Reading Log Audit

I ended up being somewhat overwhelmed by having to take four summer classes and constantly struggled to fit in readings in addition to other courses' demands. Not a valid excuse for any perceived shortcomings to my reading log, I know, but even as I write this audit I have multiple demands upon my time. For this class I think I have written 19 entries altogether. I think the average length is approximately 600 words, and that most of the entries are about this length. The shortest entry I have counted was just over 400 words. The log can be found at this web address: http://esolninthreadinglog.blogspot.com/

In many of my entries I respond to the rhetoric of integrating digital media and technology into English language arts, somewhat skeptically. I came into this class with almost no productive/creative experience of the read/write web and found Richardson’s enthusiasm somewhat off-putting. The reading reinforced our classroom activities and discussions to such an extent that by the end of the semester I was pushing back against my first pushback text (I have just started another, seeing as I bought all three) and largely because of the class assignments, I am now receptive to Richardson’s ideas and to the importance of visual literacy in general. It takes a bit of getting over the textbooks that are integrated into the Cobb County School District’s ELA curriculum (I served on the textbook adoption committee) and I recognize now how visual literacy and other new literacies can complement what I regarded as the traditional ELA curriculum.

To be honest, I don’t really like having to respond to readings in this manner. When I was an MAPW student I had one class that required a similar such learning/assessment process and I just completely took it over in the way I wanted to. I think that the quality of my writing then, shined compared to my logs for this course. I don’t write well to rubrics ever (when I read them) and this fact more than any other informs me about what practices in the ELA classroom might be detrimental to students developing their own writing skills. For example, I think my writing for the assignments is of a higher quality. I just think I don’t synthesize information well and it’s usually my writing ability that gets me through assignments like this.

In practical terms, I think that six weeks is insufficient time to come to grips with such a large volume of information. But seeing as that is only my subjective opinion, I am prepared to take whatever hit I’m going to take to my grade for this class, should my reading log fall short. As far as I’m concerned, I consider myself a convert. I really didn’t see the application of blogs and wikis to the classroom in the beginning, but now I see them as essential tools. I used to assert the primacy of text based literacy over all others to their exclusion, but, again, I have come to modify my opinion. To this extent, I feel that whatever my grade for this particular assignment, the lessons have been learned and I am looking forward to beginning to integrate my newfound knowledge with whichever curriculum I am required to teach in the fall. Some samples of my log follow (I am still not sure how or where to submit this assignment). I have chosen to present my three entries for the pushback text because they so clearly represent the progression of my thoughts as the semester advanced. They were all published about the same time but the first two existed for a while in different stages of completion on my hard drive:

Sample 1.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future

Mark Bauerlein

Part 1

Mark Bauerlein’s book, utilized as a “push back” text for this 7741 course, is the main reason I felt so ambivalent about Richardson’s text. It has taken me some time to balance both the texts and our class instruction in my mind. Bauerlein served with the National Endowment for the Arts at the time that organization issued its report, Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, which was issued about one month before I began my MAPW program at Kennesaw State University.

Naturally, the report was big news for us in the program, all being writers and wondering how small the audience of readers would have shrunk by the time we got our first works published. Still waiting on that one. Also about the same time, and before the collapse of the economy in the waning W. years, I recall having learned that either Borders or Barnes and Noble (I can’t remember which) had  surveyed the reading demographics of Paulding County (next door to where I live) looking at things like percent of population with four year degrees and such, and decided, based on the results of obtained to NOT attempt to open a bookstore in the county, even though it was, at the time, recording some of the highest rates of population growth in the country. A sad, sad testament to the lack of intellectual curiosity and the loss of basic literacy.

My home country, New Zealand had, when I left it, more bookstores per capita than any other nation, much like Iceland which has one of the highest rates of writers per capita. When I left New Zealand (to borrow slightly a tongue-in-cheek comment by one of NZ’s former prime ministers) and came to the United States, I raised the average or median IQ here. Joking aside, I later worked in the KSU Writing Center and met students who quite openly and shamelessly volunteered that they had never read a single book from cover to cover. And yet they expected me to help them improve their writing which provided ample evidence to the loss of basic literacy skills that comes with not reading. It was in this context that I began reading Bauerlein’s book, as if I didn’t need any further encouragement to push back against the ideas of Richardson.

Perhaps there is a mean streak of arrogance in me that questions the point of the curriculum of the nation’s schools, commanded by the mandates of NLCB, that every child should be reading at grade level by 2012-2013. No other nation that I know of tries to do so with the same insistence. Other countries may have higher literacy rates, but they also do not engage in selling the dream of a college education to every child, either. I don’t think enough attention has been given to the concept of functional literacy, which is the level of literacy required to perform the tasks necessary at a level of satisfaction to each individual. By necessity, a journalist should be more literate than a plumber, not to say that plumbers needn’t be connoisseurs of literary fiction, for example, but it’s not necessary for them to be so in order to replace a main water line.

But America has got itself in a tizzy over reading and literacy and now we find out why: the rot is deep and deepening, because of the shift from reading in a linear fashion to “screen time.” The cultural value of reading has dropped and those on the receiving end of this shift, college professors forced to teach remedial classes to freshmen and employers forced to hire workers lacking basic, lower-order thinking skills (like being able to read manuals from cover to cover), may complain about it, but to no avail. Schools are somehow supposed to be able to reverse the tide, and English language arts teachers are supposed to be able to teach non-readers how to write. Bauerlein paints a glum picture. And he found a nodding audience in me. Richardson didn’t have a chance once I was in the grip of The Dumbest Generation.

Sample 2.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future

Mark Bauerlein

Part 2

A good portion of the 7741 course has had us viewing images, statues, videos, logos and other numerous visual “texts.” My take on the process and the purpose of these exercises is that we were being taught to make overt or to articulate normally unspoken assumptions about visual media, because these are the “texts” that our students are most interested in. I really became of two minds about this during the course of time and due to my concurrent reading of Bauerlein’s book. One of my sticking points was this question: If our students are already struggling with basic literacy skills, why jump to interpretations that require more advanced literacy skills?

Bauerlein paraphrases the kind of justifications put out by the techno-literati in this manner:

No longer should we worry whether kids read enough books or not. Instead, we should recognize a new order of reading and text in the world, a newfangled cognition and knowledge. They don’t read books? Well, they read other things. They don’t know any history? Well, maybe not history recorded in books, but they know other kinds.

Bauerlein goes on to debunk this notion, with aplomb, asserting that corporate America has to “spend approximately $3.1 billion annually on in-house literacy tutoring.” I could go on and quote Bauerlein a lot more but his book has already been written. The so-called “new literacies” are on the rise, we are led to believe, but the examination of “e-literacy” reveals instead that both a-literacy (the habit of being able to read and choosing to not do so) and illiteracy are what is really ascendant. It’s a struggle I now find myself part of, daily, as I order my two younger children to turn off the TV, put away their iPods, and pick up a book, finish that chapter. The attractions of “screen time” are irresistible and alluring. I no longer wear a watch, myself, utilizing instead my own iPod touch, which brings wit it more music than I was ever able to choose from when I drive, a movie or two, some games to while away a moment of boredom, my email (when I’m in a WiFi zone), a camera and photo album in one, a calculator, a voice recorder (yes, I use it when I do interviews), and my favorite newspapers.

The interesting things about my iPod use is that it is constant and that it supplements but does not supplant my traditional literacies. My mind has already been trained to access information in a particular way, so I am constantly referring to Wikipedia, calling up written texts, and reading electronic letters, more than any other use. Not so my children. If anything, I feel that they need to reduce their dependence on visual mediums. I have a YouTube account, but once the initial novelty wore off, I barely visit the site now. My kids are constantly streaming movies and other content from Netflix, so much so that we are considering upgrading our internet bandwidth so that the adults can get their work done online.

It is a war: a cultural war, and as teachers we are both in the thick of it, and biased observers aghast at the casualty rate. It is no wonder that I became so ambivalent about the 7741 course. However, what changed me, a little, has been my direct experience with digital media processes and products through our assignments. At the same time, I am aware that I bring to visual literacy and digital media, skills that were honed the hard way and according to Bauerlein, the only way. I served my time in the trenches and can now command a view of the battlefield that I don’t believe my students will ever have if the new literacies are the only ones they acquire. And I know already that getting my students to read the way I do is a challenge that no one in their right mind would tackle. Then again, I prefer long odds.

Sample 3.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future

Mark Bauerlein

Part 3

A simplistic reading of the later chapters of Bauerlein’s book would instruct me to reject the allure of digital media and technology. It is interesting that as I approached the end of this book I started to come around to the point of view that my role as a classroom teacher is one of considerable power. I can take these young unformed minds and guide them to a happy point where they can appreciate, no, more than that, inherit their language, and use it to connect with the read/write web in productive, informed ways. Bauerlein challenges the mentors of the young and that is what I am about to become: so I intend to take up the gauntlet and run with it. If my classroom is going to be the only place where some of my students will ever hold a book, let alone read it, then we are going to hold books, the original artifacts of intellect.

My students are going to hold the books, read them, respond to them, build their vocabularies, develop their abilities to articulate ideas meaningfully in different contexts, and then they are going to take on the web as the new literati, as readers and translators and interpreters, even information managers. Well, some of them at least. Then they are going to become skilled at harnessing the power of the read/write web to their own ends for the good of all. Sigh. The dream bubble just burst. I remembered that those students, who I inherit, who couldn’t read at grade level in third grade, are unlikely to ever read at grade level despite my best efforts so I have to adjust my grandiose vision to meet reality. Okay…some of my students are going to rise up and become the new literati….

It’s a heck of a challenge to be an English language arts teacher in an age in which language is so threatened. The idea that some of my students may never ever be able to understand what I have been writing about in my blog is depressing. But the knowledge that some will, and may well go on to do better than I at articulating the angst of their generation, is uplifting. SO I am still of two minds about digital media and literacy. Obviously my students are going to need a guide, and I realize that I have to come down off my lofty perch and spend some more time in the trenches, learning the ropes again, or rather, learning some different kinds of ropes. Bauerlein serves a warning to educators who decide that the fight is not important. Richardson points toward the frontline and tells us to get going already. It’s kind of exciting. I would love to be one of those secret superweapons who is going to turn the tide of battle. And perhaps doing so for some of my a-literate students will be enough.  And for some of my others who may struggle the most in my class—perhaps I will sow the seeds of their future success. I hope so. 

Roblyer, M. D. Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching. 4th ed. Columbus, Ohio: Pearson, 2006.

 After reading the texts prescribed for the ENGL 7741 class, I cast around for something that might be immediately relevant to an MAT candidate like myself who will actually be teaching an ESOL 9^th grade lit. class in August. Naturally, overwhelmed by the surfeit of information about integrating technology into the classroom, I thought this book would be a refreshing change. I actually picked it up because it has one chapter dedicated to “English and Language Arts Instruction” and one to “Technology in English Language Learning and Foreign Language Instruction.” I was hoping to find some useful information for integrating the two disciplines.

Having been of two minds about some of the things we’ve learned this semester, due in large part to my sympathetic reading of the “push back” text, I was extremely interested to read the following, which I quote in full because it has so much bearing on this course’s syllabus:

According to the IRA [International Reading Association], students have the right to:

·      Teachers who are skilled in the effective use of technology for teaching and learning,

·      A literacy curriculum that integrates the new literacies of technology into instructional programs,

·      Instruction that develops the critical literacies essential to effective information use,

·      Assessment practices in literacy that include reading and writing with technology tools,

·      Opportunities to learn safe and responsible use of information and communication technologies, and

·      Equal access to technology.

This text turned out to be more general and broader in scope than I expected and its content does not lend it easily to cover to cover reading. But it is filled with ideas that reinforce the syllabus and information to help teachers access technology for classroom use, although the content is somewhat dated, like the Richardson text. But I was extremely impressed by the ideas quoted above. They reinforce the philosophy that I have reached at the end of this course and which I express in my course reflection as follows:

In class, we have examined different modes of expression that now permeate society and which students themselves also need to access and respond to. Videos on YouTube, and web sites calling for attention like sirens, amongst others, now feature prominently in the mindscapes of teenagers, and as a teacher I recognize that I have to join my students in navigating visual and digital texts and negotiating meaning across contexts in a manner that would not only have been impossible just fifteen years ago, but also meaningless. However, my readings during this semester have presented me with a significant caveat to such engagement: the traditional foci of content in English language arts (ELA) needs to complement such non-print texts, otherwise students will be unable to meaningfully articulate their own interpretations, either in person or across time (i.e. in writing). As instruction in the “grammars” of English brings students to both print and non-print texts, these texts in turn should inform students’ own understanding of how the study of English language arts can both empower them and engage them in meaningful discourse with multiple audiences across multiple platforms and networks.

I will probably continue to refer to this text as the year progresses, and as questions arise. I recognize the importance of the ideas that Richardson espouses in his book and feel better having come to terms with my initial biases towards traditional texts and print media.

The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future

Mark Bauerlein

Part 3

A simplistic reading of the later chapters of Bauerlein’s book would instruct me to reject the allure of digital media and technology. It is interesting that as I approached the end of this book I started to come around to the point of view that my role as a classroom teacher is one of considerable power. I can take these young unformed minds and guide them to a happy point where they can appreciate, no, more than that, inherit their language, and use it to connect with the read/write web in productive, informed ways. Bauerlein challenges the mentors of the young and that is what I am about to become: so I intend to take up the gauntlet and run with it. If my classroom is going to be the only place where some of my students will ever hold a book, let alone read it, then we are going to hold books, the original artifacts of intellect.

My students are going to hold the books, read them, respond to them, build their vocabularies, develop their abilities to articulate ideas meaningfully in different contexts, and then they are going to take on the web as the new literati, as readers and translators and interpreters, even information managers. Well, some of them at least. Then they are going to become skilled at harnessing the power of the read/write web to their own ends for the good of all. Sigh. The dream bubble just burst. I remembered that those students, who I inherit, who couldn’t read at grade level in third grade, are unlikely to ever read at grade level despite my best efforts so I have to adjust my grandiose vision to meet reality. Okay…some of my students are going to rise up and become the new literati….

It’s a heck of a challenge to be an English language arts teacher in an age in which language is so threatened. The idea that some of my students may never ever be able to understand what I have been writing about in my blog is depressing. But the knowledge that some will, and may well go on to do better than I at articulating the angst of their generation, is uplifting. SO I am still of two minds about digital media and literacy. Obviously my students are going to need a guide, and I realize that I have to come down off my lofty perch and spend some more time in the trenches, learning the ropes again, or rather, learning some different kinds of ropes. Bauerlein serves a warning to educators who decide that the fight is not important. Richardson points toward the frontline and tells us to get going already. It’s kind of exciting. I would love to be one of those secret superweapons who is going to turn the tide of battle. And perhaps doing so for some of my a-literate students will be enough.  And for some of my others who may struggle the most in my class—perhaps I will sow the seeds of their future success. I hope so. 

The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future

Mark Bauerlein

Part 2

A good portion of the 7741 course has had us viewing images, statues, videos, logos and other numerous visual “texts.” My take on the process and the purpose of these exercises is that we were being taught to make overt or to articulate normally unspoken assumptions about visual media, because these are the “texts” that our students are most interested in. I really became of two minds about this during the course of time and due to my concurrent reading of Bauerlein’s book. One of my sticking points was this question: If our students are already struggling with basic literacy skills, why jump to interpretations that require more advanced literacy skills?

Bauerlein paraphrases the kind of justifications put out by the techno-literati in this manner:

No longer should we worry whether kids read enough books or not. Instead, we should recognize a new order of reading and text in the world, a newfangled cognition and knowledge. They don’t read books? Well, they read other things. They don’t know any history? Well, maybe not history recorded in books, but they know other kinds.

Bauerlein goes on to debunk this notion, with aplomb, asserting that corporate America has to “spend approximately $3.1 billion annually on in-house literacy tutoring.” I could go on and quote Bauerlein a lot more but his book has already been written. The so-called “new literacies” are on the rise, we are led to believe, but the examination of “e-literacy” reveals instead that both a-literacy (the habit of being able to read and choosing to not do so) and illiteracy are what is really ascendant. It’s a struggle I now find myself part of, daily, as I order my two younger children to turn off the TV, put away their iPods, and pick up a book, finish that chapter. The attractions of “screen time” are irresistible and alluring. I no longer wear a watch, myself, utilizing instead my own iPod touch, which brings wit it more music than I was ever able to choose from when I drive, a movie or two, some games to while away a moment of boredom, my email (when I’m in a WiFi zone), a camera and photo album in one, a calculator, a voice recorder (yes, I use it when I do interviews), and my favorite newspapers.

The interesting things about my iPod use is that it is constant and that it supplements but does not supplant my traditional literacies. My mind has already been trained to access information in a particular way, so I am constantly referring to Wikipedia, calling up written texts, and reading electronic letters, more than any other use. Not so my children. If anything, I feel that they need to reduce their dependence on visual mediums. I have a YouTube account, but once the initial novelty wore off, I barely visit the site now. My kids are constantly streaming movies and other content from Netflix, so much so that we are considering upgrading our internet bandwidth so that the adults can get their work done online.

It is a war: a cultural war, and as teachers we are both in the thick of it, and biased observers aghast at the casualty rate. It is no wonder that I became so ambivalent about the 7741 course. However, what changed me, a little, has been my direct experience with digital media processes and products through our assignments. At the same time, I am aware that I bring to visual literacy and digital media, skills that were honed the hard way and according to Bauerlein, the only way. I served my time in the trenches and can now command a view of the battlefield that I don’t believe my students will ever have if the new literacies are the only ones they acquire. And I know already that getting my students to read the way I do is a challenge that no one in their right mind would tackle. Then again, I prefer long odds.

The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future

Mark Bauerlein

Part 1

Mark Bauerlein’s book, utilized as a “push back” text for this 7741 course, is the main reason I felt so ambivalent about Richardson’s text. It has taken me some time to balance both the texts and our class instruction in my mind. Bauerlein served with the National Endowment for the Arts at the time that organization issued its report, Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, which was issued about one month before I began my MAPW program at Kennesaw State University.

Naturally, the report was big news for us in the program, all being writers and wondering how small the audience of readers would have shrunk by the time we got our first works published. Still waiting on that one. Also about the same time, and before the collapse of the economy in the waning W. years, I recall having learned that either Borders or Barnes and Noble (I can’t remember which) had  surveyed the reading demographics of Paulding County (next door to where I live) looking at things like percent of population with four year degrees and such, and decided, based on the results of obtained to NOT attempt to open a bookstore in the county, even though it was, at the time, recording some of the highest rates of population growth in the country. A sad, sad testament to the lack of intellectual curiosity and the loss of basic literacy.

My home country, New Zealand had, when I left it, more bookstores per capita than any other nation, much like Iceland which has one of the highest rates of writers per capita. When I left New Zealand (to borrow slightly a tongue-in-cheek comment by one of NZ’s former prime ministers) and came to the United States, I raised the average or median IQ here. Joking aside, I later worked in the KSU Writing Center and met students who quite openly and shamelessly volunteered that they had never read a single book from cover to cover. And yet they expected me to help them improve their writing which provided ample evidence to the loss of basic literacy skills that comes with not reading. It was in this context that I began reading Bauerlein’s book, as if I didn’t need any further encouragement to push back against the ideas of Richardson.

Perhaps there is a mean streak of arrogance in me that questions the point of the curriculum of the nation’s schools, commanded by the mandates of NLCB, that every child should be reading at grade level by 2012-2013. No other nation that I know of tries to do so with the same insistence. Other countries may have higher literacy rates, but they also do not engage in selling the dream of a college education to every child, either. I don’t think enough attention has been given to the concept of functional literacy, which is the level of literacy required to perform the tasks necessary at a level of satisfaction to each individual. By necessity, a journalist should be more literate than a plumber, not to say that plumbers needn’t be connoisseurs of literary fiction, for example, but it’s not necessary for them to be so in order to replace a main water line.

But America has got itself in a tizzy over reading and literacy and now we find out why: the rot is deep and deepening, because of the shift from reading in a linear fashion to “screen time.” The cultural value of reading has dropped and those on the receiving end of this shift, college professors forced to teach remedial classes to freshmen and employers forced to hire workers lacking basic, lower-order thinking skills (like being able to read manuals from cover to cover), may complain about it, but to no avail. Schools are somehow supposed to be able to reverse the tide, and English language arts teachers are supposed to be able to teach non-readers how to write. Bauerlein paints a glum picture. And he found a nodding audience in me. Richardson didn’t have a chance once I was in the grip of The Dumbest Generation.

It Takes a Village to Find a Phone

Clay Shirky

My natural instinct to respond first to this article about the repercussions of Evan Guttman’s ability to wield social media in a successful bid to retrieve a misappropriated cellphone, is to consider strategies to help prevent my students from inadvertently becoming future Sasha’s, the teenage girl upon whom the weight of the internet fell. My second instinct is to go online and scrub the read/write web of anything with my name on it, simply because the very idea that a potential audience of anonymous millions exists to scrutinize my writings or my image or my life is appalling.

I understand that the read/write web has bought change to how we communicate. To some extent it allows communication to greatly exceed the worth of the information being communicated. If Sasha can be tracked  down or even tracked because of the tools that are now in the hands of all, then I, too, or my children could be similarly tracked down. It’s a horrid thought. Not that there is any reason why I or my children should be tracked down.

If there is any lesson to be taken from this story about the lost phone into the classroom, it is this: “You students are connected to the rest of the world whether you like it or not, whether you are aware of it or not, whether you want it or not. Be careful. Don’t threaten anyone or be abusive. And use spell-check, at the very least because you will be judged on how well you write pretty much anything. Remember that all of your texts and emails and blog posts are potentially forever, and that anything you say can/could/will be used against you in the event that something goes wrong.  Be prepared to have conversations with strangers despite what your parents told you, don’t divulge any information that could identify you, although it’s probably too late for that; use the highest privacy settings and even then be careful about who you share your personal details with. Play nice, have fun, and don’t forget to read a book once in a while.”

And that, really is all I have to say about that. If anyone wishes to comment on this posting, please note the time it was posted. You may like to read it to the sound of an automatic dishwasher in order to receive the same sensory/rhetorical effect, and it would help if you were in the last week of a master’s program in order to understand why I just can’t write anymore. Too much to do and not enough time. Please be nice. Thank you.

PS. It took less than five seconds to find the author of the book this chapter was taken from, using any seven word quote taken at random. Scary.

Mediated Memory: The Language of Memorial Spaces

L. J. Nicoletti

I don’t agree with Nicoletti’s assertion that “our cities, as well as our campuses, are memorial landscapes begging analysis.” I think he overstates the rhetorical value of memorials, because the experiential knowledge and received knowledge of all individuals inform how memorials are understood. Because of this multitude of potential and shifting interpretations of history, acknowledged by some of the designers of memorials themselves, the rhetoric of memorials can only ever please discrete audiences and provide partial truths.

Memorials, however, are not all created equal. Near where I live is a road named Richard D. Sailors Parkway. It is named for a former mayor of the city of Powder Springs. This named road “memorializes” the office of an individual who was living at the time of its naming, but will at some point also memorialize the individual himself. There might doubtlessly be some who would question the correctness of such a gift to memory but unless the road is one day renamed its name serves no more than an appeal to vanity, suggesting that the political office of this individual was worthier of memorializing than others in the community. It begs the question of how many roads need to be named after individuals, or bridges, or other common everyday constructs before the whole enterprise becomes ridiculous. The point I am making is that sometimes memorials, perhaps the majority of them, serve no rhetorical function at all other than, in the case of the Dr. Bobbie Bailey and Family Performance Center at Kennesaw State University, no disrespect intended, to state that this was an individual of means who one day decided to make a large financial contribution to a capital campaign. There is nothing else to interpret here.

Granted, many memorials are created to serve particular rhetorical functions. I acknowledge that such memorials can be a source of rhetorical analysis, visual, spatial and textual, but I question the purpose of such analysis in the context of the English language arts classroom. I think there is enough already to talk about without going looking for more elsewhere. Perhaps memorials just don’t interest me as much as place. A few years ago I visited Battle Abbey near Hastings in England. The abbey was built by William the Conqueror “out of gratitude for his victory.” The Battle of Hastings, perhaps the most famous date in English history took place in the fields that now lie below the abbey and one can walk around the site and note where significant events were said to have occurred. It’s an interesting place to visit, to see where the genesis of the English language as it now is, took place. But the abbey as a memorial has lost its significance. There are no longer any English nobles mourning their loss of power or French nobles relishing their newfound power. No relatives of the deceased visit with flowers on the anniversary of the battle. English nationalists do not parade and demand the return of true English autonomy. The rhetorical significance of the memorial no longer exists, even though the site is one of the most famous places in English history. And I think that in the space between the pointless memorial of Richard D. Sailors Parkway and the now irrelevant significance of Battle Abbey, lies a rhetorical white elephant, that could yield interpretations in the classroom, but at what cost? I just think there are more worthwhile things to study. History has a way of rendering the past obsolete. I think events post 9/11 have far more significance worthy of study than whatever construct will eventually stand in place of the Twin Towers, again, no disrespect intended.

Multimodal Learning Through Media: What the Research Says

By Metiri Group – Commissioned by Cisco

Here is where I demonstrate how smart I am or how will my higher order thinking skills process complex information. Yeah, right. What I understand is that the authors began their research by questioning the following assertions:

We remember…

10% of what we read

20% of what we hear

30% of what we see

50% of what we see and hear

70% of what we say

90% of what we say and do

Research into the origins of these assertions has shown that not only are they based upon a misinterpretation of original theory, they also are patently untrue. In other words it is a myth that we remember 90% of what we do.

Wouldn’t it be nice if it were that easy and our brains were that simple. The authors go on to describe in more detail how the brain works, how the different aspects of memory function together and how multimedia can improve learning outcomes. I will quote the following to contextualize my response to this reading:

In general, multimodal learning has been shown to be more effective than traditional, unimodal earning. Adding visuals to verbal (text and/or auditory) learning can result in significant gains in basic and higher-order learning.

Many authors speculate that unless students have been trained to interpret visuals, the impact of multimedia will be minimal.

These assertions bear directly upon the rationale for the ENGL 7741 course. The days of being a written text-based English language arts teacher are pedagogically over. Essentially, teachers who ignore the advances in technology and the opportunities they present for learning and demonstrating learning are doing a disservice to their students. Not only are our students “wired” to plug into the read/write web better than older generations, but older generations are too. Perhaps this explains the decline in reading across all demographics. As a new teacher, I have to think about these different modalities of learning both for my students and for myself. The reason why we have been creating wikis and blogs and examining pictures and videos and websites and logos and sculptures is really to help us access the visual cortex, learning to recognize that written text is not the only medium through which ideas are communicated. I don’t think this article is refuting the received value of written text. I think that it is through language that we can articulate ideas no matter how they are represented. It is through language that we are able to contextualize new ideas. Language is the primary referent for ideas. Otherwise a visual like a photograph would be no more than a collection of colors and shapes that we couldn’t talk about. But I understand that the value for student learning of multimedia is something to be examined, and is something that can be added to, through classroom activities, and by extension through digital media and literacy. Clearly, being able to talk about visuals is better than talking about ideas that could be represented by visuals alone. Point taken.

Space to Imagine: Digital Storytelling

Lisa C. Miller

It’s kind of odd, but my reading for this course is now crashing into the assignments and projects I am rushing to finish before the beginning of the next week. We are having to create a digital “movie” as part of the class and I have just now read Miller’s description of the process of creating digital movies for storytelling in the classroom. Of course, I already understood the context of this activity, the making of a movie for my ENGL 7741 class. I recognize that the instructor is trying to lure some of us out of our written text focused minds into the digital realm where so many of our students dwell. My own children have grown up with things like YouTube, so the value of digital film is perhaps more taken for granted by them than by me.

Miller’s trials and tribulations with technology make  her own story seem a little dated. I can’t imagine anything but my own personal limitations preventing me from completing my own assignment, paltry as it is, and certainly not any limitations of either the technology available to me. The rationale for utilizing creative multimedia in the classroom is completely convincing. I understand, at an intellectual level, that this is something of value which could create opportunities for planning from lesson to lesson, building an artifact that could exist in an online portfolio of work from which a teacher could both assess product, process, performance, and improvement over time. Immensely valuable stuff. And based on my experience in the ENGL 7735, Teaching Writing class, I can make a strong connection between the kind of writing/storytelling that our instructor has engaged us in the ideas advanced by Miller, and I can now acknowledge the utility of integrating the methods of teaching writing ;earned in that class and the methods of producing a text/product to be shared learned in this class. Finally, at the end of the semester, ideas are kind of flowing together and making sense and I am beginning to realize that the ideas I hold about writing are not incompatible with the ideas that have been posited in ENGL 7741.

Indeed, I recall that one of my students last semester presented one of her projects in digital format, which at the time was quite astonishing to me. There is however, one reservation that I continue to hold about the integration of digital media and the teaching of English language arts, and it speaks more about me than it does about the technology. I am extremely averse to uploading anything online. I am very against putting myself out there in the read/write web. I hate the idea of sharing like that. I am an immensely private person, even posting this log on my blog is a “painful” experience. I don’t want to share these “ramblings.” If I am to put something out there it needs to be done with far more care and deliberation than the process or time has allowed for this course. My first instinct for my own digital film, once it has been graded, is to go online and remove it. Scrub it out of existence. I don’t want it out there. I hate the idea of it being viewed by anyone other than my instructor. At the same time, I am trying to get some of my own writing published in the traditional manner. It might seem like a contradiction but it comes down to my own values. I still value the written word above all other forms of expression. But I recognize that these are my values, and that they are unlikely to be the values of my students. And that is the rationale behind this course, and why our instructor is pressing us to open our minds and consider the unthinkable: joining the kids in the virtual world.

Transforming the Group Paper with Collaborative Online Writing

Peter Kittle and Troy Hicks

Kittle and Hicks take a high-brow look at how collaborative online writing can bring new dimensions to group writing.  They raise questions about roles and authorship in collaboration which have sent me scurrying to my own group’s wiki, and has me reappraising some of the group work we have done in class.

We recently had to discourse upon a photograph and present our “findings” on a Google Doc: I recall that in class, the practicality and immediacy of collaboration resulted in one person typing and their partner “assisting” by suggesting further lines or ideas. The result, I recall well, was a text that strongly characterized the voice of only one individual. Thus David  and I produced a text that a familiar reader would have described as “my writing” not David’s, and the partnership next to us produced a text that had Harry written all over it. Obviously, working with a partner beside you is not true online collaboration. Different texts with different voices might be more likely to be produced when partners are working independently on the same text, in which the text itself becomes the voice of collaboration.

This, indeed, was the case with our wiki collaborative projects, first the video lesson and now, most recently, with our ongoing third assignment in which we are analyzing, describing and presenting findings related to a building on campus. As each of us revisits the pages to see how the assignment is progressing, we each edit or revise the extant text and comment and question using the discussion board. The report steadily grows and becomes a blend of the voices of the three collaborators. But there is a problem with this for an instructor.

When it becomes time to review the collective work, say on a wiki, it is not readily apparent that all participants created the work equally. It is easy for one member of the group to ride on the coattails of the other contributors and receive equal credit where credit is not due. The only way to assess the individual contributions is to view the history page, itself a challenging task. If a text has undergone a great deal of editing, the question that presents itself is how to place value on individual contributions. Do we tally the number of edits per individual? Do we assess the kind of contribution made in a particular edit in relation to other kinds of edits made by others? Or other kinds of contributions altogether, such as research? Or do we assume total group responsibility and ignore the history altogether? Complaints of partners not pulling their own weight have long been a part of group projects.

It’s an interesting ethical question and one that is not easy to answer. To be fair to all group participants requires the instructor to become far more involved in the process of text creation than is often feasible, but to focus purely on product can introduce inequities that might build resentments. Authorship indeed becomes a difficult question to posit.  It is a question that I will continue to consider as we move forward with our own group project.

The Facebook Generation: Homework as Social Networking

The Facebook Generation: Homework as Social Networking

Stacy M. Kitsis

I am starting to think a little differently. It’s taken the whole semester, but using the wiki for this third group assignment and then reading this article by Kitsis has started putting some clear context for using the read/write web in place for me. My problem with Richardson is that he is so exuberant and keeps throwing paint around, splashing up all the walls in the new color that I found him and his ideas off-putting, even a little threatening. Then reading the push-back text, The Dumbest Generation, just started putting the whole read/write web idea back into its box for me.

Now, however, with her thoughtful, carefully articulated report of how she used email and blogs (and intends to use wikis) to shift responsibility for homework discussion back to the students, I am beginning to reconsider. I was impressed by how her students felt excited to be in control of the learning process, as collaborators, with their peers, and how the role of teacher shifted to that of facilitator, the technology started to seem less of a barrier to learning and more of a tool. Obviously, and Kitsis noted this, access to technology is paramount, and students have to be able to work on homework in their own time—class time is too precious to let laggards make up posts in class—and opportunities to make posts would have to be provided for students who don’t have access to computers or the internet at home (in my school, definitely).

Something that Kitsis said in her article: “I bathe in pleasure and relief: When meaningful feedback is no longer my sole domain, the whole class shares interpretive authority,” really struck me as a good result for the teacher in this. As a new teacher I am worried about so many things, procedural, pedagogical, etc., that this course has seemed a little overwhelming in its import. Editing Wikipedia, setting up blogs (when I don’t feel we have had the time to blog or even that I have anything I would want to blog about) has sometimes seemed a little irrelevant to my immediate concerns. It hasn’t helped having to rush through so much of the course. Taking the time to slow down and think and consider what someone like Kitsis has to say, has helped. Now, I’m wondering how something like this could be set up: the practical nuts and bolts of it interest me. Even playing with the wiki for the third assignment has been more interesting. So, yes: this was a useful article to read. I’m glad I did.

C. Richard King: Envisioning Justice

Envisioning Justice: Racial Metaphors, Political Movements, and Critical Pedagogy

C. Richard King

King’s article on the appropriation (or misappropriation) of racial symbols to advance unconnected messages makes some interesting points, some of which I agree with, some not.

Let’s begin with a big “not.” King argues that the visual rhetoric of PETA’s media campaigns is “conflicted and context dependent,” and that “they may have little lasting significance.” He makes these point in the context of PETA’s use of Holocaust imagery to equate animal suffering with human suffering, and finds himself “troubled” by the organization’s tactics. I think that in this example King expresses perfectly his own biases to deny that animal rights and human rights are exactly equivalent, otherwise known as a human-centric view of the world. King doesn’t consider that perhaps PETA seriously intends their images to be taken at face value, because after all, human consumption of meat is purely habit, not necessity and there is no moral reason to believe that animals don’t suffer just as much as humans. It is exactly the same mechanism of depersonalization at work in the modern abattoirs as occurred in the death camps. I doubt that a single “normal” dog or cat owner in the U.S. would accept the procedures used to turn cattle into burgers if it were their own pet being served up on the plate. So, at a very basic level, I reject King’s argument that PETA’s appropriation of Holocaust imagery is in any way inappropriate.

The whole argument about the use of racial symbols in media (like Native American mascots) stems from a position that questions ownership. The implication of King and those who oppose the use of such symbolism is that ownership resides exclusively with those groups whose stereotypes are being depicted. I disagree that the ownership and appropriateness  of such imagery is exclusive. I think that racial images and stereotypes belong in the public domain because it is in the context of the public domain that they are understood. They may not be understood in the same way by different groups and that is the point. It is a from this mistaken sense of ownership that challenges to things like Native American mascots arise. If a photographer takes an image of me I do not own the way the image depicts me any more than someone else who might see it later. The image depicts me, and either correctly or incorrectly the later viewer is obligated to interpret the image according to the schema that they, not I , possess. I’m not arguing that Native American mascots are not insensitive and shouldn’t be replaced: I merely suggest that such arguments stand outside the true representations of these images, that is that they are universally owned by any who see them and interpret them. There is no universal truth to symbolic imagery.

The PETA ads make a point. Nothing more. The Native American mascots serve a purpose. Nothing else. These points and purposes might be better served by different imagery, or not. But if PETA intends to shock, it can only do so by utilizing the available imagery in the historical canon of images. And it is because the imagery is drawn from the canon (which is limited) that multiple perspectives are implied and understood within each context. But no one interpretation is necessarily better or more correct than any other. I don’t believe that PETA’s use of Holocaust imagery cheapens or harms other interpretations of the Holocaust at all. It is nothing more than the juxtaposition of ideas, in this case, a fresh metaphor for animal suffering that is perhaps more understandable because of the juxtaposition. I am always suspicious when one group’s ideas or one interpretation of something in the public domain is asserted as the “dominant” or “correct” interpretation, or when “ownership” of any interpretation is asserted. I think that the dialogue that results from differences of opinion is more valuable than received wisdom.

Jerving's 13 ways

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black and White Photograph

Ryan Jerving

Jerving’s dense and sometimes overly obfuscating prose articulates what has been taken for granted for a long while: the messages, implicit and explicit represented by photography. Jorge Luis Borges once wrote (in Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius) that mirrors were “abominable” because they multiplied mankind, addressing a paradox that photography too, represents. Just as reality is framed by a mirrors edges, unreal space lying unseen unless the viewer shifts their position, so does photography create illusion, reproducing images of only so much of mankind, leaving the viewer in the unenviable position of viewing a static, unchanging image: no matter whether the viewer shifts to the left or the right, the image remains the same, the window into the reality that a photograph purports to express is as illusory as the left-right-handedness of a reflection in a mirror.

Jerving’s polemic makes sense of this problem, reducing its disparate elements to thirteen distinct points of analysis, taking back, in a way, control over what we see in a photograph. In a metaphorical manner, his ways of looking help us to lift the camera from the photographer’s hand and cast around with it ourselves as we try to return a photographic image to its original context, not its originally intended representation, whether conscious or unconscious, of artifice. In some ways Jerving suggests more: his arguments could be no less than call to begin looking at the world in a new way, too.

We examined the implications of Jerving’s thirteen ways in class and I’m not sure that this blog is the place to look at an image and demonstrate that I can bring the same critical eye to bear upon a photograph of my choosing. However, for practice: I will briefly describe one of the most iconic photographs of my youth and perhaps in modern exploration, the photograph of Robert Scott’s party at the south pole.

Image from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scottgroup.jpg

The photograph is quite simple, taken by a string attached to the shutter, showing the five explorers posed in a group to document their arrival at the pole as a form of proof and a demonstration of accomplishment. To this extent, then, the photograph serves a purpose beyond itself: it is intended from the outset to convey a particular message, capturing a staged moment. It is tightly framed, showing only what it must: the explorers against a background of white. There is no suggestion that the frame is cropped but the interesting and ironic point to be made is that the photograph is famous because of where it was taken and what happened afterwards, not because it positions the subjects within a recognizable location. The fact that they are at the south pole at all is only borne out by their haggard and exhausted expressions. The photograph could have been taken anywhere with snow and cloud. The men are also framed purposefully, in a very ordered manner, three standing behind two seated almost creating a “W” shape with their bodies. There is nothing special about this pose, nor does it suggest any particularity about the relationships of the five men to each other. The shutter was pulled more than once, however, and in other photographs the positions of the men are slightly different: it must have been difficult to hold a pose at the south pole in 1912, for many reasons.

Scott wrote in his diary, upon discovering that his party had been beaten to the pole “Great God! This is an awful place.” In this respect, the photograph places the men directly in their historical context. There is no sense of camaraderie in the photo; each man is essentially alone, dealing with loss, exhaustion, and cold in the traditional uncomplaining stoic manner. Their situation is emphasized by their costumes, full winter clothing so thick as to render their bodies shapeless, their hats pulled down as close to their eyes as possible. Some of them smile slightly, although none had anything to feel happy about: they were over 800 miles from safety. Perhaps by design, perhaps not, the figures of the men fill the frame, with flags fluttering around them. It is a close up of the men that pays no attention to their context outside the frame. Again, what is being documented is their hardship and heroism.

The camera angle is level, the standing figures do not tower over those sitting, and the lighting is, of course, natural. The camera is very much a narrator. The men smile for it and regard it equally, aware that it is serving as a witness to their achievement, however pyrrhic. At it was taken, photograph served as a portrait of a group of men who came together to attempt the unknown. But the men knew they were filling their diaries and taking pictures for posterity and would have had concerns, not yet fears, for their safety.

It is perhaps because they died that the photograph has attained its status as an iconic image, in a line of iconic images of hardship taken by people who did not know whether they would live to share it: Shackleton’s ship encased in the ice, Mallory and Irvine setting off to climb Everest, the Uruguayan rugby players stranded in the Andes, and more, images that tell more because of the history they represent and the extraordinary reality they captured. I don’t know. Jerving’s thirteen points are a start for this kind of analysis and perhaps I picked a difficult image to which to apply such a method. But, point taken. There is a lot to talk about in almost every photograph.

Richardson Final

I have now finished ready Will Richardson’s Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts. I am playing catch up. No matter. What I really want is to read each of the push back books because I’m a Luddite and I don’t believe anything Richardson says. That’s not quite true. I admire his excitement for all things about the Read/Write Web. I agree that that is probably where most of my students are, or will be soon. I’m not there. I don’t like it and I don’t care for it. I hate social networking because it’s no substitute for real relationships. I hate email because it’s short, and fast, and convenient and thoughtless and it ties you down and allows idiots to defer decision-making to others more competent. I want to browse where my eye fancies and reduce the volume of information I am forced to receive. But I am living in the past and I have to help my students join the present, and so I will try to work up a little bit of enthusiasm for Richardson. But I’m not there, yet.

RSS and the Social Web

I’ve known about RSS for ages but I’ve never tried it. No curiosity. But I understand its utility to aggregate more stuff than I would know what to do with and so with that thought, I might consider trying it in a very limited way. At first. I can imagine that it would be useful to obtain numerous POVs for a single subject of interest in one place, but having said that I don’t think that most folks are genuinely interested in multiple POVs anymore. I recognize that RSS and some of the functions of the social web, such as cloud bookmarking have a utility that is unique to the online world. Their efficacy lies in their ability to draw down content, filter it, package it and present it for ever more efficient consumption. That’s a cool thing to have. But I harbor deep suspicions about the educational efficacy of such facilities. I tried to explain what I found troubling about RSS and social networking in class but I think there was either a disconnect or else I don’t understand both or my arguments were not clear. So, to clarify. I love the news. I love being able to know what is going on in the world. I do not watch the news on TV anymore (too short, too shallow, to simplified). For years now, I have turned to the internet for news. I have, five general news websites bookmarked, and one tech news site. I don’t subscribe to any of them. I checked each of them everyday, sometimes twice or three times daily. The sites are: BBC news, The Guardian, The New York Times, NPR National Public Radio, and Stuff.co.nz (New Zealand news online aggregator). Sometimes I go looking for what I am interested in. Sometimes I will follow a story across all five sites. But a lot of the time I browse. That’s what my browser is for, right. It’s like all five sources are delivered to my door and I’ll sit at the table on a Sunday with all the sections spread out before me, enjoying what I might learn or discover: Because a lot of the time I don’t know which story, will quicken my pulse. I browse because I want to find what I don’t know about. I look for stuff which I would never have found through RSS because I didn’t know it existed.

I took a look at my bookmarks: a lot of them are articles that struck me in a particular way and I wanted to be able to go back and read them again later, or because they set off a useful train of thought. In a way they are stories that discovered me. I couldn’t have found them without the leisure of browsing. And just because they attracted me once doesn’t mean I would want them to lead others “like” them to me. One of the reasons I still buy books in a brick and mortar store is because of the opportunity it affords me to hold something unexpected in my hand. Amazon doesn’t do that. It shows me what I’m looking for, or what others bought eventually, or what others like. Amazon doesn’t get in my brain and figure out that I am an eclectic reader.

I like Richardson’s enthusiasm but I don’t believe it is healthy. I think about how many of my colleagues in the class have never edited Wikipedia or posted on a blog, or collaborated on a wiki: and we function just fine. Better than average if any of the push back texts speak a modicum of truth. I have seen what high schoolers are like. I recognize that most of them never read even one percent of what I did at their age. I could write poems in chalk around them while they saunter to the café. I just don’t think that anything that Richardson advocates will benefit them as much as he says, especially when their lack of reading, their content knowledge ignorance and their lack of intellectual curiosity leaves them clutching at straws when they have to string more than two sentences together. Blogs, wikis, and so on are cool tools. They bring the world outside of the classroom in, in a uniquely immediate way, but they are still tools. I don’t see how anything posted online by students is of any value to anyone, even themselves. I view these tools as no more than mirrors to their vanity, occasionally a healthy thing to peer into, but just not nearly opaque enough for them to see inside themselves and figure out just how much they don’t know and how important it is for them to read about things they would not have found alone. As a language arts teacher, I view my job in a traditional sense. Richardson might argue that I will lose the kids. If they can’t connect to the language that we have inherited, then, to a great extent, they are already lost. And it’s therefore my job to find them again. Blogs and wikis may help that some, but certainly no more than a coffee-stained, dog-eared, second-hand, 1984 edition of Lord of the Flies would. (Push back text influenced post)(The Dumbest Generation).

Wikipedia is Good

Wikipedia: Friend, Not Foe

Darren Crovitz and W. Scott Smoot

The authors of this paper present solid arguments towards acceptance of texts like Wikipedia as a new kind of transitional knowledge that presents strengths that differ from traditional fixed texts and challenges that require a paradigm shift if teachers are to encourage their students to look to the digital environment for information.

The idea that knowledge is not fixed is not new, but the idea that an encyclopedia can reflect this concept and still provide accurate, neutral information is still novel. One of the drawbacks of traditional encyclopedias is that they are bound by a finite number of pages and therefore need to create a hierarchy that, while not necessarily arbitrary, is nevertheless imposed on the information it contains. For example, one author might receive no entry, another a short entry and a last one a long entry, based on no more than the fashions of the time in which consideration is given to their works. Wikipedia democratizes such choices and each entry contains information that is based upon its own merits, or the time that has thus far been given to developing it. This reality was demonstrated by no more than a cursory exploratory comparison of information presented by a traditional encyclopedia and the Wikipedia entry on a fairly obscure post-revolutionary silversmith: the Wikipedia entry was more complete, but the definitive nature of the text was no less authoritative than that of the traditional encyclopedia that presented less information due to space constraints.

The idea that such information contained in an encyclopedia is reached through consensus and negotiation, also does not differ essentially from the process by which all knowledge is processed, confirmed, re-evaluated, presented or published, and in some respects Wikipedia differs from traditional encyclopedias only in the public nature of this processing. Readers did not previously see the process of developing encyclopedia entries, and it can be an unnerving idea to consider that all texts need to be given due process in order to verify the accuracy and neutrality of the information presented. In some respects, the idea that encyclopedias were formerly written by unbiased experts is ludicrous: by definition, an expert must be biased in some manner.

So, game on. The arguments for utilizing Wikipedia as a source of information, foundational for research are sound. The wiki can only grow and improve over time, reflecting, undoubtedly, the acquisition of new information, the ascent of new prejudices, and the interests of those who come after us.