The Digital Performance of Texts

Session Coordinator: Maria D. Lombard
Dept. of English, Purdue University
500 Oval Drive, West Lafayette, IN 47907
mlombard@purdue.edu

Technology as Rhetorical Choice: Identifying, Selecting, and Using Available Means

Few would argue that knowledge of computers and software are not an integral part of our students' education and even necessary for their future advancement. The possibilities for teaching students to integrate technology into their writing and to adapt to new technologies are part of our responsibility as teachers of critical thinking and expression.

As educators, we are also responsible for being critical of the technology we bring into our classrooms. We must be hyper-aware of the message we send and the atmosphere we create as we employ and even emphasize various technologies. Bringing a software, program, or specific technology into the classroom must be a critical and informed choice. When integrating technology we need to ask of ourselves the questions we make our students ask before they write: why am I using this? what are the benefits? what am I giving up by making this choice? what pedagogical value is added by introducing my audience to this technology?

JennieMarie Blankert
Purdue University
blankert@purdue.edu

See Dick and Jane Chat: Multiple Literacies and the Performance of Digital Texts

As technology grows so do our reactions and interactions with the digital text. Some argue that the Internet is a global network that makes communication over great distances possible which leads to feelings of shared humanity and freedom. Others suggest that digital texts actually distance us from one another, leading to a fragmented self-identity and culture. This paper explores how freshmen composition students view their relationship to digital texts, how their ideas of literacy change over the course of a semester and further investigates ways in which those views are gendered. While computer-based classrooms provide unique opportunities for learning and teaching, the use of digital texts also raise interesting questions about how texts perform and how we relate to technology and one another.

Devon Fitzgerald
Illinois State University
dcfitzg@ilstu.edu

Digital Delivery: Creating and Consuming Authentic E-texts

In a culture fed in large part by the Internet, the traditional notion of a text has changed tremendously in terms of access and form. Many of the texts online are authentic e-texts, meaning that they have no print counterpart. For students in a writing classroom who are accustom to consuming these e-texts on a daily basis in terms of websites, email and blogs, creating their own digital compositions raises questions of how form and method of delivery relate to content. This project examines the questions of what kinds of e-texts can be useful for the composition classroom and why they should be used. Further, I will discuss the creation of authentic e-texts as an opportunity for examination of delivery which is often overlooked in composition courses due to the nature of the standard academic essay. By offering teachers and students a useful way to approach the electronic texts, I hope to clarify what digital delivery means in terms of both reading and composing.

Maria D. Lombard
Purdue University
mlombard@purdue.edu