Telecom Technology Tales

Reading Shelley Rodrigo’s blog on Visible vs. Invisible Work, I remembered well the four years I worked at a community college in Maryland as a combined staff program director and adjunct faculty member. Since I was responsible for classes in both continuing education and credit, I was particularly busy during the fall and spring semesters. There’s nothing like working at least 40 hours each week in a staff position by day, then switching gears to teach a lecture & lab course at night. When one is also the program coordinator, course scheduling, curriculum development, faculty hiring and professional development must all occur, either during the workday, or invariably, at home on other nights and weekends.

It was really hard to separate the hats I was wearing during the course of any given day. When I took the position, I couldn’t wait to teach, and found that the time I spent in the classroom was a necessary reminder of who I was working to help. However, office hours for students and office hours for my “day job” often got mixed together. It was nearly impossible to put a neat bow on the end of my day to prepare for a weeknight class. (The 60-mile commute home after a late class ended didn’t help much either.)

What I think suffers under this scenario is professional development. It’s extremely hard to learn something knew when you’re in essence working two academic positions. Downtime is confined to those days when you absolutely refuse to work on anything academic. I recognize and sympathize with Rodrigo’s challenges of handling both of these positions at once.

Below I’ve slightly edited Rodrigo’s blog from September 11 2007, posted in 21st Century Scholarship (http://www.committedtechnofile.com/index.php),
to those passages that resonated with me particularly, as I considered the similarities to my own challenging position at the Maryland community college:

“For those readers who do not already know, I’ve shifted jobs this academic year…I am acting as Mesa’s instructional technologist during the next academic year while we do a full-search for a replacement. Since I’ve started working in this position last July, I’ve realized two things:

1.I have more patience with my students then my colleagues, and
2.I’ve been spoiled by being a faculty member with minimal required time in a specific space.

Now I’m responsible for 30 hours a week, plus one course a semester. Eek…what is this real work thing? Reading Segal’s article “Invisible Hours” in the Chronicle of Higher education got me thinking about this role differently…the instructional technologist is a “service” position; however, it also requires a lot more “visible time.” But, as Segal discussed, I’m finding it very difficult to get “serious” or “hard” work done during all these visible hours…And if Segal is right, during this time of increased accountability (esp. for those of us at Mesa CC), learning to be productive, while we are still visible, is a skill all scholars in the 21st century will have to master.” (Rodrigo 2007)

On a related note, I was very pleased to read Kimme Hea’s (2004) webtext article on the academic job search in terms of the program my Ph.D. classmates and I are enrolled in at NC State. Many of her recommendations are already in place, and I’m glad that we’ve gotten to do the job search exercises, creation of web-based teaching portfolios (rudimentary though mine may be), blogs and other tasks to help us prepare ourselves for the impending faculty position search. We’ve looked through job descriptions, discussed our research interests, created draft vita and articulated our teaching philosophies. We also have willing mentors, and work with our instructors to help us shape our ultimate careers. So I’m glad we’re pretty far along on the processes and suggestions Kimme Hea (2004) makes.

Somehow when reading Ball’s (2004) article, I can’t help but think that we’ve already seen the beginnings of acceptance of online-only scholarly journals as worthy of tenure and promotion, particularly in the field of communication. However, I personally believe publishing in an online journal would be a choice I’d make after having achieved publication in a traditional, print-based journal. I think I’d be more comfortable with online publication once I had a successful experience taking a scholarly article through the print publication process. Not only that, but I would need a significantly higher comfort level with multimedia technologies before I feel I’d be ready to make a scholarly argument with “maniputable” statements.

I do find agreement and optimism for my research in one statement in Ball’s (2004) article. “For a reader new to such [multimodal] texts, understanding that the multimodal, extra-alphabetic elements a designer uses are available for meaning making is the first step to recognizing the importance this direction of scholarship can take us.” (421) It’s quite possible that multimodal scholarship will have practical application for populations that are not text-literate or text-bound.

Ball, Cheryl E. (2004). Show, not tell: The value of new media scholarship. Computers and Composition, 21, 403-425.

Kimme Hea, Amy T. (2004). A making: the job search and our work as computer compositionists. Kairos 9 (1). http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/9.1/binder.
html?praxis/kimmehea/making.htm. Accessed November 6, 2007.

Rodrigo, Shelley (2007). Blog entry, Setember 11, 2007. Posted on author’s blog, Committed Technofile, in the section entitled 21st Century Scholarship (http://www.committedtechnofile.com). Accessed November 9, 2007.

It was quite easy for me to stay away from my computers for two days. It was my Homecoming weekend, October 12-14, 2007, and being away from home and computers was par for the course. So from Friday, 3:00 p.m. through Sunday, 11:00 p.m., I was computer-free and unconnected to the Internet.

The first thing this experience brought to mind is a decision I made years ago to resist the temptation to stay plugged up and available 24/7. It took me years to purchase a cell phone, and I swore I’d never leave it on day and night. Of course, I haven’t been brave enough to follow through with that, and I actually purchased it because of a sick parent in the family, where I was the backup caregiver and needed to stay in touch at all times. Besides that, my family swears that I’m never home, so they took comfort in knowing that even in my high mobility state, I’m still reachable.

I’ve had no desire to own a Palm Pilot or PDA for the same reasons. Until I reached grad school – this time – I never received “urgent” emails. Those who had an urgent need to reach me always called. I’m also not used to emails that require immediate action, so in my mind, waiting two days to read weekend email is not unusual.

Beyond that, I’m from the generation that grew up with computers as “work” tools and devices. My history with computers has revolved around using them in my careers as an instructor, program manager and trainer. As some of my classmates know, I’m not an online game player, I don’t IM, I don’t have alerts programmed to my email to send me the latest news, and I even prefer to receive my news and world updates from technologies like newspapers, television and radio, all of which are accessible without ever turning on the computer.

Sometimes preparation for this kind of hiatus is good practice for power outages, driving trips, unmediated time with family, and other scenarios when computing capabilities are not available. Since my students are required to submit almost all of their assignments on paper, I just grabbed a sheaf of papers to grade in my down time, printing any stragglers from my email before shutdown time. Since students who were emailing for further information would’ve been doing so on the weekend, I could wait to respond to them Sunday night without having a guilty conscience, since the next class was Tuesday.

I avoided computers for school by printing all of my electronic documents the week before, and completing any Web-based work prior to Friday afternoon. I hate reading from screens anyway, so when I wasn’t crying in my suds because of the horrible Homecoming loss, I could finish my course readings for the following week.

Ultimately, there is a world that doesn’t require computers, is ever-present, and doesn’t get any better once it’s left alone. That’s the house! I don’t think any of my housework is computerized, and I would’ve inevitably had to leave the screen to get to the “real world” stuff of life. Even so, this was not the weekend to drop the keyboard and head to the mop and dishes. Homecoming and home are usually quite separated during Homecoming weekend, so even the non-computing related housework went by the wayside.

If there were ever a temptation for me to break the 2-day hiatus, it may be because most of my newer personal music collection is saved on one of my two computers. Fortunately, I always save the original CDs, so popping one into the car CD player is very normal for me when I’m on the go, and in fact, my car stereo sounds so much better than (Bose) computer speakers.

Regarding our readings for this week, the timeliness of reading the De Pew and Miller (2005) article was refreshing and comforting to me. Two weeks ago, I made a decision on my dissertation topic, and with the selection of committee members and preliminary research planning, I’m in the midst of considering research methods, gaps in the scholarship on my topic, site logistics, and possible societal benefits from my study. Their support of Sullivan and Porter’s (1997) post-critical methodology makes this approach sound especially suited to my research study, and I’m excited that Dr. Susan K. Miller-Cochran has agreed to be a member of my dissertation committee. Learning more about Sullivan and Porter’s methodology confirms for me that the research site and participants can shape the study, while adding rich meaning and successful praxis to the study of communication and literacy.

As I shape and pull together my final project and portfolio for this class, not to mention the preliminary CV, I think the timing of the De Pew and Miller (2005) article, among other readings, has given me more clarity on how to frame and conceptualize the research project that has captivated and called to me since long before I decided to seek a Ph.D.

De Pew, Kevin Eric and Miller, Susan Kay (2005). Studying L2 writers’ digital writing: An argument for post-critical methods. Computers and Composition, 22, 259-278.

Sullivan, Patricia and Porter, James E. (1997). Opening Spaces: Writing Technologies and Critical Research Practices. Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing Company.

In the spirit of this week’s course readings, I wanted to record my blog in a stream of consciousness style, without writing it down or typing it ahead of time. But honestly, I just didn’t have the courage or confidence that I would be able to order my thoughts and sources to coherently discuss and analyze the articles the same way I would if I could take my time to go through each one. Perhaps I am simply reflecting what Bump Halbritter (2006) writes in his article, Musical rhetoric in integrated-media composition:

As composition instructors who are well indoctrinated in the ethos of academic work, we may not be in the best position to envision new metaphors. They may sound too impious to us, at least for the moment. (332)

Actually, as a former radio broadcaster, I have no problem using a microphone or recording my own voice, and I’ve always been comfortable with having my voice aired and captured. However, I am still becoming familiar with digital recording, and will be learning much more about using new audio recording technology over the coming weeks. Admittedly, my radio experience happened before the advent of Garageband, ProTools and other digital audio software, but I’m a mean machine with a reel-to-reel tape, razor blade and splice tape.

Mixing music and weaving “records” to build themes and tell audio stories is not new to me, but doing so in an academic composition is something I’ve never considered. I’m not really sure that our readings for this week have convinced me that there is a difference between what the authors advocate and creative writing. In her article, Speaking on the record: A theory of composition, Tara Rosenberger Shankar advocates “spriting,” speaking and writing combined, and suggests that “Spriting systems are needed to represent vocal and language diversity in new and composed forms and in turn to provide students with a wide pipeline of diversity spriting models.” (380-381) Shakar describes her observation of children who are spriting, stating that “They began to perform spriting differently, making shorter and more flexible editable units.” (388) I found myself thinking that what we should be teaching our young students, and our older students, is not how to make shorter sentences, but how to make longer, more complex sentences, with subject, verb and proper punctuation. I have been dinged already in my Ph.D. studies for having a journalistic writing style, and I’ve had to learn the hard way how I should compose an academic sentence. Isn’t the kind of writing the authors are suggesting here just one more way to promote journalistic, stream of consciousness, creative writing styles that may have little to no utility in their future careers or educational pursuits?

As a writing instructor, my biggest problem right now is getting undergraduates to write full, complete sentences that are not phrases and snippets of thoughts. In the “sound bite” world we live in today, it’s no surprise that our students write like they speak, and they are unable to make the distinction when they are writing academic papers for our classes. It’s possible that this pattern will travel with them throughout their academic life. Just imaging a student “beating” out her dissertation!

However, in defense of the authors, and especially in light of the course I teach in electronic media writing, I do have to emphasize cadence and flow with my students, who must prepare scripts and compositions that can be read over the air or into another digital format. I do introduce a form of rhythm into their compositions, primarily to illustrate the importance of placing commas and pauses in appropriate places, so that the final produced work can be easily understood by the viewing/listening audience. These are not easy for my students to learn without providing some examples, so I use the NPR website and other audio clips from news organizations as demonstrations of how this is done. However, not every student is a Bob Edwards or a Michelle Norris. These journalists and announcers learned their writing and announcing crafts after years of practice. Comstock and Hocks support this view, and state, “Even for experienced sound artists, though, their audiences need a certain amount of literacy in order to appreciate their work. Whether one is a composer or audience member, analytical listening requires skill and practice.” (Section 3)

I simply do not believe that having my students record their compositions in lieu of writing them will result in a high quality product that will teach them the principles and conventions of writing. Without a good quality source document (yes, edited text), and controlled sound recording facilities (soundproof studios), we may wind up with a collection of CDs and mp3 files of very bad sounding compositions. Comstock and Hocks admit this is a real possibility.

“Although the ability to use basic sound technologies to reduce background noise and enhance sound levels and qualities is important and useful, sound must be captured initially at a high quality (of data-rate and megahertz), with good microphones, and with appropriate input levels; otherwise, the resulting files will be distorted (too loud), inaudible (too soft) or simply of poor quality.” (Section 3)

Finally, I have to admit a bias against poor quality sound. Broadcast networks, except for community broadcasters, will not air mp3’s – the sound quality is absolutely abysmal when transmitted through audio processors and broadcast facilities. In fact, mp3 sound quality is much poorer than CD quality, such that a student who “mixes” her voice, recorded in mp3 format with a few clips from her favorite CD’s will end up with a very uneven production, which is bound to detract from the underlying composition.

Ultimately, I don’t mind if my students record their compositions, or use sound clips, effects or other audio to enhance their ultimate output. But I am just old-fashioned enough to want to see it in print first, so they don’t waste their time and energy recording a seriously flawed, grammatically incorrect script.

Comstock, Michelle and Hocks, Mary E. Voice in the Cultural Soundscape. Accessed online, October 2, 2007.

Halbritter, Bump (2006). Musical rhetoric in integrated-media composition. Computers and Composition, 23(3), 317-334.

Shankar, Tara Rosenberger (2006). Speaking on the record: A theory of composition. Computers and Composition, 23(3), 374-393.

I found myself drawn to one of our readings this week more than the others, partially by the title, Wikinomics (2006), but also because of the phrase “irrational exuberance.” (15) Of course, the authors Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, used the phrase to describe “the first wave of Internet-enabled change,” (15) but I couldn’t help but also apply that phrase to what I was reading concerning “The new promise of collaboration” (18) that the authors discuss throughout Chapter 1. Clearly, phenomena like Wikipedia and blogs have provided us with examples of participatory creation and collaboration, and I clearly recognize the potential for the types of opportunities the authors describe. But I also found myself “teleporting” back to my reading of Pierre Levy’s Collective Intelligence which also suggests we are moving into a world of shared intelligence that will ultimately benefit society and allow all citizens of the world the open door to freely contribute what they know to the 21^st century world and beyond, a world that we cannot recognize today.

Without completely dismissing these works, during my reading of Tapscott & Williams’ chapter, I found a disconnect between the emphasis on collaboration for the public good while at the same time noting how the authors tout the benefits that would accrue in a competitive marketplace of the future. If business as we know it, and the economy that thrived on the secrecy, silo mentality and insulated innovation are fading away, then why are we still discussing competition? If the authors are right, and the promise of collaboration (and cooperation?) are in our future, then the very definitions of business, based on the capitalist model, can’t be used to describe the new world to come. Each time I came across instances of the words “competition” and “compete” I became uncomfortable with their connection to other parts of the chapter. For instance, how can we reconcile competition with the following quote:

What’s more, the participation revolution now underway opens up new possibilities for billions of people to play active roles in their workplaces, communities, national democracies, and the global economy at large. This has profound social benefits, including the opportunity to make governments more accountable and lift millions of people out of poverty. (17)

My problem with such statements is that they are included in the same chapter with such potentially exclusionary statements such as, “This change presents far-reaching opportunities for every company and for every person who gets connected,” (10) or, even worse, the following statement,

These changes, among others, are ushering us toward a world where knowledge, power, and productive capability will be more dispersed than at any time in history—a world where value creation will be fast, fluid, and persistently disruptive. A world where only the connected will survive. (12)

The particular paragraph quoted above continues on about harnessing the new collaboration. Isn’t it a conflict to encourage millions to participate in the new wikinomics while discussing “harnessing?” The very freedoms the authors are promoting are antithetical to the notions of capturing, grasping and dominating the world of collaboration that we read in this chapter. When collaboration promotes competition, how are we changing the nature of society and business? In my thinking, the profit motive is still there. Ultimately, somewhere down the line, the companies mentioned are still trying to make money. Individuals who collaborate may not have the same profit motive, but I’m sure they’d think it would be nice to make some money from their next blog, self-produced news feature, or collaboratively-produced motorcycle. Altruism just doesn’t seem to be a driving motivation for the collaborations the authors are suggesting.

Global collaboration and cooperation to solve societal problems is a fantastic vision of the future, especially if such relationships result in eliminating world poverty, curing AIDS, feeding the hungry and providing a living wage for billions of people. However, the authors make light of the suggestion that “All one needs is a computer, a network connection, and a bright spark of initiative and creativity to join in the economy.” (12) Unfortunately, as I’ve said before in other forums, these are still barriers in places as close as Native American reservations in the West, new immigrant communities in rural areas, and overcrowded, poverty-riddled areas in Asia,
Africa and other continents. Some areas are geographically prohibited from obtaining low-cost internet connectivity. There are still educational challenges that camouflage “initiative and creativity,” and prevent many talented people with great ideas from getting into the collaborative space the authors describe.

Finally, the exuberance Tapscott and Williams use to describe the new world of Wikinomics is quite reminiscent of what we’ve heard of technological innovation for centuries. The innovation of the telephone, particularly, comes to mind. There’s no doubt that many existing businesses have already experienced the results of collaboration outside the current business model, as the authors acknowledge in their discussion of how “The upheaval occurring right now in media and entertainment provides an early example of how mass collaboration is turning the economy upside down.” (11) However, I would not call much of what I read in the “blogosphere” (12) “news,” nor would I attribute high standards of creativity, quality or accuracy to what I see and hear on MySpace, YouTube or home-grown mp3 music or podcasts. Wikipedia is not ready for prime-time in my classroom. Without some way to verify or corroborate what we’re getting in the wikinomics environment, everybody becomes an expert, and wrong, perhaps harmful, information proliferates just as quickly as does accurate, life-saving cures and opinions.

Before we join the cheerleading squad to loudly proclaim the world-changing benefits of Web 2.0 and the new, technology-driven future of Tapscott and Williams, it would be very nice to recognize that, even though billions might participate, there are billions more who should, but can’t. Not everybody in the world is good at this collaboration thing.

Le′vy,
Pierre (1997). Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace.
Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books

Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anthony D. (2006). Wikinomics: how mass collaboration changes everything.
New York: Penguin Books.

While reading Johndan Johnson-Eilola’s essay, Negative Spaces: From Production to Connection in Composition in Computers in the Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook (Sidler, Morris & Smith, 2008), I could hear and see the echoes of N. Katharine Hayles in the description of ERROR 404. Johnson-Eilola writes, “Indeed, the individual fragments [of other texts] retain much different meanings that are read and rewritten as the reader-writer traverses different threads in the text. The anon.I node is the first in another thread in ERROR 404: an ‘alphabet’ thread that rearranges the text according to alphabetical order.” (465) Last fall, my fellow Ph.D. students and I had the opportunity to read some of Hayles’ work and we met her informally. I confess that several examples she showed us of what I think were examples of new ways of looking at text were unreadable and undecipherable to me as a reader of traditional text. As I think of this type of fragmented composition, I find it hard to reconcile with my effort to teach students proper use of grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. Unfortunately, so many of our students enter college with residual problems in writing and verbalizing effectively, which, in my opinion, has to be learned and practiced before they should move on to multimedia composition and expression. When students, who still can’t write correctly, use Flash, PowerPoint and other technologies and software, they may be doing themselves a disservice, adversely affecting their success as students. Even as an instructor, spelling mistakes in my PowerPoint lessons are embarrassing at the least, and I continually have to grade my students on their incorrect vocabulary usage several weeks into the semester. I don’t believe that multimedia exposure and use absolves us from teaching students to write correctly and effectively, since being textually competent is still a major requirement for employment or future study.

I had a similar reaction to Andrea A. Lunsford’s article, Writing, technologies and the fifth canon (2006), who suggests that “secondary literacy advances a looser prose style.” (170) I agree that the 21^st century technologies our students are exposed to feature “the phenomenon of 24/7 surround-sound split screen cable-TV culture,” (170) but I don’t support the notion that this use of communication in composition advances scholarship. When we consider the shorthand of today’s text messages, the IM language of our students, or even the grammatically incorrect emails we receive as instructions, we can see that peer-to-peer communication leaves a bit to be desired, and would be considered unacceptable by employers or graduate school admissions officers. Incorrect use of language cannot be masked by being “infiltrated by visual and aural components to mirror the agility and shiftiness of language filtered through and transformed by digital technologies,” (170) and if writing suffers as a means of communication, then performance, as used by Lunsford, will also suffer. For me, “shiftiness of language” doesn’t cut it in my classroom.

There is no question in my mind that today’s composition instruction requires “more expansive definitions of writing along with a flexible critical vocabulary and catalogue of writing and rhetorical situations that call for amplified, performative, and embodied discourses of many different kinds,” (170) but if this results in bad video, similar to the talking heads from telecourses of the 1970’s, webcam images of camera-shy students, or a multimedia bonanza of disjointed, unrelated compositions, then we aren’t getting the job done. Lunsford’s description of the outcomes of the first offering of the new program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR 2) course at Stanford includes a significant statement from the students’ evaluations. Despite the exhilaration and enthusiasm of the faculty (172) and students for “multimedia writing, producing films and videos, extensive audio essays…and Web texts of all kinds,” (174) the students concluded that “they weren’t sure their writing was actually improving. (In other words, they knew they were learning something, but many of them wouldn’t call it writing.)” (174) Neither would I, based on the description of the initial offering of the course. Hopefully the revisions Stanford faculty incorporated into the course were successful in achieving the important objective of helping student improve their writing.

Despite my differences with both Johnson-Eilola and Lunsford, my experience teaching electronic media writing is very similar to the changes Lunsford suggests are required for teaching writing. She acknowledges, “Indeed, we have learned that teaching writing based on a substantive redefinition of writing affects every single aspect of our work: our theories of writing, our curriculum, our classroom configurations, our staffing, training, evaluation principles and procedures, our relationships with other programs (and with upper administration), and our methods and materials.” (176) In the continually evolving course I teach, I find that I’ve encountered each of the challenges mentioned in the above quote, and I look forward to the redefinition that Lunsford suggests should be done in the fields of composition and communication.

In Lisa Gerrard’s (1999) chapter, Feminist Research in Computers and Composition, from Computers in the Composition Classroom (Sidler, Morris and Overman Smith, 2008), I found myself wholeheartedly agreeing with her suggestion that “researchers might find out what our male and female students know about computers when they enter our classes.” (189) Despite the fact that this chapter first appeared before the turn of the 21^st century, instructors now expect that all of their students have significant computer exposure, and we design assignments and research projects with the assumption that our students will complete them using computers and Web resources. I believe that such assumptions do not take into account the skills, or lack thereof, of our nontraditional students, and we may do some of our students a disservice by taking for granted their experience with computers. I believe that Gerrard’s point is as valid today as it was in 1999, that instructors should query their students on their prior use and comfort level with computers, and that we should attempt to learn early in the semester how little or how much our student use computers to compose and edit their writing. I believe we will learn that many of our returning students, older adult learners, and students with disabilities may be operating at a disadvantage in classrooms where instructors naturally assume they have “lived” with computers for years.

Many suburban high schools are equipped with computers, and millions of students are exposed to them at an early age. Unfortunately, however, there are still issues of access to modern, powerful computers in inner cities, Native American reservations, and in some rural areas, that have prevented some of our college population to develop a comfort level with computing. Regardless of how ubiquitous we believe computers are, and despite how we take email and Web surfing for granted, there are still populations in developed countries who simply have not used computers as long and as often as we have.

If we follow this line of thinking, we have to admit that collaborative activity may not be “routine in composition classrooms,” as Gerrard mentions on page 191. I also take issue with another statement that Gerrard derives from Gilligan’s (1982) research regarding women and electronic communication. Gerrard writes, “Classes that require students to post on e-mail or exchange work online demand considerable interdependence among class members and a sense of duty toward other students – traits that Gilligan (1982) sees as singularly suited to women.” (195) Excuse me? Taking myself as an example, I would, admittedly, be a poor example of the sense of duty she attributes to women. I post to this blog, and to other discussion boards, because it is a requirement of my classes, not from a sense of duty. I would hasten to add that many of my undergraduate students feel the same way, regardless of gender. Although I do have a bit of a sense of guilt that, sometimes, I don’t post to discussion boards or blogs until the very last minute of the deadline, I will not simply ignore the requirement to post – this is a required activity of my class.

Since I have not taught in a networked classroom where every student is seated at a monitor, nor have I made assignments that require class emails or discussion posts, I have not seen the level of interdependence among my students that Gerrard implies will occur, particularly with women. In my experience, collaboration and interdependence do not appear to occur unless it is between friends in the classroom, or it occurs when I make group assignments for in-class activities, where I select group participants to ensure a mix of genders. Neither of these situations is particularly enhanced because of the gender of the students involved.

On another note, I was interested in how often Alexander (1997) Pennington (2003) mentioned the phrases “safety” (210) and “risk-free” (411) in their chapters on the impact of computer classrooms (Computers in the Composition Classroom (Sidler, Morris and Overman Smith, 2008). When discussing sexual orientation or learning English as a second language, I contend that these terms are illusions, or at least I believe they are used in a very utopian context. Perhaps with the hindsight of the years following the publication of these chapters, we can see that our students are not necessarily shielded, protected or insulated from “flaming,” criticism, ridicule or harassment simply by being cloaked in a different online persona or contributing anonymously to discussion boards, chat rooms or other electronic forums. Perhaps I have not been involved in these kind of cyber activities to know for sure, but with concerns over MySpace, Facebook, and other online activities, and the proliferation of hate websites and pornography online, I think the expectations of respect, privacy and fairness are not coming true as these authors would imply. Despite the promises of computers and computerized classrooms, I can attest from experience that some participants can still be ignored and discounted online, just as easily as they are in face-to-face classrooms.

I think it’s highly ironic that I’m blogging about a distance learning unit of a traditional class while I’m actually “distant.” However, having left on travel soon after completion of our distance learning experiment (and forgetting to blog immediately after the class), I am currently enjoying one of the benefits of distance education, being able to participate in a class without physically being there. In fact, being in Fargo, North Dakota and not
Raleigh, North Carolina really stretches the meaning of distance, and reminds me of the Cairncross book, The Death of Distance.  Cell phones are another reminder that the phrase “long-distance communication” is beginning to lose its meaning. My cell phone exchange, though based in Maryland, allows me to reach anyone in the
U.S. with 10-digit dialing, and my phone number is portable in a way very unlike the past. Technologies like cell phones and the internet make me really glad to have lived to the 21^st century, and my experience participating in class from the comfortable confines of NCSU’s Court of Carolinas rather than a classroom is something I’ve always desired to do, and enjoyed doing it.

However, all the positives didn’t make for an easier class, and I suspect some of my negative impressions of this type of class would be true for other students who were not sure what to expect. For instance, I’m so glad I know how to type accurately and with speed, but a distance education student who does not would find herself at a significant disadvantage in responding in chat rooms, forums, discussion boards and blogs. I can visualize some students failing to participate in that portion of a class because they are not fast typists, they make significant typing errors, or they feel that a discussion has passed them by so they fail to participate at all.

Then there’s the reading comprehension speed required while reading and contributing to chats, etc. During our class exercise, I wasn’t typing because I was trying to absorb the ongoing “conversations;” then the lag time between a chat entry and my ability to compose and proof my response meant that I missed the discussion point, or was late to join the discourse. There was confusion in our chat that was hard to clear up, and I, too, felt the frustration of not being able to follow all of the discussion as I would in a classroom.

Furthermore, perhaps dating myself, I definitely experienced computer fatigue, eye fatigue, and an inability to rapidly refer back to my readings to respond to a chat entry or discussion forum post. Yes, I was outside, but in previous instances of this type of communication, I found out that you can only respond…these discussion boards and chats don’t allow time to review and form a “scholarly” response with quotes, etc. I don’t believe this is true for asynchronous postings to blogs, like this one, but the time pressure to respond in near-synchronous fashion rewards on-your-toes thinking – and typing – and stream of consciousness responses. I’ll admit, I probably don’t do that very well, and would hate to be graded on my version of stream of consciousness!

So I think my bottom line on the exercise is that I’d rather post than chat. If there’s a place for synchronous communication, it’s probably with a microphone or the (dreaded) webcam, but not with typed communication. I think there’s nothing like face-to-face communication that allows for the thoughtful pause, the ability to refer to printed resources, the benefit of seeing nonverbal cues. Either type of class relies on students to, asynchronously, do their homework, finish the readings, and think about what they mean, but I don’t think real-time chats and time-pressured forum responses work well for everyone, even the most computer-savvy student, and indeed returning adult students might find this kind of class most alien to their experiences and personalities.

I have multiple perspectives on the world of distance education, having worked on the other side for telecommunications service providers, as a student taking my first distance learning course, and as an instructor who is trying to incorporate features of distance learning in a traditional course. From my days working with satellite and terrestrial communication providers, I know how important infrastructure is in supporting ever-increasing numbers of applications that bring the promise of distance learning to life. Part of my career was spent coordinating the installation of massive amounts of fiber optic cables to help bring fiber-to-the-home service to metropolitan communities. These providers always touted distance learning as one of the primary services they wanted to support, and visions of both adults and children receiving education at home drove the companies to unbelievable implementation schedules. In the satellite industry, we were continually directed and motivated to launch and configure satellite services to help link “geographically separated groups of learners” (Miller 2001, 426), not just domestically, but also throughout the world.

That was over 15 years ago, and in Latin America,
Africa and other countries, satellite distance learning has become a reality, although it is still not readily available for all learners. The readings for our class this week reminded me that, even though infrastructure may be created to support and foster distance education, it really is the planning at the institution and course level that makes distance learning successful. Improvements in infrastructure are continuing to be made, at least in urban and suburban areas of developed countries, but no matter how much bandwidth a student has available, a poorly planned course, or one that relies on the “whiz-bang” nature of the technology will not succeed.

In that regard, the Ongyod (2007) article, Teaching Oral Communication Online Without Losing The Oral, lauds the use of webcams in a manner far beyond what I have experienced with this technology. I really question the level of enthusiasm that the author has for webcams, implying that they can provide “quality” video. Has anyone used a webcam recently? Don’t move too quickly, don’t stand too far away from the camera, don’t forget you’re actually on camera. There are buffering issues, problems with the field of vision, and even camera-shyness of the user. Yes, video can be recorded for transmission and later use by classmates and instructors, but in this age of YouTube, how can any webcam user be assured that their public speaking video doesn’t wind up on
America’s Funniest Home Videos or on the latest YouTube laugher that is featured on Entertainment Tonight?

I also question the author’s statement, “Because webcams have other practical uses, they are an investment that extends beyond the classroom.” (Ongyod 2007) I’m sure that I’m reflecting my 20^th century upbringing, but I can’t think of any other practical use of a home webcam – as I define “practical” – other than telemedicine or distance education. Would such applications include transmitting video from the U.S. to a soldier/sailor/airman in Iraq or
Afghanistan qualify as practical? Not for those of us who don’t have anyone to communicate with in those war zones. How many of us have a business with a need to transmit webcam images as an anti-theft device? Finally, how practical is a stationary webcam when “breaking news” and action is occurring in places where the webcam is absent? In the case of this technology, I believe its promise is still some ways away. As a student, I don’t know that I would choose to take a distance education course that required me to present myself to the camera regularly as a requirement of the course, at least not until the technology improves, and not until I can be sure my attempts at using it won’t wind up on a website that would shame me and my relatives.

On another note, I found a suggestion in the Blair and Hoy (2006) paper, Paying attention to adult learners online: The pedagogy and politics of community, that I would love to incorporate in my “traditional” course, the “Midterm Course Assessment.”  I think it would be extremely helpful for instructors to have such a forum, “an anonymous discussion space for students to discuss what was working effectively and what could be done to improve the second half of the course.” (Blair and Hoy 2006, 38) I have only experienced a midterm assessment/evaluation once in all of my graduate studies, and, although I don’t know that my suggestions helped modify the second half of the course, as a student, I did appreciate the opportunity to voice my opinion on what would improve the course while I was still taking it. Such a midterm evaluation doesn’t have to be restricted to the online environment, and it might be a very valuable tool for traditional courses.

The essay by Cynthia L. Selfe (2008), Technology and Literacy: A Story about the Perils of Not Paying Attention (Sidler, Morris & Smith, 2008) assists us in understanding that literacy as a construct is extremely individualized, and that educators and others have, unwittingly, and perhaps permanently, linked technology and literacy. Selfe reminds us that, not long ago, technological literacy was a national goal embraced by the Clinton-Gore administration, but it was a goal based on unevenly distributed technology and infrastructure. Selfe implies that technological literacy is just another hurdle placed in front of those who have yet to achieve print literacy, helping to perpetuate inequalities of opportunity for many in the
United States. Reflecting on how literacy is viewed in
America, Selfe urges her colleagues to remember:

When we use the more familiar technology of books, for instance, it is mostly within a familiar ideological system that allows us to ignore, except for some occasional twinges of conscience, the persistence of print and our role in this persistence. It allows us to ignore the understanding that print literacy functions as a cultural system—as Lester Faigley noted two years ago—not only to carry and distribute enlightened ideas, but also as a seamless whole to support a pattern of continuing illiteracy in this country. (Sidler, Morris & Smith 2008, 95)

Selfe clearly identifies “the link between literacy and computer technology that has been established in increasingly direct ways over the last decade” (96), and warns “composition studies professionals to recognize that these two complex cultural formations—technology and literacy—have become linked in ways that exacerbate current educational and social inequalities in the United States rather than addressing them productively.” (96)

With so many of our students arriving at college from such a wide variety of secondary school, or increasingly home school, environments, it is becoming increasingly important to avoid a “one size fits all” mentality about their prior educational preparation, exposure to computers and communication devices, their current economic status or their future earning potential. As I read in her essay about classrooms in older buildings where expansion for computers and communication technologies are almost cost-prohibitive, I remembered many of the crumbling buildings where I attended public school, buildings that are still in use 30 years later, with minimal infrastructure improvements. It would take months of “Net Days” to wire such buildings, not just for computers and the internet, but for basic, functioning electricity. Our students should not be penalized for such infrastructure failures.

As Selfe describes the “darker side of the [literacy] dynamic” (107), it is clear that expansion of the American economy, by design, requires that some become highly literate, others “functionally” literate (to coin a term no longer in vogue in adult learning), and others remain “illiterate” to fill those jobs and positions that have little to no earning potential to remove this group from poverty. Not every student will enjoy, master or become absorbed with computers. On the other hand, no student should be relegated to the ranks of the “illiterate” if she/he simply has never been given adequate tools, trained instructors and ample opportunity to use computers and communication technologies.

Communication instructors may become complacent and so adapted to technologies that we may forget that others simply do not have such access, and that this lack of continual exposure and use potentially penalizes some of our future students. Selfe cautions that “when we allow ourselves to ignore technological issues, when we take technology for granted, when it becomes invisible to us, when we forget technology’s material bases—regardless of whether or not we use technology—we participate unwittingly in the inequitable literacy system I have just described.” (Sidler, Morris & Smith 2008, 109)

Perhaps nothing brought Selfe’s warnings home to me more than her final note on technologies.

One technology writer, Mark Weiser, has said that “The most profound technologies are those that disappear,” that “weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it” (94). I agree, but with a slightly different interpretation—these technologies may be the most profound when they disappear, but—it is exactly when this happens that they also develop the most potential for being dangerous. (Sidler, Morris & Smith 2008, 114)

The bottom line for me is that, having been fortunate enough to purchase, work with, and learn using my own computers and communication devices, I just don’t THINK about how I communicate or compute anymore. It just happens, but this is not necessarily the experience of some of my current or future students, who go through extraordinary hoops to get to campus for computer and internet access, who borrow laptops for assignments, and who may, despite all this, still wind up working at Harris-Teeter after graduation, overseeing my use of the touch screen checkout. With the possibility that more and more people could be relegated to technological illiteracy, shut out of well-paying jobs and future opportunities, and anticipating the potential for discontent and unrest that such divisions could produce, taking technology for granted is, indeed, dangerous.

Our reading assignments this week generated a lot of consideration about educational predictions that have manifested themselves in other forms, at least so far in the 21^st century. Just a few years ago, computers, usually meaning desktop or laptop versions, were the focus of our readings this week, but as we look at how our students and our  associates use technology, there are many more electronic devices that facilitate communication and educational purposes. I think the term “computers” could be seen as limiting in future years, disregarding the pedagogical possibilities of cell phone technology, I-pods, and other emerging devices. When reading Ohmann’s (Sidler, Morris & Smith, 2008) essay, “Literacy, Technology and Monopoly Capital,” I had particular concerns about the statement, “engineers are shaping computers now so that those who work at them will be only keyboard operators.” (27-28) Indeed, the examples of McDonald’s food touch screen keyboards abound, but I hardly think that today’s communication technologies are all becoming so simple and single-purposed, and I believe that this is a good thing for communication education. I am excited about the emerging tools and technologies that will be available for us in the classroom, and feel that mobility of these tools will be one of the great advantages and differences from computer-based classrooms. Reiss and Young’s chapter (Sidler, Morris & Smith, 2008), then, could be slightly amended to include communication devices along with computers:

“WAC Wired” suggests that future graduates increasingly will use computer technology to communicate and to learn, and that educators will increasingly use computer technology to teach students to communicate and to learn. (441)

This has, I think, profound budget implications for educational institutions, as we consider what happens when students turn down campus computers because their own personal communication and computer technology is more powerful and customized than what they will find in the writing lab. Previous expenditures on desktop computers, which right now are in great demand in the open writing labs and Learning Commons at N.C. State, might be realigned as learning becomes even more portable. Will this shift the burden from university equipment budgets and student fees to givebacks to students to purchase communication/computer technologies of the future? The majority of my students prepare all of their weekly writing assignments on their own computers or, increasingly, on their own communication device, and may use campus facilities simply as a printing site.

The chapter from Palmquist, Kiefer, Hartvigsen and Goodlew (Sidler, Morris & Smith, 2008), Contrasts: Teaching and Learning about Writing in Traditional and Computer Classrooms, was another reminder of how the term “computer classroom” might mean something entirely different in the future. Though I was surprised at the increased level of interaction between and among students in computer classrooms that the authors discovered, I think we may be looking at transferring activities not only from computer to traditional classroom, but also to a new, third kind of classroom that incorporates and emphasizes use of many more communication devices as they become more available to our students.  As quickly as technology is changing, we may never experience another “traditional” classroom to go back to.

While I believe this is the future for communication education at least at four-year institutions, I still had concerns while completing our reading assignments about other educational institutions who still lag behind in communication technology, particularly the public schools and, to some extent, 2-year community colleges. The populations served by these institutions are still plagued with the need for communities to conduct backpack and school supplies drives for disadvantaged children. With the potential under preparation of some of our future students, and the economic situations that indispose them from purchasing, using and mastering computers and communication technologies, I am concerned that we are reducing the pipeline of future students seeking higher education.