Writing and Technology Composition Theory Journal

I like to challenge assignments. Basically, I like to write whatever I feel called to write. I sometimes picture myself as a rebel student even though I don’t come across as one. I admit I struggle with falling into that formalist, academic setting—it’s comforting. But as a feminist, I also embrace my voice and they way that I feel I need to speak and tell my story. 

So technology, what a broad word. It covers the invention of the wheel, to the printing press, the car, the cellphone, to objects that we launch into space! I can’t imagine my life without technology given that I am a digital native. I have vivid memories of myself in elementary school attending computer class. We were the first ones to ever have to take this class because it was going to be important for our future, at least, that’s what they told us. It was in a small corner in the library. To me, they felt like games. Letters would fall from the top of the screen and we would have to press them fast enough on the keyboard, which was covered. Efficiency was highlighted, going faster and faster. This was the first time I was ever told as a child to go fast like somehow time was slipping away from me and if I didn’t type quick enough I’d miss out or I’d fail--and quite literally you would fail the level and not advance. I just thought that we were playing games, having fun. I didn’t realize that in those moments we were being primed for the rest of our lives. That ideologies were being taught to us and we were creating this culture of instantness, quickness, and future focused. My favorite part of this class was that if you finished early, you could go and look around the library and check out a book and read quietly in the corner. Perhaps that is one of the reasons that I am such a fast typer because I yearned for something else, the slowness, the weight of a book in my hand and the tranquility it provided that I wasn’t in a rush to complete anything. It was just me and my novel.  

I carried this understanding of technology into the household with me. I had several computer games that I would spend hours playing and loving. I had no idea that I was learning this new language as I was sitting there playing my Sleeping Beauty game. But my mom began to notice this division. She wouldn’t let me look up things or go to sites that I knew on the internet because the internet was still largely unknown and scary then. She was trying to pull up a site for me and I looked at her and said: Mom you just type www.pbs.com right up there in that bar” to which my mom was stunned that this was so normalized for me. 

Technology has always played a part in my education, from the very beginning and as I’ve gotten older its presence in my life has only seemed to increase. Yet, now that I am older, I question if that is a good thing or not. When I was younger I thought of technology as more of a toy as something that I could play with and then move on from. In middle and High School we had these large electric boards that you could draw on and that the teachers could project their screens onto, but to us--they were just large screens to draw on. It was super cool, we all fought to orient the board, and we’d line up to draw pictures over the teachers assignment that she’d had projected on the board. It never really enhanced my education, it just made me more familiar with different types of technology. We used a moodle similar to blackboard, but once more as a child, I never saw any value in that. I didn’t understand how to log online to find my homework assignments plus I’d already written them down in my planner which was required for us to do in most classes. It wasn’t until I reached high school that this online learning tool became useful to me and from that moment on, I have stopped writing down my work--there is no point in doing so. I manage my life digitally, so might as well manage my homework digitally as well. Yet it’s still not perfect, I’ve never discovered an app that is a digital planner that syncs up to my existing calendar. They’re all separate—I want one master calendar that tells me birthdays, appointments, and when assignments are due. 

We had computers throughout middle and high school and I became very accustomed to writing my notes on them. We had options, you could type them or you could flip the screen and write with the pen in tablet mode. I found myself switching back and forth between the two because at times when I was just typing I felt restricted. I couldn’t draw a diagram, I couldn’t highlight areas how I wanted, it just didn’t feel all quite right to me. So in high school I did a mix of all three and in college I abandoned taking notes on my computer mainly due to my teacher's request but it was the best thing I’ve ever done. I have sat next to that student that isn’t motivated to work in both High School and college and just explores the internet for the entire class and it is baffling to me that they don’t care that much. I find it so rude. Also you’re going to fail but that is your problem. 

I’ve been primed my whole life to think that technology helps you. That it almost makes you smarter, a better student, but that is far from what I’ve seen and experienced. The students that are attached to technology are unable to pay attention, they are disengaged from the classroom, they look as if they don’t want to be there, and most of the time they aren’t even using the technology for educational purposes! 

This has me baffled when it comes to online classes, especially an OWI. So many people I know flock to them because they think that they will be so easy. I remember the first online class I took I almost failed it. It was a psychology class and it was so hard to understand the set up of the class. I looked around for someone to communicate with but it was just me in my room at my parents house during the summer. Sure, I sent a couple emails but he never understood how truly lost I was. While I was motivated to do the work, it was so easy to complete without putting forth any effort. You could click through assignments and just sorta half ass them and finish them. You could even literally copy the question and look it up online and find the answer. That is the farthest thing from learning. It’s frank cheating but that is what so many students love about it. 

Are we going to allow our higher education programs, really any education programs to turn into that? I’d be terrified to know that my psychologist just made it through and got her degree and cheated her way through several of her classes. I’d feel that way about any professional I interact with yet it is so common to find classes online these days including writing classes! And we as writing teachers, teach so much more than writing. I feel that we teach how to accept people, how to be a better human being, we teach wonder, we teach critical thinking, we teach all of this and so much more and now we are expected to do that through a screen. Are you kidding me. It’s not math where it’s just a bunch of numbers that has a concrete answer. Writing is alive. It breathes, transforms and moves and we are trying to teach it in this static, staccato way. I just don’t see how we can accomplish what we accomplish in the classroom over a screen. 

Once more I have dozens of friends who flock towards online writing classes because they think they will be easy. Unless they have specifically gotten an English professor to which I know their name, these classes are really easy. Most of them are completely asynchronous and as long as they produce some form of writing by the due date they’ll pass. I’ve asked to read a couple of these writings and horrified looks cross their faces because they know that it is not good, strong writing but they don’t seem to care. I try to stress to them how important this is. It’s not just about writing an essay. If you’re going into business you’re going to be writing professionally all the time and first-year and third-year writing is really your only chance to learn that considering you have NO WRITING CLASSES!! Which is frankly, stupid. Why are you throwing such an important skill, that you do actually use down the drain. Yet, I have to say that not all teachers and setups are encouraging. My own third year writing teacher told me that none of us would fail her class and that we’d all get A’s. That was her job to give us all A’s and pass us. I felt all my muscles tense and I thought um no it’s not. Your job is to teach us how to write and to better us as writers. Be helpful, don't be lazy. 

As we move forward in our adult lives, we are supposed to have a voice and an opinion on certain matters, and it scares me that a lot of my peers don’t. I think part of that is their lack of writing in their daily lives. They reduce words down to emojis or shorten whole phrases into three little letters. They haven’t found their voice, yet they are posting it everywhere. It’s quite a paradox. But if it isn’t short and sweet then it’s not worth being looked at, gone are the days of long-winded texts. We don’t read texts anymore because we’re too busy but we can listen to them and discover that wow indeed, this is life changing. I am glad that technology exists, that people are hearing these stories. But it ironic to me that they act as if this is the first time words have ever been around. The first time that they have ever held any power. Poets used to be considered the highest form of intellectuals until we started to value science and math over the humanities. But I want to question why, writing is a technology that we made thousands of years ago. Have we simply lost respect for this great technology that allows us to exist. That allows us to speak. If we dive even deeper most of the technologies that we use are tools that expand our access and ways of writing, expressing, and reading. So why is it that when I say I’m getting my Master’s in English people give me a sour look. 

You don’t have to know how to build a rocketship to wield one of the most powerful and transformative technologies. You can simply open your mouth, or pick up a pen. Language is fluid and ever changing so we are continually adapting to it just like we are continually adapting to a new iPhone. I just wish that there was some way that we could bring all of this together. 

I don’t hate technology and with COVID obviously we’ve had to turn to it. But there are ways of using technology I believe, that doesn’t extinguish the energy that a classroom can create. That intimacy. The electricity that flows around in the air. That human element that we all strive for because if we remove that, what are we really teaching? Grammar? How to put a string of words on a page and have them make some sort of vague sense? Complete this checklist and you can write. This will never help the novice, struggling, or even the strong writer. Writing is done alongside community in betterment for the world and for the individual, that requires real interaction. Which, yes can be mimicked over a screen but after awhile that is no longer enough and we will long for something more.