I like that we get more readings on the aurality of language and composing. Like I said previously, it’s not something I had ever considered before. Like she points out, music and sound is increasingly important to students and their lives. If that is the case. this is most likely one more direction the future will take and one more thing we need to teach students if we are to keep learning relevant. Like she points out, students don’t necessarily value discussion in classroom settings, but they do value listening and speaking in other ways. I think it’s interesting that she uses the term “deprive{ several times. About how teachers cannot deprive students of this valuable tool. But I don’t think teachers have meant to deprive anyone of anything, we just weren’t aware of its importance before now. Pedagogies change all of the time, it’s getting so hard to keep up with everything we should be teaching. I can’t hardly blame teachers if they fall behind n some things. And like most of the people we have read in this class, she’s not claiming that we exchange aurality FOR writing, rather use it along with composing In the traditional words-in-a-row manner, which any teacher should be more than happy to comply with if they can. We need to teach teachers to embrace multiliteracies and the many ways in which students can and should compose.

I think her brief history of aurality was pretty cool and like the history of the pencil as technology, important to know. Writing isn’t the only way of knowing or doing anymore and we need to keep that in mind. Although the English classrooms worked hard to distance themselves from orality in the past, there is a lot to be said about embracing it now. I also really liked her point on page 631 that

Walker noted, they often found the texts of television and radio, which

involved the aural presentation of information, to resonate more forcefully than

the written texts of historical eras. Walker pointed to the successes of teachers

who focused on popular culture and who used aural texts and popular music

as foci for classroom assignments. Similar suggestions for assignments were

put forward in subsequent years—with assignments that examined the music

of the Beatles (Carter) and Billie Holiday (Zaluda); popular music in general

(Kroeger); and the writing associated with popular music (Lutz)—for instance,

the liner notes that accompany albums and CDs.

Students understand and respond to aural texts and can find comfort in the mediums they are so used to dealing with on a daily basis, like TV and music.

Doug Hesse’s “Response to Cynthia L.Selfe’s “The Movement of Air,the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing”

At first it might seem like he is praising her, and he’s definitely not tearing her apart, but he has doubts and questions about her research findings. I think that in his first point he is saying that a composition course is about composing, and you can’t exactly compose in composition without text. While aurality may be important, it can never take the place of composition and the need for students to learn it. His analogies were helpful to what he was saying if “I’m to teach German but, noting the world’s economic drift (not to mention sheer numbers), I decide instead to teach Chinese, I shouldn’t be surprised if some stakeholders object.” And he’s right. If I am supposed to teach one subject I need to teach that subject and give my main attention to that one subject no matter how important I thin this other subtopic may be. I like that he is friendly in tone and doesn’t cut her down even though he clearly has a differing view point, he knows that she’s not calling for a total new way of teaching compositions and the ignoring of words-in-a-row texts, but just a more expansive definition in the mean time. He makes a lot of really good points including, “The question of whose interests the course ought to serve ultimately is an ethical one. Part of it involves “what’s good for the student”—but the student as worker, citizen, friend, soul? Part of it is “what’s good for the various cultures and subcultures” in which decisions are made, resources distributed, and ideas championed.” If organizations like the NCTE feel a certain way of teaching is better than another, shouldn’t we stick to that as best as we can and add in the other stuff we think is important along the way. I’m thinking mini-lessons. I love that he says he wants to ponder adding aurailty into his own class, but still has other implications to think about before he can do so.
Read and discuss Selfe’s response to Hesse

I love how academics talk back and forth to one another in essays published in a public forum. I wonder if they ever resent the things other scholars say about them. I mean, if I had just written an article and someone told me I was wrong or needed to think things through a little more, and I said, “so and so’s thoughtful response to my article…” would most likely be me cursing him or her internally. Is it not like that in Academia?

Selfe, as I expected, made many great points back. She brought up the questions that many of us who teach comp wonder, how can I teach all this other stuff when I barely have time to help my students write better? And the point is incredibly valid, but as she said, no one should leave writing out of the curriculum, but consider a multitude of literacies in which students can compose. Because of this new 21^st century that we live in, we must be open to communication across all modes, not just the narrow and limiting methods of writing in the traditional linear manner. Her response reminded me of what we do here in the freshman comp classes, have students compose across multiple genres so that they can one day transfer that knowledge of how to analyze genres for their format, content, style, purpose, audience, etc and do that when it comes time to composing in new and unfamiliar ways. She also makes the important point that in order to compose and communicate effectively for different groups, one must sometimes address the means in which they go about doing this, and teaching across multiple modes can get students there.

She also says that, “in rhetoric and composition should serve as role models in this regard, showing students that they, too, are willing to learn new ways of composing, to expand their own skills and abilities beyond the alphabetic by practicing with different modalities of expression that may be unfamiliar and difficult but increasingly expected and valuable in different twenty-first-century rhetorical contexts both in and out of the academy.” She couldn’t be more correct here, teachers need to expand their own ways of writing and embrace change and challenges within the classroom setting. And then finally, she links what Hesse is saying as kind of elitist and high brow ways of thinking, and all I can say is ouch!

I think the controversy between the high art and low art and literature with a capitol “L” is really interesting and important to know about. We studied this a lot in the children’s literature department and I find it fascinating how in order for the English department to gain credibility within academia they had to shed their feminine/childish image and “grow up”. That’s when the canon formed and they had a call for the “man book”.  Its very exclusionary and elitist in many ways, and purposely wants to leave out those they feel are “beneath them”. And if this is the case, what does that say for the English classroom? We want to leave people below us behind? We want to look more intelligent than others? There is just too much to point out here for all the negative consequences that could come from this type of thinking! If the high art leaves out postmodernism, which it does from my knowledge, then I wouldn’t want anything to do with it! I embrace pomo texts and theory and cannot imagine a literature classroom without it. I wonder why they devalue pomo so much, maybe because it takes away from the professor as the one who has all the answers and makes it seem like anyone could teach a text and they want to keep it more exclusionary?

The parts that talk about high and low brow art are the ones that stood out to me the most because it’s a point that I studied quite a bit as a CHL person. So this may be a little bit of a rant on my part, but talk about exclusionary! If education has always been a means to teach students high brow from low brow, and to teach the “acceptable” forms of reading, writing, and thinking, then we apparently have only been trying to homogenize our children and make them fall into line with social norms. Why not teach them to question everything? To think on their own in new, unique, and radical ways? Maybe if we taught this more often the world wouldn’t be falling apart, we wouldn’t have so much waste and pollution. How about instead of focusing on who’s better than whom, let’s focus on working together to make the world a better place. Grr. That makes me mad. Some people in education really seem to have their priorities all wrong. I mean, in some ways, who cares about “taste and sensibility”? as long as students are reading and writing, does it really matter whether it is viewed as high brow art? My Manga-loving students are some of my smartest, but a lot of people take them to be garbage texts and don’t take the texts or the students who read them seriously. What are we telling students if we continue to do this?

I like that they mention creating more of the “remix” culture in order to help students learn in a scholarly way. Mostly because this is my research project, but I agree that it has the potential to be incredibly helpful to students and the way they learn. I also thought it was cool how there were hyperlinks in this text, it really stood out to me as being an important facet of the 21^st century and the texts we read. If I didn’t know who Wesch was, or the Web 2.0 they authors were talking about, I could click on their links and BAM! I am all caught up. It truly shows how the nature of literacy is changing. I wonder is there is a program that is semi-permanent I could have my students work on to create something like this- a “professional” article with links to outside sources. Would it just be a Wiki or blog? I’m not sure, but it seems cool! I also liked the mentioning of Scott McCloud, while I clicked on the hyper-link a few times, it never let me listen to the podcast, or whatever it was, I think my wireless internet was being picky, but the fact that they mentioned McCloud as a way to kind of bridge the high and low debate was really great in my mind. And I agree, we need to teach new media with new media and compose in new media. It’s the only way to get students accustomed to the more professional ways of using technology. Even though they’re considered “digital natives” doesn’t mean much as most of our other literature has pointed out.

Voice in the Cultural Soundscape: Sonic Literacy in Composition Studies by Michelle Comstock

I really liked her point that, “Even with the renewed emphasis on visual and digital rhetoric, however, we as writing teachers are still very text-centered in our classrooms.” Even though we have been so excited to incorporate technology into the classroom, we’re still favoring texts rather than multi media literacy. How do we move away from this? I think it’s super interesting that she said, “However, we both believe sonic literacy–the ability to identify, define, situate, construct, manipulate, and communicate our personal and cultural soundscapes–should become an integral part of any course aimed at developing students’ skills in writing and digital literacy.” I mean, I’ve been such a huge advocate for visual literacy and digital literacy these last few months, but have paid little to no attention to sound literacy as well. It makes sense that we need to fuse that into the curriculum as well. Students need to know how to use sound and their own voices as compositional tools. The way we speak represents who we are, what we stand for, and the position we take on any given subject. This article made me see just how much the ELA classroom needs to take into consideration when teaching!

“When we ask students to compose voice-over narrations and soundtracks, we are asking them to write scripts and produce sound files that function as narratives in the cinematic sense–in relation to text, photographs, graphics, and/or moving images.” It just now dawned on me that there are so many things you can do with this in a classroom! Things that would have a specific purpose, teach a valuable lesson, and still allow the students to have fun with literacy and composition. They said that students who compose in these ways, “develop a stronger, more embodied sense of audience and of our popular cultural soundscapes. When they record a voice over, for example, students develop a closer attentiveness to how their words and sentence structures resonate with their own voices and their chosen audiences, and as a result, produce better texts with more awareness of the emotional impact of tone and style.” I wish I had thought about this earlier! I kind of feel like this is a bombshell that was dropped on me that I need a few days to really think about and how I would use it in my own classroom, but it is a wonderful place to start. To be honest, I am afraid I will forget this and not end up bringing it back to my classroom. I wish I had started a journal while I was in grad school of all the cool lesson plan ideas I’ve come across. And if all us TOW students did it, the cool stuff we would have to share at the end!

“The fact that each technology had a specific purpose implies a goal in its design, an objective that limited or even determined its use. Today’s online technologies are no different, and create serious impacts on our teaching.” The implications of this statement are huge. Technology has a goal, just like the bomb and the microwave, we cannot get around the fact that online web sources and teaching each have their own specific purpose, for better or worse.

Lane makes the important point that many teachers teaching online are novices, maybe not in teaching and maybe not in their subject, but a lot of them are teaching novices when it comes to teaching online (not Steve of course J) but this can be bad because they may not be setting up their classrooms to the best means possible like Kevin DePew and Heather Lettner-Rust’s article pointed out. Like Lane says, we need to help guide these novice instructors in ways that a typical face-to-face instructor doesn’t necessarily need. Maybe online courses in each department should hire an online department head to make sure online courses are meeting rigorous departmental requirements and are challenging students to the same extent as in-class instructors are expected to.

Combating Myths About Distance Education

By Todd Gilman

I think it’s interesting that he points out that even teachers today still look down on distance education as “not as good as” meeting in a classroom so many days a week. Everything in our society is such a hierarchy! I think my online course this semester has been by far my hardest and most demanding, and in fact, most stressful. How can any informed teacher not know the difficulties of taking an online course??

I like his point that meeting in person isn’t always a good thing either. Students can be unresponsive, unprepared, rude, etc. more so than they can be online. When it comes to distance education, students have to respond a certain number of times and in such an intelligent fashion that isn’t required in the classroom setting. Each way of teaching has its own challenges, but they also have great benefits as well.

He says that the online course design and environment can be a lot less forgiving than a face-to-face classroom, and I agree. A student really has to stay on top of every last post and assignment and lecture and discussion and you name it, in order to feel prepared to move ahead in the class and its content. Online courses require a discipline other classes just don’t.

Online-Education Study Reaffirms Value of Good Teaching, Experts Say

By David Glenn

I think it’s interesting that he points out that the medium isn’t the important factor here, it’s the strategies used to teach the lessons to be learned. If online classes happen to be more effective than face-to-face meetings, then perhaps it is because teachers are breaking out of their old, ineffective ruts and teaching through better means. My recent book report talked about this and how teachers need to try out new means of teaching rather than sticking with the old and ineffective things they’ve been doing for the past 20 years or so. I also like that he points out that the new methods aren’t that different from the old ones. Email or video conferencing is pretty much the same as when a students comes to your office and you tell him or her to shape up or risk failing.

They Thought Globally, but Now Colleges Push Online Programs Locally

By Marc Parry

Wow, the idea of a global campus is pretty cool. I mean, I guess that’s what a lot of online classes are anyways, but to think on a global level seems like it’s way more than what EMU and other institutions have been doing. Like I said, I think it’s important for students who are working adults with families like Joel Kohlberg to be able to go to school and work fulltime, but I think schools need to make sure they are doing what they’re doing to benefit students and not just their own pocket books. If an institution is just going online to make money then the program will fizzle like they mentioned, it won’t have to same quality instructors or instruction that many universities demand. Distance education should be to benefit students who want to better themselves, not be taken advantage of.

Regardless of what people think about distance education and its effect on learning, I think that their point that online learning allows for people to go to school who would never have had that opportunity is one of the most important things we can take away from this article. I am a big advocate of education for all, and if that means the classroom has to come to some students, then so be it. Like they said, the importance lies in the creation of course goals and outcomes and as long as students are meeting those goals and outcomes, the method in which they get there (face to face versus online) doesn’t really matter.

I mean, it’s obvious from this study and others that whether or not teachers and students ever see each other isn’t exactly important. Students can still learn and meet the outcomes from online learning, but the tough decisions come from the curriculum designers who have to decide how and what to implement when it comes to designing the class and the technology required. I wonder though, are instructors in charge of creating online courses on their own, or do they have to meet with special course developers to make sure they are meeting the needs of students through online collaboration? I am sure that for this class Steve was able to develop the course on his own because he has such a huge repertoire of online programs, but for people who don’t but still have the task of teaching online courses, do they have support systems to turn to? It’s interesting to think about because I know I am getting the most from this class because steve is so highly informed and educated on the topic and on online teaching and learning, but if other classes don’t have such tech-savvy teachers, how do they get a quality education?

As for methods of learning, sure, problem-posing methods of teaching and learning will always be more important and valuable than the banking model of learning, because students are not empty vessels just waiting to be filled with knowledge. In order to truly learn and understand, students must be able to understand a problem and solve it. I agree that the way an online course is set up and the background experience of a teacher is important for distance education, and that those instructors really need to think about the implications of everything they do much more than a face to face teacher.

Digital Underlife in the Networked Writing Classroom

Derek N. Mueller

I really liked his introductory paragraph that “The formal scene of teaching and learning ha, for everyone involved, changed: teachers are evermore frequently positioned to make decisions—to act—on digital underlife, on the distal and potentially transgressive discursive activities proliferated by emerging technologies, because their work-space hovers near a saturation point of crossed signals and converging wavelengths supported by portable electronic devices and wireless computing.” The first things that came to mind is 1) I have been there- wanting to pull the plug on my students who were messing around on chat or Google Earth or whatever program we had on the school computers and b) I’ve had a class that allowed us to go on whatever sites we wanted, but assumed we were listening as well. I’ve been on both sides of the debate and while on each side, I felt differently about what was happening. As a teacher, I wanted to pull the plug. Take students back to the classroom where they didn’t have access to such powers that they couldn’t control, but as a student who has messed around on email and facebook quickly and quietly while in class, I never once stopped paying attention to the teacher, and was actually paying more attention to the teacher while on those applications that I was in the minutes leading up to my going online.

I don’t allow laptops in my classroom. Students don’t need them and if we do need access to the Internet for whatever reason, my computer has it. We can look something up, project on the overhead screen, and get the information together. Yet, as I do this, students are on their cell phones checking their text messages, never quite satisfied with what is happening in the classroom regardless of what we are doing in class. They are so used to being entertained in five different ways at once, sometimes I think it would take a circus to keep them entertained and “on top of it all” in the classroom.

I like that article refers to the face book, texting, and iPod problem as an attentional crisis, because that’s exactly what we have on our hands. This digital underlife that pushes the rules, roles, and boundaries need to be dealt with in order for teachers and students to continue on. What must be done, like he points out, is that teachers have to embrace the digital underlife and find ways to bring it into the classroom, like the Twitter Project in Texas. We can’t just altogether ban it like the talks of banning Wikipedia, it’s not practical at this point, but we do need to find a way to make education and technology meet and assist in students learning.

Ok, so this week I am setting goals for myself and my research project. I plan to have the majority of my work done this week. I want to have my last 10 annotated bib entries posted by Wednesday/Thursday at the latest. And then by this weekend, I would like to have the first three to five pages written. I already a working outline in my head of where my paper is going to go, but I will also have that down and “official” by Thursday as well. I know my paper is mainly going to cover issues of how to use remixing in the classroom, but I need to make sure I define digital literacy for my reader and let them know why I think this project and remixing is important to student success before I can move on to the “meat” of my paper. I am feeling energized about it and have a plan of action! If you’re looking for my official project update to comment on, it’s a few entries down on this page. This is just my informal research update for week 12 J

Is there a relationship between facebook use and grades? That’s an interesting point I had never thought of before!

But seriously, now that we’ve talked about a lot of these issues in class over the past weeks, I am much more interested in reading about the positive effects of these technologies in students lives rather than all the negative paranoia. Unfortunately, no matter what I do, my friends and family are still not convinced that texting and facebooking will not be the end of intelligence as we know it. My mom even forced me to watch that silly “In the year 2025” song on youtube for like the fiftieth time insisting that that is where we are heading if we don’t stop all this stuff, lol.

It also made me think about the summer class in TC where all of us grad students were playing around and working on our technology projects while you were in the back talking and walking us through stuff. We were easily able to multitask! We were sometimes working on podbean stuff even though you were talking about Twitter or whatnot, I don’t think students should be on facebook or texting in class, but at the same time, like with the Twitter experiment, students were able to understand what the instructor was saying, keep up with the class discussion, and participate all at once. Like several of our other readings have noted, this is a generation that needs to be multitasking. They thrive on doing many things at once and I think we need to give them more challenging things to do in the class or else they will multitask with the materials they brought with them.

Thanks for the Ad, now Help me with my Homework

It really was nice to read an article that didn’t just slam the negative effects of these technologies on students’ lives. I think reading this really helped me to see my own biases against gaming as a means of learning and how those thoughts are unwarranted and a little too negative, just like all the naysayers against social networking site. Is it because I understand SN but not gaming? Probably! I use fb all the time and I am not some delinquent! So why would students who game be? They’re not and we all need to learn how to embrace this.

I thought it was important that this article noted how student writing has actually increased because of social networking sites. My book review book talks about this as well. Students may be “butchering language” in their texts and facebooking, but they do know the difference between how to write in emails versus texts, versus school papers. A lot of our paranoia is unfounded, students are learning a lot of new skills from technology and we as educators need to embrace this, just like Gee and Prensky and them were talking about.

3 Ways educators are embracing technology

I have never Skyped and haven’t used the technology, but I know a TON of students are using it and I think I need to try it out! I loved the idea of the Spanish-American dialogue happening between the two classes and countries; it’s like having a pen pal but one that can help you learn in authentic ways. I agree with the conclusion of the article, we can’t ban these technologies (like the article on the banning of Wikipedia mentioned) and it’s silly to even try. The more we try to stop students from using them, the more they will rebel and the more policing we are going to be forced to do. Let students use their cellphones in between classes, who cares? Just make sure they know they can’t take advantage of this and come late to class or keep texting once they get there. I think it can be done, but it would take a lot of discussion rather than lecturing to get students to get on board with it.

This isn’t the first article I have read about the fight between Myspace and Facebook, while I have to admit that I don’t have a MySpace, I used to. I thought it was realy cool when I first started it, but then as I got older and my friends were talking about Facebook I was a convert and quickly realized that Facebook was the place to be. I closed down my MySpace and welcomed the more mature audience and the way I could connect with family and friends in a way I just didn’t get from MySpace.

I thought the trends and statistics about Facebook versus MySpace were interesting as well. It’s weird that even the technology we choose to use can define and stereotype us.

Zen and the art of Twitter

I liked that the article was informal, but at first wan’t sure if it was a joke or not. As this just a Google article meant to entertain? I think it is important to “explore living wisely in our modern age” but Twitter wasn’t the first thing that came to my mind.

I think his point that social networking can become overwhelming is important. To a lot of us, it’s just good fun and a way to procrastinate and chat informally with friends, but to many, it just adds up to work. I like his point to try and learn something new. I tell my students, even if you think you know it all, there’s still something you can learn if you’re open to the possibilities, and it’s true for every facet of life, even Twitter I guess J

I also like the “post not to fill empty space, but to add value” as well. It reminded me of the readings about chat rooms and YouTube from last week where people think that because their posts are anonymous they can say whatever they want. People should respond to add value and not insult.

Defining Creepy Treehouse

The definitions are wide and actually really funny, lol. I think I really did laugh out loud when reading some of them J

One thing that stood out to me was when he said, “they may repulse some users who see them as infringement on the sanctity of their peer groups, or as having the potential for institutional violations of their privacy, liberty, ownership, or creativity.” I have seen this a lot in technology classes where some people refuse to put up pictures because they think someone will steal their identity or just don’t want to participate in something like Face Book because they’re terrified of the possible ramifications. I guess because I like face book I never really understood this, but maybe because I’m more of a “native” to it.

I also thought the idea that using tools that mimic the tools students enjoy using on their own time is a part of the creepy treehouse effect. We talked about this in the summer class and how using Twitter or FaceBook pages as a way to make learning cool or fun can actually have a negative effect. Students don’t want teachers invading all aspects of their lives, they want facebook for themselves and not have to be forced to check the classroom facebook page, then it’s just a creepy treehouse and no learning takes place.

How Twitter Will Change the Way we Live

Interesting and funny all at once! Who knew hearing about my friends’ breakfast cereal choice could change my life! The idea of ambient awareness was pretty interesting and how seeing into their lives can be deeply satisfying. I think more than anything it would make me laugh, which either way, is still good for one’s health J

“In short, the most fascinating thing about Twitter is not what it’s doing to us. It’s what we’re doing to it.” The use of Twitter in the classroom as a way to open up dialogue on a subject is fascinating. We watched that one video from TC about the woman who uses it in Texas and I think it could be a really cool way to get kids who wouldn’t normally talk in a classroom discussion to openly participate on screen. We tried it in the TC class and here as well, and I think it could be a fabulous tool.

ParadoxandPromise:MySpace,Facebook,andtheSociopoliticsof

SocialNetworkingintheWritingClassroom

Maranto and Barton

I think this article was really interesting, especially the way it talks about how these SN tools have both potential and potential problems. I know from experience that they are highly abused by teachers and don’t mind that they are blocked on school campuses. One of my exboyfriend’s best friends is a teacher and all he does all day long is get on facebook and/or email back and forth with his buddies. To me, this is an abuse of the system and should be policed by the schools. I’m not all crazy about not having email and technology on capuses, but I do think that teachers and students who are using them incorrectly should have repurcussion. This same teacher also has his students on his Facebook page where he talks about drinking and partying and also allows students of his to come over and let his dogs out when he is not home… female students too. Granted he’s a mess, but I would venture to say if this guy is doing it, so are a lot of others. I know some more too.

As a high school teacher who was single, I NEVER allowed students on my facebook or myspace pages, I made my profile impossible to find. One boy searched for three years but found nothing.I believe he even paid money to try and find me… He found my old address in Texas, he found my parent’s address back in Michigan, but he did not find my social networking profiles. I was not about to risk my job and my credibility just to look cool to my students. I have some friends who are established in their schools, married, have families of their own and accept their students on their facebooks but these to me seem like “safe” people. If that makes sense. They’re the ones who don’t drink, don’t “party” and don’t put pictures up of them doing anything “wrong”. It may seem hypocritical, but I think some people can get away with having students on their SN sites and some cannot. I didn’t accept any of my Vegas students on my facebook page until I moved out of the state. Even when they graduated I knew present students could possibly see my page and I wouldn’t allow it. It’s true, with SN these days one has to be careful about what they say and do. I agree that “electronic media and social networking is perilous terrain for educators” and “lends itself to the possible interpretation of an improper relationship” which is why I do not allow students on mine.

I do think it’s important htough that with all the change in literacy and the teaching with technology that “scholars in the computers and composition community are naturally curious about how these sites can be used to teach writing and authorship.” We need to keep finding ways to incorporate technology in the classroom if we are to make learning relevant to students’ lives.