The End of Composition and a bit on technology

Blog Prompt: What is the "End of Composition"? How do we get there? What are the principles of good writing instruction that will get us there?

Before I get to the above copy and pasted question for this week, put there for my old feeble mind and so I don't I have to look back and forth everytime I forget what I'm talking about, I'd like to talk a bit about Rickly's take on tech.

Well, I gotta say, I like it.
I'm an anti-technology person at heart. (I didn't know how to do an attachment to email until a publisher insisted. I was sure I would handwrite my novels in ms form. etc, etc. Oh, the list is long.) I'm pretty comfortable with that, honest even in inhospitable atmospheres, like this school. But, Rickly's position was new to me and appreciated. We should use technology, not let technology use us. We should use technology as a helpful tool. We should not change to meet technology. We should allow it to help us. I don't think I've allowed that. I think I've fought it at every step, every juncture.
I think this is at the heart of why I hate technology. I've always felt that I had to change to meet it, to use it, to "integrate" my classroom. I'm sure that stems from that fact that I've never (or very seldom), beforehand, planned an activity or assignment or anything that involved the use of technology as a helper, as a tool.
I guess I had it backwards. Thanks for the lightbulb, Rickly, I appreciate it. It's an important misunderstanding on my part. Hopefully, this'll change how I approach technology in the future.
Damn it, I know it will.
Well, that was my moment.
Let me just copy and paste that prompt again.
Blog Prompt: What is the "End of Composition"? How do we get there? What are the principles of good writing instruction that will get us there?
Alright.
Oh, one more sidenote. I hate blogging. I hate myspace. I hate facebook. I hate it all.
But, I've actually come to appreciate the less formal nature of this academic interation.
Anywho.
The end of composition, in a general sense, I guess, is to improve student's writing or perhaps to give them the foundation on which they can build their own ability to write.
I think we get their in a lot of different ways. Ways specific to the individual. We get to that end by formulating our own end, by implementing our personal philosophies of teaching and composition. I'm not going to go into the basic principles. It seems to me that the people who know a helluva lot more about this topic have done a good enough job of publishing those ideas that any one of us could find them. But, I will say that I think it's important that each of us come up with our own list of important fundamentals.
peace out,
brandy y