Multiliteracies in ELA Classrooms

At first, I had thought of exactly what Sarra mentions in the previous post responding to this article – how much has the blogosphere evolved since this article was published in 2006? Likely, dramatically. With that said, the article has some interesting points to make and is definitely still relevant in a discussion of the participatory nature of Web 2.0. While reading Lankshear and Knobel’s discussion of the participatory nature of Web 2.0 (and blogging in particular), I started to think about just want does it mean to be a “participant” and how has the nature of participating changed since the advent of Web 2.0?

My initial gut reaction, as a child of the early 90s is to hear the word participating and think immediately of ParticipACTION, the Canadian non-profit organization that promoted health and wellness through commercials that used to pack early 90s TV: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ParticipACTION. The nature of participating and taking action (ParticipACTION) has taken new form in the advent of participatory web culture – this article uses the term participating to mean creating blogs, reposting other blog posts to be followed by your circle, and commenting. I was struck by the juxtaposition of my immediate association with the word “participating” and its new meaning within the technological landscape that serves as the backdrop of the generation we will have in our classrooms. The change in the cultural weight behind the term participating is interesting to consider (and brings to mind Ernesto’s presentation). Should participating necessitate taking action beyond writing a comment or reposting a post? How does the nature of what it means to participate potentially cultivate apathy? [I realize the potential irony in using a Web 2.0 landscape (Wikipedia) to provide more information on ParticipACTION.]

Lankshear and Knobel describe the advance of participatory use of the web where space is “open, continuous and fluid” as opposed to “enclosed and purpose specific”, and where texts are constantly in flux, being changed and altered by the text’s consumers (1). The push towards an open and participatory web-culture seems democratic – where there isn’t one powerful or a few powerful sources of knowledge, but the people are the producers of their knowledge and the people choose which knowledge will be featured in their web landscapes. While blogging should allow for a conversation, according to the authors, the vast majority of blogs are read by very few people.  Some popular blogs (they give the example of Michelle Malkin’s) are not really a conversation with the author, but instead the author chooses to disable blog comments instead fostering the reposting of blog material on different sounding boards (other people’s blogs) taking the author out of the conversation entirely. Is this still the democratic use of new media? Is Web 2.o necessarily democratic?

By: Ilana Finkleman

Blog post #2

Works Cited

Lankshear, C. & Knobel, M.  “Blogging as Participation: The Active Sociality of a New   Literacy.” American Educational Research Association. San Francisco, CA. April 11, 2006. Web.