Entry 5

            I think that the central argument that Bolter and Grusin make throughout “Remediation: Understanding New Media” is that remediation is a process of cultural recycling—maybe even better described through the remediated term “upcycling”. While technology develops within our society, rather than it being an autonomous or organic creation, it is rather an updated version of what we have been using for centuries as media. As the authors state, it is “the formal logic by which new media technologies refashion prior media forms” (273). In other words, it’s technologically upcycled.

Bolter and Grusin use Renaissance art and mathematics fairly often in their introduction to emphasize the idea of linear perspective in relation to remediation, transparency, immediacy, and hypermediation. I liked this analogy a lot in terms of relating their notion that we wish to have technology fade into the landscape (as is what the media literally does when an artist uses linear perspective and vanishing points). I thought this related well to the idea Selfe presented of how once technology becomes pervasive enough, it blends in, and it has to almost be pointed out to us for us to realize it’s there. Because they were writing about this issue at relatively the same time, I’m curious if Selfe, Bolter, and Grusin ever interacted as colleagues and/or peers, or if this topic was just one of the big items in terms of incorporating the digital humanities.

I think that this model could be helpful in the classroom, but I feel less confident about how I might implement it than I have with other proposed pedagogies thus far. For instance, I think that hypermediation could possibly be an answer to Selfe’s urge in making students think about the implications and social constructions of technology. I’m not sure how you could construct a lesson plan or model a course around this goal. Perhaps those of you who have taught already might have a more tangible idea of how this would play out in the classroom. My other thought on how to incorporate the ideas in Remediation is by using it as a platform for the “self-justification” paper that we have been discussing off and on throughout the semester so far. Perhaps by giving students the terms and examples in this book, it will provide them with the vocabulary to create a self-justification in a more lucid way, especially if we are requiring students to use multimodality and manipulate technology to best represent their thesis/goal/purpose in the project. 

Entry 4

            I really enjoyed today’s readings. They got at the heart of one of the main issues I had after the first day of class and getting a crash course in digital literacy, technological pedagogies, etc. (topics I hadn’t had exposure to previously); mainly: what do we do about teaching students to use technology and use it well when it is not as ubiquitous or accessible than the traditional pen and paper method is. I appreciated seeing that this is an issue that Rhet/Comp and Digital Literacy scholars have been considering from the get go (or at least what I imagine was fairly early into the field’s development…this article is from 1999, which in my understand makings sense to thinking seriously about computers and technology being staples in home and at school).

            One of the core issues in the Selfe and Faigley article were, clearly, that technology literacy in the classroom is becoming required at the same time computers themselves are not (let alone affordable or accessible), and that is creating an enormous divide between the educational realities and future prospects of students. And while both Selfe and Faigley are critical of the political underpinnings of digital literacy infiltrating the classroom (Selfe going into more of a political history of technology attitudes in the country, especially under the Clinton administration, and Faigley going into more of an economic history of computer usage, wealth division, and corporate practices and budgets), they both seem to fundamentally agree with the motivations behind those political mandates: Technology will provide teachers new resources, students new ways to learn, and children better opportunities in the job market as adults.

            I thought Selfe’s article did a good job articulating the role of Composition teachers in providing digital literacy, as I wasn’t quite sure where to place them in the grand scheme of things, particularly given the fact that I did grow up with computers at school from the time I was a kindergartner. It seemed a given that you wrote on Word and you used PowerPoint as a visual aid…strange as it may be to admit, it was hard for me to imagine why English teachers had a difficult time trying to figure out where technology placed in their classrooms. The emphasis Selfe gave on teachers making their students think about “who gets to use technology and what does it mean” rather than just “you have to use technology to show what you mean” provided a great model for me to proceed forward with idea about digital pedagogies and computer literacy from. I thought Selfe also did a great breakdown of socioeconomic forces in her paper, given the small amount of space it took up. Faigley also made a great analysis not only of availability but of access when he breaks down internet usage demographics (39-40).

            One thing I was curious about was what I read as a difference in computer literacy among teachers themselves. Selfe opens with a description of the majority of her colleagues being quite uncomfortable with the idea of technology in the classroom, but doesn’t elaborate on if this is because they are unskilled with the equipment themselves, or if they just don’t have ideas about how they’d use it in their pedagogy. I got a different feeling from Faigley though. He didn’t mention teacher apprehension to use technology so much as accessibility to it, or perhaps a resistance to the political nature of it. I was curious if this was a case of different opinions, or if something got lost in my translation of the pieces—even though they are ten years younger than our previous pieces, it’s still somewhat hard for me to place myself in the mindset of those for whom computers were entirely new, probably entirely un-intuitive, and who were having to learn how to use them somewhat independently, instead of playing around on MS Paint on lunch break in first grade. I admit that this culture difference (weird as it is to call it that) could entirely be the cause of my confusion here.

            One of the other seemingly contradictory elements of the readings for me was how a critical awareness might remedy the problems. Yes, I think it’s entirely important for privileged students to be made aware of their privilege and made to think critically about it. The critical thinking Selfe describes is absolutely necessary in my opinion. However, I’m not sure how this will then translate to a solution, as she seems to believe it will. She writes, “In technology-rich communication facilities, students and teachers can develop a more critically-informed sense of technology by actively confronting and addressing technology issues in contexts that matter—contexts that involve real people…engaged in a range of daily practices…within their various lived experiences and in light of their own goals” (433). Here, I wonder if this almost makes the core of the problem Selfe examines worse. By encouraging those who already have technology to use it as voraciously as possible, isn’t it possible that that widens the gap even more? And also, by immersing these students in critical thinking and problem solving, that seems to put them directly in a college-bound path. While obviously these are desirable (and necessary) qualities in K-12 education, the fact remains that it does achieve some of what Selfe criticizes as leading to technological illiteracy in the first place. Is this just a continuum then, or is there a solution? What do we do for the students who deserve this education as well but don’t have the resources? “Give them the resources” is obviously not a real solution when one examines the budgets Selfe outlines on 417-18.

            As far as the guidelines set forth by the CCCC, I think this is a good model to apply in my classroom, albeit a bit vague. In particular, I’m not sure how exactly the CCCC expects me to incorporate Assumption 3 (“include much hands-on use of technologies;”). What is much? To what extent does “hands-on” mean? Does that require me to teach them software, or to go to more in-depth “hands-on” experience, like coding or creating a website? What if my students are at a range in terms of previous experience, and some could really use a crash course in programs like Word, while others are proficient enough to go on to explore means of multimodality at more complex levels? Does that then still fall on me, or does that then extend to other programs at the University? I’m also unsure what “prepare students to be reflective practitioners” entails. Is this the critical awareness and engagement Selfe was describing? Or is there some other metacognitive task I should be assigning to my students?

            Overall, I think these readings did a great job of bringing to the forefront the social elements of technology. I think it’s all too easy for many people to think of technology as cold and distant from the people who create and use it, when in really, it is in many ways both a construct and shaper of society. 

Entry 3

I found I had quite different reactions to the four articles this week. I noticed two major bridges between all of them: Moving towards multimodality in teaching, and the positive outlook on student interaction with technology.

1.) These articles, to different levels, seem to be advocating some level of multimodality in the classroom. 

In Latham’s article, he spends some time elaborating on an interactive critical textbook (for lack of a better term), where the user has control both over how to use it personally and pedagogically, and that includes history, models, etc. (p. 282). While this new multimodal style raises its own set of questions, it does seem to carry the tune of what Latham imagines as the future, especially given his references to Dada and Futurism (Dada being highly multimodal, and Futurism embracing technology as necessary and central to human culture).

In Slatin’s article, while the hypertext all remains within the computer, it can include virtually anything that be can put on a computer—images, charts, music, video, etc. The very potential for hypertext lies in the fact that it can hold so much more (and different types of) data and cross-references than traditional text can, fostering connections: “…things which someone perceives as being related do in fact become related” (881).

In both of the Selfe articles (Selfe & Hawisher, Selfe & Cooper), the authors urge the classroom to become a place of integrating technology. While this, at the time, took place largely in the form of using computer labs and online forums to facilitate traditional in-class discussion, I think an updated form would push for more multimodal models in both teaching and learning, and establishing a classroom dynamic. The various classrooms studied in the Selfe & Hawisher article seem to follow the trend of a mix of technology and traditional—I believe that these articles predate exclusively online school, although there could be a prototype that I have missed.

2.) These articles also all have a positive view on technology in the classroom, to various degrees. 

In Latham’s article in particular, he describes the traditional textbook in a very disparaging way, invoking the idea of a moldy, decrepit artifact that repulses all students who have the misfortune of interacting with it (p.271). However, when he describes the potential for the e-textbook (p.271), prophesizing its invention as “an incredible personalization of learning, a radical democratization of ‘textbooks’, which allows every student to walk an individual pace” (272). 

Slatin doesn’t seem to go into pedagogy as much as the other articles, but he does spend the majority of the article describing how viewers of hypertext can interact with it on their own terms, and how this can increase engagement and learning. While he does describe some flaws of hypertext, they are so brief that they seem of no real or immediate concern to him—at least, not enough for teachers and scholars to shrug off the introduction of hypertext.

In both of the Selfe articles, there is an obvious advocacy for the technology-based classroom as the more successful, progressive one which fosters better teacher-student relationships, with the 1990 Cooper & Selfe article stressing this even more (in my opinion, to a somewhat exaggerated level, and one that demonstrated an online portion of class as far more positive and productive than I have ever seen—I imagine, however, that this will be a popular conversation topic on Tuesday, so I will not digress into it here). In the Hawisher & Selfe article, even though they warn against and analyze the undue readiness of writing teachers to integrate technology in the classroom when it is not necessarily productive, they still advocate for the same model described in the Cooper & Selfe article. Selfe, in particular, seems to be a huge fan of the classroom forum, as it appears as the saving grace to oppressive classrooms and squandered student opinions/agency.

            In some ways, I did find the articles dated, but that was mostly in their examples of technology and their predictions for the future (which I feel is inevitable for any article that’s even a few years old, in certain cases). However, many of their predictions of the issues that would grow around technology did seem to be very spot-on, which I was impressed with. Some of these qualities were what made them feel particularly relevant. Most so, I found Latham’s discussion of intellectual property and copyright issues just as pressing today as it was twenty years ago. I feel these discussions have been background noise throughout my life, ranging from illegally downloading mp3s, torrenting video, and various piracy laws that have been enacted in the past twenty-some years. In many ways, too, I found that Latham’s questions have been unanswered, or expanded upon—ebooks and copyright is the newest issue, one that I think fits in very easily to his essay, were it updated to a 2012 edition. Both of the Selfe articles describe classroom dynamics that I have encountered as an undergrad (classroom forums, particularly), and I am curious about why this isn’t dated, even after over twenty years. In my experience, this has never worked like it did in the article examples. So why is it so enduring?

Lanham, Richard. "The Electric Word: Literary Study and the Digital Revolution." New Literary History. Vol. 20, No. 2, Technology, Models, and Literary Study (Winter, 1989), pp. 265-290.

Slatin, John. "Reading Hypertext: Order and Coherence in a New Medium." College English. Vol. 52, No. 8 (Dec., 1990), pp. 870-883.

Cooper, Marilyn M. and Cynthia L. Selfe. "Computer Conferences and Learning: Authority, Resistance, and Internally Persuasive Discourse." College English, Vol. 52, No. 8 (Dec., 1990), pp. 847-869.

Hawisher, Gail E. and Cynthia L. Selfe. "The Rhetoric of Technology and the Electronic Writing Class." College Composition and Communication, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Feb., 1991), pp. 55-65.