Can I Teach Without Technology?

I have a recurring dream, or rather a nightmare: I arrive to my classroom for the first day of the semester only to find I am in a “dumb” classroom. I look around. There are blackboards crowding every wall, lined by nubs of chalk. The room is already filled with students; they stare expectantly as I fumble around. No computer. No projector. No overhead. No idea what I’m going to do. Reluctantly, I pick up a piece of chalk and begin to write something illegible on the board. The chalk screeches like a harpy and I wake.

Ok, so I just made that up; I don’t really have that nightmare. But I do think about those unfortunate souls lost to the rooms whose contents contain only enough wiring to turn the lights on. I mourn for them and pray for myself – pray that I’ll never be in their situation.

The TAs from Dr. Barton’s 656 (Teaching College English) course last semester talked at length about the divide between tech-enabled and tech-disabled classrooms. My colleagues’ consensus seemed to be that teaching in a tech-disabled environment was doable; the instructor only needs to prepare more: have more copies made, prepare more transparencies, find hard copies of pictures to show, et cetera. But not me.

I hate to be pessimistic, but I’m not sure I could enjoy teaching in that environment. I’m sure I could teach in that environment, of that I’m positive. However, the thought of not being able to employ the technologies my students are intimate with, which I use to engage them in productive ways, makes me cower in terror. Of course, there are the sayings: “every obstacle is an opportunity in disguise”; and “nothing breeds creativity like necessity.”

I suppose these sayings should comfort me and uplift my soul. And were I actually in the predicament of having to teach without technology, they might. Unfortunately for me, I am an excessive worrywart; and I cannot let sleeping dragons go un-prodded. So the question remains until a situation arises that forces me to an answer. Inevitably, that time will be when I am looking for jobs and unable to own any preference.

What's up with Worlde?

Lately I’ve blogged a lot on technology applications in the classroom. From texts to Twitter, YouTube to machinima, I have focused on a variety of applications that have potential in pedagogy. One web application I would love to incorporate into a lesson plan is Wordle. You can find it here:

http://www.wordle.net/

Visit the site; play around; use a paper written for a class to see what the results are. Wordle creates word clouds based on the text users input. The clouds are based on the frequency with which the data uses certain words. Words that are used often are made to stand out more; users of Wordle can alter the style of the word clouds: changing fonts, colors, layout, etc. Besides a really fancy tech-savvy way to bolster a PowerPoint, this application can help visual learners map their key ideas.

Instead of rereading a paper, outlining a thesis and topic sentences, graphing the trajectory of the paper, students can copy-paste their essays into Wordle and see what words they’re using most often. The implications of this are numerous: students can see which words they are repeating most often. If non-key terms appear large, the student may want to consider revising the essay with the notion to whittle those repetitions down; if key terms come up big, the student can compare which of those terms seem most important based on frequency and see if it aligns with the important words they wanted to use.

But those are just a couple examples; the benefits don’t end at editing. Students can analyze the rhetoric of a popular essay by using the essay as the data for Wordle’s word clouds. Instead of asking them to write an essay based on Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” imagine what fun results pedagogues and students would come up with when they analyzed Wordle’s interpretation of Swift’s famous essay.

Viewing language as an art can be a difficult concept to convey, and Worlde can help. Students can step outside what they feel is stagnant text while staying within the confines of the course goals and aims of the discipline.

Fanderclai and Faigley

Last semester in Teaching College English with Dr. Barton, the class read a number of tech-related articles, two of which are immediately relevant to this course: Tari Lin Fanderclai's "Like Magic, Only Real" and Lester Faigley's "Beyond Imagination: The Internet and Global Digital Literacy.” Incidently, I also created PowerPoints for both of these articles to present in Dr. Barton’s class; unfortunately, however, I could not find a way to upload these straight to blogspot (although that’s not to say there is no way to do this, only that I could not find that way in a couple minute’s worth of tinkering). Before elaborating on how I see their articles relating to our Computers, English, and Pedagogy class, allow me to properly cite the articles for any readers who wish to seek them out and read them:

Faigley, Lester. “Beyond Imagination: The Internet and Global Digital Literacy.” Concepts in Composition. Ed. Irene L. Clark. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003. 509-520.

Fanderclai, Tari Lin. “Like Magic, Only Real.” Concepts in Composition. Ed. Irene L. Clark. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003. 521-533.

Faigley had some interesting points. He contends that teachers still have a role in the classroom despite the insistence from some that technology will replace us. He says we need to make our voice heard: technology cannot do everything teacher’s do, it is not a golden ticket. It is a tool and nothing more. The issue of cost that my previous blog deals with is also raised by Faigley. His concern with the cost of technology is understandable, but the models he explicates as business-driven education have already appeared and faded into the background. Faigley does state that misinformation is one of the greatest dangers in using the web in education, but I see misinformation as a great opportunity to teach students analytical skills to determine authority and credibility.

Fanderclai’s article was amusing, especially considering that Dr. Moberly (one of my professors last year) knows her, and her name is all over our course material. It’s no surprise, because she is one of the leaders of the MOO pedagogy movements. Her article outlines the benefits and hindrances and anecdotes of her MOO-in-class experiences. While the major emphasis in her desire to utilize this technology seems to be upsetting traditional classroom hierarchies, she also notes other relevant teaching issues, such as getting students excited about learning, communicating, and interacting in an educational setting.