I'm especially interested in what to call technology-based composition teaching. It seems to me that teaching with technology is not simply the addition of a tool to the traditional classroom work. Nor is it enough to say, we only should use a technology if it helps us achieve our traditional composition teaching goals. Because I believe that technology changes what our goals for teaching are and what those goals should be.
Teaching with technology tends to radically alter the learning environment. It facilitates active work by students, whether that is clicking links and reading or word processing. That can be a problem if students multi-task to check their fantasy football roster while they also are supposed to be reading over someone's draft. But if we are modeling "real life" to any extent in the classroom, multi-tasking is the work mode of the age. So I like to give students multiple tasks that help them experiment with a range of ways to learn and think about any given topic. This also helps decenter the classroom, to an extent, by making students' own work as much a focus of a class as my teacher talk.
But I'm not yet sure what to call this pedagogy as I'm not totally happy with the terms I've seen used. Do you have any suggestions?
14 years ago
