Teaching the Digitally Conscious

The following is from a larger message regarding the possible inclusion of a technology plank in a revised WPA Outcomes Statement which I sent to the WPA-L discussion list:

"We live in an every increasingly digital culture and many of our students, whether we like it or not, are digital in consciousness. Furthermore, the world in which they (and we) will live and compose in will be a digital one. Digital consciousness does not mean eliminating print based writing. Print based writing becomes part of the larger matrix of digitality, both shaping and being reshaped by digital practices. For me, at least, a technology outcomes statement deals not with tools for composing or discrete sets of skills like cutting and pasting or creating a spreadsheet, but in coming to terms with the potentialities and constraints digital composing tools bring to the table."

In going back through some of my posts on Notes from the Walter J. Ong Archives that I might want to repost here, this one caught my attention because of Jeff Rice's April 29 post to WPA-L on John Udell's "The New Freshman Comp". Jeff also pointed to commentary on the article at Collin vs. Blog and Weblogg-ed. Nick Carbone also pointed to a related Boston Herald article "Metcalf to MIT Geeks: Get to writin'".

digital consciousness | digital literacy | Jeff Rice | teaching | teaching composition | teaching writing | wpa-l | writing