Graduate Research Network | Computers and Writing Online | Connections MOO | Computers and Writing 2001
Abstracts
Susan Antlitz, Illinois State University
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For a teaching/research
internship I am planning for next Fall, I will attempt to examine the
relationship between building and the writing process, with a particular
eye toward how building in the MOO may help students to think about their
paper topics in new or different ways. For example, it seems logical that
describing rooms and objects could help students to better visualize scenes
concretely, therefore encouraging them to use more sensory details, description,
and dialogue in a narrative paper assignment. I'm interested in how different
ways of thinking about and interacting with paper topics with the MOO
might manifest itself in the more traditional papers students writeprimarily
at the conceptual, rather than structural, level. For more abstract topics,
I want to examine translating a topic from MOO to paper might encourage
a better understanding of global revision strategies, as well as attention
to differences in audience and purpose. Specifically, I will address the following questions: •How do students
draw on their MOO experiences when discovering, developing, revising and
reflecting on their course papers? |
Megan
Hughes,
Saint Xavier Universiy
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Selling the MOO: Preparing to Use the MOO in a Student Teaching Experience As a pre-service teacher I have been assigned to a Chicago Public High School for my student teaching experience next fall, so this research proposal is less pure research and more authentic pedagogical thinking on my part. It is my belief that utilizing MOO technology will improve the literacy lives of my students as they experience the ownership, playfulness, and text-rich nature of the MOO. Unfortunately, as we all know, public schools are currently experiencing a push toward standardization of curriculum and methods; a push that belies the fact that non-traditional methods can work well in many different school settings and undervalues the teacher's role as an education professional. Because of these institutional forces and my position as a new teacher working with an experienced master teacher, I believe that selling MOO technology and the alternate pedagogy it supports will be a challenge. My research, then, is directed to anticipating and meeting this challenge. I would like to conduct in depth theoretical research on MOO technology and its uses in the classroom, as well as find individuals who use the MOO in their classrooms and other educational settings and learn fods to my Cooperating Teacher, University Supervisor, and school administrators.
Research in this area will be part of my continuing efforts in using the MOO. I am currently a co-administrator of the Saint Xavier University MOO, and I have helped devise and implement plans for online clinical experiences involving pre-service English teachers and high school writers. |
Sara Jenkins, University of South Florida
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Two things bother me about the current state of computers in composition: the fact that not every instructor is able to teach with computers and that critical pedagogy does not focus enough on the role of technology. Although these two things might not seem directly related, I believe that they are—because there is not universal access to computers in classrooms, using them (and by extension, discussion of them) is considered a luxury and not a necessity, although critical pedagogy considers the use/discussion of other aspects of culture necessary. I believe that any cursory investigation of the current computer craze—where it comes from, what it implies in terms of literacy, and what it implies in terms of production, use, access, etc.—demonstrates that computers have had and will have a significant impact on society. To leave them unexamined in the classroom is as dangerous as ignoring any other ideology. For any teacher who
realizes how important technology is to culture, integrating a critique
of technology into their pedagogy is fairly easy to do: read relevant
articles or books, discuss issues in class, have students do research
and write papers. But what is more difficult is integrating the actual
use of technology, especially technologies like MOOs or webpage creation.
Without the resources existing in the classroom, many teachers feel like
they cannot take advantage of these new tools. Although having computers
in a class makes using them pedagogically much easier, it is still possible
to use computers pedagogically in a non-computerized classroom. |
Sara Pace, Texas Woman's University
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Voice Recognition Software: Its Effects on the Writing Process and Uses for Writers with Disabilities I have an interest in studying the effects of using voice recognition software programs (such as “Dragon Speaking Naturally”) on the writing process. What are the benefits/problems encountered when composing orally? What kinds of unique prewriting activities do writers engage in that are not applicable to handwriting or typing? What does oral composing do to the drafting and revising processes as well? And in a narrower sense, I am also particularly interested in how these programs are being used by college faculty/students with disabilities. At the 2001 4C’s in Denver, Johan Slatin and Cindy Linden presented papers dealing with their experiences as composition and rhetoric faculty with physical impairments. Both touched on the voice activated technologies they have implemented and hinted at some of the more aggravating aspects of relying on them. However, their commentary was largely experiential. Thus, although experience is certainly a central starting point of research in this area, it also shows that there is a gap needing to be filled by further inquiry informed by a specific methodology. I feel that the use of voice activated software as a writing tool (especially by writers with disabilities who have no other choice of a means of composing) could yield some important insight into studies of the writing process and also open up a dialogue on orality as the vehicle for creating what ultimately ends up as a printed text. |
Katherine Parrish, University of Toronto
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Problematizing Electronic Pedagogy Researchers in MOO pedagogy have long been putting out the call for teachers in these environments to re-evaluate notions of authority in the classroom, to recognize the powerful possibilities that MOOs hold for a decentered, constructionist pedagogy. (Bruckman, Fanderclai, Nolan.) While teachers in rhetoric and composition courses at the college level have begun to embrace these ideas, and apply them to theironline practice in innovative ways, few models exist of similar projects in MOOs for literary studies at the highschool level. The highschool classroom teacher, it can be argued, faces more rigid constraints when it comes to choice of texts, curricular expectations. Even methodology can be subject to externally imposed conditions. This project seeks to develop a working model for a "problematized" curricular MOO environment for a highschool English Literature class that recognizes these restraints, and uses the seemingly unlimited freedom of the MOO environment to work within them. The model will also demonstrate the ways in which the linguistic nature of MOOs make them particularly powerful environments for literary classroom activity, and can support a post-structuralist approach to the understanding of texts. Drawing on deconstructive, feminist and constructionist pedagogical theories, this model points to a reasonable method of moving from theory into practice. |
J. Turner, Queensland University of Technology
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