In Cynthia Selfe’s book “Lest We Think the Revolution is a Revolution” in chapter 16 Selfe talks about how “at some level, English Departments have come to terms with technology change”. Selfe claims that educators “we [(being the educators)] have adjusted to diminishing supplies and equipment budgets to accommodate an ongoing program of purchases and upgrades, accepted computer studies as a new area of scholarly focus, integrated technology into various curricula, and modified many programs to include technology training and use”. In other words, Selfe believes that English Departments or educators are altering the way they operate to adapt to the changes in technology and to integrate technology into their studies.
Selfe’s claim that English Departments are adapting to technology changes rests on the questionable assumption that technology is beneficial to English Departments and what they try to achieve. Waxman, Connell, and Gray in “A Quantitative Synthesis of Recent Research on the Effects of Teaching and Learning With Technology on Student Outcomes” found in their research that teaching and learning with technology had a small positive impact on the student’s outcome. A survey taken in the 2005-06 school year for Technology Counts 2006 showed that 40 states had technology standards for teachers in order to promote innovative practices. Although teachers and students had access to technology, the level of improvement in the students on an academic level was unnoticeable. This showed that the technology offered was not being used effectively. The Waxman, Connell, and Gray research and the survey for Technology Counts 2006 convince me that the changes that English Departments are taking to integrate technology are not necessarily worth it. Teachers continue to use their traditional teaching habits and their students are not benefiting from the access to and use of technology.
Uncovering values was defined in “How to Do Things with Text” as “when you surface a word or concept for analysis that a text has left undefined or unexamined”. I applied this countering strategy by countering Selfe’s claim that the English Department’s adaptions to technology changes have been a benefit. In my countering I mentioned how the English Departments are changing because of technology but I explained that it was not serving the purpose that the Department intended to achieve.