The first day of my Spanish class this semester, my professor told us absolutely no cell phones during class!! Ironically she typed this on her computer onto a projector. I thought holy mole (Spanish pun amiright), how am I going to pass this class? Good thing I made friends with two native Spanish speakers that I could ask for help since I had no resources outside of myself and my very unhelpful Spanish book and god forbid I buy a dictionary. There were so many moments in the class where I could have benefitted from looking up one word or a conjugation here and there. If I learned anything from the drastic differences between this class and my Spanish class it’s that the classroom should be a space apart of the modern world that incorporates tools that people use on a daily basis. Some might argue that this decreases attentiveness, and yes I’m sure there are moments it does, but I would argue we have more information and increased ability to take part in a community of academia that no other generation has ever experienced before. In no moment should any tool be discouraged completely. For instance, I’m sure not every 8th grader has access to a laptop or maybe not even a computer. If I had a class of 8th graders with smartphones I would like to encourage all of them to learn to use them to publish to Google Docs, use the internet as a source, and among many other skills utilize their smartphones to increase their accessibility to take part in a learning environment.

In regards to how ideas from the study of literacy can affect the classroom I want to focus on some ideas from James Gee’s book “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy”. I have a hard time thinking of student identity which is why I probably think of it so often. For me, I always felt like teachers were teaching me to become a teacher. Maybe other students didn’t feel this way but I always did. My parents both became educators so maybe I was truly predestined to be involved in education before I even thought about my other options. I always wonder how my older sister decided to become an environmental scientist while all along I wanted to be a teacher. In my classes in the future I strive to have each student’s personal identity shining through on every assignment I ask them to participate in. Hopefully this will impact them when they decide how to use English class to move forward in any path they choose. Another idea Gee discusses is choice. This class is the first class I truly felt I had a choice to take part in which community I was most interested in. The model of groups about 5-10 people can be reconstructed at most any size, classrooms with 300 students or classrooms with 25 students. Supplying choices for any population of people is such an obvious solution to increase engagement. During article groups, Jason had a station illustrating the concept of community within video games. On these interfaces people were discussing game strategy, sharing ideas, discussing politics, making jokes, and burning through so many topics it was hard to keep up with. At our table group we started discussing how encouraging students to work together, ask each other questions, and collaborate could potentially affect our classrooms. We talked about how this might decrease cheating and increase understanding for some students. I could see this type of interface used in any classroom whether it was a math, science, language, history, or an elective class.

The relationship between language and literacy interests me since they are so interconnected. John McWhorter’s Ted Talk about texting and literacy argues that texting is a new type of language that resulted from the desire people had to write like how they speak. I’ve been trying to categorize in my brain how reading, writing, communication, and language fit into literacy studies but I decided recently while I was preparing my presentation that these things are all just jumbled into and connected to literacy studies. Much broader than that I’ve decided to think of literacy as the way people learn to use text. BOOM. I think I defined it. The more general any definition of literacy is the better, since there are so many parts that can be added to or changed.

My favorite part of this class was giving my ignite talk. I was really happy with how it turned out and I have never been confident speaking in front of people until now when I felt I was passionate and informed about my topic that I presented. So thank you Kim for encouraging me to speak, I was so happy that I did and I could definitely see myself participating in these types of events in the future. I feel responsible to share ideas with others and I feel like I’ve stepped into a community that I just want to frolic about in for the rest of my life.

While reading this book I’ve paid special attention to James Paul Gee’s use of the phrase, “unfortunately, this is often what we do in schools.” Gee’s foundation of his connection between video games and literacy relates a lot to the way people crave an interactive learning experience. If a video game is too challenging or too easy the users lose interest. Unfortunately, this is often what we do in schools! Gee discusses the need for teaching basics, and encouraging identity progression. As a future teacher I find these ideas very interesting and useful. Each student will have their own personal interest for learning in my classroom and hopefully my lessons will be able to celebrate that and not squash it. Gee discusses identity in video games as projected identity, self identity, and character identity. The projected identity is the most interesting to me because it mixes the game user’s desires, values and ideas with the character’s own in the game. The projected identity identifies as the game character while also using one’s personal choices to move through obstacles.
Although I’ve never played the games Gee describes in his book, I’ve played others like Pokemon on the gameboy, Pacman and Mario on the Xbox. These games have less choice based learning yet give you a task to complete and skills to complete it. Each level produces different and more challenging obstacles. This would be a very good example of low stakes learning. “Lives” in video games give you lots of chances to try again until you succeed and can move on.

Every time I think about literacy I always tend to connect to general categories. First, I think about reading and writing and the use of text. Szwed’s piece was a key first piece for me to consider about literacy because I think it’s important to realize how often literacy practices are developing and changing and adding up and being distributed to many demographics. Hamilton’s writing on studying images gave me a better outlook on the way people used text through out history. The picture we discussed in class about all the train passengers had a newspaper made me think of how the “newspaper in front of your face” generation might consider the “phone glued to your eyes” generation less literate! Since they use diverse forms of text the two users are accustomed to specific forms of literacy. A newspaper reader may have a hard time navigating a smart phone or a smart phone users may become frustrated at the physicality and engagement of a newspaper. (CTRL+F: Donald Trump said, “…., is a lot different than flipping to page 8 of your newspaper and looking through your article to find the golden quotations).

Brandt goes more in depth about the concept of sponsorship. Since I want to be a teacher, when I think about sponsorship I think of it in a very specific way. I know I want to teach high school students so I stay awake at night thinking of engaging ways to positively influence my classes. I not only want kids to think about English, but ideas about communicating ideas through business, science, art or any interest they want to pursue in life. Being up to date with technology would be a key thing for my class philosophy. As an example, I wouldn’t force my students to use dictionaries in a foreign language class, when they could look up words and full sentences with in seconds. Hopefully I would change my lessons to incorporate this convenient technology. So for me my role in sponsorship is very important to me. A story that I liked was Carol White’s in Brandt’s piece. Brandt argued White’s literacy sponsor was her employer, and that she used the practices she learned there to financially support her family. In this instance White’s family serves as her personal motivation to learn a new practice.

The relationship between learning and language is something that I naturally consider when thinking about literacy. Almost completely independent from reading and writing text, and sponsorship, the idea of literacy can embody a larger idea about learning and the complexity of language. Franklin’s blog about learning to use Twitter helped me understand key ideas and processes of accumulating literacy. After she was learned the actual mechanics of tweeting she then had to consider how to reach her audience and communicate with them. Using 140 characters started to make me think of the use of language twitter created. Someone could tweet: “Chipotle >>>>>” and I would know what this means. It translates to: “Chipotle is better than every restaurant, every food, and everything!” Twitter users took a mathematic symbol and used it to communicate a big idea with very few characters. When I first saw this symbol I think I asked my friend who used it what she meant and then instantly I was able to use it as a part of my own repertoire on Twitter. The English language Twitter vernacular could be indecipherable to a person who’s unfamiliar with it. When I see a new trend on twitter it’s so easy to figure it out and copy to communicate to the audience you want to grab whether its with my friends debating politics or me retweeting funny cat videos. The complexity of subset literacy practices mixed into the English language are infinite, as I imagine would be the same in other languages as well. I would make the claim confidently that the internet fosters the possibility for unlimited subsets of literacy practices but also makes it very easy to learn them.

 

 

I find this piece very interesting because the author outlines the process of learning a new literacy in a way I can understand and relate to. I used a very similar process when I joined twitter. Unfortunately my user name for all social media, to this day, is a result of my 14-year-old awkward sense of humor (see title). Anyways, I really should change that…please don’t look my twitter up.

This blog was a really good example for me to relate the things we’ve talked about in class to the abstract idea of literacy. Franklin gives very clear examples of sponsorship, tools, and learning a new form of literacy. I like that she shared her experience about struggling to learn the conventions of this type of writing. Her learning experience simplified the concept of a student learning traditional essay conventions for me.

1.   Try to think of your earliest memories of writing and reading.  What do you remember of reading and writing before you began school?  Who helped you with it and what was that like?

I was envious because everyone in my family could write; my parents wrote notes and did work and my older siblings would do their homework in front of me, so I would write notes to my mom when my brothers and sister went off to school.  The writing didn’t actually say anything because I was trying to emulate my parents’ cursive writing.  I would give notes to my mom and ask her to read them and she would give it a shot…she had to guess what I had written.

2.           What kinds of writing did you see your parents, siblings, and other family members doing as you were growing up?  What did they read, where, and when?

My dad read newspapers, reference books, and history books.  If anyone asked a question, he would go look it up and have us read about it with him.  He learned so much on his own.  If the internet had been around earlier, it would have been a huge part of his world-could we never have been able to drag him away from all of the information at his fingertips!

5.           What are you asked to do with reading and writing at this point in your lives?

As an English teacher, I enjoy reading, analyzing literature, and writing daily with my students. In addition, I have to write up information from meetings or for my department. Generally, I do not take the time to write for enjoyment, though I often wish that I would. My favorite thing to do outside of work is to get my hands on a good book and read non-stop until I finish it, even if that means little sleep for several days.