Thoughts on Week 1 Readings…
I found Stroupe’s article to be extremely interesting. The question that kept bothering me Is whether or not the entire field of English is eventually going to change from print to digital. I guess I have never really imagined an English classroom (or a world for that matter) without the blank and white printed pages that accompany every single college class that I have taken. Although it would sometimes be nice to access something online for free (it would save that 3 hour wait time in the bookstore), I can only imagine the nervous breakdowns that would plague my life if the internet was down or the sites I needed were not compatible with safari. I think the written/web published debate is captured best on page 19 when Stroupe discusses the the fact that the web allows “everyone to publish” and that it is less like public speaking than traditional writing. It seems more impersonal to publish a website than to write a novel. There is just a different feeling associated with the author of a novel and the author of a web page, at least for me. I imagine print authors to have labored over their creation, completing countless revisions and taking years and years to complete their work. I imagine web authors (like myself with this blog) to be less concerned about constant revision and more concerned with getting the information out there to be digested.
Virtual Reality- now that’s an interesting concept. I once saw a documentary on the internet about people who really were living inside of the video games that they played. Not being the computer game type (although I enjoy Nintendo and Xbox occasionally) I was in shock to see people who were so into some of these role playing games that they continued to act like the characters even in everyday life. Interestingly enough, it would be a disservice not to teach our students about technology and how to properly use it. In the same ways that I teach my students to avoid sites such as wikipedia for research, teachers are responsible for at least preparing their students with both the print and technology in their given field.
