What are your key takeaways for assigning writing in a digital age?

Me, as a mid-20-year-old student, I honestly cannot imagine how I could live without technology in school. We have discussed in last class regarding the use of technology in classroom, and it made me think of teaching composition in the 21^st century. I would say that skills for interpreting and producing visuals need to be taught in composition classrooms, rather than discussing if writers need to handwrite or type. Students need to acquire the skills to examine what the online text and visual images are really saying. But, I am not fully sure how I could assign writing in order to foster the skills.

What do you agree with?

I agree with Trimbur’s idea of “to see writers not just as making of meaning but as makers of the means of producing meaning out of the available resources of representation” (366). Writers need to improve skills of how to operate tools, such as, words, thoughts and language, to produce meaning, not simply use those tools make meaning. Working with technology allows students to acquire the skills through different kinds of texts and visual images.

What do you take issue with?

I am not sure if I want to agree with Trimbur’s idea of “to follow Derrida out of the morass created by the Alphabetic Literacy Narrative and to picture writing not as a derivative speech at all but instead as a typographical and rhetorical system of sign making” (365). Although I support that he pictures writing as a typographical a rhetorical system of sign making, I also believe writing could be a derivative speech in some contexts, such as texting acronyms.