Welcome! Choose from the "Mythology" links to
learn about my online presence.
The links under "I Ate" describe and
illustrate my role as a composition instructor
in this age of computer-mediated writing. Digital tools
that I'm particularly fond of are
located under "Dreamt."
Writing is still [in the twenty-first century] an important act and an essential tool for learning and social participation. Skill in writing is still crucial inside and outside of our schools. Writing is still recognized as a socially situated act of great complexity. And writing is still understood to be hard work.
--Danielle Nicole DeVoss, Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, and Troy Hicks,
Because Digital Writing Matters, p. 1
The medieval manuscript and ancient papyrus roll in turn represent technologies of writing before mechanization. ... The development of mechanical printing and now writing by computer has affected our view of these previous writing techniques. ... There are good historical (as well as etymological) reasons ... for broadening the definition of technology to include skills as well as machines. The Greek root of "technology" is
techne, and for the Greeks a
techne could be an art or a craft, 'a set of rules, system or method of making or doing, whether of the useful arts, or of the fine arts' ... All the ancient arts and crafts had this in common: that the craftsman must develop a skill, a technical state of mind in using tools and materials. Ancient and modern writing are technologies in the sense that they are methods for arranging verbal ideas in a visual space.
--Jay David Bolter,
Writing Space, p. 15
Operating from the base of rhetorical theory and practice, teachers of composition can help students gain critical perspective on the purpose and intended audiences of multimodal documents, as well as the appeals employed within these texts.
--Daniel Keller, "Thinking Rhetorically," p. 49 in
Multimodal Composition, ed. Cynthia L. Selfe
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