Technology and Writing

Moran's overview of the impact the computer and technology had on writing in "Technology and the Teaching of Writing" was pretty fair in showing the negatives and positives of the relationship between technology and writing.

For one, the whole aspect of the application of word processing to writing provided further insight to the endless debate of the difference between writing on the computer and writing on paper first. Does writing in say, Microsoft word, hinder writing? Moran tried to find a suitable summary for this issue and came up with:

We found that students might or might not be revising more online than they had on paper; that writers might be having difficulty seeing their text whole, might be spending less time planning before they wrote, and might be helped or hindered by spell checkers and grammar checkers (Moran 207)

As Moran continues on, he notes that because essentially, writers WRITE differently. There are so many different things that goes into everyone's writing process, that it seems impossible to come up with definitive proof on either side.
I also liked his idea that all writers can, to a degree, control their writing environment by manipulating the program they are working with (208). By say, turning off auto correct functions that would other wise drive us crazy, we are creating an environment where words can flow freely unto the page. And for someone like me, who is distracted easily by the terrible inconsistency of my handwriting, writing in a word program is a welcomed change, because it is one less thing I have to worry about as I write.


As several authors noted, we are living in a technological-multimedia driven world, and there is a "growing percentage of students who believe their ability to communicate using new media will be critical to their futures" (Faigley, 179). I can really see this happening, especially as I once considered myself "technology savvy" (well at least compared to my family) and even now I cant keep up with whats going on, what with blogging and myspace and facebook. Of course, many of you have seen this already with my futile attempts at linking websites and you tube videos!) Therefore, I appreciate Faigley's concern about writing teachers simply not knowing enough about web writing, and it being a sometimes overwhelming force to consider putting into their curriculum when it (the curriculum) is demanding enough already.

Even with this negative notion, there is "pedagogical reasons for considering web publishing as an option for students. The ability to compose multimedia documents gives students an awareness of text over other media. Many ideas cannot be translated well into other media..."

I can certainly agree with this idea. I think that the visual literacy movement that is happening is a worthwhile cause to get invested in. Multimedia essays and documents are an encouraging way for students to express themselves in ways they couldn't on a plain text Microsoft word document, or even using a plain pen and paper. This (visual literacy) plays part into empowering them and by giving them a sense of empowerment, we are also encouraging them to use this to continue to express themselves through their writing and their "space" on the internet.

Basic Writing

Deborah Mutnick's article "On The Academic Margins: Basic Writing Pedagogy provided useful insight into the politics of basic writing classes in Universities. I did always get the feeling that, while not my own opinion, basic writing classes were looked down upon by some at the University level, and from what I implied from Mutnick, many feel that basic writing classes were only created due to the Open Admissions movement created in the late 60s/early 70s.

This was reinforced by Andrea Lundsford's study at Ohio State University, where she describes the students as:

Poor readers whose writing was marked by syntactic immaturity, abundant error, and ineffective writing strategies...In light of the study's findings, she finds several implications for remedial writing instruction: language skills are related and need to be integrated into the college curriculum; the level of reading difficulty should not be diluted for basic writers; sentence-combining exercises should be redesigned to foster abstract thinking, and teachers need to be better trained (Mutnick 189).

I feel like these are important elements to be taken into consideration. And while I do think its important to foster abstract teaching, and language skills should be integrated, I struggle with the level of reading difficult. I'm certainly not saying make it "easy" for students, but I think about the types of students taking a basic writing class. Often times ( at least in my experience as a tutor) these are students who are a bit lacking in self confidence and struggle in this new world. (At the same time, count that be said for any freshman entering college)

What I am trying to get at here is that while reading this, I couldnt help but reflect back on several of the different pedagogies as I read this. In regards to critical pedagogy,I don't think we should dumb down material for basic readers (as I agree with Mike Rose, and don't think its a entirely cognitive problem, more so a mixture of different factors, such as accessibility to good k-12 education, socio economic factors, etc) I don't think we should make the material totally inaccessible to these "at risk" students. Basic writing should provide the foundation for writing, critical reading, and critical thinking in college, not scare them away or turn them off to the whole process itself.

Could it be then, that Peter Elbow's "yogurt model" is an viable option for a basic writing class (or any writing class)? Elbow's idea is that basic writing would be like a writing studio, where students work on their writing as long as they need to produce a passing portfolio, where "at which point they would receive three credits and complete the course" (Mutnick 198).

I like the idea of creating a portfolio and being graded on your overall achievements (an idea we have played around with in our own class) is a possible idea. But I'm not sure how I feel about the uncertainty of time in it all. There should be a destination in terms of production, only because I could see this going two ways: one, that some students would be faster than others, and this may foster jealously and or further the self confidence or also that students may take a super long extended time which might delay the rest of their education.

Its obvious that when it comes to basic writing pedagogy, there is no easy answer or solution. The one thing I do hope for is that the Open Admissions era does not come to an end, because I feel like that would be a step backward, not forward...


On a last note, I wanted to do a little ode to Todd and his "juicy" language that he encourages his students to produce. Its all the more fitting because I know Todd is one of our discussion leaders tonight. Whenever Todd talks about this, I always think of one of my favorite bands, Better Than Ezra. On one of their albums, they have a song entitled "Juicy" which is a little silly ditty they do (you may have heard it in ads for Applebee's and Desperate Housewives) So, I thought it would be fun to post some kind of video with the song. (lets hope my linking powers actually decide to work!) I hope you all enjoy !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhrCqvMfj3A

*and as a side note, Better than Ezra has other really really great songs that are nothing like this :)
** and as another side note, I just thought this was a really funny video interpretation of the song, I coudnt find any really good live performances