Adjusting to New Times

While watching a live interview on C-Span this morning with Fredrik deBoer about testing and other educational issues in both higher education and general public education... a little further research yielded this bit of text: How's your "multi" Modality  (link) and in that was this parody, which is definitely worth the view:

Click to play Video

 I could Not believe just how true this really seems... or if you didn't know it was a parody you might be tempted to buy one.  The article is about defending traditional writing vs other forms of media in that there is great value in knowing how to write... on that I agree... I like the multimodal approach to assessing various levels of understanding particularly on Bloom's scale where creation and synthesizing information demonstrates a greater understanding. When I think of writing I think of it as a formal way to convey ideas or findings... I think of it as way to let the reader use their own imagination to view the story rather than the imagination of the author or a director. This idea is supported by thinking this thought... when reading a novel or short story for the first time... when the author describes the setting you begin to build your own picture based on your experiences with the information... raw and unrefined... or tainted and superimposed... by those experiences as they relate to previous texts. The tainted or superimposed images have real power to to eventually become the norm... like the case of "princess"... which Disney princess did you just think of or did you connect "princess" to the former Lady Dianna? Either way there is No going back to your own untainted imagination. To me this is what I was taking away from the reading... again the difference in how "Literacy" is defined... it usually comes from to simultaneous positions the "first" person understanding and the "third" person's perception of that understanding. I know (and I bet you do too) many people that really only have "functional" literacy skills and see themselves as well adjusted individuals...it is only through the "third" person's  "authentic" literacy views that there is a discrepancy or at least the appearance of a discrepancy or even a lack of value for the "system." Chapter Nine is easily relate-able to me and my personal experiences... that is to say I can identify with Jacques in many ways and made the decisions along the way that others viewed in the "third" person role (fair to say I was judged harshly) as Not what I should be doing with my life. As a very capable and very lazy high school student I engaged in what I wanted to and refused to do what I didn't (in the case or core classes that refusal came in the way of only getting the minimum required grade... in my house that was a "B" with the occasional "C"). Yet the comparison is more about value of education not how much education is valued... in that the formal education requirements placed on Jacques in the school setting did Not have the same value as the formal education requirements of the cultural classrooms. Therefore the effort or lack there of is based in cultural values... and cultural values are Not easily changed. Fortunately for me my cultural experiences placed a great deal of value on what true education is for the learner (lifelong learning) and hard work is a requirement for success, even when learning comes easy. My Quote for Chapter Nine... "effective teachers will always go beyond the standards and benchmarks to enact meaningful and richly conceived literacies in their classrooms." (which is likely the most popular sentence in Chapter Nine) Chapter Nine, Page 173. Connecting learning to the learner and finding what's valuable to the community will change the cultural value of education... Luis Moll gave the "Funds of Knowledge" and Eliot Wiggington gave the "Foxfire" series as examples of how to change the value of education in a community.

Chapter Ten the beginning of Part Three... This caught my "young eyes" almost immediately..."The rapidity and extent of change during the past 20 years has left many people who remain comparatively young in chronological terms out of touch with the tenor of the times." Chapter Ten, Page 187. As a recent graduate I can see both sides of this quote because on one hand I have been given insight into this "New Literacy" world, yet my chronological age puts me outside the digital natives... and I have to tell you.... these are exciting times to be getting into education. I look back on all the rich experiences I have enjoyed and use them to help me connect learning... but I am finding this new chapter in my life as the most wonderful discovery into new worlds and new ways to understand those worlds!!! It is a great day to be learning with new learners!!

Lankshear, Colin, and Michele Knobel. Literacies: Social, cultural and historical perspectives. Peter Lang, 2011.

Is Technology Capital?

I have to go back before moving forward just ensure that my clarity of thought at least resembles or tries to makes sense when others read and I say it aloud. The first thing that comes to mind is the definition of technology... in this age when someone says technology integration into the classroom... the speaker has in their mind the definition of technology that they want used or integrated, but does the listener have the same working definition?... Maybe, but you cannot be sure without clarification.  Case in point technology is not just something electronic (though I will concede that could think that way), but rather an improvement on an existing tool or a new tool all together the same could be said about ideas. I say all that to say this as you begin reading this post... should we concur on the definition of capital and capitalism before we continue? In Chapter Seven, Lankshear  is offering a look into "Language and the New Capitalism" and the role it plays in shaping social institutions. My quote comes in the form of the entire first paragraph of the ending sub-titled "Ending", which I will try to add enough to convey my thoughts... "Apologists for the new capitalism, like the apologists for the magical educational powers of new technologies, are currently surfing the tide of history with seemingly unbounded confidence. They have assumed the right to define the role and purpose of education in terms of service...backed with the power of educational policies decreed, enforced, and policed...The choice facing educators who are committed to alternative educational visions is clear-cut...Either we put up or shut up...education is not the servant of any single end or purpose" (Chapter Seven, Page, 135)
There is just so much in this ending paragraph that speaks volumes about those committed to maintaining the status quo or those that would be the agents of change. Time honored traditions have their place, but not at the expense of "Not" meeting the complex needs of students and preparing them for the complex world they will live in beyond their mandated school years. When I was 17-years-old beginning my senior year in high school... my social studies teacher asked, "How old will you be in the year 2000 and what do you think you will be doing?" The how old part was easy... I had done that calculation before... 36... basically the same age that my parents were then... But I had No real idea what I would be doing or exactly how I would be earning a living... While my teachers did a good job trying to prepare me for that future world they grossly underestimated the advances in technology and possibilities. The saving factor is that while they didn't see the technology boom they did plant the seeds of learning and thinking... which should be the true goal of all education... because if you can learn how to learn and think then you are prepared for future change.

Chapter Eight was filled with several different topics that really resonate with how I think about various ideas as they relate to learners and the learning environment. The title even sends my mind down the thoughtful path of what and how do different people use the very same technology tool. A good example it owning a "smart phone" when all you use it for is calls and texts a simple function that even a phone from Y2K could pull off, but wait there's more... buying and using a $600.00 dollar... Dell Laptop w 1TB hard drive to save photos, check email, and watch the Market when you are not sitting in front of your 19"flat screen w/ 1 TB hard drive with all the same photos, email, and Market access... make No mistake I'm Not judging Nor ridiculing just wondering about the thought process that leads to the need for a tech tool that provides so much more ... a rabbit hole that is hard to get out of once you start down...(and that was just the title)... the quote..."concept of technology as practice, where "technology" is construed generically as a shorthand for ways of doing things or getting things done, socially and culturally." (Chapter Eight, Page, 144), which leads me to ponder the view where many people only see technology as a shortcut or strategy rather than a useful tool that has the possibility to take you farther than you have gone before. The educators that embrace the idea of possibilities infect students with those same limitless possibilities. That is what will truly prepare students for their future world... when 90% of the people were engaged in farming for survival... farmers relied on innovations to better succeed... and when people started living longer and populations were growing Malthus claimed the world was going to run out of food in the near future, yet with only 50% of the people farming early 1900s...to in the US today where only about 3% of the people are actively farming and we are feeding more now then ever... technology and innovation aren't "shortcuts" they are the tools of survival. You define survival???? Even more they are the tools to innovation and creation.

Lankshear, Colin, and Michele Knobel. Literacies: Social, cultural and historical perspectives. Peter Lang, 2011.

Came across this article that seems to fit with what we have read so far and may be worth keeping in mind as we continue to read: EdWeek 

10 Words

Citizenship: Empowered to Change

The readings in chapter Five and Six come at the most appropriate time of an election year, when the primaries are in full swing. The debates are heated and the rhetoric is free flowing like a raging flood. The whole discussion thus far has been about the what and how of the various viewpoints on literacy. As it relates the real world of today the need to be authentically literate (proper literacy) is absolutely dire... I use the word dire because of what potentially hangs in the balance... I'm reminded of a movie line (Gladiator) when the leader was discussing what needed to be done with his general... "Rome is the Mob, not the Senate, satisfy the Mob and All of Rome will be yours" (paraphrased as I recall), which leads me to this thought and quote form Chapter Five, "A good society is "an open quest" calling for the active participation of all citizens, because "the common good is pursuit of the good in common"" (Lankshear, page 84). This all leads me in several different different directions all at the same time... on one hand their is the idea that if the citizenry is wholly literate then they possess the skills to discern their way through the rhetoric and settle in on the "common good." Yet on another hand the citizenry is only partially has the skills of "proper literacy" to discern their way through the rhetoric then the idea of the common good has less impact. Still, the other hand where the majority of the citizenry has "improper literacy" with very little to no skills to understand the rhetoric then a candidate that understands that citizenry is in a position to tell the citizenry what they need and therefore the only "common good" becomes what the candidate says is good. I do Not want to get political and the task was to make a connection to classroom, so my connection to classroom comes from the standpoint of curriculum. When a teacher is hired for a position, for the most part, the curriculum for that position has already been defined. There may be some places for the teacher to interject some different points or timing of the countywide curriculum map, but most of the what and when have been decided. The connection for me as I read and reread Chapter Five comes in form of constantly challenging and reflecting on the curriculum standards and objectives to ensure they accomplishing the goals and making changes or alterations where they are Not. Several places within the chapter the author was commenting on what I took to be a complacent view of those in a position of "power" when the need for change or expansion obvious. Which leads me back to the quote in my chosen quote... "The common good is pursuit of the good in common."

Is this Active engagement?

Chapter Six, New Capitalism led me down this road... because when I think about my classroom and the students that have and will pass through it... I want them to leave with the tools they need to understand their world today and in the future. The quote... "Increasingly, the critical dimension of knowledge work is valued mainly, if not solely, in terms of value-adding economic potential."(Lankshear, page 131) In this new age of intellectual property and global economies a company's employees that have a working understanding of the macro-social processes that exist in the form of the 4 identified literacies become very valuable assets.  My second visual comes in the form of a pic and a TEDTalk. (The talk is well worth the time)

 



Lankshear, Colin, and Michele Knobel. Literacies: Social, cultural and historical perspectives. Peter Lang, 2011.

TEDTalk Morgan Spurlock,TED 2011 Filmed Mar2011  The Greatest TED Talk Ever SoldTh

A Case Study... Digging Deeper

Digging deeper and making connections is that place where learners transform their understanding of what they are interacting with to analyzing and synthesizing it into their lives. That is to say... the transformation from  what it is now, to how I can or cannot use it, which follows closely the narrative I have been espousing for some time... form learning how to learn to learning how to think... It seems this circles back to me on a constant and ongoing basis because it very closely mirrors how I approach teaching and what Lankshear refers to in Chapter Three... from Wayne O'Neil's, "Improper Literacy vs. Proper Literacy." Which then leads to sociologist, C. Wright Mills' concept of "sociological imagination" a way of thinking and using information or... the way I understand information as learning how to think. Reading the words and understanding their meaning (improper literacy) provides the reader with enough information to answer questions on levels, one and two of the Bloom's scale, but to answer and use that understanding at higher levels of Bloom's requires Proper Literacy. This leads me down several different roads of understanding as it relates to me as well as other learners and specifically my case study student. Lankshear jumps right into the Stamp Acts and their impact on society both then and now... yes then and now... because many of the things I deal with in the classroom have a generational component, whether is be poverty, cultural values, mores, or folkways. The impact can be mild or severe depending on how far back the generational line it goes... it is sometimes very fair to say that apples fall directly under the tree. My quote is actually two that I join for the purpose of building the connection... part one, page 40, "The working class made itself as much as it was made" (Thompson, 1963:213) and part two, page 44, "What do working people receive in return for producing wealth and ensuring security?"  I make the connection to the text and my case study this way... In both quotes, the role of literacy has a lasting impact on the learner... in the case of my case study learner he has Not yet understood the value of "proper literacy" because it has had no value or impact in his brief life. It's likely that he will enter the working class and continue producing wealth and ensuring security for the controlling class because his "improper literacy" affords him only access to the working world, but Not the "proper literacy" for a deeper understanding of the "status quo" and therefore no knowledge or inclination to challenge or change his "class" standing. This will lead to yet another generation following in the same path... as he is a product of that path as well. I don't make these remarks from a judgmental view in that I think there is something wrong with the working class... quite the opposite... I grew up in a very middle working class...pay check to pay check... family, yet settling for the ideology that, "things are the way they because that's the way it is" was never part of my formal or informal education...sayings like, "average may be an outcome, but never a goal!!!" were constantly echoed.  The history of Chapter Three points to the controlling class promoting a certain level of literacy that helps to make the worker better at doing their job... ie... more productive... but not enough literacy to change their station and while the majority of the chapter covered England I easily can see the same issues in the US Colonies of the same period and even else where in the world today.

The quote for Chapter Four:... "In the beginning was the text; to the New Critics is was wholly within the text that the meaning was located, and the teacher was the privileged holder of this meaning (Thomason, 1984;Probst, 1986)" (Knobel, Chapter 4, page 63). This ideology coupled with everything that has been said in Chapters 1-3 along with all the other experiences I have with other readings seems to support the idea of the controlling class producing "keepers of the knowledge" to pass along only what they want the learner to know... ie... more support for improper literacy vs proper literacy or functional literacy vs authentic literacy. I think this point can even be further supported when looking at state standardized tests, in that states wanted control over their testing programs rather than a national standardize test that set the criteria for what every student should know at grade level. This notion presents even more issues, which seemingly further divides educators into groups or factions, like the for and against high stakes testing or for or against Common Core Standards vs NXT Gen CSOs. All of this commotion takes focus away from what should be happening in the modern classroom. The complexity of the world and the way in which we interact with that world and its information has made a huge shift and yet the educational system remains largely unchanged. Students need the rote fundamental skills on that I fully agree (as the way I process sound educational theory from the likes of Piaget, Vygotsky, Erickson, Gardner, Montessori, and others), but when students are able to start processing information in a deeper and more meaningful way then a static text approach is No longer sufficient, a multi-modal approach must be implemented. This relates to my case study student in the away I was delivering the math (the only way I really knew how) was Not sufficient, so he improvised by adding visual distraction. Note: this distraction, while seemingly complex to me, it was to him very simple and thus Not the cognitive distraction I would have judged it to be. Many times we make judgments as it relates to our understanding and experiences and if it is something we are very familiar with like our favorite subject then we often wonder and criticize why others are having a hard time with the subject or vice a versa. Neil Postman points this out in his book "Teaching as a Subversive Act," in this way... an English teacher that loves literature and reading, but hates math should be made to teach math for a year as a way to experience and understand what students in the English class may be dealing with because the student may be a poor reader or just not interested in static text. Its likely too, the the English teacher sees himself / herself as the "Keeper of the Knowledge" or the "Privileged Holder of Meaning" by guiding students into a singular view or understanding of the literature. Case in point... it's well known that the C. S. Lewis series "The Chronicles of Narnia" are said to be an analogy of the Christian faith, and that maybe true, but is that the only interpretation? and who gets to decide if it is? I agree that getting rid of the "Simon Says" and embracing the authentic response is Not easy... so I remind myself and my students of this recurring thought... Different is Not... good or bad, it's not right or wrong, it is just Different... try understanding before judgment or condemnation!

Lankshear, Colin, and Michele Knobel. Literacies: Social, cultural and historical perspectives. Peter Lang, 2011.