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Why did i title my post with a football term? Well it wasn’t until i was in my @#($ies i found out that H-back meant Hybrid; having more than one function in an offensive scheme. Now when we hear of hybrid we think of cars. While tooling around town or cruising on the freeway the electric element of the hybrid is humming along. When the car needs some extra power, as when going up a hill, the old technology known as the combustible engine takes over. What is my point you may ask? If you haven’t moved on to someone else’s  blog; it is this correspondence of congruency, one element of power working while the other is being sustained, functioning symbiotically and at times hyperbolically to the  other. One thing is for sure, having a hybrid gives one the best of both worlds.

While in my observational class at Chico High, i was asked by the teacher to put together an assignment with regards to Macbeth. Did I feel intimidated since i hadn’t read Macbeth since high school, nor did i probably read it then. But I know that i had the internet as a safety net. I made an assignment focusing on Shakespeare’s use of symbolism. I fingered through act three looking for some examples. I ran across five and made an assignment sheet. I will not lie, i did explore the internet for some direction. I finished the assignment and gave it to Mr Asnault. He looked at me; and said wow, thanks. I think he impressed by my expediency.

Easter break went by and when i returned to his class he asked me if i would grade them. I said sure. I wanted to see if the students followed my direction and what they had come up with. After class was over and i was on my way out, Mr Asnault asked me if i wanted to do a presentation on  the assignment on Monday. I said sure. I had broken that arrogant wall. I was going to be given the opportunity to command the class. I was amazed that he was giving me  this opportunity. Returning Monday he introduced me to the class as Mr Mulholland before i had the chance to get nervous. I went through the assignment with the students and after twenty minutes i finished up with a couple questions. The most poignant being, how many of you used the internet for this assignment?  I knew the answer would be one. It was obvious when i graded them. Mr. Asnault’s ears perked up when i asked this and he started to take control of the class back. I wanted to know why their were so many “wrong” or incomplete answers when there is the answer machine known as the internet.

These kids were living in the times where there was only a gas engine. They hadn’t been taught or even learned on their own how learn with the help of the digital age. Was i in the stone age, were we still teach from books and rely on the students to “grind out the material,” or am in in the 21 century where an answering machine doesn’t pick up the phone for you? There was no hybrid learning. There was just the old way of pedagogy.  i was stuck in a quandary, am i a running back or am i a wide receiver? Am i running on fumes or do i have alternative energy to fall back on.

The answer came to me from a student who had been so attentive to my teaching, i wanted to reach out and hug her after she said, “i think it is important to learn from here,” as she pointed to her heart. After class was over Mr. Asnault gave me the best compliment i have heard in years. He said, “Mike I am amazed, you are a natural.” he told me that he learned from me. He was more than supportive of my efforts and shook his head, man that was great. He said usually “observers” just come in, sit and stare out the window. You came in here and made a difference. I was amazed at how candid he was because there had been this wall of arrogance when i first showed up. I broke down that wall, he gave me his class and i did it.

Enough of my immodesty, Mr. Asnault was happy i brought up the question about who used the computer. It made him think. It made him question his pedagogy…I as a student my have influence a teacher to cross over into the 21st century…maybe i learned from the girl in the front row that we need to learn from our hearts. Either way it is difficult to deny that hybrid learning is upon us and we as future teachers must be careful not to give the answers away.

 

Our article group is based on Digital storytelling. The articles i read were by Joe Lambert the creator of “digital storytelling.” His main focus is to use video to tell stories so they can be archived and retrieved for later viewing. This reminded me of the oratory of the native Indians. Where stories would be told to the children so the history of the people wouldn’t be lost. I like the idea and have at times wanted to have my father write a memoir of his childhood and his upbringing. He was the youngest of eight and his father died when he was thirteen. His sisters, my aunts have told me some stories but i think it would be cathartic for him to put his memories on paper and it would give me a window into San Francisco in the thirties and forties and fifties.

The  discussions we have had in article group were a bit stunted because we compared these digital stories to the ignite talks ted talks and the like. Using video to tell a story whether it be about virtual chickens or a ted talk on jstor usage. I guess my point is that as cool as this digital story telling is we as group wanted to push it to a new level. We don’t want to film a video of telling a story, we want to make it more interactive in a resource activity. I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag, but we are trying to formulate an activity that will involve all of the students of class in a spontaneous, quick word pick entry into the resource we have chosen. This will intern tell a story based on a theme we chose and show how this activity will help students remember the content of a digital story more than just listening to someone tell a story. I think i may have said to much, but putting it into action will be the challenge. The way i see the activity is it will be a virtual Madlib.  We will have to see what happens on tue when we meet again.

 

In the book, Hanging out, playing around and geeking out; the question of intimacy and social media is a main chapter. When i think of intimacy i think of bed bath and beyond. However for this books purpose intimacy is used as a reference point to the level of cordiality between those involved in the activity of social media. As much as i was waiting for the section on sexting the book never got there. The reasons were that most kids “don’t feel comfortable talking about this during the first interview.” The authors focus on the relationship of a teenage boy and girl who wake in the morning and text, then get on facebook and im and usually fall asleep talking on the phone. What makes this different than any other relationship is that the kids parents don’t know about their relationship. So the question that comes to my mind is how intense can the level of intimacy be if they can’t be seen as a couple amongst family. I think this lack of intimacy is congruant with the lack of intimacy of an online social relationship. They can’t share the feeling of joy they have with their family and my mind thinks how authentic can this “online” relationship truly be. Sure they can hold hands at school and sneak a kiss on  the way to class but sharing their true feelings with their families could only intensify or authenticate the intimacy. I could offer more examples of the author’s interviews with other kids, but the over all feeling i came away with was social media and intimacy is like a teenager drinking non alcoholic beer and not knowing it. As much as social media plays a part in forming relationships the more “friending” doesnt mean you have more friends.  I  get this idea that the true self of people is hidden in cyberspace and any social interaction outside of social media would only immediate intimacy and create a more intense relationship which we all know we can’t have. So in  a few words. social media is a veil that covers the true faces of people. Why create a friendship the old fashion way, where one might blush when asking a girl to the dance when they can text and be denied without the face to face interaction

 

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Learning has it’s disadvantages; the first is that your friends look down on you for being a know-it-all. Second, they can’t believe it when you don’t have the answer to what rivers drain into what lake to make Niagara Falls, thus you lose at Trivial Pursuit.  So my goal is to have no friends. This has been going quite well until I started classes at Chico State. I have already met some really cool people. Little do they know i have my guard up. I don’t have every answer to every question, I even give the wrong answers so they know i am not “that guy.’

When we broke up into groups last week to discuss the reading i new that this was the time for me to come off as not being “that guy.” Autonomous literacy and Ideological literacy, i can talk some B.S. about that and the group will move on to someone else to get their ideas. Little did i know my B.S was “right”.  Right enough that everyone else thought I was that guy and applauded me into going for it.

Whenever I have a tough time with reading an article i usually find the biggest word and break it down. This week it was AUTONOMOUS.  I know what  means because at a very young age I asked my mother why my best friend was acting the way he was. “He always gets his way.” My mom said that is because he is autonomous. I asked what that means and she said, “look it up.” As she did with any word i didn’t understand. My mom can be quite truculent.

When it comes to autonomous literacy we found that like a mother-ship the leaders of this ideology tend to move into the learning community and share (force) their one way of learning. Like a ship in the night the people in charge offer literacy as a fruit tree of knowledge; what falls off gets learned and then they move on down the line. Ideological literacy is just the opposite with the same metaphor. The Mother(Teresa) ship comes to the community and hands out the fruit from the tree to those who need it. Some may need more than one type of fruit and more of it while others might just need the seeds and the seeds get planted and grow with the help of their sponsors.

If we could think of Autonomous literacy as the right wing conservative group; giving out just enough to get by while those who already have the knowledge flourish. Ideological literacy is the liberal group helping all of the community and the special needs of many. The problem arises however when  autonomous literacy is cycled throughout the community; there is one way to teach and this is a utopian ideal, however there can be no “one” way to teach. On the other hand, Ideological literacy requires many ways of teaching and it is near impossible to teach teachers to teach every student as an individual. So what do we do. I think the later is the Utopian ideal we should strive for. Knowing it can never truly be obtained, no great endeavor goes unnoticed and perhaps it can be morphed into the autonomous ideal over time. What needs to happened is literacy needs to be liberated from the old grey hair men in government who never taught in the first place. What i mean by liberation is that there needs to be a biological evolution; the dna of literacy has to be mutated to fit the masses in an individual communistic format rather than one size fits all.