HISTORY:
Teaching CyberEnglish and Why
Cyber English began for me in my junior year of college when I took a bookbinding
course. The essence of the class was that, we as writers, would become our own publishers.
We wrote some poetry. We chose the type and set it in one of those old hand printing
presses. We selected an ink. We selected exotic papers. We set the type, we printed. We
sewed and glued the pages into a hard cover book. We did everything an artist does: created
the product and saw it all the way to completion. The big difference is that writers did
not have this power. Writers always had to turn their work over to too many others who
altered and changed it beyond recognition. Well now writers and teachers of writing have
the power to publish, which is the end result of writing. So a dream that began in the
early seventies has finally found its reality in the early nineties. In 1984, technology
added an important element to the growth of Cyber English, when I was introduced to the
Intranet, and then the Internet in 1986. I added the WWW in 1994. Each scholar has email
and a webpage. TeleMentoring is another major facet of our on line presence.
Cyber English is a pedagogical experiment in practical theory in developing an alternative
option to traditional education and a project to answer the various
voices of America for better educational practice.
I no longer read a book or an article, listen to
a presentation or lecture, teach a class, or conduct an observation without
looking at the social and political implications for
both myself and my students. I inquire about power
and equity issues involved in new mandates from the
district and state level and consider what actions
I might take.
Go back to the beginning
© Ted Nellen 1993 - 2012
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