In Black and Write

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

William Butler Yeats

A Potential Conversation Between Selfe and Shepherd

Setting: Shepherd’s office

Ryan Shepherd invited his colleague Cynthia Selfe to his office for a friendly discussion on utilizing technology resources in classroom settings. Selfe arrives, and sits down on the leather couch in Shepherd’s office; he hands her a cup of coffee and pours himself one.

Shepherd: How have you been, Cynthia?

Selfe: Great. I really enjoyed your article on ScienceDirect a few years back. Your findings were congruent with what I was trying to get across to our colleagues in 1999. Have you received any responses from other teachers about your research?

Shepherd: Some, I feel our fellow composition instructors are still apprehensive about allowing, and encouraging, social networking site usage in their classrooms. 

Selfe: Yes, I met a lot of resistance after writing my article as well. I think the internet, and especially sites like Facebook, have been considered a “time-waster” in the academic and professional world for so long, that it is hard for instructors to see the potential benefits.

Shepherd: Exactly my thoughts. Even the students themselves seem to agree to this preconceived idea that Facebook is so informal that it is not composition. 

Selfe: You are right, but your own research turned up the reality that that is just not the case. I feel students consider aspects of the rhetorical situation more in their social network usage than they do in class. 

Shepherd: I agree, they consider their audience more when posting or commenting than they do when drafting a paper. 

Selfe: Yes, and they may not formally write first and second drafts, but they consider what they want to say, type it, read it, change it, and then post it. And there is an editing feature that allows user revision after posting. I think their awareness of the audience is the cause for engaging in drafting practices.

Shepherd: Hmm. Interesting point, they want to depict themselves in a certain way, so they engage in the writing process to accurately portray what they want to say or be seen as. How could that translate to classroom activity? 

Selfe: Well, perhaps in class we could have students pull up their own profile pictures, and defend why they chose that one over another.

Shepherd: What an idea! That would make them discuss who they consider their audience to be and begin allowing them to look into why they felt that was the best choice. Then we could further the exercise by moving on to analyzing a status update, with no images, just text.

Selfe: Yes, and they could do the same thing. Answer the following questions:

• Who were you hoping would see this specific post?
• What happened previously to make you want/need to post this status?
• Were you trying to express an emotion? A situation or event? Were you trying to get advice on a dilemma you were having?
• What kind of responses did you get? Were they what you expected/wanted? Why or why not?

Shepherd: I think this would be a great interactive activity for an 1101 composition class. It would engage students in conversation, while they used a platform they are familiar with. I think it’s important to allow the students to use their own posts initially. So that they can form that personal connection to what they do online and what they do in class. 

Selfe: Yes, perhaps after a few activities analyzing their own posts, images, and other Facebook activity, we could present outsiders’ posts. 

Shepherd: And have student’s answer the same questions to sort of guess at the person’s rhetorical situation when they posted.

Selfe: I think we have the beginnings of a lesson plan here.

Shepherd: I think you are right, should we try it out in our entry-level Comp classes this coming semester? 

Selfe: Absolutely! We can compare how it goes in each of our classes to get more diverse results.

Shepherd: I think this could really help our students. I think they have such a rigid definition of composition that they cannot see the possible applications to their own lives. And after all, it is our responsibility as educators, and writers, to show students how the things they learn in school can be applied and used in their future careers and in their personal life.

Selfe: Then perhaps our fellow composition specialists would follow our advise, and begin utilizing more technology during instruction.