Response to Wysocki’s Opening New Media to Writing: Openings and Justification

According to Kress, writing is bombarded by 4 factors, such as social and communicational (1/12). All of these seem to attack the traditional views of writing. How do teachers adapt to the new attacks? How do they deal with the intrusion of the visual in the face of the printed word?
Wysocki brings this out with her list of needs. Again, it seems important for the teachers of writing to grasp the relationship of the new media to writing, and to incorporate the new media to their teaching. Actually, this reflects on the discussions we have had in class, in that we teachers need to instruct the students as to how to handle the new media, though Wysocki restricts this necessity to the subject of writing. Indeed, she insists that “New media needs to be open to writing” (3/12) and maintains that writing teaches are the ones to “inform” new media (3/12).
I am intrigued by the discussion on how with online discussion, shy in class, did well. This result is because these different media allow people to develop new identities. It can be great freedom, in that one does not have to reveal who he or she really is, and can communicate in confidence. Still, there are limits. The examples given were the tendency of Latino students not to give voice on line as Latino, and that women did not know how to use online to their advantage to develop new voices (5/12). Of course, there are other problems in that pedophiles also can master the art of new identity and prey on naïve students. Another argument to teach children about the new media.
(5/12) This reads like Remediation, in that new technology does not push out old technology. Wysocki state that “New Technologies are always designed out of existing technologies and out of existing material economies, patterns, and habits” (5/12)
The remark indicates that those who wish to harness the new technologies must adopt the mindsets from with the innovation had come. Developing countries, who acquire internet technology, for example, must learn of the Western culture to understand the technology. I do not think that this is a bad thing. It is a tradeoff for progress.
I see that teachers can use their own knowledge of writing and adapt to the new media. My experience of this was at a school for my practicum. While we were teaching kindergartners the fun of writing, other children were working on computer to reinforce reading and writing skills.
I once taught a student, who straight away that he hated writing. A few days later, I noticed that the family owned a Tandy 1000 ™ computer—yes, this dates me. I immediately begged the parents to let the student use it. I had hoped that using the new media, he would change his mind about writing, and thus master the art of writing.
The gamble paid off. Not only did he begin to write, but he flourished, and, in fact, he was highly opinionated. He could easily have become a columnist. He wrote report after report and even went to the point of writing freely for extra credit. The parents had never witnessed this behavior before.
Of course, in the line of work as a homebound teacher, I know not what happened to him, but I hope that he continued his writing!