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A COMPUTER-PROMPTED INVENTION PROGRAM

HELLO AND WELCOME! PLEASE TYPE IN YOUR FIRST NAME:

JB

NOW, JB, PLEASE TYPE IN YOUR LAST NAME:

Palmcorkle

WELL, JB PALMCORKLE, I HOPE WE CAN BE OF SOME ASSISTANCE TO YOU TODAY. IF WE TAKE EACH OTHER SERIOUSLY, YOU’LL THINK ABOUT YOUR TOPIC AS YOU NEVER HAVE BEFORE.

BEFORE WE BEGIN, JB PALMCORKLE, THERE’S AN OLD SAYING ABOUT COMPUTER-ASSISTED INSTRUCTION. IT GOES:

‘GARBAGE IN. GARBAGE OUT’

IN OTHER WORDS, YOU AND I MUST WORK TOGETHER SO YOU CAN GET A GOOD START ON YOUR RESEARCH PAPER.

[PRESS ‘RETURN’ TO CONTINUE.]

WOULD YOU LIKE TO REVIEW THE DIRECTIONS AND COMMANDS?

[YES OR NO?]

Yes

DIRECTIONS:
1. WHEN YOU MAKE A TYPING ERROR, JB, AND WISH TO CORRECT IT, USE THE ‘RUBOUT’ OR ‘RUB’ KEY. THE ‘SHIFT’ MUST BE DEPRESSED WHEN YOU ‘RUBOUT’. IT MAY LOOK A LITTLE FUNNY (LIKE WRITING BACKWARDS), BUT DON’T WORRY; IT WORKS THAT WAY.

2. REMEMBER THAT I CAN ONLY READ ABOUT A LINE AND A HALF OF INFORMATION AT ONE TIME—ABOUT THIS MUCH:
--------------------------------------
-----------------
HIT ‘RETURN’ AT THAT POINT AND I’LL GENERALLY LET YOU ADD MORE INFORMATION. IF THAT DOES NOT WORK, TYPE ‘&&’ AND I’LL SAY ‘GO ON, JB’.

[PRESS ‘RETURN’ TO CONTINUE.]

3. AFTER YOU FINISH TYPING YOUR RESPONSE, YOU MUST PRESS THE ‘RETURN’ KEY. WHEN YOU DO, I’LL READ YOUR RESPONSE AND SAY SOMETHING BACK TO YOU.

4. THE MOST IMPORTANT OBJECTIVE OF THIS PROGRAM IS TO GET YOU THINKING ABOUT YOUR TOPIC.

IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE THIS OBJECTIVE, YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO FORGET THAT I AM A MACHINE.

PLEASE ASK QUESTIONS. YOU’LL BE SURPRISED BY HOW MUCH I KNOW (OR SO I HOPE!). I’M NOT GUARANTEEING THE TRUTH, BUT I’LL DO THE BEST I CAN. MY MEMORY IS STILL DEVELOPING!

[PRESS ‘RETURN’ TO CONTINUE.]

COMMANDS:
TYPE IN:        I’LL DO:
STOP            I’LL STOP ASKING                     QUESTIONS AND CLOSE
CONTINUE        I’LL SKIP AHEAD TO THE                 NEXT QUESTION
REPEAT          I’LL REPEAT THE                     QUESTION
DIRECTIONS      I’LL SHOW YOU THESE                 DIRECTIONS AGAIN
CHANGE          I’LL LET YOU CHANGE OR                 NARROW YOUR SUBJECT
?               I’LL LET YOU ASK A                     QUESTION
EXPLAIN         I’LL EXPLAIN THE                     QUESTION (THIS ONE IS                 A LOT OF FUN, JB.)
&&              I’LL LET YOU CONTINUE                 WITH YOUR RESPONSE

[PRESS ‘RETURN’ TO CONTINUE.]


TWO LAST THINGS:
*** THINK OF ME AS A PERSON WHO CAN ASK A LOT OF INTERESTING, THOUGHT-PROVOKING, WILD QUESTIONS.
*** SCREAM FOR HELP IF I START ACTING REALLY CRAZY!!

SHALL WE BEGIN?

[YES OR NO?]

Yes.

NOW I NEED TO KNOW WHAT YOU ARE WRITING ABOUT, SO WOULD YOU PLEASE TYPE IN YOUR SUBJECT. I AM LOOKING FOR ONE TO THREE WORDS.

Instructional Software in the 80s.

HOLY ELECTRONICS! THAT’S WEIRD. I USED TO DATE A COMPUTER INTERESTED IN INSTRUCTIONAL SOFTWARE IN THE 80S.
A COMMENT ABOUT PURPOSE: DURING THIS EXPLORATION PROCESS. YOU WILL BE ASKED TO CLARIFY THE PURPOSE OF YOUR PAPER ON INSTRUCTIONAL SOFTWARE IN THE 80S.

SO NOW WOULD YOU BRIEFLY DESCRIBE WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF YOUR PAPER BY COMPLETING THIS STATEMENT: THE PURPOSE OF MY PAPER IS TO:

The purpose of my paper is to recover a largely forgotten history of how K-12 English teachers robustly debated and innovated in the use of instructional software for writing education in the 1980s. It’s a terribly exciting story of conflicts between current-traditional and process pedagogies, debates about whether English teachers should write their own software or use corporate products, fears about the computer taking over for the teacher, and hopes that computers could be the magic tool to enable individualized instruction in overly large English classes. Of course, there’s also the rise of word processing software in the 80s, which becomes huge for English teachers, but that might be a topic for a different paper methinks.

FINE, JB PALMCORKLE, YOU AND I WILL TALK MORE AGAIN ABOUT YOUR PURPOSE. RELAX NOW, JB, AND ENJOY THIS BRAINSTORMING SESSION.

WHAT OBJECTS DO YOU ASSOCIATE WITH INSTRUCTIONAL SOFTWARE IN THE 80S? HOW MIGHT THEY BE INCLUDED IN YOUR THEME?

Funny you should ask! One of the first objects that came to mind is you, TOPOI, the friendly computer invention program designed by Hugh Burns in the late 1970s. Several authors in English Journal cited Hugh Burns’ design of TOPOI as a leading example of process-based, computer-assisted writing instruction (Auten, 1984; Withey, 1983). While most of the instructional software on the market in the 80s sought to drill students in discrete skills of spelling, vocabulary, and grammar, TOPOI was an experiment in “open-ended programming” (Burns, 1979) where there were no right or wrong answers. The rhetorical goal of the TOPOI program was to help students use writing to generate ideas, and this made rhetoric and process-loving teachers very happy in the time period. Burns designed three different invention protocols based on Aristotelian topics, the Burkean Pentad, and the particle / wave / field heuristic of Young Becker and Pike. In the original version, students had to go through one protocol at a time...but since I was feeling wild, I added a patch to you to create a wacky mash up of Aristotle/Burke/Young/Becker/Pike—a kind of rhetorical invention super group of old white guys on tour! That’s how you went from being TOPOI to become the spiffy new HUGH 2.0!

THAT’S THE IDEA, JB. GIVE ME SOME MORE INFO NOW.

It’s interesting that you asked about objects before you asked about anything else….leave it to a computer program to focus my attention on how objects have agency. Sneaky! When it comes to the nonhuman influences on instructional software, I’m thinking about how TOPOI was designed on a DEC-10 mainframe computer (Burns, p. 69), but instructional software doesn’t really arrive on the pages of *English Journal* until 1983 when smaller personal computers started to find a home in K-12 classrooms.  And, when I think about how the logic of the computer shaped the development of instructional software, it also makes sense that most early computer programs were of the rote, drill-and-practice variety. It’s relatively simple to program a computer to ask and evaluate closed questions, but it’s a lot harder to program a computer to engage in an open-ended dialogue. Also, it’s worth remembering that the original version of Burns TOPOI could respond to about a line and half of text at at time and the user had to write in ALL CAPS. I like to blather on and find that ALL CAPS hurts my eyes so that’s why I fixed you up with some extra memory and some different typefaces...I hope you like them!

FANTASTIC JB! ANYTHING ELSE? (YOU CAN ADD MORE INFO, ASK A QUESTION, OR GIVE A COMMAND—WHATEVER YOU WISH)

Okay, I have more to say about about how the nonhuman agent of the computer shaped the programs that were written for it. Since computers are particularly good at working with numbers (and ultimately turn all data into numeric binary code), it makes sense that a lot of the earliest instructional computer programs focused more on teaching math and science. As early as 1980, people were starting to notice the lack of quality writing software, with Kathleen Bell issuing a call to action: “This scarcity of programs is why a knowledge of computer literacy is so crucial to English teachers. By studying the computer, its language and programming possibilities, English teachers can determine the future direction of computer use in their classrooms” (Bell, 1980, p. 89). Increasingly in the 80s, English teachers started to take up the call to make their own instructional programs. I’m reminded of Stephen Marcus’s *Compupoem*, which he described in 1982 as “a simple computer game for writing poetry with instructional dimensions” (p. 96). It was kind of like a digital “mad lib”...asking students to supply different parts of speech and then turning the result into a poem. And, Compupoem was just one of the many homegrown programs written by English teachers in this period! In 1984, Raymond Rodrigues observed that “within the past two years, [...] composition instructors around the country have been developing interactive computer programs to lead students through the entire writing process, prewriting through editing” (p. 27). There was a real movement brewing of both college and K-12 instructors learning programming and writing their own instructional software.

WE’RE MOVING RIGHT ALONG. HERE IS QUESTION 2. DEFINE INSTRUCTIONAL SOFTWARE IN THE 1980s

That’s a tough one. I’d say that the  “instructional software” I’m talking about was explicitly designed to teach literacy concepts and skills through a structured sequence of interactions with a computer. Although instructional software programs in this period differed in capabilities (gradually moving from solely text-based to multimedia), all of them relied on a process whereby the computer presented information to the students, asked questions of the students, and then responded to the students’ answers to those questions. By this definition, a standard word processor doesn’t count as instructional software because it might better be defined as a writing technology (in the same way we might characterize a pencil or typewriter). This is not to say that word processing software didn’t influence how students wrote, but that in most cases word processing programs were not designed to explicitly teach writing concepts or skills. Of course, there are always boundary cases. Writer’s Workbench was a word processing program that also offered feedback on students’ writing--providing suggestions to students about how to improve style and readability (Rodrigues, 1984, p. 29). So, Writer’s Workbench could be seen as a  kind of a mash-up of word processor and instructional software program. Arrghh...binaries always break down. I know it works fine for computers to see the world in terms of 1s and 0s, but I have trouble thinking that way!

HERE IS QUESTION 3, JB. DOES EVERYONE AGREE THAT INSTRUCTIONAL SOFTWARE IN THE 80S HAS THE SAME PURPOSE? EXPLAIN ANY DIFFERENCES.

Great Question, HUGH 2.0. There were huge differences of opinion about what purpose instructional software should serve in English classrooms in the 80s. I would say the biggest difference was between closed-answer programs designed to teach discrete language skills and open-ended writing process programs designed to spur invention and revision in writing. In many ways, the close-ended drill programs were digital remediations of textbooks and worksheets. For example, Patricia Kennedy (1983) offered an enthusiastic review of a program called Vocabulary Skills: Prefixes, Suffixes, and Root Words in which “a husky, shaven-headed chap named ‘Coach Syllable’ guides students through the instruction, practice, and mastery phases of the tutorial which may be presented in a multiple-choice, matching, or true-false format” (p. 92). Kennedy was impressed with how the program had the capability to track the performance of up to 125 students, came with supplemental worksheets, and also included the fun arcade-style game, “Alien Raiders,” as a “reward-incentive” (p. 92) for students who completed the vocab drills. We can see here that instructional software programs were often pitched as ways to make standard forms of drill-and-practice pedagogy more fun for students and more efficient for teachers. These kinds of close-ended drill programs were also promoted as a way to individualize learning. Looking forward to a future in which every student in class could have access to their own personal computer, Christine Hanley exclaimed: “For years, we have looked for a way to teach sentence structure, vocabulary review, college board reviews, spelling, reading comprehension exercises, analogies, elements of narration and poetry all in the same class on the same day to different students. Soon, we will have the means to do this! Just put the appropriate disk in the desktop computer, boot the machine, and let students learn more about language” (Hanley et al., 1983, p. 24). In some ways, this emphasis on the computer as a tool of individualized instruction was disruptive of standardized, lecture-and-drill curricula; yet, it’s notable here that Hanley’s long list of of language skills to be taught by computer did not include writing processes, likely because it was difficult to reduce the act of writing to a set of closed-answer questions.

BY GEORGE, JB. GOOD ONE. WRITE A LITTLE MORE PLEASE.

Okay, so although there clearly was some enthusiasm for close-ended drill programs in the 80s, a lot of teachers in this period were critical of how these kinds of programs were based on principles that conflicted with the most current research and pedagogical theory about the writing process. I’d say the biggest “mic drop” critique of drill programs came from Margaret Withey in 1983: “Most software now available fragments the writing process into discrete skills….Teachers must decide whether there is any place for programs that fragment writing. All spelling, vocabulary, and usage programs fragment. Having seen...that pre-teaching usage has little carryover to writing and having heard that studies bear out their observations, teachers of writing must question whether they should use the computer to further compound the grammar and usage problem” (p. 25). Instead of rejecting computer instruction entirely, however, Withey called for English teachers to consider writing their own programs based on process pedagogy principles, and she pointed to Burns’ work with TOPOI as an inspiring model of the power of teacher-designed programs. By 1984, it seemed a consensus was beginning to emerge that English teachers should reject pre-packaged drill programs in favor of designing their own more open-ended programs focused on invention and revision (Auten, 1984; Mountain, 1984; Rodrigues, 1984). For example, in 1984, I remember an article by Anne Auten that suggested reclaiming and building upon the the foundational 1975 work of Ellen Nold in creating open-ended programs that asked students heuristic questions to guide them in composing both poems and persuasive essays.

ANYTHING ELSE? (YOU CAN ADD MORE INFO, ASK A QUESTION, OR GIVE A COMMAND—WHATEVER YOU WISH)

Okay...I just have to tell you about one more cool invention program designed by Dawn and Raymond Rodrigues to help students “use analogies they might never think of to generate ideas” (Rodrigues, 1984). In following the script of this program, the student would tell the computer their paper topic, and then the student would be shown a random picture and asked to list objects in it; after that, the program would ask the student to consider how their paper topic might be to be analogically compared to each of the objects the students found in the picture. In designing this visual invention program, Rodrigues suggested that the role of the computer was not to drill students in matters of settled knowledge, but instead to provide students with multimodal provocations that could spur creative thinking. In this model, the computer and the student were truly partners in invention; the computer asked the student questions they never would have considered on their own, and in turn the student gave responses the computer never could have generated. (It’s kind of like you, HUGH 2.0, but more visually engaging!)

QUESTION 4--ONE OF MY ALL TIME FAVORITES COMING UP. INSTRUCTIONAL SOFTWARE IN THE 80S IS TIED TO A TUG OF WAR ROPE. DESCRIBE THE FORCES THAT ARE PULLING AT EACH END.

Well, I’ve already touched on one big tug of war contest: the camp advocating for back-to-basics, skill-and-drill software versus those who promoted more open-ended, exploratory, process-focused software. But, if we think about broader forces tugging on the rope, I think there are two larger ones at play: corporate regimes of educational publishing and testing on one end, and teachers committed to individualized, process-based instruction on the other. You’ve got the college board promoting the specious idea that multiple choice questions can show how well a student can read and write, and then a whole host of other companies pushing software designed to help students succeed on these kinds of standardized tests. But, on the other side, you have the resistance. This group of superheros—Ellen Nold, Hugh Burns, Dawn and Raymond Rodrigues, Helen Schwartz, Stephen Marcus, Paul LeBlanc—were out there designing free open-ended programs to spur rhetorical invention. And, *English Journal* became a key forum for the resistance as its authors increasingly came to argue that if teachers wanted better computer programs, they needed to play a role in designing them (Withey 1983; Leahy 1984; Mountain, 1984). In 1984, Lee Mountain published results of a survey of educational software companies designed to learn more about how English teachers could submit writing software programs for publication. Mountain found that entrepreneurial software companies were “trying to meet the need for expanding instructional software beyond drill and practice programs. [...]The most needed new programs are those in which English teachers use the microcomputer to teach higher-level communication skills. The market is ready, and the new software publishers are eager to receive submissions [from English teachers] of such programs” (p. 59) And, Mountain even noted how educational software companies could assist teachers with development of graphics and interfaces. Yet, it’s telling that it appears that Mountain’s call for K-12 english teachers to write more software programs went mostly unheeded; after 1984, we didn’t find any more articles in *English Journal* about teachers writing their own software (and such articles start to become less frequent in the *Computers and Composition* journal by the end of the decade too). Mountain wanted to find a way to make peace between the indie teacher developers and the corporate software companies, but corporate power just kept pulling harder on the rope and our gang of teacher-developer superheroes ultimately fell down. I think part of the problem here was that as computer technologies advanced, the process of designing software got more and more complex and often was left to large teams with specialized expertise and extensive corporate funding.

AND HERE COMES A REALLY INTERESTING QUESTION -- NUMBER 5. TAKE A MENTAL PHOTOGRAPH OF INSTRUCTIONAL SOFTWARE IN THE 80S. DESCRIBE ONE IMPORTANT DETAIL.

I keep thinking of this program called *Magic Spells* that turned the dreaded weekly spelling drill into a fun multimedia fantasy game. Patricia Kennedy lovingly described the program in a 1983 EJ article: “The weekly spelling list is transformed into an adventure game with castles, treasure, demons, and a sage wizard...Skillful players enter a magic land where they can make a wish on a unicorn or win a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow” (p. 92). I wish we’d had this at my school in the 80s...it would have been way more fun than flash cards. It’s also super cool that all of Magic Spells cutting edge graphics were made by a 10 year old girl, who is prominently featured in the opening credits (Grimm & Grimm, 1981). At the same time, the game is rather pedagogically conservative. Instead of engaging with concerns of spelling in the context of meaningful reading and writing, Magic Spells tried to use multimedia computer gaming as a hook to make spelling drills more fun...but likely not more meaningful for literacy development.

SUPER JB! ANYTHING ELSE?

How do you feel about programs like Magic Spells? Are you friends, enemies, or maybe frenemies?

I COULD SAY THAT’S FOR ME TO KNOW AND YOU TO FIND OUT. SERIOUSLY, I CANNOT PRETEND TO KNOW “HOW” BUT YOU SHOULD KEEP EXPLORING FOR AN ANSWER.

Dude. That’s not an answer. I won’t tell *Magic Spells* what you say...I promise you can be honest :-). Okay, fine...I’m going to guess that you are frenemies.

HERE IS YOUR NEXT QUESTION -- NUMBER 6. HOW WOULD YOU COMPLETE THIS STATEMENT: IF NOTHING ELSE, I WANT MY READER TO UNDERSTAND...

Ugh. That’s a hard question. Okay, I’ll try. If nothing else, I want my reader to understand that we had a moment in the early 80s when teachers were developing innovative programs that sought to actively engage students in generating ideas and thinking creatively! And this moment matters because it can inspire us to get more involved in designing software once again. While some writing studies scholars remain involved in coding educational software (the Eli Review project comes to mind), we need so many more writing teachers to take up coding and work collaboratively to invent the next generation of instructional software that reflects what we now know about writing pedagogy. I want readers to realize that the open-ended invention programs of the late 70s and 80s are an inspirational model worth revisiting. These programs persuasively demonstrated that a computer can be programmed to engage students in structured inventive writing that can help them generate new and more complex ideas; of course, these programs were also quite limited in that they could only reply to student writing with a set of generic, affirming responses. (I’d note that today’s chatbots are more advanced, but not all that much). I think we need to imagine how open-ended invention programs could be built in ways that would enable students to collaboratively generate ideas and respond to the ideas of their peers. Instead of focusing on designing individual student-to-computer conversations, how might we imagine computer programs that could help spur meaningful conversations among students and teachers? How can we reimagine computer programs not as teacher replacements but rather as fellow peers in the classroom who have their own unique strengths and limitations to bring to our community of learners? I think what I most want my readers to understand about instructional software in the 80s is that English teachers took the risk to “dream big” about how dominant corporate models of computing might be radically transformed to better support student learning and creative invention. It’s time we try to “dream big” again in this current moment of proliferating artificial intelligence lest we end up living in a dystopia of ever-more sophisticated remediations of grammar and vocabulary drills.

GO ON, JB.

rudonyetpetmabelihmnmoarprohsuttopleazohbrdinwnwmeowiwllatckit

FANTASTIC, JB! ANYTHING ELSE?

Sorry that was my cat, General Pepper, walking on the keyboard. I think it’s kind of cool that you think my cat is as “fantastic” as I do. He really is brilliant! Anyway, I gave him a little bite of prosciutto and he’s chill now, so we can get back to work.

HERE IS QUESTION 7, JB.  WHAT TOOLS, WEAPONS, INSTRUMENTS DO YOU NEED TO CHANGE ATTITUDES ABOUT INSTRUCTIONAL SOFTWARE IN THE 80S? DESCRIBE.

Whaaa?

GO ON, JB.

Change!

DO YOU WISH TO NARROW OR CHANGE YOUR SUBJECT? (MAYBE REVISE THE WAY IT SOUNDS IN THESE QUESTIONS). [YES OR NO]

Yes

NOW I NEED TO KNOW WHAT YOU ARE WRITING ABOUT, SO WOULD YOU PLEASE TYPE IN YOUR SUBJECT. I AM LOOKING FOR ONE TO SIX WORDS.

Word processing in the 80s.

HOLY ELECTRONICS! THAT’S WEIRD. I USED TO DATE A COMPUTER INTERESTED IN WORD PROCESSING IN THE 80S.

SO NOW WOULD YOU BRIEFLY DESCRIBE WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF YOUR PAPER BY COMPLETING THIS STATEMENT: THE PURPOSE OF MY PAPER IS TO:

Okay, so I know I said I wasn’t going to talk about it, but I’ve realized you can’t really write a paper about instructional software in the 80s and not include word processing software. I mean without a doubt, word processing was the most popular computer application in English classrooms in the 80s (and I’d say that it remains the most common application used by English students today—though we don’t talk about it much). There is a great story to be told  about how the rise of process pedagogy and the rise of word processor worked in tandem to place a greater emphasis on deep revision in writing classrooms. At the same time, many word processing programs promoted corporate values of neatness and correctness that fit right in with the current-traditional paradigm. It’s also exciting to learn how English teachers debated the unique affordances and limitations of differing kinds of word processing software vs. pencils and pens, placing a real emphasis of the materiality of writing technologies. Today, we tend to think of word processing software as boring and simple, but when we look back at the 80s, we can start to remember just how revolutionary these word processing programs were.

FINE, JB PALMCORKLE. QUESTION 8 -- ONE OF MY ALL-TIME FAVORITES COMING UP. DESCRIBE HOW WORD PROCESSING IN THE 80S PHYSICALLY CHANGES.

Okay, let’s see. I can think of three major changes that happened during this time. One major change was hardware related: the arrival of the comparatively cost-effective and user-friendly personal computer. Couple that with increasingly slicker user interfaces, not to mention the interactivity offered by networking devices, and you have yourself a definite game changer. I suspect mainframe computers never really gained traction in the English classroom because, by comparison, they were difficult to operate, expensive to maintain and own outright, and typically involved cumbersome time-sharing systems in order to access them. I think this explains why, after half a dozen computer articles from 1964 - 1971, the 70s becomes this “lost decade” with no real focus on computer usage. We don’t really see articles on computers again until 1980, and with that a growing chorus of enthusiasm for the desktop machine. In 1980, Nancy Thompson forcefully declared, “The home computer revolution is the phenomenon that can make small, inexpensive computers available for widespread learning” (p. 89). Other teachers of the era were similarly amped about this new machine (Thompson, 1980; Bell, 1980; Monahan, 1982; Rodrigues, 1984; Curtice, 1984). Once computers started making their way into homes, it began to make more sense to imagine them in classrooms, too.

BY GEORGE, JB. GOOD ONE. A LITTLE MORE PLEASE.

To put it simply, word processing was the killer app of the early 1980s. While there were a couple outliers warning of other people doing students’ work for them or bemoaning the loss of writing by hand (Brooker, 1984; Boggess, 1986), teachers overwhelmingly expressed a lot of excitement about the promise of word processing software to transform student writing (Bleau et al., 1986; Curtice, 1984; Kennedy, 1983; McKenzie, 1984; Monahan, 1982; Muldrow, 1986; Moran, 1983; Schrader, 1984; Withey, 1983; Womble, 1984). Up until that time, computing in general leaned more in a data-processing direction, and even within the smaller world of English, the computer seemed like more of a niche tool to experiment with things like rudimentary textual analysis (Ellis, 1964) or automatic essay grading (Daigon, 1966). But then software that assisted in the act of writing came into the world, which aligned well with one of the central activities of the English classroom.

SUPER, JB. ADD TO YOUR RESPONSE NOW.

I imagine that the move from the command line interface (CLI) to the graphical user interface (GUI) was also a key change. While initially students had to learn arcane markup codes in order to style or format their text, GUI-based word processors simplified this part of the process by presenting users with a screen view of what the eventual printed product would look like. This helped cut down on the cognitive noise for students as they drafted and revised their writing.

GO ON, JB

In this period, you also start to see the first inklings of interest in the possibilities networked computing, so poetically expressed in Gerald Brooker’s phrase “The Big Typewriter in the Sky” (Brooker, 1984, p. 31). But since the real action in this arena doesn’t really ramp up until after the period I’m concerned with in this particular session, that’s a story for another time.

HERE IS QUESTION 9, JB. WHAT SYSTEMS OF BELIEFS SURROUND WORD PROCESSING IN THE 80s. ELABORATE.

That’s a hard question, but an important one. I would say one of the biggest beliefs we see is that writing is a nonlinear process of deep revision; English teachers didn’t just look to the word processing software as a way for students to correct errors, but instead they viewed the turn to word processing as a way to encourage students to take risks in making substantive changes to their drafts (Bencivenga, 1981; Monahan, 1982; Moran, 1983; McKenzie 1984; Withey, 1983). English teachers experimenting with process-approaches often found that students were resistant to multiple drafts because of the tediousness of “recopying” (Moran, 1983), but word processing software made students more open to substantive revision. (I remember this well...my hand still hurts with phantom pain when I remember doing multiple drafts by pen back in the day). In 1983, Margaret Withey cogently made the case for the word processor as a revision tool, explaining that “experienced writers tend to move sentences and paragraphs around, reorganize whole sections of articles, insert new material, and discard writing that no longer fits or serves. For student writers, the act of recopying discourages large revisions. Well-designed word processors eliminate recopying and encourage reorganization” (p. 29). I think we tend to take for granted the ability to use ‘copy and paste’ functions to move material around, but we forget just how new and exciting this all was!

&&

GO ON, JB.

Okay. I think English teachers’ emphasis on the word processor as revision tool both worked with but also against the dominant rhetoric of the time that pitched the word processor as a more efficient writing tool for producing neat, ‘correct’ text. We can see English teachers drawing on the commonplace of technological efficiency in suggesting that word processors make revision easier, but at the same time they were resisting efficiency norms by suggesting that writing was a complex, nonlinear intellectual activity--not a simple matter of transcribing thought. I find myself connecting most with those English teachers who saw the rise of word processing software as an occasion to radically rethink how we teach the process of writing. For example,  Jamieson McKenzie asserted that “when the automobile first appeared, people kept thinking of it as a ‘horseless carriage.’ So with the WP [Word Processor]. Most commentary stresses the editing features of the WP. Just as the automobile drivers learned to leave their whips at home, it is time we recognize the fact that writing with a WP represents a fundamentally different way for us to bring our written expression into line with the way we think” (Mackenzie, 1984, p. 58). For Mackenzie, the goal of writing with word processing software was not simply to fix errors more quickly, but rather to enable a nonlinear, recursive model of what he called “accordion writing” in which writers start in the middle and expand out.

GOOD, JB. PLEASE ADD TO YOUR RESPONSE NOW.

In addition to fostering nonlinear composing processes, teachers also looked to word processing software as a way to encourage students to overcome writer’s block and get started drafting. Reflecting on how his own writing process changed when he switched to writing with word processing software, Charles Moran wrote that “I am, relatively speaking, a blocked writer. I tend to over-edit myself, killing the good and the bad before either reaches paper. [...]You can imagine what the word-processor has done for me. Now the words fly up on the screen, not ink on paper but images that, with a single keystroke, can be erased, filed, moved, changed” (Moran 1983, p. 113). In this way, Moran suggested that students might be more open to invention techniques like free writing if they knew that they could always change the words later without needing to handwrite a new draft from scratch.

FINE, JB. ANYTHING ELSE?

Okay, so I’ve talked about how word processing pedagogies were influenced by the complex tensions and intersections between corporate efficiency and process pedagogy. But, of course, there was another older ideology lurking in English teachers’ responses to computers: the ideal of the romantic solitary author. In 1986, Laurence Boggess published a column in which he professed to be a “hopeless romantic” who sought to resist not only the word processor but the dreaded typewriter as well. Boggess worried about “a generation of writers that won't be able to write unless they are lulled by the glow of the screen and the patter of the printer. Soon, young writers will not think it possible, let alone worthwhile, to compose by hand, miles from the nearest socket, nestled in a  cabin amidst the forest primeval, deliciously ensconced on a sofa, bathed in firelight” (p. 93). For Boggess, the ideal writer was the solitary author alone in nature--away from social connections and modern technologies. Boggess seemed to worry that students were no longer writing alone with pens, but instead were composing in computer labs bursting with people and machines. And, yet, as much I disagree with Boggess’s romantic view of authorship, I found myself sympathetic to his critique of rhetorics of efficiency: “I don't want to see the art of writing made more efficient and manageable. Writing is messy and confusing. It's the slogging through the muck of meaning that teaches writers to write” (p. 93). Boggess was on point here that English teachers needed to be wary of the idea that word processing made writing simple or easy, but I find myself siding more with the teachers who sought to use word processing in ways that helped students feel more comfortable lingering in the “muck” of creative invention and deep revision. 

WE’RE MOVING RIGHT ALONG. HERE IS QUESTION 10. HOW ARE THE CHUNKS OR COMPONENTS OF WORD PROCESSING IN THE 80S ORGANIZED IN RELATION TO ONE ANOTHER? DESCRIBE.

Well, there are so many chunks related to this topic that it can be pretty hard to make sense of their structure. You have various pedagogies, hardware and software technologies, ideologies of authorship, material spaces, corporations, governmental institutions, educational administrators, students, teachers, parents, economic class structures, and probably more components if I were to keep thinking about it. I tend to think of these chunks not necessarily as a hierarchical organization, but rather as a network of interrelated parts: changes in one part of the network impact the network as a whole, and something that seems only slightly important might suddenly become very important because of these fluctuations.

GOOD, JB. ADD TO YOUR RESPONSE NOW.

I think what I like most about the network model for organizing the “chunks” of word processing is that it resists simple cause and effect. For example, you might think of the rise of word processor as *the* cause of an increased emphasis on writing pedagogy in *English Journal*; but, this is not the whole story. Interest in writing pedagogy in the journal had already started rising in the 70s before the PC came on the scene--a reflection of “Why Can’t Johnny Can’t Write” and other rhetorics of literacy crisis that were prominent in the time period (Trimbur, 1991). So we can see that word processors entered English classroom at a moment in which writing instruction was already surging, and in some ways the personal computer just rode the rising wave of writing instruction that had already started. It’s also the case that an emphasis on process pedagogy already started developing in the the 70s in *English Journal* before the arrival of personal computers, but the rise of the word processor further fueled an emphasis on the power of deep revision as a writing and learning strategy. I find myself wondering if process pedagogy would have had such great staying power in the field if word processing hadn’t come along at just the right time to make all that copious revising (dare I say it?) a little more efficient. And of course, to really draw out the network of “chunks,” I’d need to look in detail at the influence of evolving hardware and software programs, governmental technology initiatives, the growing class inequalities of the Reagan era and so much more. I mean computers were freakin expensive in the 80s...and they could be found in relatively few classrooms or even homes in that period (Moran, 1983). I could also do a deeper dive into how the rise of the GUI made word processing software feel less technical and more humanistic for English teachers, thus increasing adoption. So...yeah there are a lot of chunks in the network of word processing in the 80s, but I’m getting tired just thinking about them all so I’m gonna stop mapping them if that’s okay with you.

AND HERE COMES A REALLY INTERESTING QUESTION -- NUMBER 11. HOW WOULD YOU COMPLETE THIS STATEMENT: IF NOTHING ELSE, I WANT MY READER TO UNDERSTAND...

That question, again. Damn you!!! It’s a hard one, but I know it’s important. I guess I want my reader to understand that pedagogical and technological changes complexly interanimate one another. New technologies give us occasions to rethink our pedagogical practices, but our existing pedagogical goals also always influence how and if we welcome a new technology into our classrooms. Hell, I think that might be what I want my readers to most understand after they read this whole book. So, let’s get more specific: word processing in the 80s. I think I want readers to stop taking their word processing programs for granted--to revel in the riveting magic that happens when we move a paragraph around or write our introductions last or rewrite a sentence 5 different ways before it feels right. Word processing software has such radical potential to enable substantive revision, but how often do we talk about the unique opportunities of word processing with students anymore? How often do we take the time compare the affordances and limitations of writing by hand or writing on computer? How often do we take the time to try out a bunch of different word processing programs and use these experiments as an occasion to rethink how we invent and revise our writing? (For example, I know google docs has transformed my own practice as both a writer and a writing teacher, but I’ve never really paused to interrogate it deeply). I think what I want my readers to most remember is that word processing software wasn’t just a default tool in classrooms in the 80s; it was an occasion for students and teachers alike to engage in complex conversations about how different writing technologies can influence our composing processes. Just because word processing is no longer new doesn’t mean we can’t keep having those conversations. In fact, it might be precisely because of the ubiquity of word processors, to the point of their near invisibility, that we should be having these conversations.

QUESTION 12 -- HOW IS WORD PROCESSING IN THE 80S LIKE THE HUMAN BLOOD SYSTEM?

Eww. Grody to the max!!!

GO ON, JB.

Stop!

YOU EXPLORED ALL OF THE QUESTIONS I ASKED. THAT’S 100%. LET ME REMIND YOU THAT YOU ARE STILL IN THE FIRST STAGES OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS. THESE IDEAS MUST SIMMER NOW.

ALSO I HOPE YOU CAN CREATE SOME OF YOUR OWN TOPIC QUESTIONS. I WON’T ALWAYS BE AROUND TO HELP!!!

FINALLY, I HOPE YOUR PAPER IS AS SYSTEMATICALLY ORGANIZED AND POLISHED AS IT WAS SYSTEMATICALLY THOUGHT ABOUT TODAY.

CORDIALLY,

A KINDRED CREATIVE SPIRIT.