Troy Hicks

Does doing something old with new technology mean that I__ teaching with technology and that I__ doing so in a way as to really improve the reading and writing skills of the students in my classroom?_ (2007, 214). Her answer, as well as mine, would be no. When we simply bring a traditional mind-set to literacy practices, and not a mind-set that understands new literacies (an idea developed by Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel, which I elaborate on later) into the process of digital writing, we cannot make the substantive changes to our teaching that need to happen in order to embrace the...

We can no longer allow them to write just stories and poems; we must teach them the forms of nonfiction writing as well, specifically that of writing on demand.

I argue here and throughout this book that if we engage students in real writing tasks and we use technology in such a way that it complements their innate need to find purposes and audiences for their work, we can have them engaged in a digital writing process that focuses first on the writer, then on the writing, and lastly on the technology_ (8).

What, then, are some of the shifts that have happened in our understanding of the composing process that make a focus on digital writing in the writing workshop that much more compelling?