We’ve all been there. At least once in our academic careers we have spent the first 20 minutes of a class period watching the teacher or student presenter battle it out with the technology they were dependent on for that days lesson. Does the occasional misfire of technology signal its unwarranted place in the classroom? Are we wasting our time, or are we wasting the potential of the tools we have before us?
You have also very likely sat behind (and quickly learned to sit in front of) this guy:
who has been perusing his Facebook and email while typing a paper on the effects of Hurricane Katrina all throughout the lecture on poster propaganda in Berlin. Bravo on the multi-tasking skills, but will he be fully present for the ensuing group work? I’d rather not take my chances.
While these are two examples of many unfortunate drawbacks to technology in the classroom, they certainly cannot justify excising technology from schools. Not only that, but they bring up very important questions surrounding digital literacy and our own agency. What is the current role of technology in the classroom? Is it effective? Should we throw it out, work within it, or transform it to what we need it to be?
In “Students Who Teach Us: A Case Study of a New Media Text Designer” Cynthia Selfe points out that English comp teachers are becoming more and more interested in new media texts because not only do they see more of them and have more access to reading and authoring these texts themselves, but their students are paying noticeably more attention to these texts as well. Selfe argues here that teachers should be paying more attention to them, as well as using them systematically in the classroom to teach about new literacies. In the chapter Selfe uses the technological and traditional literacy narrative of one student to explore how this contested landscape effect students working in specific English comp programs, the role new media literacies play in the negotiation of new social codes, and what English comp teachers must do with this knowledge to squelch the risk of composition studies becoming increasingly irrelevant (or politicized as such).
As hard as it is to believe that something so absolutely necessary for the educational (read: professional, personal, future) career of American students (read: communities, future leaders, country) as the critical thinking skills learned through composition could be devalued by anyone with the power to support it, the sub-topic of the use of technology in the classroom comes with a built-in debate which could serve to bolster a positive view of the necessity of comp studies or derail it. David Buckingham explains in “Introducing Identity,” how the long debate on the impact of media and technology on children has always served as a focus for much broader hopes and fears about social change. The idea that technology is transforming social relationships, the economy and sprawling realms of public and private life is recycled in popular debates, drawing on its long history of public opinion ranging from celebration to paranoia.
Research like that of Kristen Drotner, who believes that schools need to more directly address the new forms of competence needed today and is concerned with the implications of young people’s emerging digital cultures and the role of schools, along with the digital literacy case studies carried out by Hawisher and Selfe can help us put together an informed picture of how new literacies can or should play out in the composition classroom; one not overburdened by celebration or paranoia, but balanced by the real emerging needs of students. Though Hawisher and Selfe are (rightly) hesitant to apply their ethnographic research to form a larger narrative, their approach points out how little English teachers know about the numerous literacies their students bring to class, and calls on them to seek out and embrace a broad understanding and valuing of multiple literacies in schools to cooperate with those at home, in the community and in the workplace; the literacies their students shape and are shaped by in other (social, professional, educational) aspects of their lives.
Of course this “unique position of the teacher to make a difference in the literate activities of students” requires an aspect of pioneering bravery on the part of teachers (especially those who do not consider themselves tech savvy), and it will certainly include a learning curve (occasionally we will spend some of our precious class time searching for a dongle). Introducing the specific strategies and activities she suggests to take this road, Selfe explains that these strategies will depend on the teacher’s willingness to: experiment with new media compositions, take personal and intellectual risks as they learn to value different types of texts, integrate attention to such texts into the curriculum, and engage in composing such works themselves. Not to mention on computer resources, tech support and the professional development that they have available at their specific institutions. This is clearly a risk for teachers, not only in their own dynamic with their students, but in breeching this learning curve quickly and smoothly enough to justify the value of new literacies in the composition classroom while the composition classroom itself is still in the process of being contested, questioned, and possible threatened. The successful use of a range of literacies in the classroom may keep composition studies relevant to students, the students’ skills relevant to future academic and professional work, and therefore the composition classroom relevant to the university.
Teaching Writing in a Digital Age 
Your picture of the laptop reminds me of a photo taken in Congress while it was in session, featuring a representative who was surfing the Internet on his laptop during a debate. I wonder if his constituents bought the argument that he was multitasking.
And your image of teachers struggling with technology is close to home for me, though most recently it is as a student in this class. I am embarrassed to admit that I couldn’t find how to post a new post. I assumed that I had to click on “New Post.” Four hours later, and help from Kory, I was able to do it, but I had wasted a lot of precious time trying to figure out the technology.