Baron, Chapters 4-6

Blog posting due February 24, 2014:

Summary

            In Ch. 4, “National Handwriting Day,” Baron discusses the holiday, which symbolizes the larger phenomenon of romanticizing handwriting versus type for its ability to reflect individual personality.  However, Baron then debunks this idea by describing the mechanical, rote manner in which handwriting was taught to be as uniform as possible.  He then discusses how typewriting made writing uniform and now we are returning to handwriting in a different way as computers adopt fonts that look increasingly similar to handwriting.  Ch. 5 begins with a discussion of one of the earliest writing technologies, writing on clay.  Baron discusses a project in which students write on clay only to discover that it limits the amount of writing they can do and the corrections they can make.  Baron then makes the point that typewriters and computers did not allow for easy correction when they first began.  Ch. 6 discusses the advent of the personal computer and makes the point that computers first began to replace the calculator, not the typewriter.  Computers have been a technology since the 1940s, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that word processing programs were introduced.  Baron ends this chapter suggesting that the computer eventually overtook the typewriter due to its affordance of allowing writers to easily revise.

Critique

            “The teaching of writing, or composition, was also rote: students copied model essays as well as model invoices so that they would internalize the structures used by successful clerks and authors” (Baron, 2009, p. 56).  The dichotomy of handwriting as personal and technology as mechanical was interesting to me in Chapter 4.  This quotation from Chapter 4 demonstrates the educators labored to make writing mechanical and that, even though handwriting is perceived as personal, Baron demonstrates that its goal was to be uniform.  Today, I believe, that rather than making writing mechanical, technology has the potential to make writing creative and personal.  For example through blogging or personal websites, students can write traditional genres, yet publish the to a personalized audience and combine text with images and audio to make writing more of a creative, multimodal design process.

Connection

            In Chapter 6, Baron discusses how technology today has affected the way we write, transitioning what was once very personal into a public act.  In education, research has shown that this public nature of digital writing is often engaging for students.  Because of the authenticity of having a real audience other than their teacher in online environments, students are often more engaged in digital than traditional writing.  However, I wonder if anything is lost due to the publicity of this audience.  Does writing lose any of its positive qualities, such as honesty or reflection, when it is published for more public than private audiences?

Blog Post Due 2/10

Baron, Chapters 1-3

Summary

            Baron discusses the history of writing and how it fits in with technology in Ch. 1.  Going back to our reading of Phaedrus, Baron reminds us that writing itself is a technology, and one that has not always been welcomed.  He reminds us that writing was once feared for its effects upon memory.  In the second chapter, “TecknoFear,” Baron discusses how new technologies have always been associated with an element of fear.  For example, he discusses the case of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, and his dislike of technology and relates this case of a luddite to those that claim Thoreau was a luddite as well, abandoning technology for Walden Pond.  However, Baron points out that Kaczynski was incorrect in citing Thoreau in his cause because althought Thoreau did often escape to Walden Pond, he was also in the pencil industry, a technology that is more complicated than we perceive it today because, just as the case with writing, we often take these technologies for granted as we have become so accustomed to and reliant upon them.

Critique

            I liked Baron’s writing style as he is somewhat easier read than our previous chapters, but is still well researched and academic.  I especially like his discussion of technology through the perspective of what he presents as almost case studies.  For instance, for his discussion of technofear, he uses Kaczynski as his case study, and for his discussion of technologies we take for granted, he uses Thoreau, both people that I have not thought of in light of the discussion of writing as a technology.

Connection

            Baron made a few connections in his discussion of society’s seemingly innate fear of technology, at least by some, and education: “Even the deceptively untechnological pencil became a victim of the wrath of educators who feared the impact of new technologies.  For much of their history, American schools allowed no crossing out” (Baron, 2009, p. 44).  He mentions other examples of education resisting technology as well. For instance, he discusses teachers who went back and forth about whether or not to hide or introduce the spell check function of word processing.  In addition, he also discusses teachers’ fear that calculators would decrease students’ ability to think mathematically.  I wonder why education has historically been slow to adapt technology and how this has effected education.  In my research on technology and literacy there is much discussion over the inability to use technology because of access to technology, a lack of hardware, software, or inefficient internet connections.  However, this chapter made me wonder if we are not also trying to overcome a luddite ethos in education.  If this is the case, how might education be changed if the system of education saw technology as a priority?