Poet Ponders the Digital

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley January 7, 2013 Deadline February 2013 Issue Accommodating Difference with Good Design Websites and software should be accessible to as many people as possible, including individuals with physical and neurological differences. Developers sometimes forget the various challenges people experience when visiting websites or using software. Failing to test interfaces for accessibility leaves barriers in place that exclude readers and users, the last thing any good organization or company wants to do. In the physical world, we notice the obstacles others encounter. Most of us try to help when we notice steep steps, heavy doors, high shelves or small print frustrating another person. Whether out of empathy, compassion or a sense of obligation, we don’t need laws to tell us that helping other people is the right thing to do. Of course, there are laws such as the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), amended in 2008, and the Individuals with ...

When I have attended meetings or conferences and the topic was online courses, a great deal of attention is paid to the "target audience" for online education. The assumption is that online courses are ideal for certain groups: Workers seeking to complete a degree. Rural residents unable to relocate or travel to a campus. Disabled students requiring accommodations. Non-traditional students (meaning everything from older to unusually young). These might be ideal "targets" if a university operates as nothing but a business, but even private institutions have a responsibility to deliver the best, most meaningful educational experience to all qualified students. I would argue the pressure on for-profit institutions is actually greater because there is a skepticism in academia towards the profit motive. And what we ignore when we think of "target audiences" is that the descriptions do not reflect the personalities of the students. Online courses, from hybrids t...

http://chronicle.com/article/Blind-Students-Demand-Access/125695 I have argued that online courses are not equivalent to traditional spaces and often are more of a barrier than an accommodation for students with special needs. I remain skeptical that online spaces can be made flexible enough to accommodate all students. Nor, honestly, do I believe it is right of universities to suggest to many disabled students that online courses are somehow better for them. In the case of blind students, clearly the online spaces aren't working as planned. For students with limited mobility, maybe online is a good alternative, but I found them less engaging and harder to comprehend. Right now, we don't consider the pedagogical implications carefully enough, but I also understand the rush to online spaces is an economic necessity for some institutions. Since I have difficulty with mobility as well as some cognitive differences, my views of online education are biased. I like the conven...

Yesterday, I defended my doctoral dissertation and paid the last $120 in fees to the University of Minnesota. For the cost of tuition, they really should include the dissertation filing, even though the money is technically paid to a private publisher. Here is a portion of the "ETD" report you receive after submitting the final project: Print Date : 05-12-2010 _____________________________________________________ Campus : University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Program : Graduate School Plan : Rhetoric/Sci/Tech Comm Ph D Major Degree Sought : Doctor of Philosophy Plan : Supporting Program Minor Dissertation: Online Pedagogy: Designing Writing Courses for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders Dissertation / Final Research Categories ______________________________________________________ 736 : Speech & Rhetorical Studies 810 : Educational/Instructional Media Design 835 : Special Education 864 : English Education It is comple...

While working on the research for my dissertation, I have read page after page on writing pedagogy asserting that the goal of a university writing course should be to teach students that knowledge is socially constructed and that "truth" is relative to culture and community. The problem with this assertion is that students with autism and similar conditions (my scrambled brain, apparently), are not relativists. Various researchers (Wellcome 2008, Frith 2001) have found that individuals with these conditions are more logical, unaffected by emotional inputs or rhetorical framing. I've found quite a bit of research on this aspect of brain trauma and autism and am including these findings in my dissertation. If a group of people are "wired" to think there is a "truth" -- that knowledge is not created but discovered and then applied creatively -- who are educational theorists to consider such people "immature" or "simple-minded" in s...

I attended Computers and Writing 2009, earlier this month and returned with mixed emotions. First, the negatives -- so I can end on the positives of the actual presentations and keynotes. As you can guess, the job market for writing teachers at all levels is weak. The reality is that a handful of instructors are losing their jobs; new jobs are definitely not on the horizon. Community colleges, four-year colleges, and full universities are all suffering from a lack of funds. Writing seems to be an easy target for cuts. In some cases, courses will migrate to online settings and in other instances graduate students will assume more teaching responsibilities. Technology, especially online courses and hybrids, are letting universities outsource general education. This is definitely a rough trend to confront. While it is good for the online companies, which offer packaged online courses overseen by part-time, freelancing instructors with graduate degrees, the end result is ...

I have been on the Internet since the 1980s. I have located messages I posted in college via the USENET, now more than 25 years after I composed them. The various incarnations of my Web sites have also survived in various forms, for reasons I cannot explain. From my main site, though, I have removed things over the years and hope they are generally "gone" from the massive electronic memory that is the Web. I eschewed blogs for many years. I posted only a few badly written essays and ramblings on my Web site. My poetry was online, but I removed the works after someone told me there were things no one needed to read. I removed a few short stories, as well, realizing that I couldn't recall what was fictional and what was close to the realities of people I once knew. When you write a lot, thousands of words some days and literally tens of thousands some weeks, you end up capturing bits of the people around you. But what if they don't want to be exposed, ...

When I consider what I hope to teach and research, I begin with the question how online collaborative tools shape the composition process. How does technology restrict or expand the choices available? Is composing enhanced or degraded for those with special needs or language limitations? Because I am a creative writer, I view "team" compositions of interactive fiction with the same curiosity I have for non-fiction projects. Composition, in my mind, includes a mix of what we often label as creative and academic genres. What matters to me is the writing process, regardless of how we might categorize the product at a specific moment. "Composition and rhetoric" are often perceived as limited to the study of academic genres. I cannot foresee myself being limited to genres I want to challenge and reshape. The "rhetoric of fiction" and "rhetoric of theatre/film" are topics I would hope to teach in the future, from a technological and co...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley April 2008 Issue March 7, 2008 Computers, Disabilities… and Miracles “Doctors Amazed by Autistic Girl’s Computer Use.” ABC News featured the story of Carly, a 13-year-old girl with autism during a February newscast, with additional information appearing on the network’s Web site. Not long after Carly’s story aired, another network featured a16-year-old boy with spina bifida using a special pad to control a computer. Both young people were miraculously performing well academically thanks to technology. A series of stories soon circulated on the Internet, most featuring disabled individuals using computers with “adaptive technologies” to communicate. From autistic children to adult stroke victims, miracles were being proclaimed. Because these stories generally appear in clusters, I knew it wouldn’t be long before a parent asked me the tough question: “Should I get my child a computer with some of that special equipment?” This is a very difficul...

I am a skeptic when it comes to technology in the classroom. From accounts like those found in The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology , by Todd Oppenheimer, to the works of Larry Cuban, one finds a series of issues with technology that keep repeating every generation — as if technology and the excitement that always follows it will translate into better-educated students. Oppenheimer is an award-winning San Francisco journalist who toured the country to study how computers were used in the classroom. He began as an optimistic believer in technology and ended the work on a skeptical note, almost a "back-to-basics" philosophy based on everything from the price of technology to the lack of technical support and training teachers generally receive. Gene I Maeroff's work, A Classroom of One: How Online Learning Is Changing Our Schools and Colleges , is authored by one of the leading experts on education. Maeroff has written 11 books in 3...