Wiki Week

This week has gone by wiki wiki. That means "quick" in the Hawaiian language, and according to Ward Cunningham, that Hawaiian word is the origin of the technology term. Of course, this is also the week that my grad class is studying wikis...

Two moments stand out for me in wiki week.

One: The class is in session, all on line and four students agree to work with me on a project I have started, a wiki about how to get a job teaching English in middle school or high school. All of us are rapidly writing and changing the text, altering the look of the wiki, adding in pictures and so on. One new idea jumping up and then being changed. We're talking with each other as we do. Do you like this look? What if we changed the color? Can you find a picture? Meghan can't get her picture loaded; Rob finds a way to post one. It's fast, fun and exciting, working as individuals and as a team -- collaborative writing.

Two: Later in the week and I come back to a page I had made about resume writing. I loved my page with all of its great ideas and my know-it-all confidence. But the page is almost entirely gone! Kim has been working on it for hours, and now, instead of offering certain advice abour resumes, the page raises questions, challenges resume writers to consider decision making. -- Yes, it is a major intellectual advance from my work, but I also liked the good ol' fashioned straight advice I had posted.

Do I regret this whole collaborative thing? Now what... I set about reading and re-reading Kim's work. I look back in the histories at my previous versions. I take some of her stuff and fold it into what I had done -- I make that page a replacement page. I take some of her stuff and create a new page, about "resume decision making," and link that to the first page. Now, where are we? What is Kim going to think? I write an email to the group...

This is work, and there are egos and different visions involved. The project is now not just mine, but how do I let go, evolve, enter into collaborative writing?

Web 2.0 and Uneven Development

I am excited to see the way teachers and future teachers are embracing some of the possibilities offered by blogging, RSS, and wikis!

As someone who has often been a "early adopter" of technology I would say that such adoptions have often meant for me a struggle with the institution to get the hardware, equipment, rooms, and software that I needed for the experiments that I wanted to perform. One thing that excites me about Web 2.0 is the way that so much is already "done" for us -- waiting for us out there on the web, such that we don't have to pay for, load, or manage new software. Nor do we need especially powerful computers, because the running of software and the storage of information is basically done remotely. This ought to make these technologies easier for teachers to use (except in so far as the public schools use filters that block access).

I thought that many of the technologies I started using for teaching would much more rapidly become "standard" activities. Twenty five years ago I was using word processors in class to help student do revision. Fifteen years ago I was having my students engage in threaded discusions. Eight years ago my students were all making websites. Five years ago I started teaching all my classes in a wireless, laptop classroom. As I undertook each of these I thought that, OK, soon everyone else is going to be on the same page. But that is not the way it has worked. The technologies involve new learning on the part of teachers and new ways of understanding teaching -- those changes take time. What I have seen instead is, to use the classic and appropriate expression, "uneven development" with some jumping ahead, and others lagging behind, at least in terms of meaningful technology innovation.

There is also lots of "hype" about how technology will save students or radically transform learning... and that I have become skeptical of as well.

Blog Blog Blog

The repetition of words can suggest redundancy, an "etc," but I can tell you a sentence where the word "and" appears five times in a row and it still makes sense! If my students are creating a blog about blogs, a "blog blog," then it is only fitting that I should write a blog about blogs that are about blogging, obviously, a "blog blog blog."

So let me link to the blog I have just been reading, Will Richard's blog, which is really a blog about blogging, a blog blog. The most recent post from January 27 is interesting because Richardson is trying to get educational bloggers to band together and make public political statements about the importance and value of educational blogging. I suspect he is thinking about this because of the need to counteract the actions of schools to block student access to blogs -- as my graduate students, current highschool teachers, Kevin Huff and Lindsey Steenbergen have experienced. I put this on the same plane as the idea that there are some books students shouldn't read -- so we should not let students read books. Or, there is writing that is inappropriate for young people -- so we shouldn't let young people write. I guess a component of politics is simply to interject commonsense into the public discussion.

In another post, dated Jan 20, Will talks about how blogging has changed the way he reads. He says something interesting,

I now read with an intent to write, and my writing (or blogging) is an attempt to synthesize and connect ideas, not simply summarize or paraphrase what I’ve been reading (if I even get to that.)

As a research scholar working on my fifth book, this position is familiar to me. I also often read with an intention to write. In my research I am more focused on how to push or extend the thinking of others, or how to utilize their thinking to support what I am working on, than I am focused on synthesizing or connecting ideas. My purposes are argumentative; Richards' seem to be to develop community understanding. Is that too bold a distinction?

I like the idea of students reading not just to answer teacher questions, but because they enjoy reading and because they want to write, to connect ideas, to express themselves, to think critically, to develop communities of understanding, and to blog, blog, blog.

Webb -- logging

Strange, for many years I have been an anti-logging activist. One place I loved was the remote Valley of the Giants, another, somewhat better known, the Grove of the Patriarchs. I was (and still am) a "tree hugger" -- I used to work for 1000 Friends of Oregon and have tried to save the last reminants of Pacific Northwest old growth.

Now, strangely enough, here I am, supporting logging! Logging on-line. An on-line logging activist even! Of course, online-logging doesn't cut down ancient trees. My kind of logging is "Webb - logging," shortened in the vernacular by some, to just "blogging.'' Now you have the etymology, or is that ent-ymology? (Spelling?)

Check out Will Richardson's blog Weblogg-ed.com. And Robert's, SecondaryWorlds.com. Consider how they are using them in their teaching, and the role of blogs in celebrating and conserving, rather than cutting down, student voices.

Hyper -- texting

So, I get a little HYPER about hypertexting. These two ideas go together so powerfully and in so many ways. Literary theory in the last twenty years has become fascinated with the social nature of language, the interconnection of text and context, and with "intertextuality" -- the relationship of texts to one another. George Landow wrote an important book, Hypertext Theory a number of years ago which was just reissued last year as Hypertext Theory 3.0. He explores the relationship between developments in the internet, particularly the nature of hypertexting, and literary theory. (It would be wonderful for a student in 5970 to give this book a look and give us a report!)

We talked about the ways in which hypertexting is actually an old idea -- encyclopedias, footnotes, glossed texts -- and about how it is emerging in the digital age. Sarah Kajder (check out her blog on her new book!) got us starting thinking about teachers using hypertext to facilitate students making "close readings" of literary texts. We started from that critical reading and analysis connection, expanding it, adding in contextual and then visual information. We were talking about digital archives so the possibilities for playing with literary works began to expand. Then, once I started riffing on students writing creative/personal/expressive writing as hyper links to texts, connecting it to postmodern architecture, and thinking about what new kinds of readings such an approach could open, and how such student projects could become class projects (example "Postcolonial Dialogues" site created by one of my classes.), on-line class contributions to knowledge, well, it was pretty "hyper" alright.

I wonder what other hyper - flights - of - teaching - fantasy we might - can -will aspire to!

Good English Teaching

I want to focus on technology and English teaching, hence the "Techno English" title, but at the same time, what I am really interested in is good English teaching, especially good literature teaching.

I guess this year marks 26 years in front of the classroom for me. There is lots of great argo for talking about good teaching -- close reading, reader-response, constructivism, cultural studies, multiculturalism -- and all of these mean a great deal to me. There are some older words, that aren't specific to teaching English that matter a great deal to me.

Listening -- learning to clear your head as a teacher of all of the fog of your own experience, your own values and passions, and being able to listen well, to hear your students what they care about, what they need, what they are learning.

Compassion, understanding others -- to me this is what literature is about. It offers the possibility to imaginatively understand the experience of other people and to care about them. I think a good teacher cares what literature is about, not just how it is made. This means addressing issues, connecting literature to historical and cultural contexts.

Locating and activiting -- helping your students to discover where they are in the world, what their values are and to think critically about those values, how to act in accordance with ones values.