What is the future of humanities in a technologically driven world? According to Paul Hammond, Director of Digital Initiatives at Rutgers University, “The future of humanities is in technologies.”
Hammond gave the keynote address, What’s New About New Media: Multimedia Composition in Today’s Classroom, at the ninth Annual Conference of the New Jersey Writing Alliance at Georgian Court University April 4. The conference, What’s the Buzz: Innovations in teaching Writing, brought together writing teachers at the high school and college level from throughout the state in order to share strategies, pedagogical philosophies, and concerns.
Hammond cited figures which indicate a decreased interest in reading by young people and pointed out its subsequent impact on writing. “If people aren’t reading, then they aren’t writing,” he said. he refered to the report by the Association of American Universities (AAU), Reinvigorating the Humanities. The report notes the role of humanities as one of cross linking, disseminating and making information more accessible. He pointed to a Rutgers learning community on writing as an example of an opportunity for a “lived experience” with the humanities. The point is to get students to “slow down and engage in the world around them.”
Hammond began his talk with a multimedia presentation, an example of the kind of assignment he might challenge students with. The point of the video, he said, was not merely to produce it, but to “enter into a conversation.” That conversation is the ongoing discussion among educators about the future of writing in an electronic world and the challenge to engage students in it.
One way to engage students is through multimedia composition. Multimedia allows students to express thoughts in ways that regular composition does not allow. Though students in today’s classrooms are technologically savvy, they are not savvy in a “thought-driven” way, Hammond said. Students may know how to use the technolgoy, but they need to be taught how to think. “Students think technology does it for them,” he said.
Hammond warned educators not to be lulled into using technology “for technology’s sake” or using it in a reactive way. Technology use in the writing classroom must be centered around what the teacher’s goals are, Hammond noted. He warned educators, “The answer is not to buy more computers,” but to look into new uses of technology that supports what we as educators are doing. The question to ask before acquiring new technology should be, “Does it do what we want it to do?”
