Technology

Works cited pages plagued me during my undergraduate degree. I seemed to always forget some seemingly vital piece of information, confuse a comma for a period, or format it in correctly. Then, during my senior year, I found some websites that did the work for you. Genius! Or at least I thought. 

'My professors will never know, technology has triumphed over knowledge!' I thought, and to some extent, it had, for I rarely missed points for anything concerning my works cited pages. Fast forward several yeas to my first or second time teaching first year composition. 

I thought, as Adjunct Professor, I could not reveal the secrets of bibme.com and easybib.com, so I studied the writer's handbook and was determined to teach my students how to do a works cited page from scratch. That was my job as an instructor, right? I erased the knowledge of 'cheaters' websites and persevered thought the bored faces and lack of questions. Then everything changed.

R****l was in her mid-twenties and she hated taking FYC, and she had been placed in my class. She challenged me on nearly every topic, and insisted on using words such as participle, dangling modifier, and faulty predication, words that I tended to keep out of a community college classroom for a variety of reasons. I can still hear the students groan when R****l would put her two cents in on every topic we covered. She was challenging as she lacked social awareness and tact, not to mention she never turned anything in, which was why she was taking ENG101 for the third time. 

However, the class sided with her one day: Works Cited day. As I started my lecture, R****l raised and waived her hand like an anxious kindergartner. "Yes, R****l?" I asked. She went on to explain that websites could now do what I was teaching them. Ah, but I was ready for this attack. I told her that I needed to explain the concepts so that if the internet were down or something like that they would know how to put it together, but I soon realized I had been led into a trap, for she then revealed that Word could do it too. Yeah, right, I thought, yet, she continued to urge me to show the students as I was making it harder than it had to be. The problem was, I didn't know how to use Word for that purpose, but as I looked around the classroom, I realized the students were more interested the easy way. I paused. Then I admitted defeat and told the class that maybe we would learn something new together that day, and we did. I'm still not sure if I handled that day right, for R****l seemed to gloat after that and one of my reviews said that I didn't know what I was doing one day and the student had to teach me the material. No doubt from the first person usage, R****l had left the review, but I wondered if other students thought the same thing. Either way, I was glad that I learned the information, but also confused to whether or not I had given the students a short-cut instead of teaching them the material.  

Now in class, I teach the students how to do a Works Cited page though Word, and I seem to receive better Works Cited pages.