“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” ~Noam Chomsky

It seems to me after reading through some articles that there are still people out in the world that do not see the advantages brought about by digital writing and technology in the classroom.  It was pretty cool today when Troy Hicks came in to lecture our class because I had just been surfing around his blog the night before.  I went back to it today, and I found an article he mentioned in one of his blogs about places to start when evaluating digital technology.  The article comes from the Why Teach Digital Writing page, and it is called “How Technology Changes Writing Practices.”

As future English teachers, we all know that we will have to incorporate technology and multimedia practices into our classrooms.  And we should (not just because the content standards mandate it, either).  Digital writing plays a huge role in our world today, and we do not want our own students fall behind others because we were not sure what or how to teach them about digital writing.

“Many writing technologies have streamlined the writing process (the typewriter is one example), but only a few writing technologies have had truly dramatic social impact. The printing press is one; the networked computer is another. It is the networked computer, the spaces to which networked computers provide access, and the public ways in which individuals are writing that are together changing the cultural landscape. These elements, taken together, are truly revolutionary.”

I guess before reading this, I hadn’t really thought of the internet and the possibilities it brings to the writing table in this light.  I of course know that technology and the internet have changed our world, but I hadn’t really imagined how it has changed our writing as well.  The printing press brought literacy to the masses; it was no longer something that the privileged enjoyed alone.  It cemented word spelling, made books cheap and available to everyone.  The amazing part is that right now, the internet is re-revolutionizing writing in the same way that the printing press once did!  Who would have thought we would live to see such times!

“The way that people are using the Internet and the sheer numbers of people writing on and with the web is having significant social and cultural impact. A February 2004 Pew Internet & American Life study reported that ‘44% of U.S. Internet users have contributed their thoughts and their files to the online world’ through posting written and visual material on web sites, contributing to newsgroups, writing in blogs, conversing in chat spaces (such as instant messaging), and via other digital means.”

44%.  In 2004!  With each passing year, the number of people joining the writing revolution brought to us via the internet grows.  How can it not be seen that the children in our school systems have a right and need to be a part of this?  Somehow, there are still arguments against it.  Continuing in the article “How Technology Changes Writing Practices,” the authors state all of the arguments brought to them as professors at Michigan State University against digital writing and then they supply their arguments against the resistance.  One example,

“‘We shouldn’t be teaching technology in a writing class. That’s not part of the art of writing. Back in the old days we didn’t teach TYPING in writing classes. Why should we teach computing now?’”

Their response:

“We are not ‘teaching computing.’ We are teaching writing-with-the-technology, because the technology fundamentally changes how writing is produced, delivered, and received. Some of us do remember the old days, thank you very much. We didn’t teach typing back in the old days because typing was a supplement to print culture: we were typing ON PAPER. However, we did teach students how to write for print distribution — that is, all our pedagogies for arrangement, our focus on modes, unity, and coherence, all of those principles presuppose print delivery. Now, in the digital era, we have vastly different technologies for production and distribution — and we have to teach our students the rhetoric for a new form of delivery. We didn’t ban paper and pens from our writing classrooms in the old days, why should we ban computers now?”

What I saw as one of the most frequent and important of the nine resistive arguments presented was, “Computer classrooms are too costly.  We can’t afford it.”  True, a computer classroom complete with all the essentials (software, hardware, furniture, etc.) can get very expensive…how can poverty-stricken schools, especially with the cuts-backs education has faced, afford these labs?  Well, with a little creativity and the fact that computer costs are continually going down, anything is possible.

The viewpoint held by many educators and others about the lack of need there is for digital writing in classrooms is simply misguided and false.  No ifs, ands, or buts about it, we have to find a way to bring digital writing and other uses of technology to all students in order to give them equal opportunities in the future.

“How Technology Changes Writing Practices” Full article