Writing and Writing Technologies: "Entwined"

“Seriously, how much writing actually occurs without a computer or phone anymore?” – me, in my head, 20 seconds ago

My first mistake is assuming that most writing today is done on a computer or other electronic device. Here is some writing I do:

On electronic devices

Facebook posts

Twitter posts

Emails

Text messages

Blogging

Amazon.com orders

Signing for the UPS guy

Searching for library books

Googling stupid questions

Academic writing

Comments on my students’ papers

On paper or other materials

Grocery lists

Signing bills at restaurants

Leaving notes for my office mates

Note taking in classes—both as a student and teacher

Comments on my students’ papers

Writing a letter to a friend (I did this once. Took me two hours to write three pages.)

Post-it note to-do lists

Writing funny quotes on napkins at bars

How I teach using/not using technologies                         

1.     Hand-written notes on hw and essays

2.     Free writes in class on paper

3.     Plagiarism = death

4.     Privileging academic writing and critical thinking

5.     Writing info on the board

6.     Handouts

How I could (am) teach(ing) w/ these technologies

1.     Annotations in Word or a PDF

2.     Composing with a keyboard or phone keypad

3.     Plagiarism = reflecting the social sharing culture of the internet

4.     Privileging writing done out of academia

5.     Emailing info

6.     Powerpoints, Prezis, D2L, attachments in emails

What strikes me about these [incomplete] categories is that most of my paper writing could—and can be—be done electronically. Three weeks ago at the farmer’s market, I signed a receipt on the vendor’s smartphone with the pad of my finger and he emailed me the receipt. Our portable computers (our phones!) allow us to do almost anything anywhere. This changes writing because it alters the composing process. I worry that because we are living it that we won’t take the time to process how it is changing the way we communicate and the way we write.

Most of my paper writing consists of notes or lists, nothing that forces me to slow down and critically consider the order of what I’m writing and how it will effect the whole piece. The letter writing was a mistake I’ll never make again—why compose in such a permanent place at a slow pace when I could compose on the computer screen that allows me to write and edit more quickly than pen and paper?

We gain time, but what do we lose by transferring our words and composing movements to screens? The composing process is already difficult to study; how do these new devices complicate the process? (I couldn’t even begin to tell you what happens in my head when I respond to an email using my Blackberry. The keys are sososososososo small….but my fingers just do it. Learning to type was a slow process in 5^th grade 1990s but learning to text a few years later didn’t seem so daunting. Why?)

I’m still tied up with the concept that our writing and composition processes change each time we are introduced to a new technology. To think of how this concept can be positioned socially, I’d like to call on Henry Jenkins’ participatory culture. In “Confronting the Challenge of Participatory Culture” Jenkins et. al. state, “Rather than dealing with each technology in isolation, we would do better to take an ecological approach, thinking about the interrelationship among all of these different communication technologies, the cultural communities that grow up around them, and the activities they support” (8). Jenkins argues that the technological environment of the net generation has led to new life skills that include multitasking, a collective intelligence, and performance (4). (These three are among eight others.) Technologies and social practices are creating a new type of writing and sharing.

The reason I find this relevant is because the characteristics that partially define the net generation’s writing is not always valued in the [composition] classroom. Rhetorical concepts change when the writing space changes. For example, writing almost anything that is posted on the internet automatically makes the audience unknown. You can have an intended audience and privacy features, but you will never know who exactly is reading what you wrote.

I worry that the technologies used by students do not reflect what they are being asked to do. For example, when I took the ACT (years ago, so it’s probably changed) the writing portion was done in little blue books. That’s not how I was composing in English class or how I was composing my social writing so I thought it was an unfair assessment of my writing abilities.

What assignments do we assign today that don’t reflect how writing technologies have shaped the way students write?

Reflection on my Blog Post

I was supposed to write about my “understandings of how writing and writing technologies entwine” but revealing my “understanding” has just led to me realize how much I don’t understand. And then there are also the limitations of my understanding that stem from my class, education, nationality, values, and privilege.

So I don’t know how technologies and writing entwine, other than believing writing technologies make it faster and easier to communicate to more people. I also know that the way they have changed my writing process is permanent—if my computer or cell phone blew up, I would not be able to compose this blog post on paper as well or as comfortably.

Works Cited

Jenkins, Henry, et al. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Digital Media and Learning. The John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, 2006. Web. 24 May 2012.