Questions

Branscum and Toscano advise us to "deal early with compatibility issues-both human and technological" by "undertaking a small miniproject of the same kind that is to be assigned to students. Such a practice, they argue, is "essential when teachers have minimal experience composing with unfamiliar modalities, with digital tools, or in digital environments" (86).

Their advice is not uncommon by any means among this type of scholarship. It makes sense that we'll need to "brush up" on the technology aspects of these assignments. But what I keep returning to when I read these kinds of statements are the issues of experience and training. As educators, we teach what we were trained in or educated in. In most fields there's an expectation that we will continue to learn and improve our methods, and to stay current with contemporary research / theory. However, TR rich comp pedagogy asks us to invest a great deal of time and energy into a few arguably separate fields (graphic design, audio/video communication, etc). My question, I guess, is this: Where do we draw the line between staying up to date in our fields and becoming trained in other areas that this type of technological composing makes necessary?