Teaching and Learning in Cyberspace: Promises and Perils in a DotCom
World
Keynote
for the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of
English/Language Arts Fall Convention
October
14, 2005
Michael
Day
View full text version
Abstract:
English and Language Arts
teachers
at all levels are feeling pressure from students, parents, and
administrators
to use advanced technologies such as the Internet in their
classes.
Along with exploring some of the major possibilities and benefits of
online
activities in education, this keynote address will end on a cautionary
note by asking educators to consider some of the dangers and drawbacks
of cyberspace before taking students online.
Prologue:
What we’re doing here.
What
ARE we doing here???
Link to
the WCTELA Fall Conference Program
URL for full text verssion of this talk:
http://www.engl.niu.edu/mday/wctela.html
Introduction:
The World Wide Wastebasket
The
Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier by
Howard Rheingold
Promise: Using the web for gathering
information
Electronic books
Peril:
Protecting students from the worst of the web
Peril:
Plagiarism and copyright violations
Digital
Millennium Copyright Act
TEACH
Act
Lawrence Lessig's site
Copyleft
movement advocated by the Free Software Foundation
Promise: A public space for student
work
Promise or Peril:
What is writing, anyway, in the age of the Internet?
Kathleen
Blake Yancey's 2004 CCCC Chair's Address
Peril leads to Promise:
Sorting through the dreck and paying attention to trends
Promise: Making use of the living
database of experts on the Internet
Promise: Publishing for the people!
Peril:
Who cares?
A post by CJ Jeney to the TechRhet
discussion group, October 2002:
The
awful, terrible, mind-sucking truth...
Is
that nobody out there wants to read student web pages. Nobody except
the
author and the teacher. Anyone who goes around surfing [student]
assigned
webs is either an undergrad who has to do it for an assignment, or a
teacher
who is getting paid to do it for one reason or anther (i.e., teaching,
evaluating, giving one of those warm-fuzzy 'awards').
They
can do webs on September 11, or pets, or A Clockwork Orange, or Yoga,
or
Wicca Covens I Have Known, or Marilyn Manson Lyrics Deconstructed --
whatever.
Nobody's reading them, nobody wants to, why should they?
Might
as well take their codex papers and tack them to telephone poles: as
many
people would read those as are reading their webs.
It's
a conceit, a construct, a space and place for writing, and for creating
video/audio "cool stuff" that is only cool for a moment, and then
nobody
cares
Peril:
Spam, scams, hoaxes and phishes!
Promise: New input systems can teach
us new ways to think about writing
Peril: Instant Messenger shortcuts
bleed into academic writing
Promise: Planning for the new Internet
and new Internet devices
Promise: If you
email me, I will email you back!
Created
by Michael Day
October
12, 2005
e-mail
me!
