My Students

My Students:
I do know that there’s one thing I can count on in a given semester as a teacher: my students often have more (and more advanced) technological literacies than I.

Working at Michigan State University I teach students from all over the world. So yes, pinpointing who they are is certainly difficult. One cultural phenomenon that is fairly commonplace is the use of the internet for knowledge production. Anybody who visits YouTube can be instructed on how to do myriad things in a matter of minutes. With an increase of knowledge availability comes a strain on knowledge application. Today it’s getting increasingly easier for students to acquire a little knowledge about many things; it’s far more difficult to acquire a lot of knowledge about a few things using the internet. The implications for college writing here are potentially large depending on how a teacher negotiates  a student’s technological utilization.

Another category of technology use among my students is entertainment. I am not a video-game player, nor do I have a smart phone. Cell phones are one of the few incredibly visible student technologies in the classroom. With the amount of writing many of them do on their phones alone, it is not difficult to make various technologies relevant to classroom activity. As I mentioned in my technology statement, the process of learning one skill or art can be translated into other skills and arts. Sometimes students just need to be asked the right question about how their knowledge of one skill can be made to apply to another.

Video games then (even though I’m not a player) are often one of my favorite subjects to ask students about. It is usually possible to extrapolate the writing mechanic equivalencies after hearing a game described. Mortal Kombat is my favorite example, particularly with my interest in martial arts. When I ask students who play the game about the opponent in the final fight, they describe the artist who has mastered and can apply the styles of all the combatants, and not to mention in the right context.

I do my best to adapt to the learning needs of a teaching situation. This means that my technological choices are highly rhetorical. If there’s a skill I want students to learn, I will do my best to select the most appropriate medium/format the lesson. If I can show students advanced arrangement with sticky notes, I will do so if that is the most effective and efficient way. If there is a rhetorical affordance of choosing another technological medium, I will certainly cater to my audience (commercials, movies, songs, etc.).

I suppose that makes me a technological opportunist, not necessarily enthusiast.