The Internet is for Porn

Driving here today a song from Avenue Q, a musical and Tony winner, came on. It's called the "Internet is for Porn" and hearing it took me right back to the last summer I spent teaching at Tech.

I call myself a technology studies/computers and writing/whatever scholar, but in reality, every time I hearing somebody pontificating about how great the internet could make classrooms I hear this song in my head. I can't help it. An adult teacher approaching the internet for the first time is going to do so differently than a student. Students who have "grown up" with internet access see the internet as a place for fun--chatting, watching videos, downloading music, and yes, porn--not as a place for higher learning. And so the computers and writing teacher's first job should be to recognize that theory is just that--theory--and that the reality is murkier and has pert nipples.

It's hard for that sort of opinion to come across right in class--I think--because I basically support using various forms of technology to get students engaged and interested. Students that see computers and the internet as fun are probably going to enjoy a class more that employs them WELL more than one that doesn't use them at all--or at least, that's the idea. What does using them well mean though?

Well, I can't really answer that question--but neither can anybody else. It's a little like trying to define what good writing is, you have an idea of what it feels like (or makes you feel like) but describing it in succinct terms is harder. So, the following list isn't realy conclusive or new or anything, but it is a list of concrete things I can hold onto and describe instead of vague feelings.

So, using technology well means:

1. Using technology you KNOW and are comfortable with. No matter what you've been told, students don't appreciate having to teach their teacher technology. It is not okay to walk into a class and say "We're going to learn how to create webpages together!' because even though it seems like it works, and students are engaged, they'd be just as engaged if you knew what the heck you were doing.

2. You shouldn't just use technology to be doing it. I teach in a computer lab a lot, because my "other job" is teaching technology courses ABOUT the technology, and there isn't a better way to demonstrate and teach it--I know, I've tried. But that might not be the best way to teach composition, or for any given teacher to teach any given course, so I feel like there needs to be some good rhetorical reason to CHOOSE technology instead of whatever else is available.

3. Lastly, and this ties into this week's readings of renegades and underlife, when students use technologies in ways that you didn't intend--you just sort of have to deal with it, let it go, and figure out ways to either incorporate their uses or circumvent them for next time. I'm one of those people that will do everything with the technology except what I'm supposed to be (or well, sometimes in addition to what I'm supposed to be). I'm the person in the MOO making new rooms and using them to hold sub conversations. I'm the person designing a bat to fly around and poo. I'm the person figuring out how to embed movies in my discussion board questions--and these things, and others like them, drive some instructors crazy. If you are one of those instructors--what're you going to do about it? And, if you're the kinda person this stuff makes want to shoot flames out of your eyes and watch 'em dance--how are you going to approach technology so that it doesn't end with you angry?

And finally, students think the internet is for porn. Standing up in front of a class proclaiming that the internet is "really really great" most likely will make them think the teacher is "really really crazy." Heck, some of them might even fill in the "for porn" at the end of that sentence for you....