Mobile writing technologies: The dislocation of the computer classroom

MOBILE WRITING TECHNOLOGIES conceptualizes the wireless writing classroom as a nexus where administrators', instructors', and students' desires are often at odds with each other. Bringing these competing desires to the fore, this work highlights the fissures that tend to get paved over by time and power, fissures that, when exposed and interrogated, represent opportunities for institutional change accomplished via rhetoric. The project problematizes the manner in which some scholars (fail to) conceptualize place and in turn fosters a plastic view of place as unfixed intersection that defies simple, firm enclosures. Drawing from technical and professional writing, rhetoric and composition, human-computer interaction, and other fields, the present study argues for a more participatory approach to wireless classroom design that takes stakeholders' favored spatial arrangements and names for wireless classrooms into account. It culminates in a series of comprehensive design heuristics that accommodate competing discourses and preferences.

Meredith W. Zoetewey is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of South Florida. She teaches courses in professional and technical writing.