Folks who teach writing should read Patrick E. McLean’s essay, “A Defense of Writing Longhand” (on his official site here, and originally spotted on LifeHacker here). In his essay, he argues that he writes better longhand than computer typing, because longhand enforces a singular focus that we tend to lose when using a computer (I would say even with screen isolating typing software, because you may still think what is going on in cyberspace just beyond your imposed veil).

I tend to agree with McLean. I believe that I write better in longhand than I do by typing. After I have written something in longhand, I type it into my computer and in that process I begin editing. Putting ideas down in writing on the page is a different operation than styling and improving your words through editing. Computers are very well suited to editing, but I have to admit that my computer can be a multitasking nightmare for me. Even with all other applications closed, I still have reminders of backups, wireless networks, the time, and even with the screen blanked only for writing, I can still occasionally hear the click and whirr of my hard drive (even when I used to have a SSD, I could still hear the fans of the computer and a barely audible buzz from the hard drive compartment).

Of course, everyone’s approach to composition is different, but this is exactly the reason I ask my students to use computers and longhand for different assignments in my freshman and sophomore writing classes. This challenges students to use different styles of composition, and it allows students who may have one preference over another to show me what they are capable of in that particular medium.

After my students completed their beginning of class writing (15 minutes) and reading quiz over part 4 of Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (5 minutes), I began to go over the quiz and open the floor to questions about the novel. This is where things got exciting. My students began asking me insightful questions. They were seeking clarifications on plot holes in the text (e.g., TMA-1 coverup on the Moon, particularly after the Discovery is on its way), as well as seeking better understanding about HAL and his neurosis.

Then, I introduced their third major essay topic:

For your third major essay in our class, I would like you to write at least 1000 words about your future career choice and how you would feel about working with and competing with intelligent machines like HAL from Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is an exploration not only of the kinds of work you may do in your future career, but it is also a personal reflection on how you would potentially interact with machines in your work place.

In your essay, I would like you to write about your future job and the intelligent machines you may encounter there. Your manager may be a computer, or the surgeon may be a robot. Creative ideas for the type of work you do may be devised or distributed by a computer. There are many other possibilities, which I would like you to think about and include in your essay. Basically, think about existing jobs performed by human beings, and consider what it would be like to work with a machine instead of a human being.

Your essay should include at a minimum these things:
- introduce your topic and your personal feelings toward working with intelligent machines
- briefly explain how 2001: A Space Odyssey and HAL provide a model for your discussion
- provide some examples of where you may work with intelligent machines in your workplace and how you might deal with that–positively or negatively
- conclusion in which you discuss the ways in which intelligent machines should or should not find their way into your workplace

This is my first time offering this essay topic on 2001, and I let my students know this. I asked them to help me clarify the assignment as I went over it. They responded with more questions and possible examples that we then worked through. Also, several students approached me after class with further ideas about how to proceed with their writing, and I was happily surprised with the connections that they had already made in the final 30 minutes of class while they brainstormed their examples.

My students know about my blog, so if they find their way here, I do want them to know that I applaud their attention and questions in today’s class. I’ve tried different approaches in our class, and today, I believe that we made a very positive breakthrough that I want to carry forward in our further work together in our introductory writing class. Furthermore, it acknowledge that it wasn’t just the text or my essay assignment that made things connect today; it was my students who made things happen today and I was only too happy to go along for the ride.

Lundin’s article is a great introduction to educators about the potential and promise of using wikis in the composition classroom.  In fact, I was jazzed about one day using a wiki in my own classes in the future after reading her essay.  I may be somewhat biased in my eagerness to use wikis in the classroom, because I am a contributor to Wikipedia, and I know how to install MediaWiki on a Mac OS X box.  However, I think that Lundin makes some persuasive points about the power of wikis in the composition classroom, so let me go into some of those in more detail.

She begins by talking about a networked pedagogy (I’m thinking Foucault’s biopolitics) comprised of ”writing as a networked activity,” and “teaching as a networked activity” (432).  These ideas of shared, distributed, and interconnected means of learning and teaching should be facilitated by technologies that reinforce those network oriented goals, such as wikis.

Wikis are excellent examples of a collaborative writing and composing technology that obviously engages network culture, come close to embodying the original vision of hypertext, and the unique features of wikis including editability and page histories reinforce compositional goals of revision and collaboration.

Lundin’s essay emphasizes how wikis challenge assumptions about the traditional composition classroom (i.e., individual authorship, workshopping papers, teacher facilitated discussion, etc.).  She demonstrates that wikis challenge these assumptions in four key ways:  

1) New media composition in a wiki requires little if any expertise beyond the use of a word processor and the open design of wikis promise to unbound student creativity and expression by embracing multimodality.  

2) Collaborative writing made possible by wikis breaks down the single author paradigm by allowing all wiki participants to write, edit, and comment on any wiki pages including those of other students and those created by the teacher.  Furthermore, the transparency, as Carr et. al. describe it, of wikis through page histories facilitates reflection on the individual’s writing as well as the group collaborative process.

3) Critical interaction by a real audience of a student’s peers along withfeedback from the teacher should enable a more authentic engagement of students’ work.  Instead of writing for the teacher, students will write for one another, and give criticism to one another.  I think that this aspect holds a lot of promise, but as Lundin admits this is one of the more difficult aspects to engage students with when she discusses her creation of a “class of lurkers” (441). Additionally, she notes problems with flame wars between students.  This part of her essay particularly intreged me, due to my own work on trolls and flame wars in academic discussion lists.

4) Online authority, particularly on wikis, is decentralized and virtually anonymous.  Instead of merely subverting authority, Lundin makes a valid argument that instead authority in the traditional teacher-student sense is complicated by wiki work.  This could serve to undermine what power the teacher may hold over the classroom dialog and guiding of student work, but the very nature of wikis does empower all users, teacher and student alike, through page histories and what Will Richardson calls soft security, or participant policing of the wiki.  Additionally, student anonymity could help some students contribute in writing through the wiki when they are hesitant to contribute verbally in the classroom.

Concluding, she indicates that wikis, through their social and networked interaction, promote student social context awareness, because despite the appearance of anonymity, they are engaging one another as social writers.

I find Lundin’s essay compelling, and I plan on considering ways in which I can implement wikis in future classes.  I like how wikis will make writing regularly so much easier, and most wikis will pragmatically make teacher evaluation of writing easier by selecting to view all contributions by a particular writer/student. As Lundin noted, some teachers would be reticent to have a fully open wiki, and I would fall into this category as well for the simple fact that it might be better for all parties concerned not to allow for too much tomfoolery.  However, a little tomfoolery might be a good thing, and turn into a teachable moment.  I will have to think more on this point as I figure out how to design my class around a wiki/network paradigm.  Also, I am concerned about the flame war aspect of online communication for the composition classroom.  This will inevitably happen, and my primary concern is potential alienation of some students as a result of one or some students non-reflective acts.  Again, this is something that I will have to think further about.  

If you are a teacher, I definitely recommend you find this article (details listed above), and read it–my notes do not do it justice!

Multimodal composition is the use of media other than paper and pencil for rhetorical communication and composition.  For example, blogs, Powerpoint presentations, Youtube videos, Podcasts, brochures etc. are other ways to make persuasive arguments and enter critical discourse.  In multimodal composition, the printed essay does not reign supreme.

There seems to be a push in writing programs, which are increasingly influenced by the growth of rhetoric programs to the detriment of literature programs, to teach students to compose by any means available.  This means that students should be encouraged to create arguments, whether it be with audio essays or videos for example, with the tools at hand in order to increase their own involvement in the increasingly technologized mediums of communication.

I like this idea, on the surface, because students should be aware of the ways they do and may be called upon to communicate in the twenty-first century.  Also, I engage in these practices in my own personal and professional lives with this blog, YouTube, and Flickr.  However, I first understood the basics of writing practices and composition before or in analog with my additionally technologized communication practices.

My belief is that a grounding in traditional writing practices and composition empowers the individual to translate and apply those to other means and mediums of communication.  In the introductory writing classes, I feel that I not be meeting my students needs if I didn’t guide them towards an increased proficiency in writing before allowing them to use multimodal composition practices in the classroom.  Analogously, a pilot must earn a single engine pilots license prior to earning a license in larger and multiple engine aircraft.  Our students should safely pull out of a stall on a small Cesna before experiencing an F-15 flame out.  Therefore, I assert that students are better prepared communicators if they build on tried-and-true translatable communicative practices before using expressive, yet not as directly translatable, modes of communication.

So what does this have to do with Vernor Vinge’s postsingularlity SF novel, Rainbows End (now available for free online here)?  In the novel, Robert Gu, a former great poet in the last throws of a slow Alzheimer’s death, is resurrected through regenerative medical technologies.  However, his disease has left a mark on his mind, and he has to relearn how to be a poet as well as learn about the changes in technologically mediated communicative practices.  Toward this end, he enrolls in a high school where he works with a teenage student, Juan Orozco, to create a multimodal final project in “shop class” that involves dance, music, holographic projection, and poetry.  There’s an exchange of ideas between the two characters–Gu introduces Juan to poetry and the power of the written word, and Orozco shows Gu the potential of story telling and art with the advances in technology during Gu’s illness.

For all of the good things in Vinge’s novel, his writing about the multimodal compositions fell flat for me.  In fact, I cringed at the possibility that we’d move away from reading and writing within such a short time.  With the rapid advances in technology, and technology’s relationship and impact on the classroom, it seems like there is not enough reflection taking place on its long term and post-graduation effects on our students.  It’s one thing to write about how great this brave new world will be, but I question if that will be so.

Granted, I haven’t been in the classroom yet, and I know that a large part of my own developing ideas on teaching practices are borrowed from the ways that I was taught, but m greatest rebellious response during the past couple of weeks in Brian’s class has been in regard to multimodal composition.  I don’t think it has a place in my introductory writing class, and I question to what extent I might employ it in higher level courses where students can demonstrate their ability to communicate effectively with the written word.

A final issue that I have with multimodal composition is the technical instruction aspect of it.  I don’t do fucking tech support.  In my previous life, prior to fully engaging my research interests in graduate school, I built more computers than I can count, I’ve repaired more Macs than I can imagine, and I gave phone, teletype, and email assistance to innumerable customers at the late, great Mindspring in Atlanta, Georgia.  I didn’t sign on to pursue research and college teaching to help students learn how to use iMovie, much less the poorly designed Microsoft Movie Maker.  I love technology, and it’s an integral part of my life, including  two World of Warcraft accounts, a 30″ Apple Cinema Display and Mac Book Pro, iPhone, building a Media Center PC, blogging, and keeping my girlfriend’s ailing Sony Vaio alive while she studies for her comps, but I strongly insist on keeping that separate from my goal of enriching the lives of my students by challenging them to think deeply, imagine new possibilities, and effectively communicate through writing before moving up to multimodal composition practices.