Larry’s school has just gotten control of the cell phone abuse at his site. I think this might be just the time slowly implemented plan for a well thought out policy to use cell phones for education. Here is my argument why. Larry has already conceded that it was possible to effectively use these tools in other school settings. But, if poor schools are banning cell phone use, and richer schools are using them, who is going to learn to use them both effectively, and appropriately? What workplace will they be getting prepared for?

First, we have McDonalds. I think we can agree that this is a work environment where you would probably NOT be able to use your cell phone. First, it’s rude to be on your cell when serving customers, and next, you might drop it in the fryer. I remember once seeing an employee on her cell at a McDonalds and being shocked, until I realized she was going off shift. The type of jobs that will not let you use your cell are few, and at the lower end of the food chain. While lawyers and judges must turn off phones in court, they are some of the biggest Crackberry addicts in the halls of justice. I worked at a school site that “banned” teachers from using cells around students, but I often had to pull out my cell to call parents because the district phone system blocked calls out to numbers with cell phone pre-fixes. I now use my cell for documentation, etc. so much that It’s often out with students.

Next, we have professional jobs that almost require cell phone usage. I know that we as adults do not always use them appropriately (back channel IMs being used to snark about presenters at meetings come to mind). Maybe if they were used in the classroom, we would have an opportunity to teach students how to use them effectively. Banning cell phones doesn’t stop off-task, inappropriate behavior from anyone. Students pass notes, I’ve been in trainings where teachers are doing crosswords, and I’ve been known to pass comments in staff meetings that were not always “on topic”. On the other hand, I’ve asked for clarification and background from neighbors in those notes too.

So what are we going to do? They won’t learn how to use them appropriately and effectively if we just give them a cell phone?

Photo Credits:

Zombie Ordering at McDonald’s on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

Photo_010208_002.jpg on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

Crackberry Addict on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

Once upon a time I looked forward to seeing mainline literacy journals take an interest in blogging. So, it was good to see an article in this month’s Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy on using of blogs for literature study, Weblogs and Literary Response: Socially Situated Identities and Hybrid Social Languages in English Class Blogs. However, for an education blogger, there’s a gaping disjunction between the academic world of the journal, and the world of classroom blogging described in the article.

The irony of publishing an article about online “socially situated identities” in a print journal that doesn’t provide a reference for the author’s online identity was too incongruous for me to focus seriously on the content of the report, and I drifted in and out of a weirdly schizophrenic consciousness where I wasn’t sure how to read the article. I imagined being the “ivory tower academic” reading about blogs, a cutting edge communication tool that could revolutionize literature study. And then I’d flip into “blogging teacher” mode, wanting to follow a link back to the students’ or teacher’s blogs, hoping I’d learn something from their example. But the JAAL article didn’t provide source citations for the students’ blogs. So the article became its own example of the disconnect between the theoretical world of academia and the messy particulars of the classroom.

Will Richardson and Konrad Glogowski might be interested to know they were casually cited along with Gee, Fairclough, and Jenkins, even though the students’ blogs, the subject of the article, are not listed. Nor are they indexed on Google from what I can see. Which is not to say that Kathleen West, the author of the study, doesn’t have interesting things to say in her account of her 11th grade AP English students using weblogs to engage in authentic talk about books.

I did find a copy [doc] of the article on a digital media course wiki. West used discourse analysis for a case study of three variously successful students to show how each of them created distinct identities and integrated their social language with the discourse of literary analysis. She showed how the “relationship-savvy teen,” the “tempered rebel,” and the “pop-cultured humorist” all constructed hybrid identities as “serious literature students” and “web-literate communicators.” She provides samples of coded transcriptions, and quotes from the student’s blogs as exemplars. The article, written for a university course, is slightly different from the version published by JAAL, but West’s data and discussion are essentially the same in each.

A couple of things about this piece bother me, though. West’s research question, “What is the nature of literary response as communicated via weblog?” was asked about kids in an AP English class at a school which West described as an “AP-saturated,” white, upper or middle class context. She concluded that the discourse of “serious literature student” could coexist with the more non-standard, non-academic online discourse. Fair enough. But what about kids who come from less privileged neighborhoods? Case study documentations that tell only success stories, especially when they come from upper middle class school environments, have limited use for teachers who work with less privileged student populations. I am always curious about what case studies don’t show, because the disappointments in my classroom are often more instructive for me than my successes. What about the kids who weren’t “serious literature students?”

The research question about literary response and weblogs tries to bridge the rift between academic and online discourse, where “socially situated identities” are constructed around different norms and conventions. Case in point from the article: The f-word was spelled out in the JAAL piece, where West apparently has to explain the meaning of ‘WTF’ for the academic readership. It was funny to see them explicitly deal with it, tacitly acknowledging their own cluelessness, like a parent using teen jargon.

Control of academic discourse is challenged by the read/write web. Anyone can publish now, about anything they like, in any style they choose. But the academy still has the credentialing job. For how long? I wonder. We’re publishing our own research, and linking directly to the evidence, every day. So, what can the academy tell us about blogging that we don’t already know, or won’t find out on our own? And when will the academy admit the social languages that kids are bringing with them into the groves of academe?

Source:
West, K.C. (2008, April). Weblogs and Literary Response: Socially Situated Identities and Hybrid Social Languages in English Class Blogs. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 51(7), 588–598.

On the down side, I just came face to face with one of the challenges of online activity. About half of my class spends time on a social-networking site (for which you have to be 13 to register; my students are not 13). One student received threatening messages through the site including references to a recent assault in our area and personal information. We suspected these messages came from another student at our school, but couldn’t be sure and turned the matter over to the police. The police did a fantastic job and traced the messages to the home of a student. Fortunately, we could rule out the possibility of a stranger lurking around the school and homes of students. Sadly, it means another fifth grader felt a need to anonymously terrify a classmate.

I teach in a title one school, I don’t expect most of my students to have consistent access to the internet. It’s clear to me that I have relied on that as a safety net. The majority of our students don’t have access at home. However, plenty do and we’ve done precious little to educate them about being safe online. In this instance, of which we are aware of the specifics, there wasn’t really any danger. But it did show me that they are online and in places they shouldn’t be. It seems I have a responsibility here.

Therein lies my question about it all. What is my responsibility? I consider myself to be fairly savvy about the online world, certainly more so than the parents of our students. I can, and will, teach my students more about internet safety. However, I think their parents need to be educated as well. If students have computers with internet access in their bedrooms or in basements isolated from the family, they will push the boundaries. Parents need to be watching, talking, and aware of their children’s activities. How do we help ensure that or at least promote it?

I have a sister post to this going out on my own blog at Miz Mercer.

Lots of mostly unpleasant conversations about folks resisting the lure of technology in the classroom. This round of the conversation started on with a blogger and blog I greatly admire, Scott McLeod’s Dangerously Irrelevant. Scott questioned why teachers seemed to be able to refuse to adopt technology, when workers in other professions had to deal with “automation”. It found its way around to Larry Ferlazzo in » Teachers Who Won’t Embrace Technology on In Practice. Larry is good at focusing on the pertinent (the bottom line is making sure students are taught and technology is a tool, not an end). He linked to a great post at The Tempered Radical: Barkin’ Dawgs and Miserably Poor Policy. . . that shows there is plenty of blame to go around, that leaders cannot expect teachers to embrace these new ways if they do not support the effort with more time and resources, and that teachers have to be willing to update skills.

Next up, via Dy/Dan, comes Dina Strasser with » The Skeptic’s Seven Questions About Technology The Line, which lists the points that even a teacher with tech knowledge will likely want answered before embracing these new technologies

Here are some closing observations. Riffing from Bill Ferriter and some earlier posts from Larry about the importance of personal relationships, I once worked in a really toxic school site. The management was demeaning and cruel. One of the teachers was really being picked on and very defensive. She was a technophobe, and hated change. The Administrator’s approach was to beat her down. I built trust with this teacher, and so she was willing to go to a blog training I held. I don’t know if she will ever be 2.0 (which may be more a comment on my training than her resistance), but she was willing to take the chance because of the personal relationship we had.

I commented on Scott’s post that I am amazed at the number of co-workers I have in my technology trainings because all the technology tools in the school have been concentrated in my lab. I could NEVER tell them that they need to use technology more when there are only 3 overhead projectors in a school with 17 teachers, and they have no lap tops. My first priority is to settle into my job, then work on getting more tools to these teachers.

I think that Dina is right to say we need to stress how technology ties into core (or other subject matter) standards, and to not have the tail wagging the dog so to speak. I’ve been in PI (Program Improvement under NCLB) schools, so I MUST be standards focused.

Here are some things I do to build relationships with my peers. I am constantly working to communicate about what I’m doing, and to incorporate their requests for instruction (especially when it involves key concepts or standards they are working on). I can’t always provide a tech solution, but they know that if it’s possible I will do it. I still do some projects that are more tech, than standards based, but they appreciate my efforts to work with them and their curriculum. Frankly, I’m in a blessed position, so I would not want to get on my high horse about what other teachers should be doing.

I have a sister post going out to address a particular concern I do have with some folks questioning the efficacy of some 2.0 applications/projects because I feel that some folks are not recognizing all of the standards, and are dismissing some technologies that hit some that are critical for language learners, but that will be elsewhere as I’ve gone on long enough.

Earlier, I talked about why Larry Ferlazzo got it right when he said face to face relationships have a quality that can’t be replicated online. Now, I’ll bring some thoughts up to the contrary.

Here are some caveats to that point…Larry himself, has already had to eat his words (okay it wasn’t that extreme) when he said he didn’t get Second Life as an education platform, and then had a reader point out how great it was for people with disabilities. This is a significant population that is often ill-served by our current education and social institutions and the online community has been a welcome advent for many (although many participate in “regular” schools and society too, thank you very much).

I started thinking about non-face to face relationships in the past. Yes, these did exist in the days before computers. First, pen pals and correspondence relationships go back far in time. This was illustrated nicely in the fictional account 84 Charing Cross Road. And as for organizing, look at how well Paul did with a few letters in organizing the early Christian church! Okay, I overstate a bit, but this is part of an ongoing process of using communication to reach out to others. In pencil and paper days, we have pen pals and other correspondence relationships. Party lines (the larger modern ones, not the old ones that just had your neighbors) showed people were dying to talk to complete strangers. CB radio (and its more technical precursor the HAM) had strangers talking to each other and becoming acquaintances and sometimes friends.

The written relationships were the most widespread. I imagine that blogging, et. al. will be bigger than pen pals were because of the ease of entry. Whether it takes the place of face to face, or is a significant part of most adults’ social life I wouldn’t want to venture a guess.

There is one area where the relationships will be at a whole variety of different levels of physical distance and that will be in work, and being able to flexibly adapt to working with a variety of people who are in a variety of different countries will be a skill needed for a larger and larger number of workers. My example of this is my brother in law who works with a team literally on different continents. They trade off conference call times because there is no time that works for everyone. By moving it around, they all feel the pain sometime. They use IM chat, email, and teleconferencing extensively. This is not an intimate relationship, but there I think back, and my face to face relationships with my co-workers aren’t that intimate either. I mean I like them, and I respect them, and we work well together, but would my relationships be any “cooler” if I only meet them over a conference call? I don’t know.

The professional relationships I’ve built up online over the last year have been invaluable to me because there are so few doing what I do where I am. It’s also nice being able to see Larry. I loved meeting with Brian, and I look forward to meeting Glenn someday. There are some things about my relationship with Larry that are closer than say, with Brian. We have the shared experience of working for the same district. In some ways though, I have feel closer to other bloggers because they aren’t in my backyard. My working in the same “place” makes me cautious so as not to piss in my pond so to speak. This may be healthier for that relationship in the long run. Who knows?

I think it’s hard to see the future. It’s easy to overstate “change” but I sense things are changing and have been for a time now.

I, though, have a different point-of view.

I’m a firm believer that technology is used best as a tool to deepen and develop face-to-face relationships.  That perspective guides much of my use of technology in school – incentives in our home computer project encourage multiple family members to use the computer at the same time to read “talking ” books and discuss them afterwards;  students from different ethnic groups in our after-school ESL Computer Lab regularly connect with each other to share their favorite activities and have friendly competitions  in online games like “Verb Tense Basketball,”  and groups of students work together to successfully finish online video games. 

In addition, students create online games, make online comments about them, and, most importantly, discuss together what they’ve done in the following class discussions.   Students also leave online comments on other examples of work, including on blogs and online journals.   A key part of that is using sentence “stems” in their writing to model good communication – “I like _________ because_____________”; “I wonder why you ____________.  Can you tell me more?”; “What do you mean by __________?”   These phrases help prepare and reinforce the content and tone of subsequent face-to-face class conversations.  And many, if not most, of the projects students create are done in small groups, not individually.

That’s not to say I don’t also try to create opportunities for students to develop online relationships, too.  This semester my Government class will be working on joint projects with a class in Brazil to compare our respective governments and how people in each of our country go about organizing for social change.  I believe students in both classes will gain from the experience.  But, no, I don’t believe that my students will be developing “real” relationships with their Brazilian counterparts.

In fact, I believe that one of the things I want my students to learn is that virtual online relationships are not, in fact, anywhere near as substantial as the ones they can develop and deepen with the people in their lives now.   Focusing on these kinds of relationships are the ones where, I believe, they will gain the most emotional support, learn the most important life lessons, and identify the most opportunities in the future.  I don’t want them to get as seduced as they may be by the lure of virtual relationships where, among other things, they miss out on the 65% to 98% of non-verbal language that many researchers say are the most important aspects of communication.  And, yes, I know about webcams.  Even there, however, I know from my own experience in the classroom and out that there isn’t much that can compare to a genuine gentle touch on the shoulder or a hug.

My students do hundreds of face-to-face “individual meetings” each year with peers, family members and neighbors to learn about their lives, their visions for their future, and the problems that affect their families and neighborhoods.    This “methodology,” which I learned during my nineteen years as a community organizer,  helps them build a real connection with others that results in collective action to help solve those problems – whether it is bringing job training agencies to their neighborhood, meeting with Congresspeople about immigration issues, or developing bilingual education health education materials.  That is certainly a different type of relationship than having people they’ve never met leave comments online about their projects.

I want to emphasize, though, that I don’t believe it’s an either/or situation.  Both face-to-face and online relationships have their roles in education.  I just think we teachers need to be “real” about “real” relationships.

I told Larry at the time, there is NO way that anyone could mistake that for a post from me. It talks about zero periods, and government class (I teach periods, but only one subject, Computers). Also, my writing style is so different from his. Still, one  member of the In Practice team thought I had written it. Makes you wonder about voice. Although I am prone to using SAT vocabulary, as Larry does, I love to throw in colloquialisms, and my sentences really do abuse commas and punctuation–what do you expect from a girl who grew up in the San Fernando Valley with too many intellectual pretensions? Also, Larry has done studies on his practice whereas I, the lazy intellectual, have limited myself to criticizing educational research.

But, maybe it’s the time for change? I recently received an email from Jeff Felix with his dissertation study on blogging, and surprise, surprise, I was one of the subjects. It got me thinking about maybe doing some research of my own. What to study though, hmmm…

This was just supposed to be a quick notice of the authorship mixup, and now I’ve gone and done a post!

I’ve now received enthusiastic support from administrators and other staff to try this experiment. To ensure that I have time for the other classes I want to teach during the regular school-day, I’ve decided to teach the laptop class during what we call “zero-period” – one hour prior to the official beginning of school. I’ll be doing it with a Social Studies subject. I announced the laptop class one day last week (making it clear that I wasn’t sure what the subject of the class would be), including the early starting time, and received fifty sign-ups within a few hours. Obviously, I won’t be able to take that many, and the fact that it will be in zero-period might skew the results a bit, since it’s likely the most motivated students will be in that class. But I’m not planning on this being a super-academic research project, anyway.

As a sort of “run-through” to explore ways to integrate technology more into my day-to-day teaching, I’m converting one period of my double-block Intermediate English class in January to a Government class. We’ll be in the computer lab three or four days each week. This will give me an opportunity to experiment prior to the fall.

I’m very committed to the overall goals of the Government class as I’ve taught it before. These include using it to help students not only learn about how it works theoretically and in reality, but how they can develop their own capacity, and the capacity of their communities, to make it work more effectively for them. Keeping those goals in mind, I have a number of questions I’ll be asking myself as I plan for the spring. These include – How can students use technology to help…

1. deepen the relationships they have with their peers in the class?
2. increase their understanding of the nuts and bolts of our local, state, and federal government?
3. learn more about governments in other countries, and how our government is perceived around the world and why?
4. gain a greater sense of understanding of how government affects their local communities?
5. (since many of the students will be recent immigrants) prepare themselves to pass the U.S. Citizenship test, and also learn what it means to be an active citizen in a democracy?
6. connect with their peers throughout the schools, and with their families and neighbors, to learn more what concerns they have about their lives?
7. prepare for and carry-out community improvement projects?
8. strengthen their ability to read, write, speak and listen in English?

I’ve got a number of potential answers that I’m mulling over, and which I’ll share in my next post. Does anyone else have additional questions, or ideas for answers to the ones I’ve listed?

One of the most common claims for using digital media in the classroom is that it increases student engagement. That may be true, but engagement alone doesn’t ensure academic traction. Rheingold asks whether kids’ enthusiasm for digital media can be harnessed to increase civic engagement. It’s an attractive idea, and it’s worth exploring. But as I read the chapter I’m not convinced that such an outcome is equally likely for all students.

The chapter examines the possibilities for helping students develop a “public voice” which they can use to speak out on issues they care about. And while Rheingold offers a lot of practical suggestions for doing that, he merely waves in the direction of obstacles to implementation:

It is not easy for many teachers to adopt this perspective and put it into action in the classroom—the political and economic necessity of teaching to the test leaves little room to fit these kinds of skills lessons into mandated and standardized curriculum. “Accountability” and innovation are often locked into a zero-sum game. Lack of resources, training, and technical support offer significant additional obstacles.

I don’t agree that accountability is necessarily an obstacle to innovation, but I do recognize that curricular constraints, lack of resources, and technical support are problematic. Many students have serious academic and personal needs which push media literacy education down on the priority list. Rheingold acknowledges the political nature of these obstacles, saying that, “The struggle for participatory media literacy in schools must be seen in the context of these broader societal conflicts.”

I lose some enthusiasm for the edtech vision when these critical hurdles are set up and then sidestepped because the enterprise becomes a mirage for me with my less affluent, more challenging, students. And that’s where I see participatory media literacy education breaking down as an avenue for populist civic reform. It does not extend to everyone equally because the obstacles for some are all too real, and “the vision” is dimmed in the context of a classroom culture impacted by domestic trauma and neighborhood drama.

Nonetheless, Rheingold offers some concrete classroom exercises for developing public voice with blogs, wikis, and podcasts using annotated links and connective, analytic, and persuasive, writing. He looks, also, at possibilities for engaging students in citizen journalism projects such as news reporting, investigative blogging, hyperlocal journalism, and digital storytelling. These are all worthy ideas that seem do-able with middle school-aged students, and they’re certainly worth looking at. There is a wiki, Participatory Media Literacy, set up as a resource for educators.

Rheingold’s question about whether developing a public voice can lead to more civic participation is critically important, but if we’re going to talk about student voice, we need to be clear about whose voices they are. Identity is inseparable from voice, and the possibilities for privileging some over others is no different in a digital environment than anywhere else. The project will need attention from a broad spectrum of educators working with digital media if the question is to be effectively answered.