English 482 Projects: The Promises and Threats of the Digital Age

The Assignment:

Prepare an 8 - 10 page written project, on a topic of your choosing that is related to the subject of this course. Your project may develop from the topic you chose for your classroom presentation (see the syllabus for those topics), from one of the areas discussed below, or it might be something altogether different. In any case, the topic you choose should be something you have some interest in, some intellectual or emotional investment to ensure that you’ll present a final product that will be interesting to others.

It’s also something you should be willing to think about, deeply and critically. I don’t want projects that are just reports, lists of things you found, a kind of intellectual travelogue. Instead, you should frame a problem and address a solution; or observe and analyze a phenomenon and give a critical assessment of its causes and effects. I want your take on the matter, your predictions or projections, your concerns or proposals. I want you to give lots of examples, the more the better, and real ones rather than hypotheticals. But I also want your ideas to control the presentation of the material, your spin to sort out the difficulties of the data. In general, to answer the “What does he want from us?” question, the smarter the paper, the higher the grade.

Here are some broad topics to work from. It will be up to you to narrow and focus the topic so that it will be a do-able project in the time allotted. I encourage you to come up with your own topic if none of my suggestions does the trick.

In preparation, I’d like to collect from you a paragraph in which you state the general area of your topic and write a few sentences about what you expect to do within that area.

1. Educational technology. Education often pins its hopes on technology: the film-strip, the radio, the television, the blackboard, the mimeograph, the slide projector – all of these were seen as ways to make learning less of a chore, and teaching more effective. Look in detail at an educational technology, past or present, studying how it works, talking to students and teachers who are involved with it, assessing its effectiveness, tracing its history, projecting its future. Once again your goal would be to develop an analytical critique of the practice, using models from the reading or developing your own on the fly. Examples might include video in a classroom, use of the internet in a school, an examination of textbook practices among students and teachers. If your interest is historical you could look at past technologies and how they changed educational practice, how they were introduced and how they were eventually supplanted. If you are involved in teaching or observing you could study a technology as it is used in the classroom or the school where you observe. You might wish to compare how theorists talk about technology with how it really plays out when it’s used in a real classroom.

2. Crowd control Hidden video cameras are now used in most stores, as well as on public streets and roadways, and in many other places computers are used to collect and process vast amounts of information about individuals. Information so obtained greatly increases the effectiveness of physical population control (benignly, as law enforcement, as well as blatantly as covert spying). What are the promises and threats of the digital age for human control? How does information processing add to or detract from identification, behavior modification, marketing research, voter behavior?

3. Work-related communication technology. Theorists have commented on how technology is changing the way we work as well as how we study and learn. Examine a workplace technology the way you looked at an educational technology. Study its history and predict its future. Interview those involved with the technology: the planners, the managers, and the end-users. Discuss improvements and disasters associated with the technology. Contrast the predictions with the realities. Does technology improve productivity? how does it impact on the quality of workers’ lives? What unforeseen consequences accompany the introduction of a new technology on the job?

4. History and literacy. If your interests are historical rather than contemporary, if you prefer library research to actual or virtual field work, examine a development in the history of literacy and see how it has affected the course of human culture. Look at literacy in ancient Greece or Rome; re-examine the effects of the printing press from the vantage point of late capitalism; look at the penmanship vs. keyboarding debate in contemporary curriculums. Keep in mind that you must write a critique, not a report: you must bring to bear your analysis and interpretation of the phenomenon in question, viewing through a theoretical lens, pointing out how things are never really what they seem, exposing the complexities, both the ups and downs of literacy practices of the past and their relation to current practices.

5. To the web and beyond. The internet offers boundless possibilities for study and interpretation. Why do people put up personal or corporate web pages? Examine a technology-triggered writing genre. How does technology changing writing practice? What about reading?

6. Selling cyberspace. Examine not the personal but the commercial prospects of the Internet. How are corporations large and small buying into the web, trying to make a profit on it, trying to facilitate customer access? Look at commercial web practices from the point of view of the buyer as well as the seller: why are people afraid to give out a credit card number on the web but not on the phone? What changes in practice, in other words, do people make when they do business on the web as consumers?

7. Trusting the text. In some of our readings, we looked at ways of determining the authority and validity of web sites. You might consider a term project looking at the problems involved in authorship and readership in one particular type of virtual communication, anything from web sites to email. How do readers learn who to trust? how do writers establish credibility in new ways? How does the technology enhance or inhibit these practices of learning to trust the text? What about problems of fraud and legitimacy? of ownership and theft? how do upgrades in technology affect the evolution of standards of authenticity? how do communities of digital readers and writers self-organize, develop codes of behavior, punish the unruly?

8. Talking the talk. Advances in electronic communication produce changes in the kinds of communications we use. You might look at the development of a genre like email: how is it different from snail mail and telephone conversations? Examine real email practices to see how the differences play out. Look at such things as concern for correctness, reactions to mistakes or perceived faux pas. How does e-communication affect the writer and reader? Why is it easier to write than to read e-communication? How is the electronic frontier becoming urbanized or citified? How has the style of email changed and developed over its short history? what are the stylistic features of email―everything from acronyms like IMHO to emoticons like : ) ¾ how do people actually use these things? how are newcomers sorted out from old-timers? how is membership in an e-community established through written communication?

9. Virtual gender. The gendering of electronic literacy has been confirmed by at least one recent report. If boys and girls seek access of technology differently, if companies market girls’ e-games that are collaborative and boy’s versions that are competitive, what does this tell us about gender and its stereotyping? I don’t want an opinion paper here, but a close examination of technology practices that cut along or across gender lines. Here’s an example: what happens at a CCSO site? how do males and females interact with technology differently (if they are different), how do they react differently when they need help from consultants, how do their practices differ? You can get information from reading, sure, but you should also observe and interview people to get a more accurate picture of what goes on here.

Here are some things to consider in looking at literacy activities:

1. Who is excluded from the activity, or considered to be illiterate in this context? How is mastery of the literacy determined?

2. How is the activity different from traditional or school-based reading and writing? How is it conditioned by traditional literacy practices?

3. How does the activity function in the life of the reader/writer?

4. In what way does the activity fit into a history of literacy practices? In the cultural panorama of such practices? How would people in different times and places perform this or an equivalent activity?

5. In what way is the literacy practice technological? Is the technology prescribed, or are there choices the reader/writer makes? How does the technology used condition or affect the activity, or its performer?

6. In what way is the literacy practice conditioned by the subject’s age, gender, race, religion, ethnicity or other significant variable?

7. In what ways can you, as an outside observer, gain insight into the activity? In what ways is full immersion in the subject and context required for full understanding of the practice?

8. How can your understanding of this particular set of literacy practices enhance your understanding of the nature of literacy?

I do not expect you to be an expert anthropologist or student of literacy. I do expect that you will be able to draw ideas from class discussion and readings, or to use your observations to test the theories espoused by some of our authors. I will look for perceptive description, good analysis, and reasonably coherent organization. You may write a long, continuous essay, divide the paper into sections, or even use diagrams or illustrations, so long as they contribute to the development of your ideas.

I encourage you to use one another as resources and test audiences. Good luck. Please don’t hesitate to see me or email me (debaron@illinois.edu) if you have any questions about this assignment. Once again, I look forward to reading your results, and to discussing them with you.