. between team members.
James P. Purdy, Duquesne University
Purdy is making the argument that as enhancements in portability and mobility continue people?s expectations about accessibility to texts, information, and each other will change as well (336). He says that being online will be an ever-present state and not a locationally dependent action, and that ?writing, reading, and researching activities will happen from anywhere? (336). Purdy says the ?frequency and freeness of these writing, reading, and researching activities will heighten students? sense that the best texts are those that are quickly accessible and always available? (336). He says as this persists ?students will develop less patience for ?gatekept? information. The idea of restricted access may come to seem not only curmudgeonly, but also unproductive for knowledge work? (336).
While Purdy makes the argument, for example, that researchers are no longer hindered by business hours and can quickly access a plethora of information, he takes the notion a bit too far. Even as a student at a university there are courses for which I have had to subscribe to outside academic journals, such as NCTE, to obtain course materials.
Madeleine Sorapure, University of California, Santa Barbara
Sorapure discusses the pros and cons of proprietary software and open-source programs, before making the case of using the Web as a platform for software applications. She says the proprietary versions are expensive and students are not likely to have them available outside of class and that accessibility to computer labs at night and during the weekend was problematic. Whereas the open source programs were free for students to download and offered much the same functionality of of their proprietary counterparts, they were not installed in the computers in the computer labs on campus (likely the university IT department would not allow such downloads).
Sorapure says using Web-based applications removes the constraints associated with downloading/installing proprietary or open source programs. However, Sorapure admits that these Web-based applications are free ?for now,? may require a subscription or premium package upgrade to allow full functionality, require providing personal information to set up an account, or may include advertisements in the HUD (338).
Sorapure says she has also begun incorporating smaller Web-delivered, niche programs that enable specific kinds of compositions, and since they are Flash- or JavaScript-based programs they do not require administrative approval to work on the university?s lab computers (338). She goes on to say that if the development of these Web-based applications continues teaching practices will have to shift and adapt, ?to teach skills and strategies that transfer across applications rather than (or in addition to) specific step-by-step procedures for specific applications? (338).
One interesting pedagogical idea Sorapure suggests is creating and maintaining a wiki where teachers post annotated links to Web applications they have used, sharing and assessing their experiences with the software.
Sorapure also mentions a potential flaw in Web-based applications in which ?many instances, these programs yield what Kristen Arola (2010) described as a ?loss of design agency.? While Arola referred primarily to the design limitations imposed by templates in Facebook and MySpace, other Web-based applications impose limitations and constrain the kinds of compositions that students can produce? (338). ?
Kristine Blair, Bowling Green State University
Blair is making the case for future teachers (graduate students specifically) being able to answer the question, ?Why teach digital writing?? Blair believes being able to articulate the answer to this question is crucial in negotiating politics within academic departments, and to effectively teach students to be literate in the 21st century. She is arguing that teachers need ?to understand how Web-based literacies will change what it means to read, write, and research in college and K-12 environments? (339).
Blair says that introducing graduate students to open-source, free applications can help them to see they have options beyond the standard course management systems available at their current institution, which can also enable them to potentially close existing technology gaps (technology rich institutions versus technology challenged institutions). She also says that as graduate students become more comfortable with and knowledgeable of technology, they have a better chance at bridging the gap that Prensky (2001) identified as existing between digital natives and digital immigrants (340).
Blair goes as far as to say, ?The future relevance of English studies will rest on the ability to share responsibility for teaching multimodal, Web-based literacies? (340).
Blair sums up her argument by quoting Cindy Selfe, who says, ?[To] make it possible for students to practice, value, and understand a full range of literacies ? teachers have got to be willing to expand their own understanding of composing beyond conventional bounds of the alphabetic. And we have to do so quickly or risk ? becoming increasingly irrelevant? (340).
Christine Tulley, The University of Findlay
Tulley is arguing for a new model of assessment in first-year writing programs as the pedagogy moves further form a print-based product to multimodal compositions. She is speculating that as open source tools and applications become more prominent to collect, exchange, and evaluate student compositions the writing program may become less of a closed system within a particular university.
Tulley is questioning the limitations course management systems present as far as assessing student writing, as well as whether the e-portfolio will remain a useful assessment of student progress.
Victor Vitanza, Clemson
Clemson is on such a chaotic and scattered rant that I can barely interpret mere snippets of what the man is trying to say. The gist of his ramblings and science fiction movie references is a comparison between past predictions of what the ?upgrade? from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 would look and feel like versus what the next generation (Web 3.0) will be. While I understand the use of his quirky writing to ?showcase? text as it can be seen on the Internet, his random typos, cute phrases, and switching randomly into French disrupted his underlying message for me; an audience member. I believe the point he?s trying to make is that Web 3.0 will devolve into a chaotic mess, but beyond that I got nothing form the article.
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