Social Scholarship

Drawing from all of the readings for this week's topic, I learned quite a bit. It is easy to believe what Alverman asserts when stating, "adolescent literacy is linked to social practices that involve reading and writing as well as other modes of communication in which young people engage" (8). In other words, adolescent literature is a lot more than it ever used to be. What students are exposed to growing up, and the technology they have access to is vastly different from what I grew up with. As a result, educators may find it difficult to harness these technologies and use them in their classroom and yet if we want our students to succeed, it is imperative to solve this problem. Furthermore, many teachers don't realize the potential for incorporating these technologies, which is unfortunate in that technology is here to stay, and it is only going to become more advanced as time goes on. Part of this resistance stems from the prejudice that students who seem incapable in the classroom are hopeless cases. However, based on the findings in both the articles and the chapters, many students are exhibiting that they care literate in other ways - specifically while using technology. They are "remixing" content they locate on the Internet via blogs, social networking sites, and affinity spaces. The skills needed to do this successfully aren't necessarily ones learned in the classroom, however students are using writing in the "literal sense"as part of the design process for any number of things they create on the Internet.
 Another point made is that the literacies found in school vary greatly from the ones that can be found outside of school. I think of this as "old school"  vs. "new school" however if a teacher can find ways to effectively link the two, students may actually begin to appreciate the "old school" literacies more. As I mentioned before, many teachers do not want to embrace this change in the way a lesson will be run, they do not want to deviate from the standard pencil, paper, and book. To a certain extent, I understand and appreciate this, but the research speaks for itself and if teachers refuse to make positive changes, students will fall further and further behind. The linking of social (new literacy) and scholarship (old literacy) is a perfect example of how this can happen in the classroom. Greenhow outlines a couple of brilliant technologies, such as Diigo and Delicious and explains how they incorporate both literacies. Diigo is very interesting to me because I think that it would be a wonderful service for students to use when writing a research paper. Every high school student needs to know how to write a research paper before they reach college and Diigo makes it a lot easier to find scholarly resources without necessarily using a library. The characteristic that makes Diigo a combination of both literacies, is the potential for collaboration. Students can be linked up with other students from the other side of the country who may also have bookmarked some sources on the same subject. I feel like this is a truly wonderful feature, and one that students would appreciate as well.
Richardson takes the idea of social bookmarking and expands in a bit more in chapter 6 when he says that by using social bookmarking sites to tag content and make annotations, we (the whole world) is slowly working towards fitting the vast content of the web together. In other words, by using sites like Flickr, Diigo, and Weblogs, we are making it easier to locate and find specific content, therfore making Google look just as bad as the commercials for Bing portray it as. Typing any phrase into Google is pretty much hit or miss - either Google understood what you were looking for or it didn't. However, with bookmarking sites, locating the specific information we want can be as easy as hitting the keyboard. I think that this is wicked smart, and can also hold a lot of use in the classroom. Students need to learn how to sift through appropriate information on the web, and this is a good way of showing them how it can be done. Furthermore, as a teacher, the possibility to be able to share content and lesson plans via a site like Diigo, is amazing. Being able to search specific content and link up with other teachers who may have more experience than I do, or may have some great ideas to share, will not only make me a better teacher, but it will also get me online experiencing the kinds of technologies that my students are. Who knows, maybe then we will have something in common.

Social Media

I thought that this was an interesting take on the way social media is affecting our lives.

Blog Response

Based on the readings about blogs for this week, and my own research after exploring on the Internet, I feel that they have great potential in an educational setting. There were a variety of points made across the research, and one that I view extremely promising is the room for collaboration that is built into the format and main purpose of a blog. As Richardson points out, “Weblogs truly expand the walls of the classroom. the internet has always provided the possibility of connection students with others outside the classroom via e-mail and chat groups. But now that collaboration can be much more accessible and much more diverse…and learning to work with far-flung collaboratos is becoming an important literacy” (27).  In my own classroom, peer editing would no longer have to be in pairs, or in groups, or even be done IN class – students could post and comment on their peers’ writing. In addition, classmates can easily contribute their own ideas, thinking, and critiques with their classmates and their teacher. This way, students will help build each other’s education while learning how to effectively collaborate, a tool that will serve them well long after they leave my classroom. The great part about learning to collaborate using the blog, is that most students will be in familiar territory – on the Internet typing away. I think Blogs can create a viable way to bridge the gap between out-of-school literacies and in-school ones.

This bridge can be seen in one blog that I came across in my exploring. The blog is called “Write Out Loud” (http://writeoutloud.edublogs.org/) and serves as a host for a 7^th grade ELA classroom. The class has just begun reading The Outsiders and the teacher has posted a video of Stevie Wonder singing “Stay Gold” as well as several prompts for multiple writing assignments the students need to answer via post. Upon further investigation of the posts that students left, I found that students left very thoughtful, honest, and somewhat lengthy responses to the questions posed by the teacher. In addition to these assignments there are also comments of support to one another from student to student either in response to a post, or just in general. I found this to be interesting, that students would mix some of their school work collaboration with their personal lives. Overall, I found this to be a great example of a successful blog.

Another great point about blogs, made by Johnson (2010) discusses the role of blogs in introducing students to authors, perhaps at the beginning of a novel unit. My personal experience with students at the beginning of a novel unit is that they could care less about the person who wrote the book they are about to read. Many students come in with misconceptions that no matter who wrote it, the book will be boring, terrible, heartless drudgery, etc. However, as Johnson points out, blogs can help bring the authors into the classroom in a way that grabs students and forces them (quite pleasantly) to understand that authors have personalities and ideas and rationales for writing what they did, when they did. In this respect I could easily see a blog being useful in my classroom. Posting links to podcasts that the author has created, incorporating a back and forth correspondence with the author (if possible), utilizing videos and graphics are all great ways to get students engaged and interested. As a teacher, I will be attempting to “speak their language” while also staying true to my own lesson plans and my own piece of mind.