The Dialogue The Commentary
"Well," you've thought, "this all seems really interesting," but what would you do in a cyberclassroom? You're an English teacher, you teach introductory literature courses and basic composition. Sure, you could have your students create a version of Odysseus's adventures in MOO space, but what does that have to do with learning to write or learning about Literature? "From what you can tell so far," you muse, "these cyber-pioneering types want to totally change the face of humanistic study." You just don't have the time to learn computer science and you're not sure you really want to. After all, it's worked just fine for most of us. You're not here to teach computer literacy, you were hired to teach English, and there's not time enough in a semester to teach both. Moreover, these cyber-teachers are getting carried away. Who knows yet whether all this newfangled technology results in better learning? We've spent years developing sound pedagogical practices in our classrooms, why reinvent the wheel?"
Shaking your head, you go to the lounge to grab a cup of coffee. Oh! There's your colleague, the "techno-goof." "Hey, do you have a few minutes to talk?" you ask hesitantly.
jane@wtamu.edu
The dialogue and commentary in this piece are meant to initiate a polylogic "hyper-dance" on this topic. Your extensions, commentaries, narratives, dialogues, dramas, short essays and ideas are necessary for that to become a reality. RhetNet will provide publishing space to allow this beginning to grow and flourish into a MOO content site that uses as much of the hypertextual nature of the web as we can. Please send your publication contributions via email to me in ASCII format. Let this dance begin!