ERIC ED424585: The Dialogic Classroom: Teachers Integrating Computer Technology, Pedagogy, and Research.

288 Pages·1998·3.1 MB·English

by  ERIC

DOCUMENT RESUME
CS 216 526
ED 424 585
Galin, Jeffrey R., Ed.; Latchaw, Joan, Ed.
AUTHOR
The Dialogic Classroom: Teachers Integrating Computer
TITLE
Technology, Pedagogy, and Research.
National Council of Teachers of English, Urbana, IL.
INSTITUTION
ISBN-0-8141-1145-9
ISBN
PUB DATE
1998-00-00
NOTE
287p.
National Council of Teachers of English, 1111 W. Kenyon
AVAILABLE FROM
Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1096; Tel: [phone] (Toll Free)
(Stock No. 11459-3050: $19.95 members, $26.95 nonmembers).
General (020)
PUB TYPE Collected Works
Books (010)
EDRS PRICE MF01/PC12 Plus Postage.
*Computer Mediated Communication; Computer Networks; Higher
DESCRIPTORS
Education; Hypermedia; Program Descriptions; Secondary
Education; *World Wide Web; *Writing Instruction
*Dialogic Education
IDENTIFIERS
ABSTRACT
The 12 essays collected in this book suggest both practical
and theoretical approaches to teaching through networked technologies. Moving
beyond technology for its own sake, the book articulates a pedagogy which
makes its own productive uses of emergent technologies, both inside and
outside the classroom. The book models for students one possible way for
teaching and learning the unknown: a dialogic strategy for teaching and
learning that can be applied not only to technology-rich problems, but to a
range of social issues. This approach, based on the work ot Mikhail Bakhtin,
understands language itself as a field of creative choices, conflicts, and
struggles. After a foreword by Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe, essays
"Introduction" (Jeffrey R. Galin and Joan Latchaw);
in the book are:
(2)
(1)
"What Is Seen Depends on How Everybody Is Doing Everything: Using Hypertext
nToices That
To Teach Gertrude Stein's 'Tender Buttons'" (Dene Grigar);
(3)
Let Us Hear: The Tale of the Borges Quest" (Jeffrey R. Galin and Joan
"How Much Web Would a Web Course Weave if a Web Course Would
Latchaw);
(4)
"Don't Lower the River,
Weave Webs?" (Bruce Dobler and Harry Bloomberg);
(5)
Raise the Bridge: Preserving Standards by Improving Students' Performances"
"The Seven Cs of Interactive
(Susanmarie Harrington and William Condon);
(6)
"Computer-Mediated
Design" (Joan Huntley and Joan Latchaw);
(7)
Communication: Making Nets Work for Writing Instruction" (Fred Kemp);
(8)
"Writing in the Matrix: Students Tapping the Living Database on the Computer
"Conferencing in the Contact Zone" (Theresa
Network" (Michael Day);
(9)
(10) "Rhetorical Paths and Cyber-Fields:
Henley Doerfler and Robert Davis);
(11) "Four Designs for
ENFI, Hypertext, and Bakhtin" (Trent Batson);
"The Future of
Electronic Writing Projects" (Tharon W. Howard); and (12)
Dialogical Teaching: Overcoming the Challenges" (Dawn Rodrigues). A 76-item
glossary is attached.
(RS)
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Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made
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0.
DIIALOGIIC
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CLASSROOM
Tpacl-ler Intp,grating Com :u.ter, Technolpgy,
a
II
III
U S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
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Once of Educational Research and Improvement
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tc(teA4
his document has been reproduced as
received from the person or orgamzation
originating it
0 Minor changes have been made to improve
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TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
Points of view or opinions stated in this docu-
ment do not necessarily represent official
INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)
OE RI position or policy
1
BEST COPY AVAILABLE
The Dialogic Classroom
3
NCTE Editorial Board: Pat Cordeiro, Bobbi Fisher, Brenda Greene, Richard
Luckert, Bill McBride, Al leen Pace Nilsen, Jerrie Cobb Scott, Karen Smith, Chair,
ex officio, Michael Greer, ex officio
The Dialogic Classroom
Teachers Integrating Computer Technology,
Pedagogy, and Research
Edited by
Jeffrey R. Galin
California State University, San Bernardino
Joan Latchaw
University of Nebraska at Omaha
National Council of Teachers of English
1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, Illinois 61801-1096
r-
J
Manuscript Editor: Bonny Graham
Production Editor: Kurt Austin
Interior Design: Tom Kovacs for TGK Design
Cover Design: Loren Kirkwood
NCTE Stock Number: 11459-3050
©1998 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved. Printed
in the United States of America.
It is the policy of NCTE in its journals and other publications to provide a forum
for the open discussion of ideas concerning the content and the teaching of En-
glish and the language arts. Publicity accorded to any particular point of view
does not imply endorsement by the Executive Committee, the Board of Direc-
tors, or the membership at large, except in announcements of policy, where such
endorsement is clearly specified.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The dialogic classroom: teachers integrating computer technology, pedagogy,
and research/edited by Jeffrey R. Galin and Joan Latchaw.
p.
cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8141-1145-9 (pbk.)
1. English philologyStudy and teaching (Higher)Technological
innovations. 2. English philologyStudy and teaching (Higher)Data
processing. 3. English philologyStudy and teaching (Higher)
Research. 4. Information technology. I. Galin, Jeffrey R., 1961-
.
III. National Council of Teachers of English.
II. Latchaw, Joan, 1944-
.
PE66.D53 1998
428.007dc21
98-41102
CIP
6
Contents
vii
Foreword
Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe
xi
Acknowledgments
I Framing the Dialogue
1. Introduction
3
Jeffrey R. Galin and Joan Latchaw
II Teacher as Programmer: How, Why, So What?
2. What Is Seen Depends on How Everybody Is Doing
Everything: Using Hypertext to Teach Gertrude
27
Stein's Tender Buttons
Dene Grigar
3. Voices That Let Us Hear: The Tale of The Borges
Quest
43
Jeffrey R. Galin and Joan Latchaw
4. How Much Web Would a Web Course Weave if a
67
Web Course Would Weave Webs?
Bruce Dobler and Harry Bloomberg
5. Don't Lower the River, Raise the Bridge: Preserving
Standards by Improving Students' Performances
92
Susanmarie Harrington and William Condon
6. The Seven Cs of Interactive Design
106
Joan Huntley and Joan Latchaw
v
"1
1
Contents
vi
III Writing as a Social Act
7. Computer-Mediated Communication: Making
Nets Work for Writing Instruction
133
Fred Kemp
8. Writing in the Matrix: Students Tapping the Living
Database on the Computer Network
151
Michael Day
9. Conferencing in the Contact Zone
174
Theresa Henley Doerfler and Robert Davis
10. Rhetorical Paths and Cyber-Fields: ENFI, Hypertext,
and Bakhtin
191
Trent Batson
11. Four Designs for Electronic Writing Projects
210
Tharon W. Howard
IV Reflecting Dialogically
12. The Future of Dialogical Teaching: Overcoming the
Challenges
243
Dawn Rodrigues
255
Glossary
263
Index
Editors
271
273
Contributors
Foreword
Gail E. Hawisher
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Cynthia L. Selfe
Michigan Technological University
We consider this book an important contribution to the profession of
English studies because it helps teachers identify strategies for acting
productively in the face of social changes that are so rapid and far-reach-
ing that they threaten to paralyze us with fear and inaction. As the twen-
tieth century draws to a close, we find ourselves very much in need of
such advice. Our own classroomsand those of most of our colleagues
seem to be populated by students who see little connection between
traditional literacy education and the world problems that they currently
facethe continuing destruction of global ecosystems, the epidemic
spread of AIDS and other diseases, terrorism, war, racism, homophobia,
the impotence of political leaders and the irrelevance of political par-
ties.
Faced with these challenges and with others of equal magnitude, many
faculty teaching in English studies programs find themselves scrambling
to rethink and redesign educational efforts within expanded ethical con-
texts that recognize vastly different global perspectives, learning how to
function with an increasing sense of responsibility in new and taxing
economic parameters, and acknowledging and then addressing the need
to learn a range of rapidly changing technologies that allows for an ex-
panded network of communication and intellectual exchange.
But these projects are complicated endeavors. And they do not prom-
ise easy success. Moreover, we often find ourselves, as teachers of En-
glish, ill-prepared to take on many of the tasks involved in these efforts.
Most teachers of English, for example, have come of age in a print gen-
eration, and our thinking has both been shaped and limited by this fact.
Few of us are equipped to function effectively and comfortably in vir-
tual literacy environments. Indeed, like many citizens, English teachers
vii
viii
Foreword
are just beginning to learn what it means to function effectively within a
society that is dependent on computer technology for literacy activities.
We are only beginning to identify, for example, the complexity of the
challenges posed by such a society, including the challenge of adapting
to an increasingly rapid pace of change. Nor do we necessarily have the
lived experiences that allow us to deal productively with this climate of
change.
As a result, we often find ourselves trying to educate students for a
world with which we, ourselves, are unfamiliar and about which we
remain uncertain. In her 1970 book Culture and Commitment, Margaret
Mead describes the unsettling sense of functioning within such a cul-
tural milieu. In this work, she calls cultures of this kind "prefigurative."
The prefigurative learning culture occurs in a society in which change is
so rapid that adults are trying to prepare children for experiences the
adults themselves have never had. The prefigurative cultural style, Mead
argues, prevails in a world in which the "past, the culture that had shaped
[young adults1 understandingtheir thoughts, their feelings, and their
conceptions of the worldwas no sure guide to the present. And the
elders among them, bound to the past, [can] provide no models for the
future" (70).
Mead traces these broad patterns of cultural change particularly in
terms of American culture, all the while setting her analysis within a
global context. She claims that the prefigurative culture characteristic of
the United States in the 1970sand, we maintain, in the '80s and '90s
is symptomatic of a world changing so fast that it exists "without mod-
els and without precedent," a culture in which "neither parents nor teach-
ers, lawyers, doctors, skilled workers, inventors, preachers, or proph-
ets" (xx) can teach children what they need to know about the world.
Mead notes that the immediate and dramatic needs our prefigurative
culture facesfueled by increasing world hunger, the continuing popu-
lation explosion, the rapid explosion of technological knowledge, the
threat of continued war, and global communicationdemand a new
kind of social and educational response that privileges participatory in-
put, ecological sensitivity, an appreciation for cultural diversity, and the
intelligent use of technology, among other themes.
In the prefigurative society, Mead notes, students mustat least to
some extentlearn important lessons from each other, helping each other
find their way through an unfamiliar thicket of issues and situations
about which the elder members of the society are uncertain. As teachers
in such a culture, our education contributions must take a dramatic turn.
Unlike previous generations of teachers, we cannot promise to provide
students with a stable and unchanging body of knowledgeespecially
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