Blog #3 Inventing and Drafting in the Digital Age

Bacci, Tina. “Invention and Drafting in the Digital Age: New Approaches to Thinking about Writing.” The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas. 82.2 (2008): 75-81. Web. 21 May 2012.

In this article, Bacci makes the argument that instead of trying to transfer pen and paper invention techniques to computers, we should be developing new ways of viewing writing and invention using the computer technology available. She begins her argument with a brief historical review of the use of computers in the writing classroom with a specific focus on the call to move “beyond computer tools based on paper tools” that was being made in the late 80’s and how the call was answered. The first answer was hypertext (which faded out in the late 90’s), and by the time Cindy Selfe reassessed the state of computers in the writing classroom in 1999, not much had really changed. Bacci attempts to answer this call to re-think what learning to write looks like by making suggestions for commonly used computer technologies.

First, she suggests having students use a search engine to type in keywords and see the variety of sites generated. Students would then make a list of topics or issues that the search engine generates "in an attempt to experience the breadth of a topic and see if anything strikes an interest" (76). Second, she suggests having students create a website as an invention strategy. Students would do this by creating web pages that cover different areas of the topic they are investigating.

Next, she suggests using PowerPoint by requiring a 5-slide PowerPoint in a workshop setting. This makes students identify five main points for discussion, consider the topic from a new perspective (when it includes images/sound/video), and discuss their main points orally. She says "Using PowerPoint presentations as a method of invention and drafting allows students…the benefits of talk-write pedagogy, making it distinct from other methods because of its multimodality: students write with alphabetic text, compose with images or sound and orally perform their presentation." (77)

Finally, she suggests using Excel to create an outline. Students would list the main points in individual cells in a column then create hyperlinks from each cell to a text document. This makes the writing less intimidating because it's broken down into small writing tasks that can be worked on in any order.

For me, this article is useful particularly because of the way the author suggests using Powerpoint. I intend to use blogs (which are capable of audio/video/image/text) in my DE course in the fall as a way for students to investigate and develop ideas specific to their final essays. Outside of my own classroom, this article can be useful to online writing instructors because it offers different ways to go beyond word processing to help students with the early stages of writing. This is particularly important because having students pre-writing/invent/draft, etc. using computer technologies allows the DE instructor to see these stages which are often difficult to see in a distance environment, and despite the call to move beyond paper tools, will allow the course to incorporate more of the f2f aspects that we find beneficial (i.e. talk to write pedagogy).