Rhetoric and Technology – ENC 6421

People have mixed feelings when it comes to technology in the classroom.  I personally feel that wireless technologies can bring both positive and negative results; so I’m no better than the people who can’t make up their minds.  Wireless technology will definitely impact writing pedagogy.  It will impact it both negatively and positively.  To start with the negative, wireless technologies are evolving English to a basic form of simple numbers and letters.  SMS is to be blamed for this.  Text messaging is the most popular form of communication with cell phones with 73% of people “[using] text messaging to communicate with friends” (Castells, 176).  This may not sound bad but text messaging has a “limit of 160 characters per message… [which causes] young users… to summarize their messages” (Castells, 179).  People summarize by leaving out vowels, using numbers instead of words, and symbols.  Even though some people would see this as an evolution of the English language, this is downgrading the quality of writing.  Teachers whom have limited knowledge of messaging or are use to seeing correct usage of the English language, will be impacted by the kids who see SMS as correct English.  The “messaging language [has already seeped] into formal writing tasks, especially in school” (Castells, 181).  The kids see this as a valid written language and will try to use it in the classroom, making it difficult for both the teachers and the children.  However, there is a positive note for wireless technology in writing pedagogy.  Like the example in the Rheingold piece, wireless technologies can bring many together to reach a goal.  ”More than 1 million Manila residents, mobilized and coordinated by waves of text messages, assembled” to overthrow their government (Rheingold, 157).  Now if this kind of coordination could be used within the writing pedagogy, the results could be amazing.  Wireless technologies could allow student to work in a classroom, exchange papers wirelessly with another student in a different state, and have the results back within minutes.  A student could get opinions from not only another student, but one that might have been taught differently.  A teacher might be able to communicate to the other professor through this wireless technology and learn some tricks the other professor uses.  Though this would be a great expense for the school, wireless technology could open the door to many possibilities for how to teach students and how to run a class.  One day a teacher could decide to have the class from home if they couldn’t make it to campus without having to cancel the class and fall behind.  A teacher could also answer grammar questions through using examples obtained through the wireless technology.  Wireless technology brings both the good and the bad which each has an impact on writing pedagogy.  It would be up to the institutions to determine which outweighs the other.