I chose the group focusing on video games and literacy. I wanted these articles because I read What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Language(Learning?) & Literacy by James Gee for my book club book, and I found it really interesting. I like the idea that these so called mindless games are actually teaching us new ways to learn, and was interested in reading more about the subject.

James Gee is the goofiest looking old man I ever saw, but he is definitely on to something when it comes to literacy. I especially liked the pbs interview posted in the resource section, it sums up the whole book all in a nice and neat 5 minutes. The pbs interview with Katie Salen was also pretty interesting. I loved the idea that you could send a child to the type of school where learning is a hands on experience instead of forcing energetic kids to sit all day in a desk and stare at the board. It reminded me of a charter school in town where the Waldorf Method is used to teach children who cant sit in one place all day (which is all of them when you think about it).

It is just refreshing to read/watch/hear that there is something being done about this old fashioned, outdated way of teaching the youth of today. I think the creative observance of people like Gee and Salen can progress the schools of today into somewhere kids want to go to learn.

The blog by Keri Franklin really caught my attention. None of the teachers at Chico State print anything out any more, so I got a Kindle to save my self the hassle of printing out twenty pages a day. I spent at least the first week trying to figure out how to even use the thing.  Keri Franklin really put into words how it was to learn a new type of literacy that involves technology. She definitely was dealing with a type of social literacy, since twitter is a social media. It’s a way to communicate your ideas/feelings/thought/meals/actions/bodily functions with a big group of peers at the same time.  While most of the information that is tweeted into cyber space is useless and awkward, Franklin pointed out there are tweeters that have helpful information as well.  I especially liked the requirements for learning a new genre that Keri wrote out.  They do not only help with learning twitter, but with learning to write any kind of new literature.

 

 

The parts of Brandts Sponsors of Literacy that I found the most interesting were the ones that talked about specific sponsors that an individual encounters over their life. Her definition of ‘sponsors’ is so broad, I have a hard time thinking of non-sponsors.

My whole family is full of readers. My parents had very different styles of reading and I think that caused me to have a wide range of reading choices. My mom always had the bible on her night stand, and she made me and my brother listen to the old stories over and over again. We would take turns reading Dr. Seuss out loud to my baby brother. When I got older, she was home less and less and there would always be a note on the table when I got home from school with a chore list and what time she would be back. Now we write e-mails, texts, notes, and facebook messages to each other all the time. We read the same books and talk for hours about content and writing styles of the different stories.

I cant tell you how many hours were spent with my dad in the living room listening to him read out loud. I would beg him to read me the same book every night: Teep and Beep go to Sleep by Mercer Mayer. After I grew out of picture books, I would read my own novel next to him, while he was reading the latest Tom Clancy or Stephen King. My grandma loves to read as well, and we often trade paper back mystery novels. She said they never used to have time to just sit and read when she was growing up, and that I was lucky that I had so much free time. She said most of her beginning reading was newspapers or school materials…

Hello! My name is Lauren Wilson. I’ve been at Chico State for four years now, so technically I’m a senior. I wont be graduating until next year because I wanted to find a minor in something completely different than English, just in case. I was born in Paradise. Most of my free time is spent doing something involving music, family and/or fun. I hate homework…. And I hate talking about myself, so I think that’s enough of that!

There are endless reasons I read and write, but reading seems to have the one basic purpose of gathering information about something, while writing seems to be about informing. Szweds article had some interesting ideas, but I don’t think there was much new info in it. It was surprising to read the standard definition of literacy because I have never looked it up before. I liked his idea about teaching literacy according to the environment a student lives in, but I also think its important to teach about other environments because we live in a highly mobile culture.