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.