It's finally come to pass. Without much ado or fanfare, I should announce the publication of the article "Five Ways of Looking at the Computer-Supported Classroom (With Apologies to Wallace Stevens)", co-authored with my friend and colleague J Chambley. Originally written in 2001, the article has eventually made its way onto the digitally backlit pages of ACE Online: A Peer-Reviewed Journal of the Assembly on Computers in English, the inaugural issue of a journal that originally existed in printed form (thus explaining the delay).
Although some of the article's contents are a bit dated, I think the basic premise of the piece still holds up. In a nutshell, our article answers a call from ACE's print journal that questioned the continued relevance of studying computers in English studies. It's a "big picture" argument that looks at how the field continues to change based on developments in the ever-shifting world of digital technology. Here's an excerpt from the article, addressing the issue that most of our students are already so familiar with computers that specialized computer instruction in an English Studies curriculum is unnecessary:
But that's far from a good reason to suggest, as ACE's recent call-for-manuscripts did, that computers have "become so integrated into our teaching that special attention to their pedagogical uses is redundant." The assumptions behind a question such as this (which, we concede, reads as intentionally polemical) are fraught with dangerous undertones. In fact, it’s precisely because of this ubiquity that more critical attention should be given to how digital technologies inform and are informed by our pedagogies. For one, a question like this implies a static view of computer-enhanced instruction, giving us the false impression that we've somehow "gotten there" and that the question of access has been virtually settled, at least in this milieu. But as anyone who studies the developments in digital technologies well knows, the accessibility battle happens on an ever-receding horizon line. Technology changes and changes quickly, and already educators are wrestling with the questions of how to integrate increasingly smaller and more powerful PDAs, the once again popular instant messaging applications, and graphic-centered chat rooms such as The Palace into their curricula. In short, to conceive of this integration as an attainable state rather than an ongoing process misses the point; these technologies are still—and will still be—taking shape, and therefore the paradigms governing how we interact with these technologies, how we communicate on and through them, are always in flux.
1. The Incredibles? Incredibly awesome.
2. And WTF, ODB? Dirt McGirt, we hardly knew ye...
I don't think any of the pundits have offered this particular theory as to why the election swung in the favor of Bush (and in some states, quite to the surprise of most). Many years ago, someone working for the Nixon campaign was fiddling around with this ornate, black and gold puzzle box. Upon solving the puzzle, a gateway to the dimension of hell opened up, and through that gateway stepped a ghastly creature, a cenobyte. That foul, fetid, sluglike, unholy creature's name? Karl Rove.
Proof? I give you Exhibit A:
