Electronic Literacy; Digital Youth, New Media Literacy (reading or writing on computers)

From - Electronic Literacies: Language, Culture, and Power in Online Education – Mark Warschauer

I should note before writing that this book was published in 1999, which makes me guess that the information was gathered in either the 1997 or 1998 school year. Not a huge deal as the content and main ideas are still quite relevant, but it was interesting to think where we were technologically speaking back then. IM (or at least GUI based IM) was still very new, most people were still on dial-up at home (and possibly still at work or school), and the general speed and power of computers had yet to explode (I’m guessing this was around Pentium 1, before a 1-Gig hard drive was common, etc.) I only bring this up because the topic is “Electronic Literacy” and how to use computers to promote literacy. Most of our students now use computers more fluently than their counterparts 10 years ago.

What struck me most about this chapter is the notion of making writing in the classroom as authentic as possible. At my school (Bell), we are always discussing the school’s academic tenets: Rigor, Relevance, Social justice, or more specifically: “is this assignment authentic?” “how does it relate to the students’ lives?” We’re constantly giving students writing assignments where they’re writing to an audience of one: the teacher. This gives the impression that writing learned in school does not relate to real life. How often, outside of school, will students have to write essays? Probably never. One main idea in this chapter is to have writing assignments not just feel authentic, but be authentic.

For starters, the class examined in this chapter began every time without speaking. Everyone logged on, opened up a program (Daedalus) and received instructions for what they would be working on. Sometimes there would be a forum or chat via Daedalus where students would make short comments to keep it more of a discussion than long, in-depth thoughts (the fact that the professor asked them to keep comments short in this program made me think that this was before IM widely used).

The professor in this chapter has half of the assignments in her English 215 class (note: this is a community college) as “service learning.” This means that they are required to work in groups to write/design some sort of real life piece for a community group such as a brochure, website, newsletter, press release, etc. In doing this, the students learn more skills than just writing. They need to interact with contacts at their organization to gather information for their assignment. This requires internet, phone and face-to-fact contact. Many students in the process learn to use web design software, Photoshop, HTML, and other computer skills needed for the assignment. In some cases someone in the group has these skills and teaches the others, in other cases, students just learn on their own. Another byproduct of this format is that students take more ownership of their work. Knowing that their project will eventually be used by members in the community, students put in long, sometimes excessive, hours working on this. Only in cases where a student didn’t fully believe that their work would be used did the author see a lack of interest or pride in the work being produced.

By having students work in the real world, and primarily interact through the internet (or in this case Daedelus), it creates a de facto immersion program for her ELL students. The author found that students from other countries had much more to say and took greater risks in making statements in their computer conversations vs. discussions out loud in class. When they would have to interact with members of an organization, it enforced using their English skills. Having the students type all of their ideas and work back and forth has them constantly writing and constantly seeing other models of writing. This makes an interesting case for using computers to improve literacy as most studies show that immersion greatly improves literacy.

Overall, I can see using a project similar to this for our English IV Language class next year. Give the students writing assignments that will be used outside the classroom. In addition to making the assignment more interesting, it gives students real life skills, something that they could use in a job down the road.

There’s a quote towards the end of the chapter that discusses how electronic literacy will level the playing field. With more people being literate on computers, it gives everyone a voice, not just the traditional “intellectuals.” It’s interesting, since this quote is from 1992, when email was still quite new, and well before everyone had blogs. 15 years later, some of the most common news sources have become blogs, and there are no requirements as to who can voice their opinion as it was when people mainly got their information from books and print news sources. It makes me wonder what the author’s newest conclusions are in his 2006 book: Laptops and Literacy: Learning in the Wireless Classroom. It can’t be far off before every student has access to a computer throughout every class they take.