The WAC Clearinghouse

Reviewing CCCC 2000: Navigating Between Computer Mediated and Face-to-Face Classrooms: Opportunities for Instructional Enactments (E.11)

This set of solid presentations (though they didn't bring forth any new discoveries), served to heighten awareness of three basic principles: innovations from computer classrooms can be modified for use in paper-based classrooms just as we bring our paper-based pedagogies into computer classrooms; visual rhetoric can be studied even in classes that do not have computers; and the scholarship on the use of technology with second language writers, where it may be of most use, is lagging significantly behind that done in freshman composition classrooms.

Nicole Brown did a fine job of presenting possible ways that teachers can bring methods used in computer classes into paper based classes. Her presentation served as a reminder that many teachers and students do not have the access to the basic computer and writing technologies that many teachers take for granted, and she emphasized the fact that a teacher doesn't need to leave certain pedagogical tools behind just because they don't have computers around. Bridget Fahey was inspired by Gunther Kress' assertion that "if English is to remain relevant" it will need to move into teaching analysis of both the visual and the linguistic. Fahey showed ways that teachers can help their students analyze visual rhetoric whether they are in a computer or traditional environment.

Kevin Eric DePew focused more on electronic communication in his presentation, focusing on the ways working in MOOs effect the writing processes of second language students. Questioning whether the spoken word is superfluous in the writing class, he focused on ways that MOO environments help facilitate second language learning. He concluded that some difficulty arises in teaching writing with a MOO because most institutions would not accept a final written product with the oral qualities that MOOs encourage, but he did believe that using MOOs with second language students would be useful for process based activities, brainstorming and conversation.

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