Tech Camp 2010: My Experience using New Media in the classroom

I use new media in my class. In addition to audio-visuals, computer and web technologies, I also use computer and online applications and programs like I-movie, Windows Movie Maker, blogs and wikis for various purposes. I have been using I-movie and Movie maker for the unit 3 of Writing 205 but I must confess that I have not done full justice to the unit. I am not a very good movie maker. But because I always find somebody expert in the class among students, I often collaborate with those experts. They help me with the technology part while I bring in the rhetorical skills/insights. The combination has always worked. For the first time tow years back, however, I had invited Rachel Shapiro as the guest lecturer.

I don't have a long history of using technology/media in the classroom. I did not use any while teaching back home in Nepal. Reflecting back on why I did not use any takes me directly into Wusocki's article about the materialities of technology and new media. I did not have access to new media and computer technology in many of the places I taught back home nor was I was prepared well to, for example, handle projector or operate I-movie. So, I think, Wysocki is right in saying that material conditions including access, infrastructures and literacy play a big role in whether we can use new media in writing class or not.

While using new media in the class, I was not aware that "new media texts do not have to be digital; instead any text that has been designed so that its materiality is not effaced can count as new media" (Wysocki 15) or "new media" are the texts "where we keep their materiality visible, both as we work to make them and as we hold before us" (Wysocki 19). This is something very new I got for her article.