Genuinely this was my favorite class I’ve had in college. Everything about it was super interesting, even the gaming presentations that I had zero interest in. I feel like this class made me think a bunch and reevaluate how I learn and what my literacy practices are and it all just blew my mind.

The tradition sense of literacy is read this, write that, but I don’t see that as learning at all. The most beneficial part of this specific class to me was the article groups. I 100% understand why we did the readings and the reflective blog posts for the beginning half of the class, but that was the part I could have lived without. To me it wasn’t that engaging and I just wanted it to be over with. But as soon as we got to the article groups I was all in. It was so fascinating to see all the ways literacy differ in schooling and how people might apply things that are relevant to this day and age. One thing I have a problem with is the reading that is forced upon us in English classes. Like originally these old books were chosen because they addressed controversial issues and the readers could personally relate, but now days we see worse things on South Park, so students are not fazed by the readings and don’t learn. I believe the idea of learning is directly connected to the clichéd idea of fun. As soon as I am bored I learn nothing because I have lost my interest. For example, the hip hop group was great because it took something that student were generally interested in and turned it into an assignment. They had songs everybody knew and we all broke them down and it was genuinely hard, but I was so engaged I couldn’t help but learn. Or the maker culture for that matter. In high school they tell you to read a bunch of old book, but you never do and just spark note your way to an essay. My freshman year was an engaging class because we took books and instead of writing, did things with them. Like for “Of Mice and Men” we had to build a scene. I built a barn out of popsicle sticks and had hay in it and then brought a blonde Polly Pocket from home to use as Curley’s wife and set up the scene where she dies. Or for “Romeo and Juliet” where we got into teams and made videos all over campus acting out the play. These are the book I actually remember. I learned things form these books because the activities associated with them were fun and engaging.

My ideas of being a future teacher have changed so much because of this class. It literally makes me want to throw every idea of teaching and learning out the window and start from scratch. I want to be able to use the ideas from the article groups to keep my students engaged and learning. Yes there will be reading and writing, but hopefully I will be able to choose options that they are interested in and give them the options to choose what they want to read and keep them active in class and base the standardized lessons around those reading/activities. Basically it sounds like I want to work the system.

1. The hip hop a literacy group was super interesting. I always knew rap was poetry, but I never knew all the specific aspects that actually related lyrics to poetry. It was nice to see their example of using something all student can genuinely relate to being used in a classroom because we could see how that really got the students interested.
2. The next group was the gaming group. First off I learned that I will never know the point to video games if I’m not specifically told what I am supposed to be doing. But mostly I learned that it does take a certain mindset to be a gamer. During surgeon simulator I struggled with the controls, but that didn’t matter because I was able to start over which is a good idea to incorporate in a classroom to eliminate the fear of failure.
3. The last was the maker group, which was my favorite. I loved that we were all able to come up with our own ideas because they were all so different and we got to use ideas from our different backgrounds and have none of them be wrong. That is something that doesn’t apply to schools in many areas but should be.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10ll8fqb_Lot33-kx0jg1-I5JVXmCdhFmEiBYbnabK0Y/edit

 

By: Claire, Sarah, Brooklyn, Gaby, and Julia

Just Girls, by Margaret J. Finders, goes over the differences between the popular “social queens” and the nerdy “tough cookies” middle school girls. It talks about their different literacy practices and how those define who they are as girls. The “social queens” are very group oriented and are more focused on literacy practices that are not associated with school and learning. They read magazines for a group activity, not for the literacy aspect. As well, they write notes to each other that way they can all be on the same page about everything and unified through the entire group. Basically they’re stupid kids who care too much about fitting into societal norms. On the other hand, the “tough cookies” are very individualized and independent girls. They read books to further their education because they have that goal. They tend to be more responsible as people, which to me was way more relatable.

I feel like this book really helps the understanding of literacy studies because the girls are at a developing age and this is what’s going to affect them in the future. For instance, the “social queens” and their non-interest in academics is going to hinder their chances at furthering their education, unlike the “tough cookies.”

For me I think digital literacy sponsorship comes from ourselves. I find it really rare that I have a friend ask me how to use Twitter or any social medias. It seems more of a self-taught lesson. Like open the app and fiddle around with it until you know what you’re doing. But worst comes to worst and you can just google how to do it. The other side of the self-taught agreement is if you are on twitter, you are digitally observing everyone else using it, so in a way they are sponsoring you. I can see both sides of it, but it depends on what you are learning or doing digitally that defines who the sponsor is.

My most recent new digital literacy would be Google Docs. I have never used it before and its used all over campus. It’s hard simply because it is completely foreign to my, but after I had to use it for the first time I knew what I was doing. And a few of the students in the English 30 class I observe in asked me how to upload documents and how to get into Google Docs, which was funny to me because I hardly figured it out for myself.

As far as a non-digital literacy goes, it would definitely be navigating my way around Chico. Clearly I am new in town, so sometimes it’s a struggle to find how to get places and then there’s a bunch of one way street (which I despise). The easiest part is that the streets are just numbers, but when I walk the other way when they have real names, I get lost. The coolest thing someone told me was that some spell out CHICO, so that was super helpful and I can successfully navigate that portion and I’m continually getting better at the rest.