Online Literacy Takes Off: Classroom Crossover

Online Literacy Takes Off: Classroom Crossover

by Glenn Marsala

In “’Tomorrow will not be like today’: Literacy and identity in a world of multiliteracies,” Bronwyn Williams (2008) writes of alternatives to the archaic practice of writing for a grade or sharing with a few friends, at most, to publishing a text “instantly available to a global audience” (p. 683). While David J. Rothman, in “The crisis of literacy and the courage to teach,” (2007) bemoans an alarming loss of literacy at all levels of society (p. 97), in large part as a result of “commercial electronic media” (p. 100), Williams views these new media and technologies as offering new opportunities to build new kinds of literacies. This stands as a challenge to the accepted norms of our education system, and so students have “been told too often that their online activities are a waste of time” (p. 685). Literacy of this kind may appear antithetical to the “accepted” form practiced in proper school settings with entrenched curriculums. However, respecting things like blogging, texting, and the complex and simultaneous interactions involved in online literacy as valid forms of expression and participation in a community can offer educators a valuable tool for engaged learning. This parallel development of self-directed literacy practices and school-focused outcomes can help foster a vibrant critical literacy, which Pescatore calls “fundamental if one is to be a thoughtful and responsible participant in a democracy, and participant is the crucial word here, because it underscores an active orientation toward and engagement with society” (p. 330).

Williams writes about the use of literacy in online technologies, like blogging, messaging, social networking websites, and whatever the ever-changing reality of publishing on the web encompasses today. In the deep past, before the early 1990’s, most kids, or anyone else for that matter, never got the chance to publish anything. If we were lucky, in my day, some project or contest would be covered by the local media and we’d get our picture in the paper. I distinctly remember my contribution to an art (or maybe health) assignment to design a poster against drunk driving. The contest may have been associated with SADD or MADD. My poster’s slogan was “Boozers ‘R’ Losers.” I didn’t come in first, but I was very proud, and my work was published! But today, with the advent of the internet and cellular communications, students have access to relatively cheap technology with astonishing capabilities.

However, these practices of reading online material, responding in writing, opening diverse channels of communication, global sharing of ideas and information, and finding an identity (or identities) through this active, immediate form of literacy, offer a challenge to educators versed in more traditional models of literacy. Williams claims that if teachers listen to their students “closely we will find that their experiences and resulting knowledge may surprise us and offer new opportunities for connecting our pedagogies with their lives” (p. 685). The issue here may be simply educators’ unwillingness to admit the preeminence or even validity of these new literacy practices. They are not “by the book,” certainly, and these changes could shake the foundation of education to its core.

As just a quick example of one of these evolving challenges, a coteaching duo visited my SEC 500 (Foundations of Secondary Education) classroom this semester, and they opened my eyes to some of the realities of “texting” in schools. Students can disengage from their unengaging classroom and focus their energies on written communication with an ease and expertise that can only come from long practice. Texting out of sight of the teacher, even in a pocket or a purse, passing notes wirelessly, sharing test answers—how can a teacher keep up? With the internet available on handheld devices as well, students can have access to a huge body of knowledge in an instant. When has the likelihood of a student exposing the gaps in a teacher’s expertise ever been greater? It’s almost like a psychic connection with all the knowledge in the world, which can be netted and claimed, caught and released, forgotten without concern—any memory of which becomes a fish story, “the knowledge that got away,” perhaps.

Keeping and synthesizing knowledge seems a far cry from this practice. Rothman, for instance, fears that “commercial electronic media”:

will eventually transform everything that it touches, including politics, religion, education and more, into entertainment until it conquers the universe. Destroying traditional notions of literacy is merely one of its byproducts. The new commercial electronic media are antithetical to every aspect of reading, from notions of grammar and syntax (which they do not have; images can appear in any order) to the way writing organizes and stores information (p. 100).

Does literacy necessarily submit to a specific grammar? There are grammars of film, of music, of painting, or any other art form. These norms have been claimed, challenged, reformed, transcended, reinvented, and altered repeatedly by the very nature of engagement. Rothman does not here define what exactly comprises “commercial electronic media,” but the internet radically redefines the borders between commercial and “freely available,” private and personal. Therefore, many active literacy practices can be crucial to safely and effectively navigating these new media. “Critical literacy,” as Christine Pescatore puts it in her essay, “Current events as empowering literacy: For English and social studies teachers” (2007/2008):

offers a way to speak out against injustice and unfairness. Critical literacy builds awareness of how power is used to marginalize and silence certain groups in a society, and engenders a willingness to reveal that situation in order to bring about change. Critical literacy is an active engagement with the world as well as with text and requires the ability to think
critically. (p. 330).

I wonder what pre-modern literacy rates were, before things like radio, television, recorded music, films, and other “commercial electronic media” were like. What does Rothman really mean by “traditional notions of literacy”? If he wants to exclude film and other media, then this literacy must predate the 20th Century. What are the challenges to literacy in the 21st Century?

Many of the challenges of structured educational settings transcend time periods, of course. For example, because of the difficulty in finding interesting things to do in school, students seek active engagement. When they turn to “underground” literary pursuits like blog writing, they seem to find no connection to their studies, despite the shared skills involved. Rather than learning to learn, or learning how to learn, students all too often learn only what will be “on the test,” presumably so schools can stay in business. Just how interesting can it be to students to test for tests’ sakes? What is the end purpose for learning “‘deep literacy’—the ability to construe complex symbol systems of any kind, from a novel to the periodic table to the quadratic formula to a Beethoven sonata” (Rothman, p. 101). I think any of these critical living skills might fail to impress your average adolescent.

Contrariwise, activities like blogging, texting, video blogging, multi-tasking with computers, internet, cell phones, and other electronic devices all do engage students at an increasing rate. Williams speaks at length about social networking websites, like MySpace, where students spend time constructing their identities, building statements about themselves with text, pictures, and video. They write lists of “likes,” which serve as points in common with others, because “Popular culture is one of the most powerful organizing forces in determining where young people go online and with whom they interact” (Williams, p. 684). Students, non-students, and people worldwide, find each other based on preferences for high, middle or low culture, connecting fans of anything imaginable, or beyond imagining, with people of similar interests. The test of literacy may be, then, not so much based on grammar handed down from the historically “correct,” but any means of interacting with others which enables a functional exchange. As Williams asserts, “Our taste in popular culture is not innate but learned from the culture around us” (p. 684). Therefore, “traditional literacy” may indicate an insistence for students to temporarily regress culturally to an ever more distant literary past, which they abandon whenever possible during school, the whole time they are not in school, and for the rest of their lives after high school. “Tradition,” from a student’s perspective, just does not seem all that important.

As we have studied throughout the reading in this course, the most effective learning comes from building connections to things already known. Williams emphasizes that “the knowledge that students are bringing to the classroom from their daily experiences emphasize the necessity of an ongoing, open-minded conversation about the ways in which evolving online technologies are changing literary practices” (p. 685). Being sensitive to this changing atmosphere in the intellectual lives of students, where their intellects actually spend their time and attention, means a greater chance for connecting to students, engaging students in literacy that connects their outside interests to activities that can serve them well academically and beyond.

Williams speaks of students constructing identities online, but of course they do this in life, as well. I wonder—what, exactly, is a “student”? Is it a mask worn to school? Who brings their “self” to class? Breaking down some of these boundaries, perhaps with the help of technology, can help integrate school concerns with a student’s “life” concerns. As Williams writes, “Reading and writing offer distinct opportunities for connecting our minds and hearts to those around us” (p. 686). I find it exciting that technology now affords us all the chance the connect to a global community. If we, as teachers, can connect to students, respecting and using their experiences to engage them in literacy, then we teach both the skills they need to succeed in tests and other more “traditional” assessments, and we model the option of valuing their own interests and opening their minds to the diverse viewpoints and interests of others.

References

Pescatore, C. (2007/2008, December/January). Current events as empowering literacy: For English and social studies teachers. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy , 326- 339.
Rothman, D. J. (2007). The crisis of literacy and the courage to teach. Acad. Quest. (20), 94- 111.
Williams, B. T. (2008). Tomorrow will not be like today”: Literacy and identity in a world of
multiliteracies. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy , 51 (8), 682-686.