"Technology and the Teaching of Writing" Response

Ahhh, technology: one of my favorite subjects to hate on. First of all, I would like to point out that I think this article was the best organized, most clearly written, and easiest article in this entire book. So I agree with the notion that writing teachers should be aware of the mediums in which their students are writing. I do not think that implementing technological uses in a classroom is necessary. I do not plan to use many technologies within my classes. I may have a student-created home page on which I will post calendar’s of due dates, reminders, homeworks, study guides, and research sources. I think that having that is quite beneficial for students with computer access. However, e-mail will not be a method by which students may communicate with me. Perhaps I’ll include a discussion board on which they can ask each other questions, but answering e-mails from more than 120 students (remember, I’m teaching high school) will be next to impossible to handle with my many other public educator responsibilities. I may make ONE class an online class so that we may discuss the advantages and disadvantages of that form of communication. But forcing technology on students is unfair, I think. This
article spoke of access, and I think that the biggest problem with forcing it on students is access. It is just as unfair as making students only write in academic discursive ways because it ignores their home culture which may not be able to afford a computer or possibly abhors computers. Even if computers become cheap enough for the poorest family to own one, technology will always remain expensive. Something more important than a computer will come along that we are expected to force on students who will continue to lack access. I think the only technological necessity within the writing classroom is allowing students to use technology to compose. If they have access and they are able, they should be allowed to use, but not forced. And I the teacher should have at least tacit understandings of the most fundamental technologies (word processor, etc.) so that I can provide at least minimal guidance in their uses.

One more thing the article brought up that interested me greatly was what I took to be the universalizing of online language. Black students within the classroom setting alter their AAE language when they know a teacher is reading their e-mails. I think a study that tracks the occurrence of abandoned dialects and vernaculars within the electronic setting for the adoption of e-dialects and e-vernaculars would be very interesting. Do all blacks who speak AAE in the home speak the same as all white’s who speak Standard English in the home? Is language universalized into a rigidly structured e-language? Or perhaps e-language is rigid in that it is especially flexible, though regular. I don’t know the answers to any of these questions or of the existence of possible studies, but I think that some very interesting results could come of it.