SparkCBC takes on the issue of computational literacy

As I've explained in previous blog posts, I'm a fan of incorporating computational literacy education into the formal classroom--across curricula and content areas. So I was thrilled to see Spark Radio will be tackling the issue of computational literacy in an upcoming broadcast. Spark co-producer Dan Misener explains, using the user-friendly iPad as an example:

(T)he iPad (and its little brothers, the iPhone and iPod touch) abstract much of the computer away. Apple watcher and former Spark guest John Gruber says it’s a bit like the automatic transmission in a car:

Used to be that to drive a car, you, the driver, needed to operate a clutch pedal and gear shifter and manually change gears for the transmission as you accelerated and decelerated. Then came the automatic transmission. With an automatic, the transmission is entirely abstracted away. The clutch is gone. To go faster, you just press harder on the gas pedal.

That’s where Apple is taking computing. A car with an automatic transmission still shifts gears; the driver just doesn’t need to know about it. A computer running iPhone OS still has a hierarchical file system; the user just never sees it.

And from the standpoint of the vast majority of computer users, this abstraction can be a good thing. It makes computing simpler, easier, friendlier. Why should I need to understand what’s going on under the hood of my computer if all I want to do is send email to my friends?...

But I wonder, is the same attitude towards computers dangerous? Does oversimplifying technology –removing necessary complexity — have a downside? By making technology simple, easy, and convenient, do we risk a generation of people who can’t tell the difference between this blog post and the Facebook login page?

As I ponder this, I’m a bit torn. The technology populist in me wants to say, “Of course, make computers easy! What’s wrong with making computers as simple and friendly as possible?”

But another (geekier, snobbier) part of me wants to say, “Yes, computers are hard, and that can be a good thing. I don’t want to use technology designed for the lowest common denominator.”

The question this Spark show hopes to tackle is this:

If I don’t understand how to use my computer, whose fault is it? Is it my fault for not wanting to read manuals or spend time learning a new technology? Or is it the fault of the designers and engineers who build the technology we use?

You can weigh in on the discussion at the Spark blog, then listen in live or or download the podcast of the show; information on broadcast times and podcast download is available here.

Here's my take on this issue, which I've also posted as a comment on the Spark blog:

This is a thorny issue, because easier interfaces help to drop the barriers to participation, but on the other hand this shift means we give up some degree of empowerment to make decisions about which sorts of interfaces, and by extension which sorts of technologies, work best for our specific needs. Indeed, the crafting and marketing of products like the iPad is deeply, deeply political, and the embedded politics that lead to the tools we use is not readily evident to those without a degree of computational literacy. And enormous swaths of the computer-using public are lacking in this area.

On the other hand, computational literacy is very much like other forms of literacy: reading, writing, mathematical literacy, and so on. We don't blame the math-illiterate learner who has never been exposed to mathematics education, or whose math education was lacking in significant ways. This is the exact case with computational literacy education: It's nearly nonexistent in formal classrooms, and has become the nearly exclusive domain of those with the luxury of access to computational technologies outside of school. In some ways, then, perhaps we get the technologies we deserve.

notes from the {computational} revolution

As part of an ongoing effort to design a model for integrating computational technologies into the formal classroom, I have turned my focus to computational literacy. My current model already has a space for considering computational literacy, so in this post I want to spend some time exploring my definition of computational literacy. This includes a discussion of the key features of computational literacy and how these features might be taught. The models I've created are included at the end of this post.


I started learning to play the flute at age 8. I kept it up for 10 years. At age 15, I took a typing class and surprised myself by how easily I mastered the QWERTY system. At my fastest (in my early 20's, when I was a reporter), I could type more than 160 words per minute. I'm a fan of languages, studied French from high school all the way through a master's-level class, picked up enough German during a 2-week visit to Austria to order my food, ask for directions, and hold a basic conversation with a native Austrian. I studied computer science for about a minute in college --I hated it, I was no good at it--but I've taken to html, CSS, and other simple programming languages that support my ongoing efforts at web-based social revolution. I don't understand, though I wish I did, the inner workings of computer hardware. I don't understand the difference between Newtonian and pre-Newtonian physics, though I know the pre-Newtonian stuff is naive and kinda wrong. I build web pages for fun, mainly relying on templates but recently branching off into my own web design. Fairly soon, in fact, I will be leaving Blogspot behind in order to build a brand new website to my exact specifications. I have an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, with an emphasis in poetry.

I don't understand physics. I don't like most programming languages. I play the flute and like to tinker with language. I'm a fast typist but a slow web designer. I am a computational thinker.

Computational literacy is like all true categories of literacy: a cluster of practices whose meaning emerges as the learner deploys those practices in increasingly knowledgeable, increasingly socially valuable ways.

And increasingly, computational literacy is both part of and separate from other clusters of literacy practices. Computational proficiencies are similar to but distinct from those proficiencies we label "new media literacies," and they're similar to but distinct from those proficiencies we label, for lack of a better phrase, "traditional literacies." They're often but not always, and not fully, aligned with the "hacker mentality": an attitude that treats nearly everything as potentially bendable to the user's will.

Like all other forms of literacy, computational literacy can be taught--though not if we treat it, as Jeanette Wing does in her 2008 treatise "Computational thinking and thinking about computing," as a set of abstractions. Wing writes that "the nuts and bolts in computational thinking are defining abstractions, working with multiple layers of abstraction and understanding the relationships among the different layers. Abstractions are the ‘mental’ tools of computing."

You don't have to be much of a hacker to know that Wing misses something essential here. It may be that the language of a program is abstract, and that programming is dealing in abstractions, but only in the sense that letters, words, and sentences are abstractions leading to language. Even fairly young children develop an innate sense of grammar and know when a speech act violates the rules.

This is to say that the elements of language may very well be abstract communicative units, but native speakers develop a concrete mastery over their language nonetheless. (Though this mastery is often belied by our near absolute inability to articulate a single grammar rule.)

Teaching in support of computational literacy
My focus is on the English / Language Arts classroom, or what I've lately been calling the "literacy sciences" classroom. In describing the categories below, then, I've included a few ideas about how these aspects of computational literacy might be fostered in the secondary literacy sciences classroom.

I believe that computational literacy is comprised of the following sets of proficiencies:


Programming skill: This may include proficiency with one or more programming languages; or it may include creativity with language (the primary programming language of our culture); or it may include mathematical or scientific know-how.

What to teach: Basic web design can help to foster some foundational programming skills. Students might start a blog or, working within a closed social network like Ning, build personal profile pages complete with modified color templates and extra widgets. For many, the notion that what users see gets controlled by a kind of puppet master can be both surprising and empowering.

Technical expertise: Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel might refer to this category as "the technical stuff." One feature of new media, for example, is its modularity--the ease with which we can copy, remix, and move media elements. Technical ability includes facility with the tools that allow for this kind of work, as well as ease with unfamiliar interfaces and comfort with just-in-time learning.

What to teach: I'll never forget hearing games and education expert Katie Salen talk about the approach her Quest2Learn school takes toward computer literacy. She wondered why we have computer classes where kids learn how to use word processing, spreadsheet, and similar programs instead of folding that instruction into authentic learning experiences. "Why not teach kids how to use Word in the context of having to write something for their English class?" she asked. And she's right. Of course, this means that English teachers will need to start developing more technical know-how--we're long past the days when facility with Microsoft Word was a sufficient condition for effective writing, even in the English classroom. Let's start having students use email programs, work with social networks, do some basic image and video editing with the programs that come standard on most newer computer systems.

Hand-eye coordination: Another feature of new technologies is that they often stretch across the virtual and the physical. I busted laptop screens and frayed charging cables until I learned to work with the physical affordances of computing technologies; I'm graced with excellent typing skills; these make any task that requires text generation between 20 and 40 percent easier than they would be for the typist of a more average speed.

What to teach: Typing is of course an important skill, though many kids build up their dexterity through text messaging. I'm going to argue for the practice of building things in the English classroom. There is, for example, the brilliant piece of rhetoric embodied in this recent OkGo music video:



You can't tell me that the building of that enormous mousetrap didn't foster not only increased hand-eye coordination but a deeper sense of space and rhetoric, as well. We may not have the tools for building a better mousetrap in the typical classroom, but the building of small sets for video productions, the designing of costumes and backdrops and other visuals, can help support increased motor confidence in learners.

Visual literacy: Lev Manovich explains the visual basis for all digital media, and even goes so far as to explain that even the very letters and numbers we see on our computer screens have been converted into binary code, then converted back into visual representations so that we can easily make sense of the information. This brings a new imperative to visual literacy. Previously, visual literacy was treated as the ability to think critically about advertising, television, and films; today, we add a near-limitless number of visual media formats in addition to our new roles as producers of visual media in addition to our role as consumers.


What to teach: Visual rhetoric is a growing field. Many teachers are already incorporating video projects, website design, and other forms of visual rhetoric into their classrooms, and we can look to them for advice on how to proceed in this area.

Tolerance for tinkering: Pastimes like crocheting, woodworking, and gardening took up time but didn't necessarily take up all of our attention. When we weren't counting or focusing on a particularly difficult maneuver, we could talk or watch TV or sing a song. Coding doesn't allow for this split of attention. Neither does building a digital scrapbook or designing a webpage or building a virtual model. At best we can devote all of our attention for a time to the code, then shift our full attention away, then shift our full attention back again. Mimi Ito and her colleagues talk about "geeking out," and part of geeking out is hours passed immersed in one activity or another, sometimes to the exclusion of all else. As a culture, we haven't really had much tolerance for geeking out, though that's starting to change. What we need now is to build up a tolerance for geeking out in our learners. There are those who argue that we lost something when young people stopped reading books--that those children lost the ability to immerse themselves in an entire world. It's possible that what's been lost in the decline of books can be compensated for through the emergence of computational thinking--of geeking out.

What to teach: Immersive, lengthy projects. We might consider trying to turn the classroom into a structured workshop space, much as fine arts programs balance studio time with critique. We're already halfway there with peer review and collaborative activities; if we can just shift the focus away from critique and toward construction of powerful projects, we can easily build a tinkering-tolerant learning community.

I'm not saying it's easy to support computational literacy in the formal classroom. What I am saying is that it's necessary.

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I made a t-shirt.

In case you're wondering why, go here and here and here. (Also here and here.)

I'm thinking about selling the shirt and donating the proceeds to Aurora Alternative High School, a public school of choice in the Monroe County Community School Corporation. Recently, in what I consider to be a cruel, short-sighted and deeply inequitable money-saving decision, the school board decided to shut the school and funnel its students into one of the district's large public high schools.

Also, the board decided to boot all elementary and middle school librarians. Keep the libraries open, but get rid of the librarians. Smart choice, that. This way, the kids who have been exposed to reading and books at home will still have access to all the books they could want, while the less lucky kids who haven't received support for reading at home will just walk right on by. And nobody benefits from the guided support for accessing online and electronic information that librarians and media specialists have gotten so good at offering.

Fantastic.

notes on the MCCSC public hearing on proposed budget cuts

Last night, the Monroe County Community School Corporation (MCCSC) school board held a public hearing on the sweeping budget cuts the board plans to make across the district. I was one of hundreds in attendance; we filled Bloomington High School South's Carmichael Auditorium. I also live tweeted the event and took copious notes during the 5-hour meeting, and I want to offer up my observations.

A note on MCCSC Board members
First, I want to say that in the handful of years I spent as a local newspaper reporter, I spent a lot of time sitting in school board meetings. In those meetings, I encountered a very small minority of school administrators and officials who truly seemed not to care about the schools they represented and who acted in ways that really did seem sort of...vile. But based on my experience last night, I can say that nobody on the MCCSC school board is among that minority. These are people who care about schools and who care about the damage the proposed cuts will do to the district, the community, and the state. Before opening up the floor to public comments, each board member spoke eloquently and with deep emotion about how painful it was to have to make the kinds of decisions they were faced with. The MCCSC Superintendent, John Coopman, said that he believes things will get worse before they get better; he expects the budget crisis to worsen through 2011 and 2012. His fear, he said, is that the damage this crisis is doing to public education will be irreversible.

The audience was a smart crowd. They could simultaneously empathize with the board and hold board members' feet to the fire. The most common criticism I heard last night was about transparency: Audience members felt that decisions about the proposed cuts were made without sufficient input from MCCSC teachers, administrators, and staff. They felt that things were happening far too quickly--the proposed cuts were announced on Friday, Feb. 12, with a final vote planned for Friday, Feb. 19, which was a postponement from the original plan to vote at last night's meeting.

On the scarcity of information about the proposed cuts
Many people took issue with the paucity of information about the proposed cuts. Several members of the teachers' union, the Monroe County Education Association (MCEA), spoke with anger about only receiving a hard copy of the planned cuts for the first time last night. At the district meeting held to announce the cuts last Friday, they said, nothing was given to attendees and they had to rely on their notes and their memories in summarizing the proposed cuts.

This seems like a fairly legitimate complaint, given that I have been unable to find any primary-source documentation of the proposed cuts. The only information I've been able to find has come from secondary sources, including a recent article in the Herald-Times. I should point out, too, that while the Herald-Times article does a good job of summarizing the proposed cuts, the article is stuck behind a paywall--only subscribers to the paper can access the details. In case you're keeping count, this is yet another reason the Herald-Times should drop their ridiculous paywall.

Since I believe in the importance of spreading all available information about these proposed cuts, I have helpfully lifted generously from the Herald-Times article and carried it over the paywall by pasting it at the end of this post. Here's hoping the HT lets this information stay out in public, where it belongs.


Send your comments all the way to the top
I did my best to take note of the general theme of every comment during the public hearing, and I'll summarize my observations below. Before I do that, though, I want to add that the general theme of the evening was: Blame the state government for this travesty. Because I'm a new resident of Indiana, I don't pretend to know all the details of just how we ended up with the ceiling caving in while the floor drops out from under us, but the basic story is that a change was made in how schools receive funding, resulting in an enormous drop in revenue. Indiana's governor, Republican Mitch Daniels, despite insisting he's committed to supporting public education, has repeatedly refused to consider raising taxes to make up for the shortfall.

Complain to Mitch Daniels and State Superintendent of Schools Tony Bennett. This was a common plea, from board members and audience members alike. Tell them how angry you are. Offer them your suggestions. And for godsake, let's get a referendum going to reverse this downward spiral.

I don't know how, if, or when a referendum would be initiated, but I can certainly offer up contact information for Mitch Daniels and Tony Bennett. Here it is:

To send a comment to Mitch Daniels, you can fill out a form at what I can only assume is an ironically named website, "my man mitch," at http://www.mymanmitch.com/email_mitch.html; or you can complete a form on his official Indiana government page at http://www.in.gov/gov/2631.htm.

To send a comment to State Superintendent Tony Bennett, email him directly at tbennett@doe.in.gov.


Public comments
I did my best to keep accurate, thorough count of all comments, but it was a fairly hectic (and long) evening. I am absolutely open to the possibility that I've forgotten, overlooked, or misinterpreted various comments, and I hope that anyone who was in attendance at the meeting will let me know if they think I've missed something important. You can submit comments below; or, if you prefer, you can email me directly with comments, questions, or suggestions at jennamcjenna(at)gmail(dot)com.

I counted 92 comments, given over the course of about 4 1/2 hours. Speakers were limited to 3 minutes each. One final caveat: I was one of the commenters, and I spoke in support of Aurora Alternative High School, which would be closed if the proposed cuts are passed. I've been working at Aurora for nearly two years and feel a deep sense of passion and pride in the educational work of the Aurora community. That's my bias, though this bias should not detract from the strong outpouring of support for Aurora demonstrated in last night's meeting. Current Aurora students, alumni, parents, teachers, and administrators showed up in droves to stand in support of their school, and it showed in the number of pro-Aurora comments registered during this meeting.

By the end of the meeting, I was pretty much exhausted, and my notes got kind of sparse. I did tweet during board members' closing comments, though, that it seemed that the board had already made up its mind to pass the proposed cuts. I don't remember specifically what led me to this conclusion, but I hope it's inaccurate. Given the time and energy the MCCSC community devoted to last night's hearing, I believe it would not only be a travesty but a violation of the public trust for the board to simply pass the cuts as proposed.


The Breakdown
Total comments: 92
Breakdown by theme: (note that several people spoke in support of more than one item)

1. Save Aurora Alternative High School (and the Teen Learning Center): 39 comments. The support for Aurora came largely from current students and alumni, who spoke about how important the school had been for them. Over and over, we heard stories of students who would not have graduated, who would not have had the opportunities they now have, were it not for Aurora. Teachers and parents also spoke in support of Aurora, and many argued that moving the program into one of the existing public high schools would effectively destroy Aurora.

2. Save the libraries / librarians and media specialists are the heart of their schools: 28 comments. Libraries, parents, students, and community members spoke in favor of MCCSC's library programs. Several people argued that cutting librarians and media specialists would be disastrous to students, leading to a decrease in literacy rates, a drop in development of 21st-century skills, and a drop in support of teachers' work outside of the libraries.

3. Let's have a referendum: 20-24 comments. This was a difficult category to count, since even though many people didn't specifically speak up in support of a referendum, their comments and attitudes seemed to suggest they would stand behind one. The board, too, seemed to support a referendum; the problem is that the board suggested that the community would need to initiate the referendum, while the audience seemed to believe it needed to be initiated by the board.

4. We need / want / demand more input: 17 comments. These comments came largely from teachers and members of the teachers' union. As I noted above, many people argued that they had not been given ample opportunity to offer input and that they had not received enough information in a timely enough manner to be able to respond adequately to the proposed cuts. (As a side note, if anyone has a copy of the proposal, I would be thrilled to post it here or link to it on another site. Please let me know.)

5. Please don't raise class size: 16 comments. The general consensus was: Classes are big enough already; making them bigger won't solve a single thing. Many Aurora students and alumni hinted at this in their comments, pointing out that before they came to Aurora they struggled with being noticed or heard or getting the attention they needed from teachers and administrators at the larger public high schools.

6. Please don't cut the elementary strings program: 10 comments. Many former students and parents spoke with great emotion about the value of the elementary string program, which they argued was key to their academic success and growth as people. One former student said, looking at the Aurora students sitting together on one side of the auditorium: "What Aurora is to you, the strings program was to me."

7. Think about utilization rates: 6 comments. I'm still not quite clear what utilization rates are, and I hope someone can clarify for me, but people who spoke about utilization rates spoke about how space was being used in the schools. One new elementary school, according to one speaker, is operating at only 40% capacity; another speaker talked about how well his school (I'm fairly sure he said it was Bloomington South) is using space and argued that administrators should take a look at what his school was doing.

8. Save outdoor education (Honey Creek / Bradford Woods): 6 comments. Speakers in favor of these programs spoke about the value of these places to their children's or their own education, and argued for a reconsideration of the proposal to close these programs.

8. Save foreign language education: 5 comments. One speaker pointed out that Indiana University requires three years of a foreign language, and that cutting middle school foreign language programs will make it harder for students to meet that requirement. "You'd have to know in 9th grade that you want to go to college," she said. "And believe me, lots of kids don't know in 9th grade."

9. Save Family and Consumer Science: 4 comments. Several teachers spoke in favor of this program, arguing for its deep educational value for all students.

9. I volunteer to (work for free, get paid through grants, write grants, find ways to fund my position) if you give me one more year: 4 comments. It's too bad that this item is buried so far down the list, because I admire so deeply the people who made it into this category. People actually stood up and said: Give me one year to find alternate funding for my position or program, and I'll find that funding and keep my program going. I can't imagine a better deal for the MCCSC board, and I can't imagine how or why they would refuse these people.

10. Save the middle school youth outreach program: 2 comments. Two educators affiliated with this program spoke about its value. They argued that it's the only program of its kind for middle school students who have been expelled, and that as such it's an essential support program for the district.

10. Please don't close the swimming pools: 2 comments. The people who spoke in support of keeping the swimming pools open year-round volunteered to raise funds in order to make this happen. Again, if people are willing to reach into their own pockets to pay for something extra like this, I can't imagine why they would be refused.

11. Please don't cut ATS: 1 comment. ATS is an afterschool suspension program affiliated with the Teen Learning Center, but I'm including it as a separate category because the commenter who spoke in favor of this program made one important point: With the proposed increase in class size, do you think student behavior is going to improve? She argued that a program like ATS is essential given the types of cuts that are proposed.

11. Please don't slander the Project School: 1 comment. One parent whose daughter attends the Project School, a new charter school in Bloomington, spoke up against what she perceived as negative comments toward the school. Project School families are encouraged by their school's staff to support the MCCSC, she said, and she hoped to see the same kind of support from MCCSC toward Project School families.

Below, I've included the details of the recommended cuts, as described by the Herald-Times. If anyone has more information, please include in comments below or contact me directly; I would be thrilled to provide as many details about this issue as possible.



ADMINISTRATION RECOMMENDATIONS (as described by the Herald-Times)

• Increase class-size ratio, generating approximately 45 certified staff (teaching) cuts.
• Eliminate elementary and middle school media specialists.
• Eliminate middle school foreign language.
• Eliminate middle school Family and Consumer Science.
• Eliminate one assistant, part-time athletic director at each high school.
• Reduce high school assistant coaches (no specific numbers or areas revealed)
• Possibly reduce extracurricular activities (brain game, spell bowl, etc.) at high schools and middle schools.
• Eliminate six elementary assistant principal positions for 2011-12.
• Eliminate the unfilled assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction job and the secretarial job for that post.
• Eliminate the healthy school coordinator position.
• Freeze all administrative salaries.
• Reduce school board salaries.
• Consolidate Aurora Alternative High School into an existing high school with some reduction to staff.
• Close the Teen Learning Center.
• Close Alternative to Suspension.
• Close Youth Outreach.
• Eliminate the Bradford Woods.
• Eliminate Honey Creek School.
• Eliminate elementary strings program.
• Drain the high school pools out of season.
• Eliminate Batchelor Middle School pool and fill it in.
• Eliminate substitutes for building secretaries.
• Eliminate summer school.

OTHER NONPERSONNEL ITEMS

• Move NWEA (testing) costs from general fund to capital projects fund ($85,000).
• Eliminate corporation cell phones.
• Reduce energy costs through the Energy Education Inc. program.
• Move maintenance materials and supplies from general fund to capital projects fund.
• Reduce instruction materials and supplies by 10 percent.
• Reduce administrative materials and supplies by 10 percent.
• Reduce travel expenses by 10 percent.
• Reduce vehicle purchases.
• Eliminate the district’s supplemental share of band uniform purchases.
• Reduce each school’s allocation for substitutes for teacher and staff professional development opportunities.
• Eliminate staff development costs from the general fund that are not (state law) PL 221 required.
• Eliminate the general fund’s portion of purchasing library books and periodicals.

update: model for integrating technology into the literacy classroom

I've upgraded.

As part of an ongoing assignment for a course I'm taking called Computational Technologies in Educational Ecosystems, I've been designing and modifying a model for the role of technologies in the classroom. A previous version, a cellphone picture of a drawing on a sheet of notebook paper, looked like this:

Well. This is for a class on computational technologies, so a hand-drawn model would never do. Besides, one of the more useful affordances of new design technologies is the ease with which designs can be modified--not the case with hand-drawn designs.

So I upgraded. The upgrade looks like this:

(You can click the image to enlarge it; if it's still too small, you can open a powerpoint version here.)


As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm focusing in on the English / Language Arts classroom--what I've begun to call the "literacy sciences" classroom. I'm calling it this to reflect my vision for the kind of learning that can happen in the ideal ELA classroom. It's a community where class activities reflect the real-world practices of people engaging in authentic, valuable and valued reading and writing practices. In the real world, reading and writing practices cross multiple media and platforms; and they're all bound up in the context for which they're necessary and useful.

Which is why this version includes one tiny but important addition: The open door leading to other content areas. This addition was inspired by reading I've done this week on participatory simulations and wearable computing. Vanessa Colella's 2000 piece, "Participatory Simulations: Building Collaborative Understanding through Immersive Dynamic Modeling," describes one aspect of these types of simulations: That they treat the classroom as what she labels a "cognitive system." Colella describes the cognitive system as one comprised of all people, tools, data, and discourse that are both part of and a product of class activities.

What Colella doesn't point out is that the simulations she describes call for a cognitive system not bound by any specific content domain. Her simulation is of a fast-spreading virus similar to HIV or influenza, and though students' primary goal is to solve the problem of how the virus spread and to whom, related social and cultural implications are hinted at and have educational potential.

Indeed, the real-world literacy practices of literacy science are not bound to any domain. It's hard to imagine what "pure" literacy science would look like: A solitary reader, engaging in literary analysis in a room by herself, without any tools other than her eyes and her mind and her memory? Though the cognitive systems that surround literacy performances are not always clear and not always stable, one thing we can say is that they extend far beyond the domain of English / Language Arts.

We must, therefore, prepare learners for this reality by opening up the doors and letting content bleed across boundaries, and letting readers move between contexts. The problems learners must be prepared to address--the deep, thorny problems of our time--call for a breaking down of content silos.

One other addition here is the citations around the borders. These are linked to varying extent to course readings; I've added a few other names where relevant. Upon completion of this project, I'll post a list of all relevant resources, in case you're interested in perusing them.

a model for designing the ELA classroom in support of "literacy science"

You guys, I think I have a model to show you.

This makes me extremely happy, because as I've explained (more than once), I've struggled mightily with the very concept of modeling. I've also struggled with representation. The purpose of designing this model is to show my take on the role of new technologies in educational environments. But articulating a theory, even a working theory, about the role of technologies has been such an insurmountable challenge for me--which technologies? for which students? and for what purpose?


But the elements for building this rudimentary model have been around me for some time. It just took time and reflection for me to be able to put the elements together.

(image description: this is a pen-and-ink drawing of a classroom. In the center of the room, the class is seated, facing each other, around a square of tables; on the table in front of them are combinations of books, notebooks, and electronic equipment. Around the edges of the room are, clockwise from the upper lefthand corner: an easel labeled "representational literacy;" a table with extra pens and extra notebooks; a chalkboard with a variety of marks on it, labeled "design thinking"; book shelves; a workbench labeled "computational literacy"; open space lining most of one wall; a laptop labeled "new media literacy"; a safe filled with bundles of cash; and a laptop cart. Below the picture is the phrase, "If you can't build it, then you don't understand it.")

Inspiration for this model
Design of the periphery: Multiple intelligences schools. A few years ago, I read the 25-anniversary edition of Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. Throughout the book, Gardner describes a variety of approaches to integrating his theory of multiple intelligences into learning environments, and one description--of the Key Learning Community in Indianapolis--has stuck with me. In this school, students work in "pods" that represent each type of intelligence outlined by Gardner; a founding principle of this school, he explains, "is the conviction that each child should have his or her multiple intelligences stimulated each day. Thus, every student at the school participates regularly in the activities of computing, music, and bodily-kinesthetics, in addition to mastering theme-centered curricula that embody standard literacies and subject matter."

You don't have to agree with this approach to appreciate its effort at offering a range of avenues for learning to happen. From time to time I think about those multiple intelligences schools and wonder what aspects might be applied to my current area of focus, the English / Language Arts classroom. Clearly, more avenues toward literacy is better than fewer avenues; and since we know that traditional literacy practices taught through traditional means are insufficient preparation for the types of literacy practices people are called upon to demonstrate in real life, we might think of "pods" for different groupings or categories of literacy learning.

Design of the center and periphery: A real life ELA classroom. I've had the unBELIEVABLE good luck to sit in on Becky Rupert's ELA classroom at Aurora Alternative High School here in Bloomington, IN. Much of the design of this model is based on how she has arranged her class. To begin with, the main focus of the room is a square of tables where students meet at the beginning of each class. My model does not identify the teacher's location; that's because in Becky's classroom, she sits at the table right alongside her students. She does this on purpose, and it works in service of developing a learning community.

Becky's classroom is absolutely stuffed with books--you have to move books in order to get to other books. A new addition this year is a laptop cart, which sits against the far wall of the room.


Inclusion of design thinking: my work with SociaLens. For the last several months, I've been working with a new organization called SociaLens. The purpose of this organization is to consult with businesses and offer strategies for integrating new types of communications tools and ways of thinking into their organizational plans, with a particular eye toward social media technologies. Two key categories that we think make for highly adaptive, potentially highly successful organizations are new media literacies and design thinking.

Until I started working with SociaLens, I had not thought to consider the connection between these categories. I also hadn't thought about what educational researchers can learn from corporate innovators and vice versa. But what has been seen cannot now be unseen. I've come to see design thinking as an essential element of literacy learning, and especially if you believe (as I do) that computational flexibility (which I'll describe briefly below) is key to preparation for success in a new media age.


Inclusion of new media literacy, representational literacy, design thinking, & computational literacy "pods": Some stuff I've read. I've been immersed in new media literacy research for a good chunk of years, and I drank that kool-aid long ago. If you believe in the value of teaching new media literacy practices in schools, then computational literacy kind of comes with the territory. These categories of literacy are similar in lots of respects: Both are better described as a set of proficiencies and attitudes--what Lankshear and Knobel call a combination of "technical stuff" and "ethos stuff"--than as concrete, teachable skills. Both require a kind of openness--a flexibility--to meet the quickly changing demands with emerging technologies. But new media literacies are the required skills to engage in collaborative knowledge-building or collective meaning-making or problem-solving activities, while computational literacy is, in my mind, linked to a kind of "hacker's mentality." It's the act of simultaneously making use of and resisting the affordances of any technology; of knowing when and how to say "no" if a technology doesn't meet your purposes; and of finding (or developing) a new technology that better meets your needs and interests.

Design thinking, as I mention above, comes out of my work with SociaLens and the (admittedly very surface-level) reading I've done about this approach to problem-solving. This type of thinking has also made an appearance in the recent work I've been reading about research in science and math instruction. Many researchers whose work focuses on supporting an inquiry-based focus in science instruction, in particular, emphasize the value of embracing the epistemological basis of science-as-inquiry. As William Sandoval and Brian Reiser explain in their 2004 piece, "Explanation-Driven Inquiry: Integrating Conceptual and Epistemic Scaffolds for Scientific Inquiry," the epistemic elements of this approach include

knowledge of the kinds of questions that can be answered through inquiry, the kinds of methods that are accepted within disciplines for generating data, and standards for what count as legitimate interpretations of data, including explanations, models, and theories. Placing these epistemic aspects of scientific practice in the foreground of inquiry may help students to understand and better conduct inquiry, as well as provide a context to overtly examine the epistemological commitments underlying it.

Wilensky & Reisman, in their work with computer-based modeling, argue in support of what they call "the engineer's dictum": "If you can't build it, then you don't understand it." They work with a modeling language called NetLogo, which is a loose descendant of Seymour Papert's Logo program. The program requires students to solve problems by developing models of real-world processes like population fluctuation within predator-prey (wolf-sheep) communities and the phenomenon of fireflies synchronizing their flashes. The authors make a strong case that model-based thinking--or what we might also call "design thinking"--is key to students' ability to engage in deep learning about a specific phenomenon and about scientific inquiry more broadly.

I included a pod for "representational literacy" in this model because of my own recent experience grappling with model-building. The ability to design, critique, and modify representational models is a set of skills with relevance across content areas, and we don't typically think of it as extremely valuable in the literacy classroom. But it should be news to nobody that "literacy" is becoming an increasingly visual category of proficiencies, and that representational literacy is quickly becoming even more tightly bound up with traditional literacies than it ever was before.

What I haven't yet noted is that these categories of literacy practices make up what we might call "literacy science." I mean this term to hold the same place in the literacy classroom as "mathematician" or "scientist" or "historian" or "musician" hold in their respective classroom-based environments. As a culture, we haven't spent enough time yet thinking about the purpose we hope the new literacy classroom to serve. Science class is supposed, ideally, to get students thinking like scientists; in math class you (ideally) learn to think like a mathematician; in history class you think like a historian; but in general English class has been designed as a sort of catch-all, a place where students can learn the basic reading and writing skills that enable them to think like historians, mathematicians, and so on.

What if we shifted the focus of the ELA classroom to more explicitly broach the notion of "literacy science": A way of being in the (literate) world characterized by an ethos, a set of skills, and a set of norms and behaviors? What would it mean to turn the ELA classroom into a place where we support the growth of literacy scientists?


Inclusion of open space: a nod to the future work of literacy science. Howard Gardner's list of multiple intelligences has grown over the years, and my model is designed to accommodate new categories of literacy practices. Filling up the entire classroom does nobody any good, especially since we know--we absolutely know--that new valued practices are emerging along with the breakneck speed of emergent technologies.

I should mention, too, that my model includes a safe filled with bundles of cash. This is a nod not only to the future work of literacy science but also to the current conditions of the typical public school. On top of the training required, every one of the pods in my model costs money, and it's money that schools simply don't have.

So that's it: That's my current model for the role of technologies in the literacy classroom. I would love to know your thoughts. Comments, questions, and suggestions are most welcome and will be read with great joy, thoughtfulness, and enthusiasm.


References: In case you're interested in reading the work I identified above, here are the citations.

Wilensky, U. & Reisman, K. (2006). Thinking like a Wolf, a Sheep or a Firefly: Learning Biology through Constructing and Testing Computational Theories -- an Embodied Modeling Approach. Cognition & Instruction, 24(2), pp. 171-209. http://ccl.northwestern.edu/papers/wolfsheep.pdf.

Sandoval, W., A., & Reiser, B.J. (2004). Explanation-driven inquiry: Integrating conceptual and epistemic scaffolds for scientific inquiry. Science Education, 88:3, 345-372.

let's all agree to pretend it's not ironic that we ask experts to weigh in on the changing nature of expertise

An astounding phenomenon of participatory culture is this: If you toss yourself around in it enough, and you bang hard enough on everything you think might be a door, and you try to do your very best to toss yourself around and bang on doors in articulate, responsible, and interesting ways, sometimes you get lucky and someone opens the door to figure out what all the ruckus is about.

I got lucky this week, when CBC Radio called to interview me about new media literacy. The resulting interview, posted to the CBC program Spark, was my chance to try to say something reasonably articulate and unembarrassing about strategies for navigating the new credibility issues that emerge out of a cultural moment in which, as National Writing Project Co-Director Elyse Eidman-Aadahl put it in a recent panel on digital writing, we have the technologies and the potential to foster universal authorship in tandem with universal literacy.

The interview, with Spark host Nora Young, has been posted in full online (here and here). A shorter version will air on CBC Radio soon. Try not to pay attention to the eye-crossing, jaw-dropping irony of the argument I make that the very nature of expertise and credibility have changed, all the while acting as if I were an expert on the issue of expertise.

Another interesting feature of participatory culture is that there are still plenty of opportunities for people to act as the Sage on the Stage, despite the fact that the wisdom they impart often comes through deep collaboration and interaction with many people. In this case, the ideas I brought to this interview came through conversation with my buddies Rafi Santo, Katie Clinton, Michelle Honeyford and Becky Rupert. It's strange to me sometimes that the person who makes the most noise so often ends up being the one who gets handed the bullhorn and an audience to address.

By the way, the example I give of the stakes in finding out the year Mickey Mantle was born came directly from Rafi Santo. I stole it and he deserves all the credit.

a note on critical computational literacy

In Changing Minds: Computers, Learning, and Literacy, Andrea DiSessa sets forth a definition of literacy that emphasizes the socially constructed nature of the term. He writes:

Literacy is a socially widespread patterned deployment of skills and capabilities in a context of material support (that is, an exercise of material intelligence) to achieve valued intellectual ends....

Although I wring just a bit more specificity out of our preliminary definition in a moment, there is a fundamental lesson here. We must recognize an inescapable diversity in the phenomenon of literacy. There is no essential, common basis of literacy along any of the dimensions listed or along any other similar ones. There are no fixed basic human skills on which it builds.

DiSessa's point, quite simply, is that we should never forget that the skills we gather under the umbrella term "literacy" are neither firm nor fixed, neither intrinsic nor fundamental to human discourse.

This approach aligns nicely with the critical literacy approach forged by social justice-focused thinkers like Paulo Freire, Howard Zinn, Henry Giroux, Michael Apple, and others. Now, with an increased focus on a new category of literacy that DiSessa Mitchel Resnick, and others have labeled 'computational literacy,' we get to think of the social dimensions and equity issues linked to this new (enhanced?) set of social practices. We get to consider what it might mean to develop critical computational literacy.

And a visualization: Check out this page and this page for my take on a few key readings on computational literacy. And one more, here, that I feel is the best of the bunch.

And below, you can scan my very first custom gadget EVAR. Am I a programmer? Am I now? Now?




now?

you have to watch this vlogpost

file under: world's most awesome 16-hour vlog project


This link to pure awesomeness comes to you courtesy of my buddies, Jeffrey Kaplan and David Phelps. If you care about literacy or the learning sciences, you will die of joy.

liveblogging the Home Inc Conference: keynote speaker Alan November

From Alan November's website:

Alan November is an international leader in education technology. He began his career as an oceanography teacher and dorm counselor at an island reform school for boys in Boston Harbor. He has been director of an alternative high school, computer coordinator, technology consultant, and university lecturer. He has helped schools, governments and industry leaders improve the quality of education through technology.

His opener:
"I used to think I knew the truth. I don't know it anymore. So whatever I say is only good enough to criticize."

Here's why, according to Alan November, we've been able to spend over $10 billion on putting technology into schools over the last decade without making any gains on learning. He pulls much of his arguments from Shoshana Zuboff's 1989 book, The Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power.


1. The real solution isn't bolting technology on top of what we used to do. November pointed to Zuboff's notion of "automating," which is the process of using technology to automatically transfer information. "When you automate," November said, "at best, you only get incremental improvement. Not surprisingly to me, you often get a decline in quality.

According to November, connecting our classrooms to the Internet has lowered the quality of education int he U.S. Plagiarism has skyrocketed. "Everywhere I go," he said, "teachers complain about how students are taking the easiest route to learning" through copying and pasting and other plagiaristic approaches.

2. The real issue isn't technology; the real issue is control. We have teachers and administrators controlling learning and we need to ask how well (or poorly) that serves the needs of the learners.

Here are the solutions November offers:


Zuboff's notion of informating: Giving people access to information they've never had before. "I've been to schools that are technology-rich and information-poor. Teachers don't have the right information at the right time to do the right job. Students don't have the right information at the right time to do the right job. Parents do not have the right information--ever, hardly."

Identify new opportunities for collaboration. This is, according to November, a mark that you're beginning to use technology well.
"The one-room schoolhouse was a great idea. We need to go back to that. The very structure of the school system is what's in the way. That structure is a control model."

If you do those two things well, November argued, then more and more people become self directed. They don't need an organization to tell them what to do. That's the ultimate skill, according to November.


"One of the most important questions we need to ask is: Who should own the learning?" Since technology is typically used to reinforce teacher control, we need to think of new strategies for using technology to shift control over learning toward learners and, November argues, parents. He argued that the best thing schools can do is to "build capacity in every family as centers of learning.

"But I can say this until I'm blue. i don't think anybody's going to do this--because it falls outside of the boundaries of the current collaboration people have."

Time? Money? Energy? "It's all red herrings," said November. "It's all about control!"

November says the biggest technology from his perspective that can help lead to a shift in control is Skype.

my thoughts on November's keynote:
It's refreshing to see his energy and enthusiasm about rethinking the use of technology in the classroom. I worry, though, that his stance on transferring agency to the family could just shift the control issues from the schools to the family structure. In brief, it's not just control that makes schools worrisome institutions; it's the colonizing effect of middle class values on members of non-dominant classes and ethnicities. Collaborate with families and you get the same old divide we've been seeing for much more than the last decade. Middle class kids will get inculcated with middle class values, which we know lead to success; lower class kids will learn a different set of values, thereby reifying the divide between the haves and the have-nots.

Add to this the increasing influence of new media technologies--and the participation gap that Henry Jenkins has pointed to--and this concern becomes even more vital.

Control, after all, is much less simple (and simplistic) than we try to make it appear. Add to that the fact that institutional control has nuances that aren't easy to talk about in the keynote structure.

"If you don't have the right mission," November said, "it doesn't matter what technology you have." Yes, and we need to consider the broader (if tacit and unexplored) mission of the American education system.

putting the "new" in "new media literacies": a helpful visual aid

Here's a Prezi project I've been working on to visualize some key features of what Kress, Lankshear & Knobel, Scribner & Cole, and others find salient in emerging new media literacy practices.

This visualization emphasizes Lankshear & Knobel's characterization of two distinct approaches to the "new" in "new media literacy." As they explain, the use of 'new' in the paradigmatic sense is a sociocultural approach to literacy practices:

the New Literacy Studies comprise a new paradigm for looking at literacy as opposed to the paradigm that already existed that was based on psychology. The use of 'new' here parallels that which is involved in names for initiatives or movements such as the New School of Social Research, the New Science, the New Criticism (and New Critics) and so on. In all such cases, the proponents think of their project as comprising a new and different paradigm relative to an existing orthodoxy or dominant approach.

Okay, that's the paradigmatic sense of 'new.' Here's the ontological sense, which Lankshear & Knobel explain

refers to the idea that changes have occurred in the character and substance of literacies associated with changes in technology, institutions, media, the economy, and the rapid movement toward global scale in manufacture, finance, communications and so on. These changes have impacted on social practices in all the main areas of everyday life within modern societies.... Established social practices have been transformed, and new forms of social practice have emerged and continue to emerge at a rapid rate.

Gunther Kress, in "Literacy and Multimodality," emphasizes design, perhaps above all else. He explains:

Design does not ask, 'what was done before, how, for whom, with what?' Design asks, 'what is needed now, in this one situation, with this configuration of purposes, aims, audience, and with these resources, and given my interests in this situation?'

Design matters; and my choice to work with Prezi and a publicly accessible blog shaped my engagement with this project. It would have looked very different had I sketched it out on a sheet of paper; even had I sketched it first, with the intention of designing it in Prezi and posting it to my blog.

This visualization is only my first attempt to point to two broad groups of shifts into new media literacy studies. I hope to gather feedback (you can comment below!); return to, revise, and refine this project; and resubmit it for your approval at a later date. Thank you in advance for your input.

To take a look at the visualization, click the arrow below the design. It's interactive--you can zoom in on any part of the graphic.

on successful blogposts, successful blogs, and skilled bloggers

more thoughts on blogs as tools for teaching and learning

If we're going to think seriously about how to use blogs as tools for teaching and learning, it seems to me that it may be useful to differentiate between crafting a successful blogpost, developing a successful blog, and being a skilled blogger.

Successful blog posts
Here's an example of a successful blogpost, on a blog called "neologophilia," that identifies a gulf between the new National Writing Standards and the actual skills required to write well: We Interrupt This Writing Process... It's a smart, well supported, and articulate argument, supported effectively through the use of hyperlinks and development of ideas; but the blog itself appears to be dead in the water: The writer published only seven posts in eight months (all of which were excellent, btw), and the last post went life a full two months ago. No audience has the patience to stick around through gaps that big.

Successful blogs
Here's an example of a successful blog that contains a mix of successful, moderately successful, and far less successful posts: Ironicus Maximus, which uses as its anchor this quote by the Rev. Ray Mummert: ""We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture." The bog focuses on politics and social issues, attacking lameness with irony and precision. It's one of the smartest, wittiest, and most subtly hilarious blogs I've read, and the author has kept it running for over four years. Not every post is of equally high quality, but when you're tossing up an average of just under 240 posts a year, you get some wiggle room in this respect.

Skilled bloggers
Here's an example of a skilled blogger: Media Nation, run by Northeastern University journalism professor Dan Kennedy. Kennedy keeps a clean, well ordered, and regularly updated blog, and it attracts a wide and active reading public. Because of his relative celebrity as a media analyst (and his participation in a range of communities, including writing for The Guardian, CommonWealth Magazine, and the Boston Phoenix), he gets some of his readers for free. But Kennedy also works hard to cultivate his readership. He posts regularly, responds to nearly every comment on his posts, and places himself squarely inside of a network of blogs and bloggers who write and think about the issues he grapples with. He serves as an ideal intelligent filter, pointing readers to links of potential interest both in his blog and through his Twitter feed.

Kennedy has built his growing readership by going far beyond shamelessly trolling for readers. He offers himself up as a trustworthy source for others and refuses to engage with the traditional broadcast style of reportage that news sites and some blogs still promote. In short, Kennedy is a skilled blogger because he understands and engages with the largely unspoken norms of being a blogger.

Lots of really good blogs are maintained by people who publish beautiful, articulate, and engaging posts but clearly miss the boat when it comes to the norms of blogging. Being a skilled blogger takes time, and not all of that time is devoted to simply drafting new blogposts. Skilled bloggers engage with other blogs. They read like crazy, comment like crazy, hyperlink like crazy. They feel a deep responsibility to their reading public and to other bloggers within their thematic sphere. They're self-promoting fiends, sure, but they also promote, criticize, and filter the ideas of others.

In a future post, I plan to explore how four different types of engagement--procedural, conceptual, critical, and consequential--align with the requirements for publishing a successful blogpost, keeping a successful blog, and being a skilled blogger; for now, because this post is getting way too long as it is, I want to offer a provisional description of the features of each:

Features of a successful blog post

• A well organized argument or main point, supported through the use of hyperlinks and multimedia materials (video, sound, images)
• A clear, unified voice that is appropriate for the intended reading public
• A title that links clearly to the content of the post

Features of a successful blog

• Short, concise posts that use multimedia materials (video, images) to effectively make a point
• Effective use of hyperlinks to support ideas, to direct readers to relevant, interesting posts, and to demonstrate an awareness of the community of writers focusing on a common theme or set of ideas
• A clear, unified voice that continues to grow and develop over time

Qualities of a skilled blogger

• Ability to quickly synthesize and articulate ideas
• An awareness of a wide range of blogging techniques and of how these various techniques reach different target audiences effectively or ineffectively
• Reading with mouse in hand: Engaging with (online and offline) materials as potential material for blogposts
• Willingness to serve as an intelligent filter for a wide public audience
• Engagement with the wider blogging community, including offering thoughtful comments on others’ writing and reading widely and broadly

This is far from an exhaustive list, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on how to build on, reshape, or refine the categories above. My next post, I'm pretty sure, will focus on assessment strategies across these categories--so input would be most welcome.

blogging as a pedagogical tool: some initial ideas and a request

I'm hoping to crowdsource some brainstorming about the pedagogical potential of blogging on learning. Lately, in my work with Dan Hickey's 21st Century Assessment Project, I've been thinking tons about how integrating blogging in the formal English / Language Arts classroom might build a rich new media environment for ELA students. I've started a provisional list below but am hoping that others (most importantly for me, people who have worked with blogs in their classrooms) can offer ideas for additions to this list.

First of all, it's worth noting that my approach to the value of blogging for teaching and learning in Language Arts is deeply informed by the work of a number of teacher-researchers from several fields. Most notable among these are Paul Allison, whose chapter "Be a Blogger: Social Networking in the Classroom" (in Teaching the New Writing: Technology, Change, and Assessment in the 21st-Century Classroom, by Anne Herrington, Kevin Hodgson, and Charles Moran) offers a glimpse into the day-to-day workings of a blogging-focused ELA curriculum; and Sam Rose and Howard Rheingold, who have devised (and made publicly available) an enormous set of resources for teaching in and through new media platforms.

My approach is also informed by my personal experience as a blogger--really, to be fair, as someone who is willing to squeeze out nearly anything in order to make time for posting. By even my most generous estimate, I spend far too much of my time blogging--unless you account for the formative value of blogging for someone like me. I am convinced that the intellectual and identity work required for me to maintain this space has led directly to my growing prowess as a researcher, reader, and writer. You cannot convince me otherwise; so do not even bother trying.

My experiences and the reading I've done about the value of blogging for learning informs everything that comes next.

Characteristics of blogging that support new media literacy

Reaching a wide(r) reader base
It's important to note that blogs differ in purpose from many seemingly similar writing platforms. It's obvious to most that a blog is different from a personal journal, in that while many of us may hope to have our journals read by a larger public some day, blogs are actually intended to support wider readership. The majority of blogs are public (meaning anybody can view them) and taggable, and they come up as legitimate sites in web searches.

Blogs also differ from forums, chat rooms, instant message programs, and social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Of all of these spaces, blogs are generally the most polished, the most text-based, and the most supportive of extended engagement with a single idea.

Shifting from intended audience to intended public
This idea is ripped from Howard Rheingold, who (tapping into some Habermas) writes that

[m]oving from a private to a public voice can help students turn their self-expression into a form of public participation. Public voice is learnable, a matter of consciously engaging with an active public rather than broadcasting to a passive audience.

The move here is away from the "please read what I wrote" approach to "please act on the ideas I've written down here." The regular practice required for building and maintaining a blog's readership helps to crystallize this shift and helps writers to see there is a broad, if constantly shifting, group of people whose interests align with the broad, if constantly shifting, ideas of a blog. Though the intended public is largely invisible (we have generally only met a fraction of our blog's readers), consistent practice in finding, drawing in, and engaging this target public makes them less transparent.

Blogs as (genuine) conversations
When I taught college composition lo these many years ago, I always tried to argue to my students that all writing is a conversation--that when we write, we take up ideas that were presented by other writers before us and try to present something new that might be of interest to people who care about the kinds of things we write about.

The argument always felt hollow to me. After all, college students are typically only eavesdroppers. Only a handful of people will ever read what they've written, and often the students don't really care all that much about the assigned writing topics anyway. Add to that the artificial motivator of the ever-elusive 'A' and you have a recipe for calamity.

But blogs--now blogs are authentic communication spaces. They really are. Anybody can get almost anybody to read a blogpost and, if the post is engaging enough, to comment on the post for all eternity to see. This very fact ups the ante some: Getting the spelling of someone's name suddenly matters an awful lot. Making a concise, well supported argument has real, potential consequences: A strong enough argument gets people to sit up and notice. A strong enough argument gets people to act.

A move toward increasingly public spheres of participation
An increasingly participatory culture calls for participation that's ethical, reasoned, and publicly accessible. After all, the widespread takeup of the spirit of participatory culture requires that we all act in ways that keep the barriers to participation low, the potential for contribution high, and the mentorship possibilities readily available to most or all participants. This can only happen to the extent that all or most of us are willing to operate, to express and circulate our ideas and creative works, in public online and offline spaces. Since so much discourse will increasingly happen in public spaces, it only makes sense that we use the ELA domain to prepare students for engagement in those public spaces.


Blogs as spaces for fostering both traditional and new media literacies
For language arts teachers, blogging presents a fairly obvious avenue for preparing learners for engagement in public spheres of communication, since blogs align nicely with the traditional purposes of the ELA classroom. As a group of readers engage in deep analysis of their own and others' blogs, they have to think about issues like tone, style, genre, punctuation, word choice, and organization.

The extra toy prize is that students also get to learn about the characteristics of online writing, including what danah boyd identifies as the four properties of online communication (persistence, searchability, replicability, and scalability) and three dynamics (invisible audiences, collapsed contexts, and the blurring of public and private). As my colleague Michelle Honeyford put it, "they hit all the standards and get to learn about online participation for free."


Confronting the ethics challenge
Nobody's arguing that we should sign every sixth grader up with a Blogger account. That would just be silly. Media scholar Henry Jenkins is fond of saying that the role of educators and parents is not to look over kids' shoulders but to watch their backs, and scaffolding learners toward participation in increasingly public spheres allows us to do just that. Lots of teachers (including the famously brilliant Becky Rupert at Bloomington's Aurora Alternative High School) start their students out by having them post to a private space (she uses Ning) but having them analyze writing from more public spaces. This way, they have a kind of new media sandbox to try out and engage with the norms of online communication before actually being held to the higher ethical standard, with deeper potential repercussions (both positive and negative).


That's all I have for now, though I would love to hear from you on the list above. What have I missed? What am I ignoring? What struggles are linked to bringing blogs into the classroom, and what challenges have you encountered if you've tried to do so?

I hope for this to be a multipart post that will include thoughts on the following categories:

• Affordances of blogging as a new media writing technology
• Challenges to integrating blogs into the ELA classroom
• Resources (including lesson plans, other writing on this topic, etc.)
• Assessment guidelines for working with blogs

If you have thoughts on any of the above, I'd love to hear from you. If you have any trouble posting comments (I don't know why, but some of you have) please email me at jennamcjenna(at)gmail(dot)com.

my first vlogpost: how blogging has shaped my reading and writing practices

You guys, I think this is my very first vlogpost.

According to Wikipedia, video-blogging, or vlogging, is

a form of blogging for which the medium is video.Entries are made regularly and often combine embedded video or a video link with supporting text, images, and other metadata. Entries can be recorded in one take or cut into multiple parts.

The open content site at public radio station WGBH clumps vlogs with blogs and offers one definition for both; presumably, this means that both offer the same kind of content, using different media delivery formats.

In that case, here you go: my very first vlogpost, a video project (filmed and edited by me!) explaining how I read and write through my primary identity as a blogger.

some thoughts on what's 'new' about 'new media'

Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel, writing about "new" literacies, argue that the notion of "new literacies" is a useful way of thinking from a historical, but not temporal, perspective. There's no point in thinking about new literacies in temporal terms, they write, because:

Under conditions where time is increasingly calculated in nanoseconds and, as the saying goes, five minutes is a long time in cyberspace, there is little to be gained from speaking of new literacies in temporal terms. As soon as Instant Messaging appears, email seems like an “old” literacy. There is no future in hitching a research agenda to anything as fleeting as that.

Lankshear and Knobel then proceed to divide the "new" literacies into two categories: "technical stuff" and "ethos stuff." They explain the difference thus:

What is central to new literacies is not the fact that we can now “look up information online” or write essays using a word processor rather than a pen or typewriter, or even that we can mix music with sophisticated software that works on run of the mill computers but, rather, that they mobilize very different kinds of values and priorities and sensibilities than the literacies we are familiar with. The significance of the new technical stuff has mainly to do with how it enables people to build and participate in literacy practices that involve different kinds of values, sensibilities, norms and procedures and so on from those that characterize conventional literacies. These values, sensibilities and the like comprise what we call “new ethos stuff.”

This is the best explanation I've come across so far of the "new media literacies" we're all talking about so much: technical stuff and ethos stuff.

Of course, traditional literacies had their own technical stuff and ethos stuff--it's just that the stuff of traditional literacies had been around so long, and had been so relatively stable for so much of that time, that the adults whose job it was to foster skills in both categories felt comfortable doing so. The slate and chalk model was replaced by the pen and paper model, but that material change aside, writing was writing was writing. And anyway, the stuff clustered up in the ethos for traditional literacy practices really only mattered to the extent that people would be expected to engage in public conversations through those practices--and for the most part, this type of engagement was limited to a small, elite, and well-educated group of (rich white male) citizens.

It's not news that this model has been turned on its head--and this is what both makes the new literacies "new" and what makes them feel so new, so unfamiliar, so hard to teach. Normally (and by normally, I mean historically speaking), we'd have a generation or more to figure out the fallout from this changing cultural model, but this time around, the change is happening so fast, and is so complete, that we don't have the luxury of taking it slow.

The term "new media literacies," therefore, can be said to be making double use of the word "new": The media formats, and technical skills required to make use of them, are new to us all; and the literacies--the social and cultural competencies required to engage in the "ethos stuff"--are new as well. Thinking more broadly, the emergence of new media literacies has also, and at the same time, forced us to engage with a new model of expertise: The young tend to be much, much better at adopting and adapting, and therefore have a great deal to teach us about both the technical stuff and the ethos stuff. (By 'young,' I mean anyone up to the age of oh, say, 32. Ask me again next year and I'll say 'everyone up to the age of 33.')

We're not used to a distributed model of expertise in which all participants in a culture have something to teach all participants in a culture. Traditionally, older adults had a monopoly in this respect--early reports suggest the monopoly has been overthrown. It still takes a number of years to become a domain expert, of course, but even the established 10-year time frame required for expert status has been called into question by the ubiquity of learning environments and experiences.

This kind of revolution, as a friend recently remind me, doesn't lead to chaos in the streets. This is new, as well: Historically speaking, times of great cultural upheaval are generally accompanied by violence, riots, some sort of physical evidence pointing to revolution. We're all being quite calm and civilized (YouTube comments notwithstanding). This, in case you were wondering, makes it the perfect revolution to buy into.