Page 93 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of New Media On

62 CHAPTER 2

teacher, one's peers, and the external audience, authentic revision
occurs and students begin to understand what it means to be a
writer who has real ownership of the words she writes. Authentic
assessment occurs without the instructor having sole power over
the student.
Is it possible or even desirable for instructors to create a community
of writers with their students when assessment is involved? In an era of
technological convergence, it may be the only way to keep a human
presence connected to either computer use or assessment procedures.
Although a computer-based classroom does not in itself ensure a
constructivist classroom, it does enable one happening. Likewise, forms
of writing assessment such as the e-portfolio or external review of stu-
dent webbed writing do not guarantee constructivist assessment; they
do encourage the possibility of it occurring. In the constructivist voice
of either computer-assisted instruction or writing assessment, the hu-
man presence is retained to give polish and refinement to the messages
and texts that writers develop across time and space. Together in con-
vergence, the two strands of technology blend with constructivist
thinking and can lead to the following six points so critical for students'
progress in writing:

• Students will come to know the uses and limitations of com-
puter technology, texts produced through the use of computer
technology, and the range of discursive strategies needed to
communicate with others.
• Students will come to know both a depth and a breadth of
knowledge that arise from researching a topic and writing
about it through hyperlinking. The depth emerges from the
process of inquiry; the breadth arises from the surface presence
of links to multiple URL sites.
• Students will come to know the criteria others use to judge the
quality of an electronic text, how an electronic text should be
judged within various contexts, and how to secure evidence to
measure a text's value according to different audiences' con-
texts and criteria.
• Students will come to know how to create an effective elec-
tronic text and how to write to accommodate a global or a local
audience.
• Students will come to know how to select information appro-
priate for their electronic texts that will be useful for a particu-
lar situation but could be understood by a wide audience.