CI 5472 – Chapter One

Here in the English Ed cohort, we've been hearing about multimedia and digital literacies since September. It was cool to see David O'Brien (or as I call him, the ODB) quoted in Beach's text. Actually, if I can make a tangent in my first paragraph of my first blog post for this class:
I'm continually surprised by how often intellectuals and academics will list themselves or colleagues at their institution in their research articles or textbooks. I know that one is probably most familiar with the work of those that one works with, but I'm always worried about the stagnation of ideas that seem to be geographically isolated. What do studies find in other regions of the country, if not in other countries altogether? I'm not saying that Beach doesn't reference other places and institutions, but I think he was a lot more likely to talk about the ODB because they're colleagues and even advisors for the same department. I guess I'm paranoid about groupthink.
Getting back to the matter at hand, a lot of Beach's arguments are already near and dear to my heart in this program. Student engagement with digital literacies? Check. Multitasking and multimodality increasing in whippersnappers of today? Right. A public aversion to admitting that reading or writing online is not "real" reading and writing? You better believe it.

It's sometimes tough not to set up a dichotomy between "old school" and "new school" as if we're all one or the other. The school board member from EP got a little vilified, but most texts need a "straw man" here or there. My point is that literacies are messy and even since 2007 technologies and the ways they're accepted in the classroom have been changing. So while there certainly are sentiments that education should remain the boarding school-style test of asceticism in which students memorize Shakespearian soliloquies and fourth graders parse through Chaucer, it's more often than not mixed at institutions in which certain teachers and administrators value the affordances of technologies. In other words, no school or district is exactly like this old-school EP school board member, and at the same time, no district is exactly as new-school as Rick Beach and the ODB, where students each have personalized laptops and post imbedded YouTube videos on their blogs that exist only within Second Life.

Digital literacies didn't take hold with me immediately, but once it's stated in language such as "equipping students," it's hard not to see the appeal. We want kids, or at least I want kids, to be versed in Shakespeare, write in Standard English, and think critically when they need to. These are all things with which kids are better off being equipped. How can I justify depriving kids of digital literacies that they're more and more certainly going to need in their professional and private lives? Also, it's a major concern when we talk about the achievement gap in academics being wider when we consider familiarity with technologies. It's an unfortunate characteristic of our country that privileged students take advantage of all kinds of things off-limits to the underprivileged. Unsurprisingly, access to digital media makes that statement especially true. If kids can't take advantage of digital literacies in school, where on Earth are they going to become literate? It becomes a responsibility of schools and teachers, then, to educate students in all valid literacies, and the list is growing.

Peace,

-Matty K