Part 1: FOCUS ON PEDAGOGY
The essays of the first section, called "Focus on Pedagogy," all reflect the declared goals of the introduction. They conceptualize CMC as targeted toward very specific teaching goals related to cultural studies, classroom management, student online discussion, play, and obscenity in the computer classroom. Each writer carefully lays theoretical groundwork and many offer teaching stories and assignments.
Barbara Stedman's cautionary "Hooked on 'Tronics, or Creating a Happy Union of Computers and Pedagogies," concretizes the message of the introduction by discussing how problems arise when the technology overshadows the purpose of helping students become better writers. She warns,"computer-based activity need[s] to have a direct correlation to the learning." Advising teachers to find points "where pedagogy and technology genuinely meet," Stedman illustrates specific teaching goals and tasks that facilitate this union (24, 28).
In "Cultural Studies in/and the Networked Writing Classroom," Beth E. Kolko links cultural studies theory of the fragmented subject with the function of computer pedagogy. In her classes, students are urged to reexamine their roles as learners and cultural participants with fluid identities in CMC (41). Kolko postualtes that computer pedagogy is based on the social constructionist composition perspective, and, like cultural-studies, is characterized by the "breakdown of public-private boundaries" that "create[s] a public forum within classroom space" (34).
William Condon's insightful "Virtual Space, Real Participation: Dimensions and Dynamics of a Virtual Classroom," evaluates the dynamics of classes that meet wholly online. Theorizing the existence of the virtual classroom, Condon makes the important observation that these classrooms' "very presence resides in the writing students and teachers do there….if there is no writing, there is no classroom"(49, 50). Class participants only have "existence" as their writing.
Whereas Condon concludes that "students engage in higher order thinking as they create new knowledge" through writing, Gail Matthews-DeNatale asserts that "play" is crucial in technology education in "Teach Us How to Play: The Role of Play in Technology Education." The essay explores "the interrelation between play, learning, communication and technology"( 64). In keeping with the other essays in this volume, Matthews-DeNatale describes the pedagogical applications of her theory of "play" in writing.
Sharon Cogdill tackles the pedagogical challenges emerging from student anger and pranks in "Indiscipline: Obscenity and Vandalism in Cyberclassrooms." Drawing on Foucault to define "obscenity" and "indiscipline," Cogdill establishes a theoretical framework through which practical policies can be imagined. She asserts, "teachers [need] to respond to obscenity," while warning administrators not to mistake the instrument (computers) for the agent (81, 87). In practical pedagogical terms, she suggests that, instead of punishment, teachers make instances of obscenity in CMC "teachable moments," respecting student autonomy and responsibility for their discourse (103). She also advocates that students be enlisted in a collaborative project of writing a policy against obscenity--on "netizenship" (92).
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