Passions Pedagogies and 21st Century Technologies

Abstract

1. English language-Rhetoric-Study and teaching-Technological innovations. 2. English language-Rhetoric-Study and teaching-Data processing. 3. English language-Composition and exercises--Data processing. 4. Academic writing-Study and teaching-Technological innovations. 5. Academic writing-Study and teaching-Data processing. 6. Information technology. studies traditionally link life in the profession with the world of privilege and leisure in protected enclaves often associated with the upper classes-they seldom, 2 Gail E Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe if ever, mention technology. College English professors of both sexes tend to be represented as bookish types in tweeds and corduroys, wielding leaky pens, outfitted in the suitably subdued colors of navy and tan, and, more recently, in the pervasive all-black of those likely to take cultural studies as their field of study. And yet, all of this, one might argue, the pens, the books, and the attire, can be understood as technologies that are associated with language studies-even though the black of traditional academic robes has been afforded new authority with the ascendancy of postmodernism and the computer has assumed new importance in our study of discourses, communication, and language.But these changes notwithstanding, as Richard Ohmann argues above, many in the public sphere continue to see English professors as occupying a station in life that requires less in the way of hourly, accounted-for-labor than that of their neighbors inhabiting worlds outside of academe. And, although we know that few citizens would cast English professors in the role of hauling manure to beautify the grounds of their college campuses, as Rudolf above describes Fletcher O. Marsh, few, also, we would argue, construct them as the erudite technology-wielding expert that English graduate student Matthew G. Kirschenbaum aspires to become through his work in the academy. Yet these various and contradictory renditions of English professors exist side-by-side in a world that is changing so fast that any commonplace understandings of what we're about as scholars and teachers in English studies are constantly being called into question-even our own. The passions that mark us-teaching, texts, the day-to-day work environs, the challenges of a changing society and sometimes the new technologies-descend from the scholarly deeds of those who have gone before us; yet they also mean that we enter the future transformed. Certainly the trajectories of our own lives-especially those portions that combine interests in the humanities and in the design, use, and study of computer technologies-escape easy classification and evade the stereotypes of English professors which continue to be kept alive in popular society.As English professors who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s and entered the profession in the 1970s, neither of us started teaching with computers; we learned as we went. And what we learned convinced us that computers were becoming increasingly important in educational settings-not simply becau...

Broadening Perspectives and Possibilities: Learners’ Pathways to Digital Multimodal Composition (DMC) in ESL Context

“…Moreover, this insight can empower educators to anticipate and address any challenges or obstacles that learners might encounter along the way. In Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies, Cynthia Selfe and Gail Hawisher (1999), the two pioneers in the field of composition and computers, argue that learners must be prepared for unique experiences in this digital world as the world is changing at a rapid pace, those experiences that we have never had. Kress, Hawisher, and Selfe (1999), along with the participants of The New London Group (1996), support the idea that literacy has evolved to comprise a digital aspect, including multimodal avenues of communication.…”