The Significance of Audience

A couple quotes from the Chavez and Soep (2005) piece, Youth Radio and the Pedagogy of Collegiality regarding audience that I intend to use in my reflection paper for Culture, Media, and Education:

"The significance of an audience is not, of course, measured by size alone" (410)

"The anticipated audience acts as a witness..." (419)

Globalization and Beyond

I've been thinking about a funny comment my 4 year old son said to his teacher recently when I was visiting his classroom:

(addressing the teacher) "Do you know what I learned from T.V.? I learned that in space there are these big blue things. Do you know what they're called? Supernovas. When the sun gets really old, it will break and..." (makes a smashing motion with his fists).

I thought that it was pretty cool that 1) he learned that in the first place, 2) he learned it from T.V. and 3) he described the concept as something that he learned.

I didn't get to talk to him about it right away, but wondered what it was that he was watching. I couldn't recall watching any shows about supernovas with him.

Later that evening while he was getting ready for bed, I asked him, "Where did you learn about supernovas?"

He responded, " From the movie. At my friends house."

"What was the movie about?"

"The university," he replied.

So after we talked about the differences and similarities between the universe and university, I thought more about his remarks. He engaged in this learning with another friend who shares a similar interest. Watching the show was a very social activity for the two boys. I'm curious about the differences in learning when watching a T.V. program alone versus watching it with a friend.

The family of my son's friend is from India. Often, I talk with his parents about education in America and learning in general. Up to now, I haven't thought about the boy's educations in terms of globalization and what their world will be like as adults, but this Jon Stewart clip from last night got me thinking about it. Enjoy!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Deep Space Naan
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Multimodal Image Sharing Tool

Kangaroo Rock: A Multimodal Artifact

Here is an artifact that illustrates the affordances of multimodality that my students and I made together last school year.

From Technologies and Literacies

Although I wrote the text (sometimes transcribing verbal stories or descriptions from my students), they contributed to producing the newspaper by drawing pictures, providing captions and descriptions, and telling a story.

From Technologies and Literacies

Both students and teachers all over the school enjoyed the newspaper. We printed out several hard copies and also sent copies electronically to our "subscribers".

Have Meaning, Will Travel

The most important concept I took away from chapter 7 of Travel Notes from the NLS is that "meaning can travel and traverse modes" and that "literacy does not travel" (Kell, p. 165).

The mode of Noma's meaning (her house was in need of repair) transformed as it traversed the margins of distinct activity systems, from verbal presentation (or performance) to written text, to conversation and community discourse.

Multimodal Literacy

FLY ME TO THE MOON
by Eric Carson

made in Comic Creator

I am in favor of letting children explore language and text in a variety of formats, such as picture books and comics. Beyond just reading Manga or comics, online sites exist that provide image libraries, dialog bubbles, and story frames that allow kids to create and share their own comics.


By searching 'comic creator' and 'manga creator,' several interesting sites are found, including:

MashON Spore This site has an extensive image and background library, however it may be more interesting to boys (similar to the descriptions of Shonen manga). I tried to make my own comic, but felt a bit clumsy using their editor.

Make Beliefs Comix! This site has only a few choices for images, but may actually encourage greater creativity by requiring the user to create imagery through text to compensate for limited graphics.

Newspaper Clipping Generator Although not really multimodal on it's own, this fun newspaper clipping creator could be combined with visual images, allowing kids to create authentic looking digital artifacts to enhance projects.

Comic Creator Another simple way to author one's own comic strip. More options for story board size than Make Beliefs. Also, these can't be saved on the website. One must print or save it locally.

Laika, a Soviet space dog, was the first living mammal to orbit the Earth.

Educational Leadership's Literacy 2.0

In Educational Leadership's current issue(a publication of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development), each article centers around a theme of Literacy 2.0. One entire article is devoted to defining 2.0 literacies.

Personally, terms like Web 2.0 or words beginning with i make me cringe. Do we really want to start numbering our collective advancements of ICTs and literacy practices? Does literacy 2.0 accurately reflect that language and communication have been changing and responding to human activities for thousands of years before wikis and blogs? Was all of human language prior to the printing press the equivalent of the literacy beta-test?

Back to the current issue of Ed Leadership, Naomi Baron contributed an article about mobile technologies' effects on speech and written language. While much of it is similar to her discussions in Always On, it does highlight the preoccupation of the popular press with the superficial effects of acronyms popping up in student speech and writing. Baron argues that relaxed attitudes towards grammar and spelling may be more detrimental.

A text-to-self connection with Baron ch. 9 :)

On page 199 of Always On, Naomi Baron retells a short story about an internet company that singularly determined that readers now have to be responsible for the accuracy of stories, not the internet journalists who compose them. The justification from the official was that internet journalists have to "work very fast."

About a year ago, I noticed an error in something that was on the front page of the Yahoo! site. Normally, I don't bother correcting errors that I catch in someone else's print, but this was a big mistake, so I responded by using a 'questions/comments' link on the same page (I can't recall what the error was, though - wish I could).

The message I received back was similar to the response of the official in Baron's story. "We repost news items and stories that we get from other sources so it's not our problem" was the gist of it. Apparently, Yahoo! is fine with mediating inaccurate content. I imagine many other internet sites, including newspaper sites, are just as guilty of using content without checking the accuracy.

A month or two after that, I noticed another error on the same site. I didn't bother reporting the error because I'd learned valuable lessons the first time around:
1) Yahoo! is not interested in disseminating accurate information
2) Yahoo! doesn't care to report they posted inaccurate information from another source
3) Yahoo! doesn't care to correct their inaccurate information from another source
3) I don't trust anything I read on Yahoo! to necessarily be accurate

I probably should substitute 'all internet sites' for Yahoo! in my lessons, but I'll give each a shot to retract and apologize for a news item that was posted inaccurately. I recognize that 'internet journalists' have to work fast and that sometimes mistakes will be made. Just don't call yourself a journalist if you're not willing to correct those mistakes.

Barton and Literacy

As I was writing my review of the Barton text, I decided to group chapters thematically. I hope the themes make sense to other readers, but if they don't, I tried to explain the groupings explicitly in my opening paragraph. I've committed to this approach, but I'm afraid that jumping around the book will be confusing. Hopefully, this fear will cause me to pay special attention to my descriptions and organization.

On another topic, I've found this book to be very interesting and useful for thinking about disciplines outside the realm of 'literacy'. I can't say that I have much to be critical about (other than Barton should have organized his book the way I do in my paper!).

Patterns of Speech and Instant Messages

I was hoping the results of Naomi Baron's pilot study were going to tell me definitively, "Yes, the patterns of speech and instant messages are the same" or "No, instant messages follow patterns of written language." But the end of the chapter left me feeling that the question is one that can't be answered in such either/or terms.

Perhaps, IM is a form of language all it's own - a hybrid of writing and speech. In Crystal's chapter on email, he suggests the same may be true of that medium as well. Whether it is email, instant message, or text message, I think each is dynamic in use. A user may email as a written form of a communication act and as a spoken form for another. This would be evidenced in the composer's attention to greetings and closings, use of contractions and emoticons, and structure of the message.

Language in the Chat Room

A great deal of Crystal's explanation of Netspeak offered examples from multi-user dungeons and chat rooms. While it is important to study the development of Netspeak, I found the focus on these less-popular technologies to be outdated. Perhaps this is merely a reflection of the changing nature of technology - a nature that published books often struggle to capture.

In Always On however, Baron describes a new prevailing view of chatrooms. She notes that while popular during the 1990's in the United States, they are now viewed as 'creepy' and not appealing (Baron, p 23). She suggests that educational MOOs and instant message buddy lists have replaced the chatroom. Another possibility is the prevalence of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, which do not have chat room components.

While understanding the historical development of the terms is useful, as an educator, I am more interested in the current development of Netspeak and how it affects language and writing in the classroom. Reports that text abbreviations are creeping into students' writing suggests we examine the function of literacy using the ecological perspective, as Barton advises. There is no sense to dismiss text abbreviations as not having communicative value in the classroom, but teaching students appropriate times to use such shorthand in the school context is worthwhile.

'The Ecology of Written Language'

So, just how far will Barton extend the metaphor of ecology? As I'm reading (and construct my own understanding of the metaphor), I'm beginning to understand the usefulness of ecology as a description of what is really happening when we use the terms literacy, literate, illiteracy, and illiterate. Interestingly, I was surprised to learn that the terms, in their current usage, are relatively new and continually evolving. I think I may have been under the impression that 'literacy' has been in similar pedagogical use since my grandparents' school days (which was in the early part of last century).

I'm recognizing that literacy is a concept that can't be described as a skill set or a portion of a larger system, rather it is connected to elements throughout the system. I particularly like Barton's description on page 31, "...the structure and patterns in a community are a product of processes at the level of the individual."

So, what does the 'ecosystem' of literacy look like? This is the understanding that I'm constructing.

Finally, a favorite line from this text so far:
"[Metaphors] are like the tips of icebergs..." (p. 17)

Always On, Initial Thoughts

I'm eager to finish this book for two reasons. First, I'm interested in Baron's analysis of how being 'always on' is slowly affecting our language usage as a society as technologies emerge and are adpoted, or domesticated. Second, I am eager for an answer to the question: should texting and IMing be considered a form of speech?

The book prompted an interesting discussion the other night with my mother, who teaches 2nd grade. As her son, I could anticipate her response before I raised the subject, and I wasn't surprised by her verdict. In her experience, being 'always on' is eroding our reading and writing abilities. For me, the jury is still out. While I agree with my mother that our language is changing (or adapting?) to new technologies, I don't think it necessarily means that the changes are detrimental to our language. Furthermore, if some practices are detrimental to our language systems, it definitely does not have to be the case.

Finally, my opinion of texting and instant messaging is that, yes, they are akin to speech, albeit a modified form. As a student of augmentative and alternative communication for individuals with speech difficulties, I immedietly recognize text and instant messages as forms of speech. While I'll continue to develop this idea over the course of the semester, my main reason for this belief is in the transient nature of these messages. Although they can create a log of a discussion, when they are not used for that function, they merely transfer content (which can be information, asking a question, commenting, or social niceties) for immediate use.