Teaching with Technology

My interest in working with Generation 1.5 writers began back in August 2006 when I had just started my first year as an eight grade Language Arts teacher in an American college preparatory school in the Dominican Republic capital of Santo Domingo. No sooner than the first weeks into the semester–and noticing that the majority of my students’ work was liberally plagiarized–had I proposed a writing program for the English curriculum. Thankfully, it was the D.R. where education is less regulated than here in the United States, so a go ahead from administration would turn out to be an opportunity for both me and my students. For them it would be the luxury of a personal writing coach and for me a new niche for myself. By the time I left the school in December 2009, I had managed to establish a computer-based writing center where nearly 200 high school students “workshopped” once a week. It was a move based solely on a hunch that proved to be a good one: Students were engaged and apparently enjoying the process, but, most important to me, they were producing work all of their own making. Well, at least the majority of them.

I want to continue working with this expanding group of students who are American-educated speakers of English as a second language, many of whom are right here in the United States in public secondary classrooms. In a prefect world I would replicate the Workshop in a community of Gen 1.5-ers here and in need of additional academic support. This time around, however, I would have to inform my practices on pedagogical theory and practice, which is the reason why I am here at George Mason, and the basis for choosing Computers and Composition as the professional journal I will explore for our knowledge-building assignment.

Beyond exploring how computers can be used in composition classrooms, Computers and Composition(published by Ohio State University) also looks at how teaching writing can be enhanced through the careful study and integration of new media on new paper–if you will–called “digital composing environments”. To begin I will look at the article “Paradox and Promise: MySpace, Facebook, and the sociopolitics of social networking in the writing classroom.” It seemed like a good place to begin as my impulse to jump on the new media band wagon is tempered some by fears of possibly creating legions of young people crippled in other ways as a result of overexposure to the Internet.

I do recognize, though, that my fears stem from my lack of a full understanding of what exactly is meant by new media education. Even scarier is the fact that the rate by which these changes are taking place may mean that I will never fully understand the buzz surrounding the topic. But that is no reason to not inform myself. If I’m not going to buy into the hype, I should at least have a sound basis for my decision.

To be continued…

Fe Bencosme