On the Rewiring of Teaching

Here's a quote I find fascinating:

“The current explosion of digital technology not only is changing the way we live and communicate but is rapidly and profoundly altering our brains. Daily exposure to high technology--computers, smart phones, video games, search engines like Google and Yahoo--stimulates brain cell alteration and neurotransmitter release, gradually strengthening new neural pathways in our brains while weakening old ones. Because of the current technological revolution, our brains are evolving right now--at a speed like never before.” ~ Gary Small, iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind

There are quite a few other recent books about this subject. Another one I'd particularly recommend is The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. There's a great essay by him from The Atlantic that formed the basis of this book. You can find the essay here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/.

He raises some really fascinating points about how the internet is changing the way we learn and the ways our brains function. His ultimate point is that Google (and computers and the internet) are not making us think less; rather, they are changing the way we think. Likewise, I would say that students don't learn less than they once did; they learn differently.

I didn't grow up with the internet. I didn't have a network connection until I was in college. My brain is being slowly rewired by the internet; however, many of my students have had internet access in their homes as long as they can remember, so their brains were wired (not rewired) by the internet. A question for me, then, is how must I change or adapt my teaching strategies to address my courses to newer generations of students. If newer generations of students learn differently, must I also teach differently?

Questions About the Teaching of Writing

After thinking further about my last post, on technology and the teaching of writing, I immediately began to wonder what it's relevance would be to a non-composition instructor, which led to a flood of questions that I'd like to throw out to anyone reading this blog.

To what extent is it the responsibility of every teacher (no matter what subject) to teach writing? Is writing a discipline in and of itself, or is it a tool we use to work and learn in various disciplines?

My approach is to teach writing as a tool we use for critical inquiry; so, in my class, grammar and rhetoric are never abstracted from content. In order for students to have realistic encounters with writing, I have them working with specific subjects, using their writing to engage with and reflect on those subjects. A composition class focused only on grammar and rhetoric seems almost as strange to me as a class focused on pens, pencils, and looseleaf paper. Still, I think writing-intensive courses are important, because they offer a place for students to reflect (in a second order way) on the writing process (and on the grammar and rhetoric good writing employs).

More questions: Should every course be writing-intensive? Is writing essential to learning? It seems like these questions are particularly relevant with regard to online courses, where writing is the primary mode of interaction. How do we (or should we) work with (and encourage) student writing in non-composition courses?

On Technology and the Teaching of Writing

From all the jails the Boys and Girls

Ecstatically leap—

Beloved only Afternoon

That Prison doesn’t keep

They storm the Earth and stun the Air,

A Mob of solid Bliss—

Alas—that Frowns should lie in wait

For such a Foe as this—

—Emily Dickinson

Consider the tangible violence technology has wrought upon grammar. We rely on automated grammar and spell-check tools in our word-processing programs (so much that they’re quickly becoming a crutch). E-mail shorthand fails to live up to the grammatical standards of typed and even handwritten letters. And many believe our language is being perverted by the shortcuts (and concision nearly to the point of indifference) we’ve become accustomed to writing and reading in text messages and IMs. For example, if Emily Dickinson were writing today, the poem I've quoted above would likely be stripped of punctuation altogether and reduced to something like, “frm jail bfs and gfs leap and luv l8r to prty :-( w8 ttyl E,” or some such seeming nonsense.

For many teachers and writing pedagogues, this is a travesty, a torturous fact of modern life that we all must contend with and defend against in our classrooms. However, I would argue that we are at a moment in the history of the English language where the capacity for something wondrous is upon us. This isn’t to say that there haven’t been other wondrous moments in the evolution of human language, but there has not (and may not ever be again) a moment just like this one, a moment where the very fabric of how we speak and how we express ourselves through language has become so tenuous that every new textual utterance threatens to either devolve into gibberish or reinvent the very way we speak and write.

The evolution of written language is speeding up at an exponential rate, and this necessitates that we, as teachers (and particularly teachers of writing), reconsider the way we work with language in our classrooms. We can no longer be the staid old-school grammarians that taught so many of us how to write, nor can we simply dismiss or overlook the teaching of grammar entirely. Rather, we must think consciously (and practically) about how our student’s conceptions of (and contexts for) writing are changing, and we must approach the teaching of grammar in new and innovative ways.

On E-mail and the Cascade Effect

A friend/colleague of mine recently tweeted: "what a drag responding 2 e-mails only breeds yet more e-mails - I remember the days when it was thrilling 2 send/receive these cursed messages". I think it's particularly interesting that she uses the word "breeds" here, which suggests that an e-mail can at least figuratively copulate and reproduce--that e-mail has a life of its own.

I think there is definitely something to this. When my iPhone is in my pocket, an incoming message actually tickles my leg, as though a critter is climbing into my phone. We think of e-mailing as a disembodied mode of communication, but it is becoming increasingly embodied. The touchscreen on my iPhone also allows me to use my fingers to interact with my e-mail, flicking it back and forth across the screen in a flurry of text.

Another thing I've noticed is that the number of e-mail accounts we maintain is increasing rapidly. I used to have a single e-mail account, but now I am juggling inboxes on Facebook, other social networking sites, my educational e-mail account, my Yahoo account, my Mobile Me account, and the messages within my online courses. Not only are individual e-mails reproducing, but so are e-mail accounts. I'm surprised that I rarely struggle to manage all of these accounts.

I love e-mail. It is, by far, my preferred method of communicating at a distance. But I recognize that I'm reaching a limit, where my brain is no longer capable of keeping track of all the virtual threads that connect me to my friends, family, students, and fellow teachers.

What does all of this mean for teaching online: E-mail is our voice in an online classroom. It's the primary way that we have one-on-one interactions with students. When we go silent on e-mail, it would be like staring in prolonged silence at a student sitting in front of us during office hours. For me, I think of responding promptly to e-mails as my first priority in my online classes, followed closely by participating in discussions, then maintaining the course (so that students can navigate it efficiently), and then grading.

I'm curious. How does my ordered list of priorities line up with how other people approach online teaching?

On Technological Panic

My first entry for this blog is coming a little late due to technical difficulties, so I thought it was a good time to think further about the role technical difficulties play in online pedagogy. I've always been of the mind that the computer and the LMS for an online class are merely its medium. Still, so many online instructors and students spend the majority of their time grappling (and coming to terms) not with the content but with the delivery device of online classes. We struggle to log in, to format our work correctly, to find the information we're looking for in an endless parade of contextual menus, and to bring some semblance of ourselves into the interactions we have in online forums and chat tools.

When we gather to discuss our experiences as teachers and students in online classes, we often end up talking more about technology than about the subjects we're studying/teaching. It would be like sitting down to write an essay with pen and paper and becoming distracted by ruminations about the nature of No. 2 pencils and recycled college-ruled loose-leaf paper. (I have always had a particular fondness for No. 2 pencils, even though I rarely find the occasion to use them anymore.) Likewise, discussions of online pedagogy usually become entirely preoccupied with best practices for using technology in teaching and not with best practices for teaching more generally. Thus, we so often allow the bells and whistles of new-fangled technological tools dictate our pedagogy, rather than finding ways to use those tools to implement our own pedagogical choices.

When technology fails us, as it so often does, our impulse is to become even more preoccupied with it. I often encounter students and fellow teachers in a state of utter panic about the failures of technology in their online classes. For example, I very frequently get e-mails from my students about their inability to upload an assignment to the course. It goes something like, "I've tried and tried to upload my assignment before the deadline, but I can't because of . . . and . . . and then . . .," which includes a sometimes endless narrative about their experience of technological failure. The e-mail ends with a plea: "What should I do? Is there any way that you will still accept my work?" Exclamation marks are quite common in these e-mails, which is just one of the many indicators of the student's ensuing panic.

I respond to these e-mails quickly and calmly with something like, "Of course, I'm happy to accept your work for full credit. Feel free to e-mail it to me when you can. My hope is that technology will not become a barrier for learning in this course. When it does, just assume that I will be understanding." My goal is to have students focusing on the quality of their work and the integrity of their learning experience. When technology fails, there is always a fallback. Certainly, a secondary goal of online coursework is to help students become more proficient at working online; however, the primary goal is for students to engage with the subject-matter of the course. In my mind, the secondary goal should never trump the primary goal. If a student is unable to upload work to the course and unable to submit it by e-mail, I could (though have never had to) ask them to mail their work to me via postal mail. The point is that I want them to spend more time thinking about their work and less time thinking about its delivery device, which is ultimately arbitrary.

So, while it took longer than I expected to upload this first blog entry, it did eventually get here, and it is no better or worse for having floated around briefly in internet limbo. And, even more importantly, I haven't yet felt a moment of technological panic about my not-yet-but-soon-to-be-working-brilliantly blog.