by:
  Michael Donnelly,
  Rebecca Ingalls,
  Tracy Ann Morse,
  Joanna Castner, and
  Anne Meade
  Stockdell-Giesler

  Introduction: A Writing Program Director's Dilemma
   by Michael Donnelly

Never trust anything that can think for itself
if you can't see where it keeps its brain.
Mr .Weasley, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,
J.K. Rowling, 1999

Some years ago, as a young graduate student, I spent a semester as a graduate assistant in the computer lab. In reviewing the then current scholarship on computers in composition, I was dismayed to find that the use of computers hadn't really developed much beyond doing the same things we'd been doing with pen and paper (e.g., journal writing), except now, we could do them on a computer. Upon remarking on this to the director of the lab, he said something like, "Yes. It's as if they've invented the airplane and are driving it around on the ground."

Of course, we couldn't then foresee the explosion of technological development coming in the next decade-or even within the next couple of years. E-mail, the internet, cell phones and text messaging-these things, as it turns out, are not merely new technological tools; they have fundamentally altered the ways in which people read and write, or, to put it another way, they ways in which they compose.

Thus, for teachers of composition, it has become increasingly important to understand, whether we choose to incorporate technology into our courses or not, the impact(s) of such technology. For many, it has meant using technology inside and outside of the classroom, in various ways, in order to "reach" students in ways that traditional pedagogies often do not.

• Introduction: A Writing Program Director's Dilemma
• Flying, Finally
• The Role of the WPA
• The Problems with PDS
• May the Conversation Continue...
• Dissimulation in the Writing Classroom
• The Devaluing of Growth?
• A Lack of Ethics
• An Ethos of Academic Integrity
• Students Consenting to Turnitin.com: What Are We Asking When We Ask Them to Sign Away Their Work?
• The Concept of Intellectual Property
• Roots of Consent
• Why "Consent" May Not Be Sufficient
• Turnitin.com: A Teaching Tool
• Responsibility for Writing
• A Focus on Revision
• Turnitin: Oversimplified Answer to a Complex Problem
• Skill and Creativity
• Self-Fulfilling Prophesies
• A Stimulus to Creativity
• Engagement and Success
• Conclusion
• References
• print version