Overcoming Digital Divides
The central opposition that this class hypertext works through is the relation between individual writers and group collaboration. Since the students in this class have to write their own essays and link these essays up to other student essays, they are motivated to read closely each other’s articles and locate the places where their own work links up to other students’ work. In turn, the production of a visual interface can push students to combine textual and visual modes of literacy, while they learned how to use important computer programs. Furthermore, this employment of functional and creative literacies is combined with a need to perform a social and critical analysis of technology and higher education (Selfe, 1999).
This work helps to mediate between traditional models of academic writing and a more concrete vision of social activism, thereby crossing another important border. These students are writing about particular problems that directly affected them on a daily basis (McComiskey, 2000). As Cynthia Selfe (1999) has argued, an important aspect of teaching students technological literacy is to have them investigate the local conditions shaping the use of new technology (p. 147). She also posits that critical technological literacy involves teaching about computers and writing from a social and cultural perspective, and an essential aspect of this pedagogical process is to have students examine the educational policies and initiatives shaping their own educational environments (pp. 148-149). By having my students construct a web zine on the educational structures at UCLA, I am able to place the use of technology in higher education within a broad framework incorporating social, cultural, institutional aspects of literacy.
Technology, Writing, and Higher Education
Student Writers as Hypertext Users
Changing Conceptions of Academic Writing
Home and School Models of Literacy