Page 170 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

HOT AND COOL TECHNOLOGIES 137

students as they worked in various electronic genres, and the contri-
butions students made to the direction of the class, I came to know
each of these students and their work very well. I understood where
an individual student's electronic writing excelled and where it was
in need of improvement. The archives that emerged for deep assess-
ment allowed me to pore over earlier files and watch student growth
occur in stages during the semester.
Grading became clearer for students too, because my comments
were always couched in the context of what led to the final submis-
sion and reflected both my attitudes and responses to their work as
well as the student's own attitudes and responses. Even though the
semester created artificial end points where grades must be given,
the students realized that networked writing truly is a work in prog-
ress. As I wrote this chapter, nearly 3 years after I first began teach-
ing in Room 25, I received two e-mails, one from Doretta and one
from Kamau, telling me they are still working on the web sites cre-
ated for one of my classes. Both said they were tweaking and refin-
ing different parts of their sites. Then they warned me that they
would be looking for me on campus soon to get feedback on their im-
proved sites. Other students too have contacted me over the last few
years, telling me that they are now creating web sites for employers
or on a freelance basis. In their postings, these students always begin
with something like, "I'll bet you never figured I'd keep doing web
pages after your class, but guess what" (Wendy, personal
correspondence, October 2001).
Needless to say, the e-mails I receive from former students as-
tound me. I do not remember the last time students writing in a
papertext format sent me a message a few years later telling me they
are revising their work and asking me for a critique. This experience
has made me think that convergence may indeed provide a real re-
naissance for writing instruction in the years ahead.
What I relearned about hot and cool technologies by teaching in
Room 25 is that instructors can use these technologies to create in-
clusive activities that bring together students and instructors under
a common purpose: to discover how writing can be a communica-
tive act. The coolness of computer technology mediates the direct
heat of evaluation, as both students and professors are pressed con-
tinually to communicate with each other in electronic environ-
ments. Reducing assessment's heat allowed me to refocus on what
makes student evaluation successful for the teacher and the stu-