Wednesday, February 28, 2007
unrelated to anything
SO I am thinking about creating a haiku blog. This is unrelated (mostly) to new literacy studies, so I think it deserves a new blog entirely. But I don't want to spread myself too thin. But I just remembered how much I love haiku! Does anyone know of any good haiku sites? I will keep thinking about this before I commit to a new blog.
Blogging Code of Ethics?
Pamela from class sent me a link to an article about blogging, which led me to another article about a proposed code of blogging ethics. It is worth checking out. I have to admit I haven't read the whole thing yet; however, I think that as the face of journalism changes, this is a really important topic to discuss.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Three Things
A) of all: We watched this You Tube Video in class tonight.
It made me think about the flexibility of digital text and makes a nice simple statement about how the web is changing us (especially web 2.0, but I don't think you have to know much about that to appreciate the video). It is changing how we read and how we interact with text. It gives authorship and agency to people who have never had it in the past. Is this inherently a good thing? Does it change how we evaluate authenticity of a piece of text? On that note, someone in class mentioned that the NY times recently reported on the use of Wikipedia as a reference in academic work--here is the link to that article. I thought it raised a lot of interesting questions about authorship, attention and authenticity.
B) of all: I think I have a title for my paper (which is due in a little over a week). Yes, that is right--just a title, but it is a start. I wrote it down on real paper, then lost the piece of paper. So much for paper. It was something like: Attention and Authenticity: Critical Literacy in the Age of Digital Media. Great title, don't you think? Now I just have to write it (thank goodness the hard part is over though).
C) and finally: Is anyone reading this?
It made me think about the flexibility of digital text and makes a nice simple statement about how the web is changing us (especially web 2.0, but I don't think you have to know much about that to appreciate the video). It is changing how we read and how we interact with text. It gives authorship and agency to people who have never had it in the past. Is this inherently a good thing? Does it change how we evaluate authenticity of a piece of text? On that note, someone in class mentioned that the NY times recently reported on the use of Wikipedia as a reference in academic work--here is the link to that article. I thought it raised a lot of interesting questions about authorship, attention and authenticity.
B) of all: I think I have a title for my paper (which is due in a little over a week). Yes, that is right--just a title, but it is a start. I wrote it down on real paper, then lost the piece of paper. So much for paper. It was something like: Attention and Authenticity: Critical Literacy in the Age of Digital Media. Great title, don't you think? Now I just have to write it (thank goodness the hard part is over though).
C) and finally: Is anyone reading this?
Sunday, February 11, 2007
teaching kids to cut through the BS
So I am in Los Angeles this weekend, and something about this place has gotten me thinking quite a bit about our super-saturated media culture, and how we deal with it in the classroom. Teaching kids to cut through the bullshit (I don't think this is a technical term, but it is a blog, after all) is not really in the best interests of those who hold positions of power in our society. A public that cares more about Anna Nicole Smith than they do about the 1900 people who died in Iraq last month is easier to control than one who thinks critically about political policy and popular culture. It makes me think about how popular culture can be used in the classroom to achive a couple of pedagogical goals; not only can bringing popular cultural resources into our classrooms help to bridge the gap between out-of-school and in-school literacies by connecting to students' background knowledge, but it can also help to engage them in a critical analysis that may then be applied more globally to larger issues of political and economic power. If kids are consuming this type of media at home, then the best thing we can do as educators is to help them to understand and think critically about the images and messages that are flying at them on a daily basis.
This post is just a spewing of random thoughts for now, but I hope to launch in to a larger discussion of social semiotics and critical media literacy soon.
Also just picked up the new issue of New York magazine this week--the cover article is about the "largest generation gap since rock and roll"--the internet and how it is being used by today's youth and where the lines between public and private lives have become blurred for these young people and how the older generation (anyone over 30--yikes!) is having trouble relating to this new paradigm. More on this later.
E
This post is just a spewing of random thoughts for now, but I hope to launch in to a larger discussion of social semiotics and critical media literacy soon.
Also just picked up the new issue of New York magazine this week--the cover article is about the "largest generation gap since rock and roll"--the internet and how it is being used by today's youth and where the lines between public and private lives have become blurred for these young people and how the older generation (anyone over 30--yikes!) is having trouble relating to this new paradigm. More on this later.
E
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
The subject of blogging as a form of new media provokes strong responses from many, particularly those who work in the newspaper industry. David Horsey, a columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, posed this question to his readers on December 30, 2007, and (perhaps ironically, perhaps not) asked them to post their responses to the online forum:
“Unquestionably, there are good things resulting from the democratization of the media. The best bloggers are delving into issues and information that may be bypassed by professional journalists. But with everyone holding a virtual megaphone, will we be able to hear the wiser voices amid the din of full-throated free expression?”
His question goes to the heart of what I believe is an exciting new territory for media and education—the posts held by the gatekeepers of traditional print-based media have been knocked down and the result—the democratization of media—causes many people to shift uncomfortably in their chairs. Should everyone really have a voice? Does every opinion on local politics, climate change, government conspiracy, popular culture, and practically anything else you can imagine really warrant a forum for expression? And (the question which most interests me) what are the implications of these practices on teaching media literacy?
To explore these and other questions, I have created a blog. In creating this blog, I hope to engage in a meta-analysis of blogging as a cultural phenomenon and reflect and explore the theory and practice of this emerging new digital literacy. My blog will also include reflections on new literacy studies and educational theory and practice. I will explore the resources available on the internet for teachers to engage with digital literacies, especially blogging, and will include links to other blogs and websites that help to support or complicate my own theories on the topic.
The process of creating a blog and linking to other websites has already activated a new literacy for me—the intertextual and multi-modal nature of this practice is different from any literacy practice I have engaged in before, yet requires a competence in the skills found in the traditional, print-based literacy practices of the classroom in order to deliver my message effectively. Intertextuality and multi-modality are two terms that are discussed at length in the current research digital literacy that I hope to explore even further throughout the course of this project. My project will involve tying the practice of blogging and my personal experience with it to the conceptual frameworks posed by digital literacy theorists such as: Gee, Oravec, Lewis and Fabos, Stone, Knobel and Lankshear, Luke, the New London Group, and other yet-to-be-read theorists from our Digital Literacies seminar.
This project is particularly relevant for me because I work as an educational curriculum specialist for two Seattle newspapers, and am constantly exploring new ways to engage students with media literacy. I see blogging as a tool that is ripe with potential for activating students’ prior knowledge and engaging them with the practice of journaling and writing for different audiences. I also believe that it is a practice that is becoming more and more common in the digital age and that is—for better or for worse—changing the face of journalism as we know it. Our students will someday be the future taste-makers, meme-warriors, culture-jammers, or gatekeepers of our media landscape; teaching them to think critically about democracy, media and messaging today is the most important step we can make towards helping them navigate a future that is certain to be as complicated, intertextual, shifting and exciting as our present.
“Unquestionably, there are good things resulting from the democratization of the media. The best bloggers are delving into issues and information that may be bypassed by professional journalists. But with everyone holding a virtual megaphone, will we be able to hear the wiser voices amid the din of full-throated free expression?”
His question goes to the heart of what I believe is an exciting new territory for media and education—the posts held by the gatekeepers of traditional print-based media have been knocked down and the result—the democratization of media—causes many people to shift uncomfortably in their chairs. Should everyone really have a voice? Does every opinion on local politics, climate change, government conspiracy, popular culture, and practically anything else you can imagine really warrant a forum for expression? And (the question which most interests me) what are the implications of these practices on teaching media literacy?
To explore these and other questions, I have created a blog. In creating this blog, I hope to engage in a meta-analysis of blogging as a cultural phenomenon and reflect and explore the theory and practice of this emerging new digital literacy. My blog will also include reflections on new literacy studies and educational theory and practice. I will explore the resources available on the internet for teachers to engage with digital literacies, especially blogging, and will include links to other blogs and websites that help to support or complicate my own theories on the topic.
The process of creating a blog and linking to other websites has already activated a new literacy for me—the intertextual and multi-modal nature of this practice is different from any literacy practice I have engaged in before, yet requires a competence in the skills found in the traditional, print-based literacy practices of the classroom in order to deliver my message effectively. Intertextuality and multi-modality are two terms that are discussed at length in the current research digital literacy that I hope to explore even further throughout the course of this project. My project will involve tying the practice of blogging and my personal experience with it to the conceptual frameworks posed by digital literacy theorists such as: Gee, Oravec, Lewis and Fabos, Stone, Knobel and Lankshear, Luke, the New London Group, and other yet-to-be-read theorists from our Digital Literacies seminar.
This project is particularly relevant for me because I work as an educational curriculum specialist for two Seattle newspapers, and am constantly exploring new ways to engage students with media literacy. I see blogging as a tool that is ripe with potential for activating students’ prior knowledge and engaging them with the practice of journaling and writing for different audiences. I also believe that it is a practice that is becoming more and more common in the digital age and that is—for better or for worse—changing the face of journalism as we know it. Our students will someday be the future taste-makers, meme-warriors, culture-jammers, or gatekeepers of our media landscape; teaching them to think critically about democracy, media and messaging today is the most important step we can make towards helping them navigate a future that is certain to be as complicated, intertextual, shifting and exciting as our present.
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