Despite extensive research on digital aspects of composition and repeated calls for shifts in the teaching of composition, movement towards digital rhetorics and multimodal literacies is slow. The well-reasoned arguments and suggestions for change are often widely adopted and advocated among teachers and researchers active in the field of computers and composition. Outside that circle, however, the ideas might be acknowledged but they still meet large pockets of resistance, resistance that sounds something like:

• I can’t. I don’t know how to do that.
• This takes resources, time, and skills that I just don’t have.
• Will this be acceptable for a history paper? I have to teach these students to write. Who will prepare them if I don’t?
• That’s not my job. I teach writing, not design.
• Is this really teachable? I don’t think I can or should teach this.
• I’m not a techy person.
• Students need to learn to write first. Then they can do this multimodal thing.
• I don’t have time in my classes to add any of this digital stuff.
• My students know social media. They just don’t know how to write.
• This new media stuff is not better. It's just hype.
• I do not want to be assimilated by the technology “Borg” or by “Googlezon.” I prefer to keep my identity and privacy intact.
• I don’t want to be lulled by digital bells and whistles into peacefully accepting the colonizing and hegemonizing forces of this technology and of the people pulling the puppet strings behind the screen.

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