How Have Writing Centers Viewed New Technologies?
A brief look at the ways writing centers have responded to new technologies in the past may help us answer the first of these questions and provide a useful context for answering the other two as well. Computers have been a part of writing center work for the better part of forty years now, sometimes as writing tools, sometimes as teaching devices, sometimes as resource centers, and sometimes as communications media, yet the relationship between writing centers and computer technology has been, overall, only a cordial one, with occasional fluctuations ranging from wild enthusiasm to brooding antagonism. While computers and computer software have often been praised by writing center scholars for the educational benefits they provide, they have also been seen as incipient threats not merely to the personal, interactive pedagogies that writing centers embrace, but also to the writing centers very existence, particularly in tough budget times when administrators may view CAI programs and o
