Writing New Media

Wysocki’s “Opening New Media to Writing: openings and justifications”

The point Wysocki makes that “what we know about writing can usefully affect how we approach new media” makes me reflect on how theorists build off of the ideas of those who came before (5). That is—building from Piaget for theorizing how students learn is important. So building from our knowledge of writing and applying it toward an approach to media makes perfect sense. Wysocki’s reasoning that writing needs to find a home in new media is, of course, something that only some care to come to terms with. Writing “needs to find a home in new media” (this is me quoting myself paraphrasing Wysocki) is so important because, the way our culture is evolving, without doing so, writing may nearly die out of popular culture.

Wysocki constantly refers to change, or that media has changed the world, and that writing might as well change with it, I think implying that it will change or die. Kenneth Bruffee says something about needing teachers take on the responsibility of “inducting new members into the community [of knowledge]” in his essay Collaborative Learning and the “Conversation of Mankind.” “Without [them, Bruffee points out] the community will die when its current members die, and knowledge as assented to by that community will cease to exist” (431). If we adapt this statement to consider the current voices who support the use of writing in conjunction with new media, we can reasonably say that if they do not successfully pass the torch, then writing within new media will die. And if it dies there, a space where so many people spend their time instead of with more traditional forms of literature, then writing will be hanging on instead of thriving in a world wide web of great potential.

We know that we can make a difference, that truth is not static, and that we are not simply helpless and completely dependent on the machine of which we are afraid to rage against. Let us be a part of a new media revolution that includes writing within its construct, not a new media revolution that shuns it. If we become “situated people [and] make things happen,” we will have overcome the idea that so many have—that we only make a difference if the superstructure allows it (5)

I won’t say much about the exercises except that I am anxious to try some of them, even with high schoolers.