In my Composition I course ( Mapping the Self), students are in the late stages of their third paper, a textual collage documenting a memory of an Entertainment text. (The students use collage techniques from Elbow's Being a Writer to conduct an experiment loosely based on Chapter 5 of Ulmer's Internet Invention.) The other day, we had a discussion about the characteristics and techniques used to create collages as opposed to essays or other more traditional writing forms. One of my more technologically savvy students commented that "collages are more blog-ish."

I'm intrigued by a couple things there:
1. That my student is so familiar with blogs that they become a descriptive form--he conceives collages as a sort-of remediated blog. Of course, the characteristics of the network culture that blogs propegate don't work so well on ink-and-paper assignments, but the same rhetorical moves occur. Nonetheless, my electracytometer (measures how strongly electracy appears in a context) buzzed high. I like that he sees the digital as the primary mode for this kind of work.
2. That many others in the class had no idea what he was talking about. I had to explain what blogs are, and where they might have seen them. Does this constitute another kind of "digital divide"? One based less in access (most of these students have the same opportunities for access) and more in education and appetite?