Writing Digitally is Not New

The CCCC’s goes to great length to establish an “official” position on teaching writing from within a digital environment (See http://www.ncte.org/cccc/resources/positions/digitalenvironments). The paper, like most position papers, is about recognizing a shift in the paradigm and establishing a set of guidelines, or a “position” for professionals in the field to use or amend as necessary for their given academic environment.  But what’s really curious about the “position paper” is that what is really addressed, is not so much the actual digital environment but the assumptions about teaching in the digital environment.

I would argue that these assumptions are no different for a traditional classroom where writing is being taught.

That “the focus of writing is expanding” goes without saying. What is it that the CCCC’s is trying to tell us that we don’t already know? Clive Thompson writes in Wired (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-09/st_thompson)  that students are writing more now than ever and while they may not know, definitively, the definition of Kairos, they seem to know it intrinsically. In other words they understand the rhetorical value of their text(s), even if it is as mundane a task as persuading their peers to see one movie over another.

So what is so new about composing digitally that the Great and Wonderful CCCC’s saw fit to establish their position, officially, with regards to teaching writing in the digital environment? In a word: Ownership.