Back To Grappling with Lankshear and Noble

    Thinking back on the last week, grappling with literacies of various types is something that I have become very acquainted with. Whether I was trying to figure out if I agree with Lankshear and Knoble's proposal of literacy and literacy practices or attempting to become literate in other ways that pertain to medicines, make-up work, and insurance, I was surrounded by a variety of literacies begging me to become proficient in them.  I've realize that I am also working to get this whole blog thing down - and by thing I mean the lingo, the catchy title, writing in a way that I don't feel awful making people read - and this has proven to be much more difficult than I had anticipated.  When I started college, participation meant participation in class, no exceptions, but as the months ticked away, Courseworks came onto the scene as did the requirement to participate online.  For some, this inclusion was great, their fears of participating in the classroom had been alleviated and they no longer possessed fear for their participation grade.  However, for others, this inclusion of a web-based participation piece meant two things, more participation was being required, and the fear that the submission wouldn't make it to the proverbial mother board, that the intellectual genius you had spent hours writing would be lost in cyberspace never to return again.  So, while I was reading Lankshear and Knoble's discussion of this "'participatory' cultural creative," I had to take a deep breath and tell myself that everything was going to be OK because I am genuinely concerned about what this entity being termed cultural creative means, what it's implications are, and how it will affect our society for better or for worse (65; excerpted copy).  
    However, I do feel within myself a push to be more open to using the Internet in the classroom.  As of this moment, I am whole-heartedly in support of using multiple modalities and media to present ideas to students, but when it comes to using the Internet, I shy away and run for cover.  Perhaps this stems from my own discomfort using the Internet, my own uncertainty with what "Big Brother" is tracking, who is gaining access to my own information, and the fear that I don't know who I am dealing with because I can't see them.  Maybe I am old-fashioned in wanting face to face interaction, with the desire to not be connected 24/7, but I think there is something left to be desired when I am constantly attached to something with a WIFI or 3G connection.  I apologize for the tangent, I had to get that off my chest. Anyway, like I was saying, the use of the Internet and technology in my classroom is something that, ideally I would love to have, but I fear that I will not be confident enough in my abilities to be able to lead my students in the use.  I think Merit wrote something very captivating in her blog post from July 19th, 2012 "Notes from Henry Clay: Determining Technology's Place in the Classroom." In the post she writes, 
     I think it's dangerous to base any pedagogy completely on computer screen or print text.  Students should learn the nonlinear thinking required of them on the web by participating in fast-moving chats and moving from article to article by clinking on link after link.  However, they should also learn to immerse themselves in a good book for an hour, two hours, even five or six.  They should learn to listen to a multitude of others' voices, then sit quietly and listen to themselves.
I found this to strike at the very essence of my feelings regarding technology in a classroom.  As educators we want to prepare our students for the spaces that the will be occupying for the remainder of their lives.  Therefore we must provide them the opportunity to explore various types of thinking and expression in order to see what fits them best in certain situations.  Perhaps for some, the creation of an animoto best fits the needs of that which they are trying to present, and for others it may be a handmade collage or storyboard.  Regardless of the medium, we, as teachers and as citizens of the world, must provide our students with the opportunity to know what it is like to hold a book, to turn its pages, to smell that old book smell and at the same time feel the gratification of finding the answer to a question immediately online. 
      In chapter 2 of Lankshear and Knoble they discuss how different people read different texts in different ways.  Just as we are reading and interpreting the texts that we are working with in this class in different ways so, too, will our students, "read academic texts very differently, and the practices of bloggers and online social networkers can differ enormously in 'look and feel'" (38).  That is what makes education possible, what makes the world exciting, without variation and difference, things would be boring and routine and the exact same.  In a way, our education system is reinforcing this sameness through its reliance of standardized tests and the push to get everyone on the same playing field, but I wonder if perhaps we are saying more about conformity through this method of education than we are about advancement and opportunity.