Re: What do you think?

[Hillary Jones <hillary -at- NICHIMEN -dot- COM>]

Is your degree dependent on this? If you slash too much will you fail
comprehensives? Do you have the professors who wrote this on your thesis
committee? Hopefully you're in a politically safe spot for giving
criticism. ;-)

> "Still other instructors have consciously decided against using
> computers in their classrooms, and they have had good reasons for
> doing so.  First, they argue plausibly that the majority of technical
> communication in the workplace is still paper-based and that many
> students will be entering companies where they could certainly get by
> with little more than basic word processing skills.  Second, these
> instructors argue that their courses are intended to teach technical
> communication, not computer literacy."

Like everybody else, I agree that while the majority of end products may
be paper, we use computers to make those end products. Therefore it's
vital that TW students at least have the opportunity to use them while
composing and revising!

As far as the idea that a TW course isn't intended to teach computer
literacy--that's technically true, but if you want your prevent your
students from exploding from frustration as they try to work with
Microsoft Word or figure out how to format their disk in Windows 95 (or
eject their disk on a Mac), you'll teach computer literacy when it's
needed.

Somebody else wrote:

> The school should require a computer prerequisite or knowledge
> or something such to make sure that instructors don't have to teach anyone
> anything but technical communication skills (which include software skills).
> Computer use shouldn't be there. Specific software use very well might be (like
> FrameMaker) but not general computer use.

This is a pipe dream. Schools aren't that organized--some departments
use Macs, some use PCs with Windows 3.1, some use PCs with Windows 95,
some use UNIX-based. The hard truth is that tech writing instructors are
going to have to teach some amount of computer use to their students.


> "Computers and networks are, as Dale Spender (1995) notes, an
> environment of privilege-created by privileged white men and used
> mostly by them-and those environments are quite often forbidding to
> women and people from disadvantaged groups."

Ugh! I agree with the people who have a sense of creeping evil about
this little paragraph. It's got an unspoken "therefore" that seems to
whisper: so don't bother to teach women and disadvantaged groups about
computers; they will cry and pray to their heathen idols.


> "It's true that many workplaces are still primarily paper-based, but
> does that mean we should ignore the enormous growth of electronic
> media-the journal Electronic Publishing estimates that by 2001, 30%
> of all workplace documents will be at least partially electronic
> (Romano, 1997)-in the hopes students will find an employer willing to
> train them?"

This clip sounds like it's supporting using computers in the classroom.
...Anyway, I'm with everyone else again--most employers don't have time
to teach you how to use a computer, and there are too many other
applicants out there who already know how.


--
******************************
Hillary Jones
hillary -at- nichimen -dot- com

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/6589
******************************

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