Blogging Pedagogy - digital literacies

Teaching the (Not So) Tech-Savvy, or, Why My Students Wouldn't Get This Meme

James Wiedner — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 03:09:54 +0000

Author:

James Wiedner

Image Credit:

www.quickmeme.com

When I was informed as to what text we would be engaging in our introductory rhetoric classes this year, I was simultaneously heartened and shaken. I was heartened because the subject matter of the substantive material we would be engaging was of tremendous import to everyone- as students, as individuals, as participants in the flow of e-commerce. The issues we would be examining were being addressed and discussed right now, by everyone from politicians to niche nerds with alarmist blogs. (I was actually halfway through "The Filter Bubble" for my own interest before I found out that it would be the text I'd be working with for the next semester. What that says about me, I care not to speculate).

Almost immediately after this moment of enthusiastic anticipation, however, I was hit with an equally powerful punch of anxiety. It occurred to me that I would be walking into a room full of students who- as much as it pained me to admit it- were a full generation younger than me. The internet was something that had been part of the everyday lives of most of them for as long as they could remember. They had long ago eschewed the landline at their houses for the texting, IM'ing, posting, tweeting, and probably a whole litany of other means of communication that my old ass hadn't even heard of. No matter how much I read up on these subjects, I was going to be in front of 20 kids half my age, with twice of my knowledge on the subjects being examined. Having been assigned a classroom with state-of-the-art technology suddenly seemed less like a chance to enhance learning, and more like a chance for me to demonstrate my comparative cluelessness as to the technological devices and subject matter we'd be engaging.

I had flashbacks of my sister and I laughing hysterically as we watched my dad try to figure out the remote control for that newfangled VCR he'd bought. I had a flash-forward wondering what other awful surprises Karma had been waiting to pay me back with...

After much fretting, I resigned myself to the fact that there was simply no way I could hope to be as tech-savvy as a group of students who would struggle to even remember what it was like to have to use a phone line to get online. And, given that their demographic is always the first to know about the latest video trending on YouTube or the new social networking site, any teaching examples I found on the web were going to already be so woefully dated that my students would have to stifle laughter at the luddite that was supposed to be the one imparting knowledge to them.

This is all a long-winded way of saying that I was utterly amazed at the apathy, inexperience- and (frequently) downright ignorance- that my students displayed on so many technology-based matters. This was true both with respect to their lack of knowledge regarding the ins-and-outs of the technology that was so central to their lives, but also with respect to their ignorance and apathy regarding technology-based policies and politics that were on the tip of everyone's tongue (or so I thought). Having been a beer-swilling undergraduate myself, their lack of interest or knowledge of larger policy-based matters didn't throw me into shock. But the complete lack of knowledge about the technology that they were using virtually every minute of every day astounded me. Not a single one of them had any grasp of what Wordpress was, much less how to use it. Embedding videos in a WYSIWYG window was a new one for them. Conducting online research was overwhelming and pointless. Completing the most basic tasks on the course wiki was something at least half of them never did get a handle on (which I guess is a failing on my part as their instructor).

As for privacy issues, they were even more in the dark. SOPA, personalized search results, user tracking, electronic scanning of their gmail accounts, questionable data collection policies of the phone carriers--all of this was more or less new to them.

Naturally, I've spent the past 12 weeks trying to explain the reasons behind this ostensible obliviousness. I've arrived at the conclusion that this generation of students knows nothing about things that I consider fundamental to an understanding of the present state of technology for the simple reason that they've never had to understand. I never had to figure out the science behind my dad's VCR remote, I just had to know how to use it. These students don't need to know how online tracking works, they just need to know how to enter address A and address B into MapQuest on their iPhones. As for programming languages, that sort of thing was not even on their radar.

For every stride forward in human-computer interfaces, there is a certain amount of cognitive offloading that takes place. Things are the way the way they are and they work the way we want them to--does it really matter how google knows to give you advertisements for overstock.com at the same time you've been emailing and gchatting with your "bros" about what sort of cologne you should wear on your date tonight in order to achieve your desired ends?

In the end, their profound lack of knowledge on these issues was gold for a rhetoric class. They were exposed to eye-opening ideas about matters that impact them personally and profoundly. Some found themselves content with the state affairs even after being exposed to these new ideas, others were ready to burn Mark Zuckerberg at the stake (which is especially amazing when you consider that 95% of them had no idea who Mark Zuckerberg was a couple of months ago). There were always plenty of issues to debate, and there was (and is) an endless stream of "texts" to pay a little more attention to. They became much more adept (in class, anyway) at watching commercials, reading articles, and listening to political pundits with a critical eye and ear.

To the extent this is the case, I think that using "The Filter Bubble" in teaching students about the what's going on "behind the scenes" with the technologies that they take for granted left them a little more informed and a little less susceptible to blindly following the stated positions and policies of the people presently determining what our future will look like. And if they did, indeed, walk away with (1) newfound factual knowledge regarding internet privacy, (2) a desire to become part of the discourse at large, and (3) armed with the rhetorical and critical thinking skills to be productive voices in that discourse, then I cannot imagine a rhetoric course with more appropriate subject matter than that which we engaged this semester.

The Case for Digital Submission

Cate Blouke — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:53:39 +0000

Author:

Cate Blouke

Image Credit:

Cate Blouke

It's the end of the semester, and across the nation an all-too-familiar sight is littering the hallways of English departments: the box of student essays. Sometimes it's an envelope, sometimes it's a stack of papers half-shoved into a mailbox or under a door. But the sight of these final papers abandoned by their students and/or professors reinforces my conviction that it's time for us to move to digital submission.

While assessing student essays on a computer screen isn't without challenges (I find myself making many fewer positive comments in the marginal remarks, for example), there are a lot of good reasons why I made the decision to go digital. And I encourage you to consider making the switch for the semester ahead. First and foremost, digital submission improves work flow - for everyone.

No more misplaced assignments: word processing software has its risks regardless of how the final product is formatted. Students will inevitably forget to save documents or suffer computer crashes and viruses before an assignment is due. But digital submission means that once an assignment is turned in (via e-mail or the class wiki or website), there's no longer a risk of any assignment going astray. With the date and time stamping of any digital platform, there's also never any question of when an assignment was submitted.

Coursework isn't restricted to class time: when assignments can be turned in from a computer, the time-frame for submission is opened up well beyond the one hour window two or three days a week. This expansion can benefit both students and instructors. Digital submission gives you the freedom to allow students extra time to revise after Thursday's useful class discussion, but they can still get their papers turned in before your weekend grading binge. It can also reduce turn-around between assignments. You can ask your students to submit short papers each Tuesday, but you won't have to kill yourself to get them graded by Thursday if you can provide your feedback over the weekend.

Feedback becomes a semester-long process: when your comments are stored in a digital file, you (and your students) can access your feedback at any time. You can say farewell to the days of file folders filled with multiple drafts and assignments (which often go astray or unexamined). When grading a student's essay 2, you can look back at essay 1 to see how they've improved (or if they're still struggling with the same problems).

Grading revisions is a lot easier: when you have digital copies of both the original and the revised version of an essay, comparing the documents is a snap with Microsoft Word's "compare documents" function. The changes a student has made will be highlighted, and you can quickly discover if they followed your suggestions and how rigorously they revised.

Smaller environmental impact: this might go without saying, but digital submission is obviously a way for composition instructors to feel better about the environmental impact of their assignments. Given that the U.S. paper industry (alone) consumes 83 million tons of paper each year, requiring 40.5 million trees, and "clear cutting an area half the size of Texas" - I like to think I'm making some small effort to reduce those numbers.

All this being said, I do agree with my colleague, Jay Voss, who argues for the value of seeing one's writing in print. While I encourage digital submission for my students' final assignments, I always hold peer review workshops in print. Though I'm dubious about the efficacy of the feedback they receive, the physical act of marking up a paper (whether their own or a fellow student's) has proved extremely valuable for my students.

No system is entirely perfect. Digital submission means that I can't generally grade papers on the bus, and I'm less prone to use Word's comment function for positive feedback. But in the age of e-readers and social networking, I can only think that asking students to submit assignments electronically is an exercise that better prepares them (and me) for the times to come.

25 Things Students Forget About the Internet, or Why Explicit Instruction of Internet Literacy is Vital (Plus a Special Bonus Thing!!)

Wall — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:41:58 +0000

Author:

Amanda Wall

Image Credit:

Steve Rhode

This list is by no means complete. If I had the time, it would probably be 50 items long instead of 25. It came about as I was mulling over how to explain to students that no, the audience for any given text on the internet is (probably) not all internet users. And I realized that there are lot of these simple ideas floating around that many people don't know or ignore or forget, partly because some of them are commonsensical and don't seem to be worth mentioning and partly because they are made invisible by a lot of the popular ways of using and thinking about the internet. My title for this list was originally "25 Things Students Don't Know About the Internet," but as I began brainstorming, I realized that teachers (myself included) also tend to forget these simple ideas and thus forget to mention them to our students. And students will often readily assent to these ideas; they simply don't realize they're acting on these hidden assumptions.

Tekla Hawkins kindly suggested a couple of these ideas. The last four are, I admit, more controversial than the others, but definitely ideas that I'm willing to argue. I'm grateful for suggestions for additions to the list, or alternately, counterarguments about the current items.

25 Things We Forget About the Internet (+ One Bonus Thing)

Not everyone in the world or even the U.S. has access to the internet.
Not everyone who does have access also has consistent access to the internet.
All information on the internet is NOT available at all times to all internet users.
Even if information is in a publicly accessible space on the internet, not everyone will see it.
A lot of information is only "publicly accessible" if you have the right computer, the right browser, and the right physical abilities.
All this means that, even if information is posted in a publicly accessible space on the internet, the actual audience is definitely not everyone on the internet.
The author's intended audience is probably also not everyone on the internet. If they say that it is, they're (probably) not thinking very rhetorically.
Sometimes people don't like it when you take the information they posted publicly for one audience and put it elsewhere for a different audience --yes, even when it was already "public." For every example ever, see Facebook.
Just because you can find information on the internet doesn't mean it's true.
Just because you can't find information in the first two or three searches doesn't mean it's not on the internet.
Just because you can't find information on the internet in the first twenty or thirty searches doesn't mean it's not on the internet.
Accordingly, the ability to search for and find particular, credible sources of information is a skill that must be learned.
Just because information isn't available on the internet doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Just because information isn't available on the internet doesn't mean you don't need it.
Not everyone on the internet is an asshole.
Not everyone on the internet will be nice to you or give you the benefit of the doubt.
Your ability to be anonymous in any internet space is always limited and contingent.
Your ability to be transparent in any internet space is always limited and contingent.
Your ability to choose your audience in any internet space is always limited and contingent.
Not every piece of text and media on the internet is free for the taking or unlimited use.
But some things are, for some uses. These uses depends on a host of things, including but not limited to federal law, accepted practice, and good manners.
Web utopians think the internet or its associated technologies have a revolutionary potential that will save our minds, our businesses, our politics, and in some cases, our souls. It won't.
Web dystopians think the internet or its associate technologies are destroying our attention spans, our ability to communicate with each other, and the quality of our cultural output. It's not.
The internet, like every other technology, works with and through and on society. One does not independently cause effects on the other.
For all of these reasons, to use the internet thoughtfully and rhetorically must be considered a literacy, and one which must be explicitly taught to all of us who bounce so recklessly and hopefully around this new frontier.

Bonus: Like most other composition technologies, the internet is a source of both joy and terror about our responsibilities to ourselves and to each other. Internet forever.