Re: Too many printouts

["B. Silk" <bsilk@titan.iwu.edu>]

Like Neal, I have questions about the experience of reading and about 
privileging certain forms of texts.  I still vote strongly for the 
multisensory reading experience in which one not only sees the text but 
feels the smoothness (or tooth) of various papers and the weight of it in 
one's hands.  There is also a dimensional understanding of development 
and complexity when one is holding a sheaf of papers clipped together.

Having said that, I'll also say that I have students "deposit" daily work 
electronically when I'm teaching in the Mac classroom.  The university 
charges for laser copies (being willing to risk damage to its 
instructors' eyesight by allowing free copies on those nasty little 
ImageWriters).  I often receive outside-of-class papers produced on these 
printers.  However, when the students do work in the classroom, I 
download and print their work on the laser printer.  This gives me 
readable hardcopy, saves in-class printing time, and it has an added 
advantage:  at the end of the semester I can hand back to the students a 
portfolio of their impromptu classwork and twice-weekly "creative" 
assignments.  Holding all their collected writings in their hands seems 
to give them a sense of the "heft" of their accomplishment.  They like 
reading where they've come from.

I know I'm not saving any trees this way, but I figure I'm sparing a
little plutonium and I'll plant a tree now and then to compensate. 

   Bobbie Silk
   Illinois Wesleyan University
   P.O. Box 2900                  
   Bloomington, IL  61702-2900     
   (PH:  309/556-3085)
   email:  bsilk@titan.iwu.edu


On Sun, 21 Jan 1996, Neal Lerner wrote:

> Wow, Eric, this paperless classroom seems pretty cool.  But I can't help 
> wondering about the experience of reading text on screen and how 
> different that is from reading text on paper (just as the experience of 
> composing on legal pads is different than composing on word-processing 
> software, I suppose).  And I would guess that the wide variation in 
> screen size (I'm moving outside of the experience of your class where I'd 
> assume all monitors are the same) would have some influence on the 
> experience of reading.  I recently went from a 9" screen to a 15" one.  
> My poor little short term memory isn't quite taxed as much now that I can 
> actually *see* more of my text rather than having to store it in mind 
> while I press my mouse to the scroll bar.
> 
> I think what I'm getting at here is the privileging of a certain 
> spacial/visual skill (or the teaching of that skill since you've 
> identified it as vital).  Or is it that these are the kinds of skills 
> students are bringing to your classroom as a result of being immersed in 
> such things since birth?
> 
> 	Neal Lerner
> 	nlerner@acs.bu.edu
> 
> On Sun, 21 Jan 1996, Eric Crump wrote:
> > well, I'm teaching tech writing this semester. First day I told the 
> > students that if the situation warranted print, they should write for 
> > print and produce print. But I suggested that they *not* think of print 
> > as the default medium or textual form. We work in a fully networked 
> > computer classroom. There's no point to limiting ourselves to print. In 
> > fact, it would be a huge waste of the resources we have available. Tech 
> > writing, like all writing, is moving online. 
> > 
> > *My* resume is on the web. I only print it out for people who don't have 
> > web access. 
> > 
> > Besides, no product is *final*. We only think so because in print they 
> > *look* final. It's an illusion of the medium  :)
> > 
> > --Eric Crump
> > 
>