Dayonne Wegner – Multiliteracies in ELA Classrooms

Texting

In Carrington’s and Baron’s articles, they discuss how the new literacy of text-messaging is perceived by society and its possible effects on language. My first thought on these two articles is that they speak far more to our society’s fear of linguistic change than they do to any actual change. The “rhetoric of ‘crisis’” (2005 p.171) that Carrington discovers in the newspaper article towards texting shows that our society still view literacy in a singular way. It seems as if people believe there is only type of literacy and if students do not master it, our civilization will collapse. In opposition to this belief, this multiliteracies course has taught us that there are many different types of literacy that students need to master, and that there are literacies that students have already mastered which serve their communication needs very well. From this point of view, it is important for teachers to be asking: “What does it mean to be ‘literate’ in contemporary economies and cultural landscapes? What kinds of texts will the students in our classrooms find it necessary to ‘read’ and manipulate and produce in order to effectively participate in civic life?” ( Carrington 2005, p.172) For teachers to condemn these modes of communication as detrimental to students’ wellbeing is to underestimate their capacities to work between and with many literacies.

Consequently, my second thought about these two articles is that becoming fluent in texting language is very important in today’s world. It is becoming more and more uncommon to call people on the phone so we need to be able to text information quickly and efficiently. If we write everything out in full sentences, it would take forever to have a text conversation. Also, on a side note, it is pretty embarrassing (for me, anyway) when someone texts you an acronym that you don’t know. It would be very interesting to know what kind of attitude business people have toward texting since blackberries have become the main mode of communication in business.

Lastly, I’m not sure why people are so afraid of texting language when university students have been writing in short-hand code for their note-taking for years and years. We can still write essays as well. It seems that Baron is right when he writes that, “IM is unlikely to play a significant role in altering writing standards—unless we as parents and educators let it” (2005 p.31). This quote raises the troubling question: are we, as teachers, the gatekeepers of new literacies and of progression and change?

– Dayonne (Blog post #2)

Baron, N.S. (2005). Instant messaging and the future of language. Communications of the ACM, 46(7), 30-31.

Carrington, V. (2005). Txting: the end of civilization (again)? Cambridge Journal of Education, 35(2), 161-175.

A Response to Blogging as Participation

This article provided a very interesting overview of the participatory nature of blogging as well as a history of blogging. Particularly striking is the definition of blogging as “like a mongrel hunting the dark alleys of the digital city” that is “adaptive and unique at the same time” (p.2). What an image! I think this definition can be extended to the internet as a whole. It would be interesting if we could make education as “adaptive and unique” as technology is right now.

I found Lankshear and Knobel’s description of the evolution of who is and was creating and using blogs very interesting. They explain that blogging used to be something that was exclusive to people with a computer programming background until weblog publishing tools became available online, at which point blogging became open to the mass population (p.3). This change reminded me a a conversation that occurred in my YA Literature class a few days ago about how students are not being taught coding and how they aren’t interested in learning it because most everything that we want to create on the internet today, we can do so through a program that someone else has already created (ie. Weebly, Blogspot, Twitter, Wordle, etc.). Does this promote only shallow participation from today’s internet users?

In my own experience with being an internet user, I sometimes wonder if my consumer attitude towards the internet means that I am not really participating at all. I often feel a bit guilty that I do not contribute to blogs, wikipedia, yahoo answers, etc. but I use them all the time for almost everything I do. A question I would like to pose to Lankshear and Knobel is: Does simply visiting and reading a blog count as participation? Similarly, I would like to ask: What is my responsibility to the online community? I have also always been too nervous of the participatory aspect of blogging to create my own blog. Not only can it be intimidating to think that anyone can read your thoughts, but if your blog does become appreciated and population you are in danger of “becoming a broadcast outlet, distributing material without participating in conversations about it” (p.4) because you become a slave to the expectations of your followers.

Coincidentally, I just set up a blog the other day with some friends and I am very excited to see how it works out. I would also like to ask my students how or if they are using blogs because I’m sure it is all changing really fast.

– Dayonne (entry #1)

Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2006). Blogging as Participation: The Active Sociality of a New Literacy. American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, US. April 11, 2006.