Outcomes, Technology, and a Blog
Let me say a few things about this. Not that I want to put anyone’s efforts down, and, of course, I am a technology-oriented person. But, Houston, we got some problems here:
- Instrumentality. Here it is. In bold letters. Understanding the role technology plays in writing as being only based on using computers. Instrumental reasoning. The history of literacy teaches otherwise. Technological influence is as implicit as it is explicit. It is ideological and long term. It shapes the apparatus. You don’t have to use a pencil to be affected by print. Same with technology. We’ve moved beyond referentiality as the basis for pedagogical practice (or we should move beyond it). Computer = computer literacy? NO! Or: No, it doesn’t have to refer back in an equal equation. NEXT!
- Keywords. Too many. Or: The rhetoric of the text. Too many words used that have little meaning or substance. The most obvious is “critical.” Who is proposing an “uncritical” approach? Nobody. NEXT!
- The medium used. Blogger. Blogger is ok. If you are ten. Ethos is important here. And when you throw up a blogger account, you are walking a thin line regarding credibility. It takes twenty seconds to put up something slightly better, like a Word Press account on an academic server. Five minutes more to customize it. If you teaching a “critical” literacy, part of which involves visuality, start applying it to your own work. Or start working with people who will bring you up to speed. Which brings up the next point, and one missing here (NEXT!)
- Who’s involved. These are all excellent people, and they don’t need me to say that. Many will say that. Many have said as such and these folks’ careers are much longer and richer than mine or most people I know. But these are not the people inventing the practices regarding pedagogy and new media. Sorry. That’s a hard point to hear, but it’s true. Not everybody needs to think the way I do or those I admire do, but there are many voices out there typically ignored by the old guard. I saw another item today - a TOC for a new source book on computers and writing to be published by Bedford St. Martins and it, too, suffers from the same problem. The old “greatest hits” is too outdated and often problematic for too many reasons to list here. There are new “greatest hits” out there, there are new voices out there, some in composition, some not. The new media question of perspective and involvement (which I always borrow from McLuhan) is quite complex, but at its core, it resists this type of professional insularity. Which brings up…NEXT!
- The ideas expressed on this blog. What differs here from what is already in circulation? Why do you need an “Outcomes” for technology if you are only going to repeat the ideas and so-called approaches already being considered when technology isn’t present (though, technology always is present, of course; the issue is whether it is foregrounded or not). How do you know that the concept of “Outcomes” even applies anymore, particularly when specific types of new media writing practices resist such efforts? Why are these terms still relevant: critical, evaluation, organize, literacy, awareness…etc.? Which is not to say they are not relevant. It is, instead, to question an immediate assumption that previous terms are still relevant in the same way. In what ways are these terms redundant? And once I am using “images” or being “critical,” let me ask this: why? Why am I doing these things? Who are you convincing here anyway? Me? No. And I am actively engaged in technology-shaped/based pedagogies. Then who? Those who aren’t? Ok. What do they do exactly with this info. Where do they begin? What do they do differently? Admins? Maybe. But I pose the same questions. What are they funding, why, when, where, and so on.
And so on. If the field devoted more time to understanding and considering new work and ideas (instead of the typical rejections that accompany such ideas) as the field does to writing up “outcomes,” maybe some new work would emerge.
Thanks for posting on this. I, too, am less than bowled over. The requisite warnings about access and technology for technology’s sake have a very first wave feel to them, and then the whole better techno literacy makes better workers flavor reminds me of much that bothers me about organized composition. Too starched.
Not much to argue with in the less noccous outcomes, and at some point, people get benefits from having such points written down. But it does feel like there ought to be more to the picture. I almost wonder if a technology plank is even needed at this point. It’s all composing. There must be larger constructs that can capture the outcomes that matter–recognition, selection, mixing, matching, swaying–something that would get you out of having to pin down the forms.
Comment by Dan — June 26, 2006 @ 10:03 pm
To tell you the truth, the information on this wpablog thing-a-ma-bob must have been in one of WPA-L posting I deleted without reading. And why aren’t they using the WPA organization/drupal powered site for this kind of thing, anyway?
So you’ll get no argument from me about the less than impressive nature of this space. To a great extent, I blame NCTE as an entity for not having its “tech act” together so that the best alternative is Blogger. Blogger is great for a teaching tool, and I even don’t mind it as a “normal” blogging tool, too. But jeez, at least get a decent template. And, more important, have some decent content.
But, I do think there is something that ought to be “in there” (and in other classes at a bunch of different levels about “technology” or “media” or whatever) about actually being able to use the computers/machinery involved. I don’t know if that constitutes “literacy” or not; literacy is such a problematic word to me. But I guess what I’m saying is this: I don’t think it does much good to have students (and scholars in the field, for that matter) theorizing about the implications/discursive practices of, say, blogging without having any knowledge of how to set up a blog in the first place, or without having any knowledge of some of the tools “behind the scenes” that drive most blogging/CMS tools– html, CSS, php, etc.
You might be thinking “well, duh, of course!” but I gotta tell ya, I’ve seen plenty of smart teachers who thought they knew a lot about the way that writing/text/rhetoric/whatever works on the web, but they didn’t know the first thing about HTML or anything else– and God forbid that they take the 15-20 minutes and actually learn it! And I’ve even seen a few presentations at things like C&W, presentations by BIG BIG names in the field, people who supposedly were the gurus about how technology and media “worked” as a discursive tool, wherein said presenter literally did not know how to launch the right browser or connect a projector to his (or her, but in the case I have in mind, his) computer.
So somewhere in there, there should be “knowledge of how to use the tool.” Though I would certainly agree with you that tool knowledge alone is not the end of “technological literacy.”
Comment by Steve Krause — June 28, 2006 @ 8:15 am
[…] Collin offers another critique of WPA Outcomes and technology, something I discussed earlier. So here’s a little follow-up: […]
Pingback by Yellow Dog » Blog Archive » The Unbearable Confusion Over Technology — July 9, 2006 @ 8:55 am
[…] Outcomes, Technology, and a Blog on Yellow Dog. Jeff points out 3 basic problems with the OS. […]
Pingback by the forgotten canon » Blog Archive » Walking the “Techplank” — July 11, 2006 @ 5:18 pm