Page 189 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

156 CHAPTER 7

logical convergence looks more like bureaucratic boondoggle
rather than educational initiatives at some institutions.
Still, there is much teaching faculty can do in their classrooms and
in their writing programs to harness the power of technological con-
vergence in ways that benefit student learning. Here is where hope
enters into the discussion. Despite these external pressures, opti-
mism exists for teachers to discover what they and their programs
value about technological convergence in the writing classroom. The
discussions these values can foster are the foci of this chapter. As
with other campus or programmatic issues, our ability and willing-
ness to construct dialogue and to articulate the importance of spe-
cific shared values related to convergence become central.
For hope to take hold, teachers must first realize that this is a criti-
cal time for the nexus of hot and cool technologies in writing peda-
gogy, because the terrain of ideas, information, skills, and strategies
needed to be literate in society changes more quickly today than in
previous eras. It is time for those of us involved in the teaching of
writing, from K-12 teachers to college instructors to school and pro-
gram administrators, to engage in redefining literacy practices that
effectively synthesize these technologies in the writing classroom.
The good news is that combining these technologies can take many
forms in a writing program. This suggests that there are infinite
ways to construct an assessment program that accounts for e-texts,
as chapter 4 in this book outlines. What is of significant concern is
for writing instructors to take notice of the need to incorporate these
converging technologies. If we forget to pay attention, others can
and will impose certain technologies on our teaching. These exter-
nally imposed technologies may not be appropriate for the types of
writing curricula we imagine for our students. This is not fear
speaking, but reality. Unwanted programmatic changes occur when
faculty cannot or do not speak.
A few years ago in the Atlantic Monthly, Lester C. Thurow opined
that "capitalism is a process of creative destruction. The new de-
stroys the old .... The old patterns of powerful vested interests must
be broken if the new is to exist, but those vested interests fight back.
They are not willing to fade quietly into the pages of history" (1999,
p. 62). Although Thurow was discussing the laws of radical suppres-
sion in capitalism, he might as well have been talking about Compo-
sition in the age of convergence between computer and assessment
technologies. Both computers and assessment are by-products of