Enduring Questions - Activity 10

This course has, in a good way, left me with more (practical) questions than answers. Consequently, I have decided to create my final assignment as a questioning task, to help me think through and articulate some of the questions I am still grappling with, not as a theorist but as a ground-floor educator.

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Assignment: After reading both articles, come up with three questions, based on your reading of the texts, relevant to your practice as an English teacher. In posing your questions explain the relevance, ideas, context etc for your questions that make them important to think about as a practioner. You can use a quote to help bridge your question and the text. Limit 100 words per question.

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1. How as a teacher do we support literacy acquisition in a digital age?

Knobel and Lankshear, argue that “much of the cyberspace life of young people is text-based…reading and writing mediated by new digital technologies become even more complex…and the “rules” or “language games” associated with different online practices shift and metamorphose into other new literacy practices” (2).

As teachers struggle with concerns about ELL support, valuing “home” languages and the ever-growing demand for focused literacy instruction in the classroom, the complexities posed by digital literacy can work as either a barrier or an opportunity. Using Kalantzis and Cope’s (2010) argument that in a digitally-focused environment teachers need to shift their position in the classroom from authoritarian to designer, I wonder how teachers can effectively approach conversations and lessons about traditional literacy through engagement with digital literacy forms?

2. What attention do we need to give to teaching patience?

“The idea that a new kind of economy- an attention economy- is emerging…formal education has something to do with helping prepare (young) people for the world they will enter…if you don’t grab the average web surfer’s attention within 10 seconds, they’ll be out of your site” (19).

I understand the interplay between demand, supply and consumption. I recognize the need to meet the growing demands and changes to our cyber and physical worlds. However,  I also think that if we have an obligation to prepare learners for the world they are about to enter and ultimately take over, we also then have an obligation to think about the role and necessity of developing and understanding why it is necessary in moments to have and show patience. In the same ways that we teach literacy skills and grammar skills, we need to critically examine and teach the value of patience, particularly in an attentionally deficient culture.

3. If it is impossible to prepare for the unprepare-able, how do we support students to critically enter the world they are inheriting?

“Educators cannot hope to engage in critically literate ways with the new social spaces of the internet without working at knowing ‘how to make the next move’…in the absence of rules or prior experience” (22)

In returning to the first question on supporting literacy development in an ever-changing literate environment and thinking about teaching an undervalued skill like patience in an attention focused world, I am puzzled by my role as a designer. How do I balance the task of designing with care for what I do not understand? The only tool I have to bridge to the future is what I take from my past and if my past proves fruitless in supporting my movement into tomorrow, what are the ethical and practical implications for my designs?

Works Cited

Knobel, M & Lankshear, C. (2003) New Literacies: Changing Knowledge and Classroom Learning. New York: Open University Press.

Critical Cyberliteracies: What young people can teach us about reading writing the world.

http://www.geocities.com/c.lankshear/cyberliteracies.html

Do we have your attention? New Literacies, digital technologies and the education of adolescents.  http://www.geocities.com/c.lankshear/attention.html