Page 88 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of New Media On

TRANSFORMING TEXTS 57

1. Students complete a series of short, teacher-directed assign-
ments to acquire the basic techniques and skills needed to do a
larger project in a particular medium.
2. Students develop a base repertoire of networked writing strate-
gies from which to develop longer, more complex collaborative
or individual projects.
3. Students design and create an end-of-term project of their own
choosing that incorporates two or three of the electronic forms
discussed (i.e., a web page linking viewers to an original listserv
and blog or a hypertext chapbook of poetry and a companion
web site). This may or may not be a webfolio of work.

Fourth, students develop the rhetorical and technological tech-
niques and skills necessary to write and communicate in a net-
worked environment. The following individual criteria are used to
measure this goal:

1. Students know and use the terms of technological production and
can discuss the rhetorical effects these terms elicit in an audience.
2. Students cast a critical eye at the electronic and paper texts
they consume and question both media's effects on the viewer
or reader.
3. Students judge a web site, a discussion list, a hypertext compo-
sition, a MOO, or a weblog by studying its effects on the in-
tended viewer, what issues the e-text raises for the writer and
the audience, and the potential power the e-text has for enact-
ing change or action in the audience.

Some may ask where the emphasis is on grammar, mechanics,
and structure, the trinity found in most assessment rubrics. Let me
suggest here that technological convergence challenges older, more
prescriptive notions of what entails "good writing," "good gram-
mar," "proper mechanics," and "fine structure" in communicating
with others. This is a point many instructors discover when they
read postings on Usenet, chat, or discussion lists. People tend to un-
derstand the faux pas of typing too fast, relying on acronyms, or us-
ing the inventive syntax that sometimes occurs when writers are
trying to capture content. We accept these "errors" when corre-
sponding with peers but not with students. Far too often the hall-
marks of good writing regarding computers and writing focus on