Getting the message

The thing I'm going to take from Selber's final discussion of multiliteracies is the consideration that is given to the fact that nothing happens without impacting the whole. My first exposure to computers in an educational setting was on the old TRS-80s in computer literacy. I say that then thank God that we're not turning in our technology narratives in their final form until later in the semester. Getting back on point, at the time there wasn't a whole lot of literacy in the computer literacy course. It was taught by the same teacher who ran shop. To an extent, there's a kind of rudimentary logic to assigning the most mechanically apt person with teaching certification to the computer class. After all, if one of them breaks and he doesn't know how to fix it, that'd put the matter to rest fast, now wouldn't it?

Coming back to Selber, I'll bet the administration at my junior high was convinced that this was a neutral decision. Get a warm body in the room, toss the textbook out there, no problem. Most of us knew this shop teacher and, even though I cannot remember his name, honestly liked him and therein was part of the problem: we knew him because he continually drew these kind of assignments. Standardized testing? He was at the head of the class. High school requests the middle school kids take the National Driving Test? He came down, he popped in the video, he collected the papers, and I even heard that he drove the answers over, all to help the senior high rework their driver's ed program. Teacher calls in sick and kids are just watching a movie? Don't pay a sub, send him on down and put the sub in shop for the half-day he works.

If you're guessing that we got the message that computers were not important, you got it in one. How could we think otherwise when the teacher in the room primarily taught a different subject, a subject we had seen treated as almost totally unimportant? We ignored the typing component, goofed off during taped lectures on the history of computers, and learned just enough Basic to create graphics, which stereotypically meant hearts for the girls and crude middle fingers for the boys.

We learned computers were just toys and it did not at all come from the curriculum. Honestly, I can't say that last as a fact because I don't remember the curriculum at all. However, I think Selber is correct in calling for each department on a campus to take an active interest in computer literacy because I think it's important to avoid messages like the one we got. Integrating provides further evidence to students that they have to treat computers as something that runs through their entire lives. I think most students don't really see computers as part of their academic world and this furthers the stereotype of school curriculum being based on Victorian principles that no longer apply.