James Patty Cake

Baby James smiles and laughs at Mommy's game. Bethany Snyder

Gender and Espaces

It is not particularly surprising that gender in relation to espaces should be the focus of study in current academic circles. It seems that with the birth of each type of new technology, gender has the potential (arguably never realized) to become transparent. The telephone could be considered a first step. Though it's often easy to tell if a voice belongs to a man or woman, that is not always the case. It would be possible, at least, to impersonate the opposite gender in some cases. That type of impersonation is also available to web users.

There is clearly no "gender-fair haven," at least in my mind. The closest we get to that is in photos that advertise colleges and universities, since the creaters of such photos are excellent at promoting their colleges as equal opportunity spaces, and that includes race as well. While nearly every college brochure features a multi-cultural and multi-gendered group positively interacting, I very rarely witness such interactions at colleges or universities.

The big question, I think, is if any medium can erase part of one's identity. It can certainly alter aspects of it, but total erasure is probably not possible. Communication is communication, and even if we communicate in different forms (email, phone, chat room, etc.) there are still markers that tell others about us. I've noticed that a person will rarly act differently in a dream than in real life (when arguably we could do anything in a dream). One would not, for example, kill someone in a dream if he/she would not do that in real life. I am not speaking in absolutes here, of course. It's as if there is some subconscious mechanism that censors our actions. The same is probably true online as well, at least to some degree.

Bethany

Web Images

There is a danger in the World Wide Web that Blackmon highlights in her article “But I’m Just White.” That is, racial stereotypes are portrayed there, just as they are in texts. If it’s true that young African-American males have primarily a musical presence on that web (and only that), then students are likely to pick up on the underlying assumptions, consciously or not. It’s important, therefore, to mention that the web is NOT immune from gender or racial stereotypes, even though the web was born in an era when we as a society try very hard to be politically correct and representative of all peoples. If students are working with images on the web, such as Blackmon illustrates (97), I feel it would be useful to note the sheer variety out there. If there is an image of a woman baking bread, there is surely one of a woman playing soccer. If there is an image of an African-American listening to rap, surely there is one of him/her in the role of a lawyer. It’s very easy, therefore, to find opposing images. How hard we have to search might be another story. It would be interesting to discover which images are most accessible. I actually tried typing in African-Americans under Google images, and the majority of the pictures were slave or HIV related. There was one positive photo of a family (4 generations of women, I assume). When I typed in women, I got a huge mix of everything. There were two scantily clad women who looked like sex-symbols. There were women in the Middle East completely covered in their clothing, and there was a volleyball and hockey team from the US. There were also two graphs of women in state legislator positions. It’s apparent that women have made more strides than African-Americans when it comes to representation on the web. I could have my students do a similar search and analysis of why the web is set up this way. Who decides? Who is the audience for the web? These are large questions worth exploring.
Bethany

The Future of Visual Rhetoric

I was surprised to hear that "students don't understand visual rhetoric" from some members of the class, since others seemed to reinforce the idea that students are in fact more visually literate than text literate. Because my 111 class has not focused on visual rhetoric, I am not in a position to comment on their understanding. As Hocks points out, most of use are still teaching ourselves about how to best teach visual rhetoric, especially with computers (203). Multimedia design projects are promising ways to incorporate visual rhetoric into the classroom. If, though, copyright laws become more strict and it becomes difficult to access web images, we as intructors might have difficulty accessing certain information for students. It's already difficult to get music (which is understandable so the artist is protected), and an iTunes download seems to be a viable option.
Multi-media oral presentations are also options for instruction, though I am amazed at the lack of audio/visual equipment available at conferences. We can argue that an oral presentation is good preparation for a conference, but if the universities cannot accomadte new and evolving technologies into their conference presentations, there will be a gap between the potential technological quality of a presentation and the usual oral presentation (or worse, the reading of an academic paper).
It will be interesting to watch where technology goes in the future, as related to conference presentations.
Bethany

The death of the book

I'd like to address the idea of the book's obsolescence that is brought up in the Writing Space chapters. The argument that an electronic text cannot be taken to bed is (even if that's a cliche) quite convincing. The tactile, physical entity that comprises a book simply cannot be replicated online. It also seems silly to pay for electronic access to a book, though I'd gladly pay money (when I have some) for a fresh bound book. As the digital age goes on, book stores have become even larger and more elaborate, so perhaps that's a sign that print is not going away. It's not difficult to imagine a device shaped like a book, but with an electronic screen that automatically displays the book of your choice after you pay a small fee to download it, much like iTunes. That could be taken to bed, certainly. With that, though, we lose the ability to own a used book, since we would not accumulate them. Also, it's impractical to expect children's book to be fully electronic in any form, since children like to touch books and turn the pages.

The idea of "unity and homogeneity" (10) that characterizes a book is something I take for granted. We know that digital files can and often do contain a little bit of everything. Few of us have a separate flash drive for each class. When we hold or make a book, however, we expect the content to be uniform. One exception might be a photo album, since putting in random photos doesn't seem like too large of a crime, as long as they are photos. Chronology is a rather dull way to organize, though it can be useful. Who, though, has his or her pictures neatly labled with dates? Can we think of other mediums that use uniformity, much like books?
Bethany

Distance Learning

The role play article mentions a compelling idea in that "Several studies have even proved distance education to be more effective than face-to-face instruction" (98). We might question what effective means, exactly, but I have found that the intensity of the learning is better achieved through online environments. This is perhaps the case because one needs to be present in mind. Being physically present in a classroom does not mean one's mind is engaged, but an online student cannot simply sit there. He or she must type and contribute.
The virtual peer review was a bit more difficult for me to make connections with, since peer review tends to imply working with one's peers in a classroom setting. As Breuch mentions, the virtual environment does filter social cues (43), and sometime having students face-to-face hiders their ability to be critical of one another's writing. My main concern with peer review is the lack of quality that comes from it. Not all, but many students write few comments, and even less that are helpful. I have not tried a virtual peer-review with my students, but it is something I could consider in the future. I like to think the virtual classroom will help students write stronger responses about the writing.
Hewett and Ehmann take a grassroots perspective to online training. Training needs to, they claim, simulate "ss close as possible the actual teaching situations in which they will find themselves after training is complete." Can an online environment be effective for training teachers (who will teach face to face)? These are issues worth exploring further, but the teacher shortage and the increasing number of available online courses might make for a heavier presence of the web in teacher training in the future.

Technology and language

I find that reading a history book on technology has an oxymoronic quality, though human technology has been around since people began manipulating their world, of course. Chapter five's (Hawisher's book) amusing title "1992-1994: Looking Forward is amusing." While 2006 is not that far removed from the early nineties, the technological leaps made since then in computers and writing have been astonishing. We learn that at the end of 1994, consumers could buy a Pentium system for under $2,000, as if that's a deal. Also amusing is the fact that "as the writing of this book, the Alpha 21164 is the fastest general-purpose micro processing chip in existence" (227). The discussion of numerical values in relation to computer speed is something with which I am not too familiar. I recognize if a computer is fast (which is why I cannot visit home that often. My parents dial up rarely works to connect to the web, and I always have online courses or students to communicate with) or if it holds a lot of information, but I need to develop a numeric sense of recognizing what different values mean. I had a 64 (whatever that refers to) computer a few years ago, and for my word processing needs it suited me fine and still does. I've since unhooked it and found that the death of floppy drives made it difficult for me to save my work using multiple machines. My dot matrix printer still looms largely in the corner, collecting dust. Now, with my video work, I do appreciate bigger and faster computers.
I also find it worthy to note that the internet was thought of in terms of metaphors (229). With something so new, it would have been nearly impossible to describe it in terms of itself. Now, I find that we use metaphors FROM the internet, since the general public (on college campuses at least) knows enough about internet to talk intelligently about its applications and uses. Goggle has become a verb. Blog has as well. Technology, then, changes our language. The relationship(s) between technology and language would be a topic worthy of further exploration.
Bethany