Recently on TeachersTeachingTeachers.org, we’ve been talking and writing about the best ways to use blogs in the classroom. Our concern has been to find a balance between:
merely publishing school work (call and response)
vs.
students connecting with their peers,
but without depth (MySpace-style social networking)
We want our students to blog about things that they are passionate about, and this connects our conversations to a meme that was being passed around educational blogs this weekend.
“Passion-based learning” is currently a fast-moving meme in educational blogs, coming from a speech that John Seely Brown gave on Friday, December 1, 2006 at MIT on the impact of Internet culture on education.
Seely Brown argued that education is going through a large-scale transformation toward a more participatory form of learning. Rather than treat pedagogy as the transfer of knowledge from teachers who are experts to students who are receptacles, educators should consider more hands-on and informal types of learning. These methods are closer to an apprenticeship, a farther-reaching, moremultilayered approach than traditional formal education, he said. In particular, he praised situations where students who are passionate about specific topics study in groups and participate in online communities.
Of course, this is pretty familiar territory for those of us who have been working to transform education for many years. Brown is recasting Freire’s “banking” vs “problem-posing” education. Haven’t we even heard some of Brown’s metaphors before? But why not amplify his calls for teachers to think about “how to go from sage on the stage to being a real mentor.”
Perhaps you would prefer Freire’s description in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) of “banking” education. He describes a bankrupt process where the teacher’s task is…
to “fill” the students by making deposits of information which he or she considers to constitute true knowledge. And since people “receive” the world as passive entities, education should make them more passive still, and adapt them to the world. The educated individual is the adapted person, because she or he is a better “fit” for the world.
To replace this form of education, Freire, described a “problem-posing” education which involves:
a constant unveiling of reality. [Banking education] attempts to maintain the submersion of consciousness; the latter strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality. Students, as they are increasingly posed with problems relating to themselves in the world and with the world, will feel increasingly challenged and obliged to respond to that challenge. Because they apprehend the challenge as interrelated to other problems within a total context, not as a theoretical question, the resulting comprehension tends to be increasingly critical and thus constantly less alienated. Their response to the challenge evokes new challenges, followed by new understandings; and gradually the students come to regard themselves as committed.
In his recent speech at MIT, Seely Brown argued that, “Schools can teach essential knowledge and critical thinking through somewhat traditional means [banking education ]. But they should complement that teaching with “passion-based learning” that focuses on getting students more engaged with topic experts [problem-posing education] (Futurist: To fix education, think Web 2.0 | Tech News on ZDNet). Even though the meme seems to be about “passion,” it’s worth noting a couple of other words in this description, “engaged” and “experts.” The vision of education that Seely Brown is carrying forward from Freire is not just about some vague emotional state. It’s about finding topics and approaches that engage students with content that excites both young people in our classrooms and experts outside of school.
Part of what makes a meme a meme is that it is “in the air.” This notion of “passion-based education” has been on our air on the TeachersTeachingTeachers Webcast on Wednesdays at 9:00 p.m. Eastern at EdTechTalk.com. Last week Paul Allison posted a quote from Clerance Fisher that provoked interesting dialogue in a couple of places. We discussed the quote on the webcast, which is archived here: TTT30. Troy Hicks wrote a response on his blog: Discussion of “Appropriation.” And members of the New York City Writing Project’s Listserv discussed this meme on the NYCWP Listserv.
On the Listserv, Joe Bellacero kicked things off by suggesting that Writing Project teachers might have things to say about “the interesting questions raised by Clarence Fisher atNCTE’s Conference in Nashville.”
It seems to me, Joe wrote, that his questions resonate beyond the arena of the new technology and touch on what happens in classrooms everywhere every day. He is asking questions about whose education it is. In the last six years or so of my teaching I was very conscious of trying to shift the responsibility for learning to the students and often repeated the phrase, “It’s your education.” What does that phrase mean in terms of “honoring the literacy practices of the people in our classrooms” (I love his choice of the democratic word “people” over the hierarchical word “students”)? Is Mr. Fisher going someplace where we don’t want to go? Do we need to rethink what happens in our classes to honor and value our students’ literacy practices? What is the nexus between academic writing and real writing (no quotation marks around “real”)?
Nancy Brodsky responded by saying:
Maybe the nexus between academic writing and real writing is analogous to the nexus between literary/academic texts and YA/street lit. Kids often start off reading so-called “non-literary” books and eventually make the transition to more classic literature and academic texts. The bridge is that the skills used to comprehend those early texts are the same ones used to comprehend the later ones. So, real writing, then, is a bridge to academic writing– in the classroom, we might have to make the connection explicit to the kids, in a way that we wouldn’t have to when it comes to reading. I guess the question is… how do we make that connection?
Joe answered:
It’s true, Nancy, that finding that connection or finding a way to have students make the connection is important. I’ve often thought while standing in the classroom, “You already know this stuff. You analyze people and songs and movies and stories people tell you all the time and are astute in your analysis as often as not, so why can’t you see that it’s the same thing when you’re looking atShakespeare ?” In fact, when I have heard teachers tell me how lacking in analytical skills their students are, I think of how in about three days in my class they have my number, know how to push my buttons and have already figured out ways around me. How do I get them to connect what they did with me to what I’m asking them to do with writing about literature? Maybe there is something to Plato’s view that we are born with all knowledge and that the job of the teacher is “educare”–to lead out.
But there is another bone that I’m worrying in Mr. Fisher’s statement. “Are we still doing the old things in new ways?” And are the old things discredited and ineffective. Should we be doing new things with the new ways? For that matter, should we be doing new things with the old ways? If so, what?
Nancy continued:
Maybe the old things are not discredited and ineffective but instead have fallen to prey to that instant-gratification syndrome of the 21st Century. Everything is about the latest, newest thing and pedagogy is not exempt, I guess. Sometimes, it feels like the educational equivalent of keeping up with the Joneses.
At this point, Karen Andronico “couldn’t help but … respond to the conversation”:
Perhaps we need to help connect students’ learning in the classroom to the outside, real world. This can mean that students write for social action. Another idea is to use media in the classroom as a way to get the students to connect to what we think is important for them to learn. They need to see a reason for learning something; many of our students are not motivated just to earn a grade; they need to be excited about learning and discovering. Why are we so passionate about learning? Could it be that we choose what we want to investigate and study? I’ve just developed a passion for learning about film and photography–I am going to learn how to make a documentary with my class–they will choose a topic that they feel strongly about. What about photo essays? I might not be all that computer literate, but I must become so for my students; it would not be fair to them otherwise. As Blanche warned Stella, “Don’t hang back with the brutes!” As teachers, we need to prepare our students for life in the 21st century. Some of them will have jobs that haven’t even been invented yet. So, why not have them “read” and analyze a photograph or a frame from a film for a change? How about having them create a problem to solve? All the reading strategies in the world won’t motivate them to read if they have no reason or passion to do so. Just thinking….
Joe returned to say:
Thanks for your voice in this Karen. What you are saying, of course, touches nearly every teacher’s heart. We all (well, all the true professionals) want our students to be writing/working with passion. One of the pleasures of doing I-Search with students is that we can help them find something they really want to write about. And we’ve heard on thislistserv many assignments that have deeply engaged students. But I do have two caveats. First, it is important to recognize that no matter what you do, you’ll never get every student involved with equal passion. I’m not saying that to prevent people from trying, but to prevent them from becoming angry or discouraged at the students who refuse to see a reason for learning in even the most fetching idea. Take what you can get from them and move on. Maybe the next idea will get them. (I always worry about this because so many teachers and administrators can look at a class of thirty, see 24 of them raptly engaged and 6 goofing off and think they are looking at failure.) Second, and this bothered me a bit with Fisher’s originalstatement, teaching is a mishmash of things ya gotta do, things ya wanna do, and things ya oughtta do. For example we gotta teach them about the conventions of writing. Sure we can build that teaching around a passions-provoking piece of work (if we’re good) but there is no better passion killer than correcting errors (”I told you I don’t like your tongue in my left ear, only in my right ear!”–believe me, I never dated HER again). Passion is important but not infinitely sustainable.
Having given those two warnings, I can say that one of the clear values of the Internet activities of our students is the passion and the amount of joy they take from it. Myspace feeds their normal narcissistic young need to be the focus of attention, and to create a self that they can feel comfortable showing to the world. Blogging makes their voice the center of the universe. And THEY own the language. They get to invent it and shape it and THERE ARE NO ERRORS.
How do we bring those things into our classroom, and do we want to?
Finally (for now), Catherine DeLazzero also found this conversation to be “really very interesting!”
For me, it’s the dichotomies that cause the trouble. I think it helps to define the terms *old* and *new*. Familiar territory: Is old and new dependent on form or genre? (All texts, if complex, require critical thinking, reading, and writing skills, either to interpret or create. That goes for the five-paragraph essay and the music video. So as a teacher I haven’t made distinctions between street novels and canonical texts - both are equally complex. This is not a new idea; Shakespeare wasn’t considered high art in his time, was he?) Does academic writing fall into the traditional camp and is authentic, real writing a progressive, novel idea? Are these dichotomies helpful? What Fisher seems to question is the outta and the gotta in our teaching, and he seems to think that using new forms - blogs and art and student publication - are the old methods in new clothing if our hearts are still attached to the red pen. And many of our hearts are still attached to the red pen, if we think it’s what we outta and gotta do.
I think we outta do more than just index student motivation and passion. I do consider the outcome- what I want students to be able to do. But I want them to be able to do it on their own, and this requires that they own the learning process. For me the red pen is a symbol of the old and it takes self-discipline to silence it in myself. The red pen works from a deficit model, that students are already wrong, and we need to make corrections visible (red!) to them because they can’t make distinctions *on their own*. The form isn’t what makes something old or new. Academic writing –clear, organized, formal– is beautiful to me and beautiful to the students as well if they feel a sense of autonomy and ownership in creating and assessing it. (I tell students that their participation in academic writing will make it new, that a language must evolve in order to survive.) And all the methods for motivating students mentioned so far — making an impact on the world, expressing identity and creativity, exploring the arts — light a match in students’ heads precisely because of student ownership and autonomy.
Skills acquisition matters to me, but I don’t think the product evidences new skills if the means is the red pen, if students don’t set the priority and contribute to assessment. If we own those processes, what are they learning? The days I remember this I and my students have a better chance at being made new. Lately teaching what is essentially a Regents Prep class is really jamming me up; the days the Regents rubric (not created by the students or me) is on my tongue, I feel my practices are old, outdated, and ineffective, too.
So, that’s what we talk about when we talk about passionate learning! It would pobably be a mistake to try to summarize all of the themes here. The next place we plan to sponsor this dialogue is on TeachersTeachingTeachers on Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern. We’ve invited Clerance Fisher to join us (and he plans to) as well as Troy Hicks and Joe Bellacero. With our regulars, we plan to discuss how blogging might represent “passion-based learning,” what this might mean, and how we go about sponsoring it in our classrooms.
From “north of North Dakota” (Snow Lake, Manitoba) Clarence Fisher joined us for a conversation in which he insipired us to think “about all the connections that are possible” because of blogging. The 7th and 8th graders in Clarence’s class use Bloglines to create Personal Learning Networks. The students subscribe to blogs from around the globe — some required (e.g. from Global Voices ), some selected as part of personal explorations.
At about the 20 minute point Troy Hicks, from the Red Cedar Writing Project in Michigan, asked, “Why is it so difficult for many of us to change?” Troy asked us to think about some the “fundamental issues that are keeping us from” the kinds of changes that Clarence’s work embodies.
Later, Eric Hoefler, from the Northern Virginia Writing Project, came online to tell a story about being behind a “walled garden” in his high school. He is beginning to use an elgg to open up to the world.
On this podcast, Lee Baber adds her thoughts, Paul Allison has a story about blogging from students working in YouthVoices.net, and Clarence shares a moving story from one of his student’s blogs.
Student Bloggers in Clarence Fisher’s 7th/8th grade class:
Please take a moment to go and vote: Vote here for the Best Group. Voting closes midnight GMT Saturday 16 December 2006.
And now for our regularly scheduled program…
Many successful blogging stories are happening in special places where the teacher can give students more time than is usually possible for reading, writing, and responding to blogs. For example, as we learned in last week’s webcast, Clarence Fisher has his 7th and 8th grade blended class for most of the day, every day, five days a week. Paul Allison is able to make blogging the focus of his 6th - 12th grade curriculum in elective-studio classes that meet one period a day, three or four days a week. Lee Baber has students blog in technology classes where they basically control the curriculum and can make blogging central, and Susan Ettenheim’s students blog in a variety of different elective classes.
To succeed, perhaps blogging needs to be in separate classes like these where it can have curricular priority. Perhaps the students need regular, on-going time to develop the necessary habits of mind and work to become good bloggers, especially if means that we want students to use blogs for reading and research as well as writing and publishing.
Perhaps. But what about the many, many other examples where teachers are trying to elbow blogging into already jam-packed English, Humanities, History, Advisory, or (even) Technology classes? Can it work there too?
We’ve invited three teachers who have been on Teachers Teaching Teachers before to return in order to discuss these thorny issues:
Madeline is also just about to set up a WordPress blog for her after-school podcasting club, and her students regularly participate in Lee Babar’s webcast, Spacecast (10:30 a.m. Eastern, Fridays on WorldBridges.net).
Richard Stohlman is the Technology Coordinator at Landmark High School. This year, he is working with five teachers on several different WordPress blogs:
Listen in as these teachers talk about how they picture the use of blogs in their own and in their colleagues’ classrooms.
And of course…
What about you? Do your students blog? Do they blog it in a specialized class where there is time set aside to prioritize blogging? Or have you found ways to integrate blogging into another curriculum? Let us know! Join us on EdTechTalk.com this Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern (Americas). To get your voice heard, log into the Chat Room at EdTechTalk on Wednesday evening, and you will find a link to this week’s specific Skypecast.
Of course, you can always leave a comment at right here, as well.
We are in the last 5 or 6 weeks of the semester, and I'm having a great time with most of my 9th graders. They have developed good habits of mind and work, and I'm just their consultant. Christy's story of her relationship with Flickr continues to blossom. She set up a group in Flickr. I'm also interested to see Jose and Zadia move beyond their comfortable subjects. Blogging is a n interesting process to watch!
We are in the last 5 or 6 weeks of the semester, and I'm having a great time with most of my 10th - 12th graders. A couple of stories that stand out: Cailin's abilitiy to see connections between a journal-entry-like blog post and an essay she is writing for English class... Nichole's amazing blog by now... John's podcasting habits... and more!
Please check this shows Google Notebook for links and additional materials: TTT32. Erick Hoefler and Richard Stohlman joined us to give us updates on their work with blogging and discussion forums in the high schools where they work.
Richard’s work with WordPress and WordPress MU is progressing, and he is looking for other high schools who would like to the students on his student’s blogs, especially Charlie’s Advisory’s New York Experience - 2006/2007.
Eric seems to be in the middle of adding to his technology repertoire. In addition to the committed, rich writing that he is having his students do on forums on a Joomla site, he is moving toward the use of an an elggspaces account in his creative writing classes.
Listen in as we discuss how blogs and discussion forums are folding into other cirricula. Some of the questions have to do with how to get other teachers in our buildings to buy in to these new technologies… and in particular, how to think about the process, less finished nature of blog posts when teachers are feel the need for finished products and projects. We talked about how much time blogging takes to develop. Many other issues came up as well, including how to bridge the gap between MySpace problems (although a student joined us to say that we exaggerate these) and the formal writing instruction found in many of our classrooms. Oh… and research. We plan to talk more about that soon.
Finally our dream of a coast-to-coast network of student bloggers is becoming a reality. We have invited the most recent teachers in this network to join us on this week’s webcast, to have a public discussion about our work together. Perhaps you would like to join us too! Come to EdTechTalk.com to Listen and Chat on Wednesday evening at 9:00 p.m. Eastern. But before we get to all of that, here’s a bit of history.
“Ah-ha!” we thought (at a National Writing Project meeting in November 2005), “Maybe we could some day become a larger network!” We agreed that it would be a good idea to develop our own communities first, then see about bringing them together.
For various reasons, teachers in both projects decided not to use these particular blog sites in the current academic year, yet we learned a lot, and many of us continue to blog with students. This year you’ll find many of our students over on YouthVoices.net (YV) and the PersonalLearningSpace.com (PLS) These are two elggs sponsored by Dave Cormier and Jeff Lebow of WorldBridges.net. Dave set up and manages both sites. He launched the PLS with Lee Barber this Spring as an experiment for 8th graders, and he did the same at Youth Voices for Paul Allison’s, Susan Ettenheim’s and Chris Sloan’s high school students this fall.
Cast of Characters
The network has been growing over the past four months. There are now fourteen schools with students posting — some more than others — on these two elggs:
Baccalaureate School for Global Education, New York City - Madeline Brownstone (PLS)
Eleanor Roosevelt High School, New York City - Susan Ettenheim (YV)
East Side Community High School, New York City - Paul Allison (PLS, YV)
The Franco Brazilian School, São Paulo, Brazil - Barbara Dieu (PLS)
Florin High School, Sacramento, California - Bob LeVin (YV)
Galileo Academy of Arts and Technology, San Francisco, California - Pat Delaney (YV)
Gompers High School, New York City - Nancy Brodsky (YV)
Jane Adams High School, New York City - Lorraine Nowlin (YV)
J. Frank Hilliard Middle School, Shenandoah Valley, Virginia - Lee Barber (PLS)
Judge Memorial High School, Salt Lake City, Utah - Chris Sloan (YV)
Landmark High School, NYC - Richard Stohlman (YV)
Lower Canadian College, Montréal - Sharon Peters (PLS)
Trenton Central High School West, New Jersey - Bill O’Neal (YV)
World Journalism Preparatory School, New York City - Renee Dryg (PLS)
Joining us from West Coast on the webcast will be four Writing Project teachers who have worked together before. Bob LeVin, from Florin High School in Elk Grove, California and Matt Makowetski, from Lompoc Maple Continuation, in California — whose students will be joining us soon on YouthVoices.net — first worked together on a collaborative blogging project a couple of years ago, Enrique’s Journey. Gail Desler will also be contributing her thoughts. She is a teacher and technology support specialist for the Elk Grove School District. Gail, a technology liaison to the National Writing Project and the North State Coordinator for the LINC Center, has been instrumental in helping to coordinate the West Coast crew. In addition, Beth Yeagerthe director of the LINC Center and a teacher consultant for the South Coast Writing Project will bring her perspective to the table.
Lorraine Nowlinand Madeline Brownstone and Renee Dryg from the New York City Writing Project plan to come by as well. And we’re trying to hook up with Bill O’Neal from the Trenton Writing Project as well. (See schools on the list above.)
And more…
And now for some dramatic tension…
In our enthusiasm for blogging in the classroom — and in the midst of our hard work in building this network — it’s not easy to listen to some of our colleagues more critical comments. Here are some that are not uncommon:
“Sometimes a bicycle is better than a car,” is how one teacher expressed his disappointment with a recent group-blog project with students. “Almost all of what happened on the blog might have happened more simply and elegantly on a discussion board.”
A computer teacher, who has put blogging at the center of her curriculum for the first time this semester asks, “What do you say when the students complain that they aren’t learning anything?” She explains that they want to make web pages, learn how to use Photoshop, and explore Flash.
“The major exhibition is over, and I wasn’t able to use the blog that much,” reports an English teacher from the Bronx, “Now I’m just letting them write whatever they want.”
“I’m not sure I like blogs,” another English teacher reflects, “They don’t show revision. The students just post their writing.”
How often do we also feel what these teachers are saying? Sure it’s great to see students posting their thoughts online and responding to each other, but how well do blogs reallyhelp our students reach the reading, writing, and content goals we have for them?
If we want to avoid the blogging burnout that is sure to follow teachers’ disappointments, then we need to be clear about what blogs can do, and what we want them to do for our students. We need to ask:
Is blogging is a means (or a tool) to achieve other goals (content knowledge or skills)?
~~ OR ~~
Does blogging have a set of intellectual habits and skills that are worth learning for themselves?
Why do we want students to blog in our classrooms? It’s not enough to say that we want an online extension of the work we do in class. Forums and discussion boards probably do that better than blogs do. And if we want to emphasize collaborative writing, don’t online word processors (such as Google Docs) and wikis facilitate that much better?
On the practical tip…
Paul, Susan, and Lee, who are mainly reponsible for administering the two elggs. YouthVoices.net and the PersonalLearningSpace.com have set up a wikispace to collect together our blogging guidelines and lesson plans. Please join us in making Elgg Plans useful!
As 2006 slips into 2007, we invite you to listen to our last webcast of the year, recorded here as a podcast. If you are a teacher who is looking for a place for your students to blog, if you are considering joining our elggs at YouthVoices.net (9th - 12th graders) or PersonalLearningSpace.com (6th - 8th graders), this podcast might be a good place to start. On our December 20, 2006 webcast, we wanted to publically welcome a few new teachers to two blogging networks (elggs) that several of us have been using with our students since earlier this year. We wanted to do some public thinking about how to make it easier for other teachers and their students to join us.
A few “regulars,” Paul Allison, Susan Ettenheim, and Lee Barber, welcomed BillO’Neal, an English teacher and Writing Project member from Trenton, NewJersey. Bill and his students from Trenton Central High School Westhave begun blogging with the rest of us at YouthVoices.net. Also joining us with a couple of key questions was Gail Desler, a teacher and technology support specialist for the Elk Grove School District, in Sacramento California. Gail, who is a technology liaison in the National Writing Project, is assisting Bob LeVin and Matt Makowetski as they get their students from Northern California in Youth Voices. Wehope to hear more from Bob (who got on for a few seconds at the end ofthe webcast) and Matt in future.
In a renewed effort to make our work accesible, we opened up a wikispace, Elgg Plans, where we are collecting and growing the lesson plans that we are using to build our our elgg communities.
In preparing for the December 20, 2006 webcast, Paul Allison posed a couple of questions, and there has been brief blog-exchange about them this week. Paul asked: Is blogging a means (or a tool) to achieve other goals (content knowledge or skills)? ~~ OR ~~ Does blogging have a set of intellectual habits and skills that are worth learning for themselves?
Miguel Guhlin reflects that the way he uses “blogs in school, it’s about blogging to achieve content knowledge or skills.
Blogging is just the latest in a string of tools available to us. As such, blogging is easily subordinated to the way things are done in schools…that is to say, technology is something nice but unnecessary in helping students learn what they REALLY NEED for life. Teaching can occur without technology because our goal is content attainment, skills, and strategy development…you can pick up the technology stuff later.
Miguel then contrasts this conventional view of blogging with a more radical one, and he shows that he has:
…slowly come to the position that blogging IS a set of intellectual habits and skills that ARE worth learning for themselves. And, because blogging isn’t just about writing but an inseparable blend of writing, technology and inquiry, it is an activity worth learning for the inherent skills and habits. But is it just what we do (habit) or a skill? I think it is deeper than that. It is becoming aware of a global audience, of interacting with that audience using tools never before available. It is that “however” that makes blogging disruptive, that goofs up education as we know it. We have finally stumbled upon a process of inquiry, technology, and writing that is indivisible. You can take each of these items in isolation–problem-based learning, web publishing, journaling/essay writing–but clumped together, like a salad, they are no more than that. Instead, the stew analogy is closest. Maybe there is a better analogy…care to share? The ladle is right over here…or there…or there….
It’s this indivisible salad, this stew of inquiry, technology and writing that we would like to continue discussing in 2007.
Tom Hoffman also responded to Paul’s questions with:
The obvious answer is “both.” Beyond that, however, English teachers should recognize that from their perspective blogging is most closely related to reader response activities, not discussion. Reader response with an emphasis on intertextuality manifested as hyperlinking. In terms of skills and practices unique to blogging, I think it is most interesting to look at accomplished writers in other genres who don’t blog well. The hardest thing for these folks seems to be achieving quick turnaround of short posts, establishing an incoming stream of posts to bounce off of quickly (or leave behind), not writing a full column or essay for every post but seeing the whole thing as an ongoing montage or pastiche.
Tom identifies an important aspect of blogging. Teaching students to write “quick… short posts,” is new, except perhaps for that philosophy professor heard who requires and responds to short weekly essays. Even this professor didn’t work with students to see the “whole thing as an ongoing montage or pastiche.” If that’s not a new set of skills for most English teachers, we don’t know what is! Tom can say “both” if he wants to, but his post emphasizes the unique qualities of blogging.
And we’re glad that another blogger, takes up Tom’s cryptic references to “reader response with an emphasis on intertexulity manifested as hyperlinking.” Doug Noon writes on his blog:
Tom’s analysis of blogging practices as a form of intertextual reader response is right on the mark with a thought that I’ve had brewing. An intertextual stance - linking texts to experience, and to other texts, is the mark of a proficient reader. Conventional reading lessons involve comprehension of single text passages, whereas strategy approaches to reading instruction advocate, among other things, teaching kids to make intertextual links. But how do we teach someone to think this way? The process of making text-to-text connections requires us to first select and organize content from a variety of sources before creating new meanings. It’s a purpose-driven process that follows from a person’s participation in a discourse. Helping kids learn how to be responsive readers is the key here. I’m wondering if making hyperlinks might encourage my students to adopt an intertextual stance toward their reading and writing on the web. I showed them how to do that the other day by asking them to read another student’s post and comment in one of their own. I figured that keeping the exercise “in house” would ensure that the content they had to work with was on-level for them, and not require them to find and process information they weren’t familiar with. My instinct there was correct, because this was a leap.
We recommend reading all of Doug’s post that we’ve excerpted here, because it shows how complex — and new — the literacies are that we are beginning to explore as we teach our students blogging. Good thing we have this community to support us in these leaps of faith!
