In this paper we explore the phenomenon of writing online. We ask, ‘Is writing by means of online technologies affected in a manner that differs significantly from the older technologies of pen on paper, typewriter, or even the word processor in an off‐line environment?’ In writing online, the author is engaged in a spatial complexity of physical, temporal, imaginal, and virtual experience: the writing space, the space of the text, cyber space, etc. At times, these may provide a conduit to (...) a writerly understanding of human phenomena. We propose that an examination of the phenomenological features of online writing may contribute to a more pedagogically sensitive understanding of the experiences of online seminars, teaching and learning. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Where Are We When We Write? Writing Public Cyberwriting Writing the Distance to the Other Entering the Page: Proximity and Distance Writing Revisited Note References.