3) Most importantly, help students develop "a writing relationship with technology" (Pope 196)

Stuart Selber (2004) notes one way we can prepare teachers of writing to integrate technology is to engage them in student assignments that make transparent the relationship between technology and writing (64). They see the assignment in practice, test it themselves, and critique it at the same time as a means of learning by doing (Gee 138). (Hult and Meeks 188). Assignments that immerse second career teachers in "new" and "old" technologies include digital letter writing (May 1995), technology literacy narratives (Duffelmeyer, 2000; Latterell, 2002), and offering intertextual or post-textual responses to the students" using electronic comments (Pope 196) One assignment I like to use with WMC students is a "bridge" assignment. Here, students are asked to "describe" their first career in one print and in one non-print based medium. One assignment I received from a former comptroller had a student's first career represented in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, with descriptive words in the cells meant for formulas, such as "numbers," "9-5," "rigid." The non-print project was a series of photographs in a video essay featuring former co-workers at conferences, lunches, and at impromptu moments around the office. We compare and contrast not only the differences in representation, but how the multimodality often lends a richness to the texts not available in print mediums like spreadsheets and print-based essays. Assignments such as the one above address the need for teachers to be fully prepared to engage in multimodal instruction, and "nurturing this appreciation and readiness requires that preservice teachers experience technology as a natural part of their preparation environment" (Byrum and Cashman 221).

This writing relationship with technology should also be a critical one. Like traditional students, non-traditional students are also in danger being so eager to try a variety of technological tools that were often not available when they themselves went to school, that they fail to question why mode of learning is better over another (audio versus print, or video versus blog, etc.) While I found several students were eager to question technologies they were "suspicious of" such as Facebook, they were less so when it came to tools such as Windows MovieMaker. In addition, Blair (2005) argues "few student texts submitted for grade or publication have the 'just right' balance between design and content to complement each other and contribute equally to rhetorical purpose, even if the choice of medium is effective." However, "the use of technology should exemplify how it can be used to support, expand, and enhance the English Language Arts curricula" (Merkley et al. 227). Because writing is immersed in all aspects of this curricula, WMC instructors should be careful to have second career students make use of their ability to question and debate the benefits to multimodal assignments while immersed in these multimodal assignments and to articulate benefits. By doing so, "Opportunities to think and compose multimodality can help us develop an increasingly complex and accurate understanding of writing, composition instruction, and text" (Takayoshi and Selfe 5). If it is "It is only teachers' learning about new approaches to composing and creating meaning through texts that will catalyze changes in composition classrooms" (Takayoshi and Selfe 5), it is particularly important that second career teachers, who remain in the field statistically longer (Grissmer 2000), that are trained to do so effectively within the writing methods course.

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