Re: Computer <Aside>

[Chad Engbers <engbers@cua.edu>]

Thanks to everyone for the good discussion of computers in the WC.

Mickey asks:

>So, my question is....do we have some responsibiity to help students
>use the computer as a writing tool..and to use it appropriately and in
>ways that assist composing? (That tag end to the question is prompted
>by students who tell me that they DO use the computer, but only to
>type in their final draft because the teacher requires printed
>copy. They often say they do no revising at that stage.)

YES.  Although there are myriad definitions for the term "literacy," the
definition used by most of the people who will some day be interviewing my
students *does* involve computers.  I've taught in a computer-equipped
classroom for the last four semesters, and nearly all of my students sign on
for the course (designated as a computerized section in the course catalog)
because they feel they need the experience before entering the workplace.

And I suspect that most of them mean that they need to learn basic tricks
like how to move a file from Word to Outlook, etc.  But I think it is the
responsibility of the instructors to recognize that the computer-literacy
students need is more complicated than that and inseparable from the writing
process itself.  I appreciated Jennifer and Mickey's comments about using
computers to meet specific needs of individual writers--that's exactly what
I think we need to be doing.

The problem is that computers can do so many things, and very few people
know how to do all of them.  Has anyone experimented with Word 97's ability
to track revisions, for instance?  I only read the Help menu on those
features when I started scraping together a dissertation proposal.  (The
tendency of new-fangled software like Word to emulate old-fashioned things
like strike-through is itself an interesting issue, I think, but not
entirely relevant here....)  It seems to me that it would take an
exceptionally knowledgeable tutor/instructor to match the best computer
solution to an individual's writing process.  (BTW I understand the
"reading" part of computer-literacy to involve the Help menu!)

But this problem, along with most of the others (emphasis on formatting, for
instance), seems less a reason for avoiding computers than a reason for
knowing them thoroughly and using them responsibly.  I think that dealing
with these issues is a valuable service I can offer my students.

On a slightly different subject, Jennifer writes:


>They're building us a new campus here in Oak Ridge, so next fall, I
>should have a new Writing Center. One aspect of planning, of course,
>has been the furniture. The architects have drawn up at least three
>sets of plans so far, and in every single one of them I muddied up
>their pretty renderings by drawing in a nice big round table,
>*without* computers on it.


I taught in a newly computerized classroom last year, and I was quite
pleased with the furniture.  We had the computers all around the perimeter
of the room (facing the walls), with a printer in the corner and a huge
conference table in the middle.  The chairs were on wheels, so I'd plan each
class into a "computer" phase and a "table" phase, and the students would
just scoot over to the appropriate station.  The only thing which I think
would work even better would be to have the computers in pods of three or
four.

WC needs are different, of course, but the round computerless table sounds
like a great idea.


cae