ERIC Number: EJ1112288
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016-Aug
Pages: 19
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0013-2004
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Programming the Gesture of Writing: On the Algorithmic Paratexts of the Digital
Adams, Catherine
Educational Theory, v66 n4 p479-497 Aug 2016
In the wake of the digital, some have recommended that we abandon the tedium of teaching handwriting to children in service of promoting "more creative" digital literacies. Others worry that an early diet of keyboard and screen may have deleterious effects on children's social, emotional, and cognitive development, as well as their physical well-being. Yet in this debate, the algorithmic scripts and digital surfaces underwriting these new reading, writing, and mathematical practices are, with a few notable exceptions, almost exclusively ignored. In this essay, Catherine Adams asks whether the digital, and the reading and writing spaces it affords, are of consequence to our habits of thinking and ways of being, particularly in light of the possible obsolescence of pen and paper in schools. She shows that writing using a word processor is no mere mechanical pressing of keys, but an intricate ballet of writerly reading eyes and readerly writing hands, caught up in a dynamic environment of algorithmic paratexts and copy-cut-paste thinking.
Descriptors: Handwriting, Writing Instruction, Word Processing, Writing Processes, Reading Processes, Mathematics, Writing Skills, Affordances
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
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Language: English
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