Second Annotated Bibliography

Abdullah, Mardziah. “The Impact of Electronic Communication on Writing.” ERIC Digest. 2003. ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading, English, and Communication. 2 Nov., 2005. OCLC First Search. EMU Halle Library. .

This article is a collection of research relating to writing behavior performance in the digital age. It concludes that writing process and content are changing as a result of increased use of electronic media. The study also acknowledges greater collaboration among students as a result of using electronic media.


Anderson, Mary Alice. "The evolution of a curriculum: yes, you can manage iMovie projects with 170 kids! (The Media Center)." Multimedia Schools 9.4 (Sept 2002): 17(3). Professional Collection. Thomson Gale. Eastern Michigan University. 10 April 2006 /itx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=SPJ.SP05
&docId=A91205175&source=gale&srcprod=SP05&userGroupName=lom_emichu&version=1.0>.

This article focuses on the ways new communications technologies were incorporated into the curriculum of one Minnesota middle school. Students worked with iMovie, digital editing software, powerpoint in combination with traditional literacy skills training to create collaborative portfolio projects. The author, Mary Anderson, also provides tips for working with these technologies in the classroom.


Fisher, Pamela W., Jane B. Drotos, and Mesut Duran. "Invigorating literature analysis: technology helps students deepen their understanding of characterization, imagery used by writers, and reflective writing.(Language Arts)." Learning & Leading with Technology 32.6 (March 2005): 25(3). Expanded Academic ASAP. Thomson Gale. Eastern Michigan University. 10 April 2006 .

This article was the based on a study conducted to determine how fourth grade students in one Michigan school responded to the introduction of multi-media digital technologies in the classroom. The students used digital cameras, concept mapping, drawing, presentation and Word processing software as part of the literature an3alysis curriculum. The researchers found that it gave students new ways to articulate concepts about imagery and characterization in literature, as well as improved their collaborative and reflective skills. This study was “component of the Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology initiative.”


Lankshear, Colin, Ilana Snyder. Teachers and Technoliteracy: Managing Literacy, Technology, and Learning in Schools. Allen & Unwin: St. Leonards. 2000

This book is the result of an Australian research project – Digital Rhetorics: Literacies and Technologies in Education (Current Practices and Future Directions). The main focus of this book is how literacy and technology issues are becoming intertwined in regards to teaching. It also explains the extent of current digital technologies inside and outside the classroom the classroom and ways for teachers to modify their practices to incorporate these technologies.


Levy, David. Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age. Arcade: New York. 2001.

This book takes a look at the long history of written documents as a way of recording and transmitting information. Levy also focuses extensively on the current transition period we are now in where so much of recorded human knowledge is being transferred from paper to digital format. He discusses the potential impact on research and credibility as a result.


McGee, Tim and Patricia Ericsson. “The Politics of the Program: MS Word as the Invisible Grammarian.” Computers and Composition. Vol. 19: 2002.

This research essay examines the impact of grammar and style checking programs in word processing software. McGee and Ericsson focus on the “theoretical underpinnings” of MS Word and contrast it against traditional grammar pedagogy, concluding that a more thorough dialogue needs to be opened about “the very notions of stylistic and grammatical correctness.”

Smith, Leanne, Jo Mathis. “High Tech, Ancient Art: Students’ podcasts involve Internet, storytelling.” Ann Arbor News. 8 April, 2006. A3, A4.

This newspaper article describes some of the ways Michigan teachers are incorporating podcasting, Internet, into traditional school curriculum like narrative writing and science.


Vernon, Alex. Computerized Grammar Checkers 2000: Capabilities, Limitations, and Pedagogical Possibilities. Computers and Composition. Vol. 17: 329-349.

This research article examines the history of spell check technology in word processing software. More than a literature review, Vernon the limitations of such programs and offers suggestions for teachers on how they can use spell and grammar check as part of the composition curriculum.


Wallis, Claudia. "The Multitasking Generation: They're e-mailing, IMing and downloading while writing the history essay. What is all that digital juggling doing to kids' brains and their family life? (Cover Story/genM)(Cover story)." Time 167.13 (March 27, 2006): 48. Expanded Academic ASAP. Thomson Gale. Eastern Michigan University. 10 April 2006. /itx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IACDocuments&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=EAIM&docId=A143414831&source=gale&srcprod=EAIM&userGroupName=lom_emichu&version=1.0>.

This article focuses on the educational implications for children growing up in an increasingly networked society. Wallis presents findings from many different studies which describe the social, physical, and cognitive effects of multi-tasking. While some of these studies focus on an alarming decrease in students’ ability to focus for long periods on single tasks, others describe the benefits of using curriculum which expands the learning experience through multi-media presentations.

516 Research Update

Steve, first let me apologize for my late proposal. Some of your concerns were helpful to me, so I will try to sharpen the focus for you in this post. Although I'm not completely sure how my research will come together, the general thesis states that the influence of new media technologies (primarily visual and hypertext formats) is demanding that writing teachers re-evaluate how traditional English composition is being taught, mainly in regards to narrative and argumentative expression.

Another concern you mentioned was the outdated nature of some of my sources. For the most part, I agree with you, but I want to try and show a bit of the subject's background. I am still looking for more recent examples of curriculum to support my thesis, but I also want to overview the topic from a variety of interesting angles in an attempt to show that this evolution is not simply technology-driven, but cultural and multi-faceted.

So far, I have a partial outline detailing intro w/ background info, body support describing and defining the technologies at issue here, a section describing the conflict between traditional compositional goals and some new media approaches, and a section discussing a blending of styles. I still have a ways to go, but I feel positive about my vision for this project as a piece of persuasive information.

I would like to open the paper with a brief personal narrative detailing my own struggles with computer technology simply as a way to provide some perspective to the audience. I think this would be an effective rhetorical strategy, not only as a researcher, but as a teacher who also struggles with the issues addressed in the essay.

I look forward to your comments and suggestions.

516 Research Proposal & 1st Annotated Bibliography

Technologies – not simply computers as we know them – are changing the ways writing teachers are required to teach composition in the classroom. The main problem lies in the gap between what generationally challenged instructors (many born in the late industrial age), and the digital adeptness of the students they teach. This problem may bloom into crisis unless there is some kind of leveling of the playing field between student and teacher. The influence of emerging visual communications technologies is having a profound (and sometimes confusing) effect on not only the way English composition is being taught, but in the ways students interpret narrative, argumentative, and expository rhetoric in what are otherwise standard writing assignments.

It is all too easy to dismiss the changing formats that students use to express themselves with ideas and language, especially if we as instructors have been schooled in the pedagogies of traditional, canonical literature and formulaic compositional structures like the five paragraph essay. However, mediums like hypertext, and visual technologies (hand-held video recorders, flash software, Photoshop, digital cameras, power point, etc.) have, and are continuing to evolve, compositional genres in ways that are still trying to be understood – ways that are critical to the future of writing curriculum.

Nonetheless, the proverbial elephant in the room continues to be the question of our students’ basic writing skills – their ability to string words, sentences, and paragraphs together in purposeful, meaningful ways. Issues about teaching ideologies and pedagogical theory, although crucial in any discussion about composition, are too subjective and complex for an examination of the influence of visual rhetoric in the writing classroom. Although it will be important to address the various theories concerning the current state of students’ written language skills, it is equally important to illustrate the cognitive changes that are happening as a result of students’ cultural immersion in the new media environment of digital communication genres.

Another important aspect of my research focus lies in the question of how conventional (reading & writing) literacy, and technological (making a web site) literacy are becoming increasingly interrelated. Will it soon be just as critical to understand new levels of discourse, such as html code or podcasting, to be considered literate in the most basic sense of the word? This might be projecting a bit too much into the future, but is important considering the many prognostications about an expanding information-based society.

The first part of my research will focus on communications technologies in relation to pedagogies, literacy, and post-modern notions about writing. The second part will emphasize the actual technologies that teachers and students are using to create new compositional genres in the classroom and beyond. Although I assert a general thesis that these trends are inevitable, the main purpose of my project will be to inform the reader about the increasing influence of visual rhetoric in the classroom, and to raise questions concerning the necessity of textual literacy in an educational environment whose practical curriculum is becoming increasingly graphical, non-linear, and interactive.

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Barker, Thomas T., Fred O Kemp. “Network Theory: A Post-Modern Pedagogy for the Writing Classroom.” Computers and Community. Carolyn Handa, ed. Portsmouth:
Boynton/Cook, 1990.

This article argues that because composition curriculum is moving away from the exclusively teacher/student interaction to a more community-centered, peer-critique environment, changes in the structure of writing classroom must be made to accommodate the post-modern “communal aspects of knowledge-making.” The authors introduce network theory as it relates to using computers in the classroom as a way for students to engage in collaborative writing using a variety of mediums such as email, publishing software, and electronic discussions.


Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.

In this book, Manovich builds on theories about cinema and narrative to create a
language for discussing the new media forms of hypertext and databases. An important emphasis here is on the way the user moves through the spaces of these new media environments.


Plant, Sadie. Writing on Drugs. New York: Picador, 1999.

This book examine the history of drug use in well-known writers such as Poe, Burroughs, Foucault, and Coleridge. It also describes the influence drugs have on social consciousness and cultural life as a result of these artistic forays. Of interest here is a connection between MDMA (ecstasy), and the evolution of cyberpunk literature – creating the vocabulary for human-computer interface through an accelerated neurochemistry.


Rice, Jeff. “Cybogography: A Pedagogy of the Home Page.” Pedagogy: Critical
Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture.
5.1 (2005).

In this article, Rice combines theories about Web writing as a method of identity formation, and expressivist theories of composition (Peter Elbow), to create a new “theory of the home page” called Cyborgography. Rice explains that his purpose is to “defamiliarize” the process of using code to write a home page so that students can gain a richer understanding of the “complex relationships between writing, technology, and personal experience” (66).





Rice, Jeff. Writing About Cool: Hypertext and Cultural Studies in the Computer
Classroom. New York: Pearson Longman, 2004.

More of a textbook than a discussion of theory, Writing About Cool uses the concept of “cool” and how it is defined by popular culture as a focus for teaching connections between writing and technology. Rice use examples from the media, advertising, the Web, literature, and music to help students gain a critical understanding of popular culture’s influence on their daily lives.


Skubikowski, Kathleen, John Elder. “Computers and the Social Contexts of Writing.”
Computers and Community. Carolyn Handa, ed. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook,
1990.

Although this article was published early on in the era of computer-mediated writing, it provides some valuable background about the way students’ writing changes as a result of the social interaction of networking, and the fluidity of word-processed text. The authors found that students were more willing to take chances with their writing if they perceived the process as “playing” with a piece rather than drafting an essay.


Swiss, Thomas. “Electronic Literature.” (no further bibliographic info available)

In this article, Swiss examines the past, present, and future of electronic literature in all of its forms. He covers everything from classic literature being re-formatted for the Web, to the continuing evolution of hypertext fiction and other examples of new media. Swiss also discusses the changes in publishing industry as a result of new modes of distribution.


Yagelski, Robert. Literacy Matters: Writing and Reading the Social Self. New York:
Teachers College Press, 2000.

This book is a thorough examination of the ways in which literacy affect our lives and shape our identities as social beings. Of particular interest here is Yagelski’s discussion of how definitions of literacy are being shaped by communications technologies such as email and hypertext.

Writing Inquiry

A general reflection on the meaning of writing is always somewhat of a double-edged sword. As a student heavily invested in the meanings, purposes, history, and future of “writing,” my first instinct is to be forcefully idealistic – espousing the importance of the written word, describing its role in advancing human civilization. However, the other side of this coin reflects the divisiveness of literacy, miscommunication, and the smug certainty of truth we often attribute to the words we bandy about.

Speaking of coin, Nietzsche employs an incisive coin metaphor in an essay about the slippery subjectivity of “truth” and the inability of language to capture it: “[T]ruths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins” (On Truth and Lie…). On that note, I will begin my statement of beliefs regarding the current purposes and definitions of writing
by simply saying this: the tail is wagging the dog…our technologies are advancing faster than our ability to define ways to use them, and in regards to writing – everything is uncharted territory.

As for “theory” versus “practice” in the teaching of writing, I see theory as the methods, concepts, and strategies that have been conceptualized as scholarship for the purpose of building curriculum that teachers can study. Theory can include various ideologies about the way students learn to write, along with the research projects conducted to support various claims. Some theory can be very helpful in providing suggestions and roadmaps from which to construct one’s own pedagogy, but it also can seem dense and disconnected from the actual reality of the writing classroom.

“Practice” includes the actual, real world, day-to-day methods we use in our writing classrooms. The main difference is the leap of faith we make by exposing our students
to these methods and strategies that, for the most part, were theories, gleaned from scholarship, that appealed to our sensibilities about teaching. Over time, we develop and solidify our ideologies as writing teachers from a combination of simpatico theory and time-tested, successful in-class practices and assignments.

Although what writing actually is evolves constantly, I would have to say that it’s defined as marks, symbols, images, or any visual representation of thought, message, or idea, rendered on a medium, whether digital or analog, to communicate a concept.

In regards to the kinds of things having to do with computers writing teachers should convey to their students, we need to be careful. Often, the student will be much more technologically savvy than the teacher, so the main focus should remain on the content, or, the types and validity of information students are getting from the Internet. Holding students responsible for correctly citing their research is also important in this age of “cut and paste.”

Technology and writing are always intertwined. The most important characteristic, I feel, is the ability of technology, whether printing press or computer, to change writing, and reading, in unexpected ways.

one small step for an idiot...

Did I draw you into my "web?" Ha Ha ha

Sample Post

Here's the way we post a blog....

OLD NEWS...But, What the Hey!


Nietzsche’s idea of slave morality is no more dangerous than, let’s
say, the bible. It is what people end up doing in the name of an
idea which is dangerous. The drive for a “higher self,” in both
cases, is a spiritual quest open to misinterpretation. Slave
morality is like a state of atheist purgatory for those who cannot
break from the herd and stand as individuals. The underman,
condemned to live within the limitations of society, resents and
envies the overman’s individuality.

Nietzsche’s philosophy clearly predicts the effect of the modern
world on human beings: disillusionment with traditional values and
less dependency on others for survival. The issue of his highly
charged language (slave, god is dead, uberman) is a problem in
itself, and is where most of the disagreement about what Nietzsche
meant can seem dangerous.

It is unfair to think that people should not carry some resentment
for the dominant culture. Since the beginning of human society, that
which is different is a danger to the whole. So in a way, all of us
have had to suppress our individualistic urges to get along and
thrive within our culture.

However, the truest expression of Nietzsche’s ressentiment can be
found in the guise of entitlement and political correctness. The
notion that people are helpless victims of past events and therefore
entitled to whatever (a good grade, the benefit of the doubt) is, I
feel, unhealthy in the long run. The individual will never out in a
situation like this, but wallow, powerless to break free of the
forces that shaped him.