Teaching writing and resisting the textual

I think that it is particularly ironic when writing instructors resist online teaching. After all, we teach writing because we believe it is more than simply a critical skill; it is necessary to critical thinking and dialectic. We teach writing because we think it has intrinsic value. We teach writing because we think we can reach out and touch others through what we write. Then we insist that students need face-to-face interaction to really learn.

If we then add multimodal writing, something that has become increasingly valued in writing classrooms, the resistance to online becomes even more baffling. Why teach students how to include video, illustration, audio in their texts, how to design webpages, how to communicate clearly and effectively through internet mediated texts, if we don't think we are capable of communicating that way ourselves?