Literacy as Battleground

"Sometimes it’s an all-or-nothing choice, and either you adopt new literacies or you isolate yourself."

from Doug Noon writing at Borderland

Last November I gave a presentation at the NCTE national convention in Pittsburgh on changing views of literacy and what this means for teaching. At the time, ideas of 2.0 in education were beginning to percolate but were still very amorphous. When I look back over the few months that have passed since then, I think we have learned a tremendous amount. But in many side discussions at that conference, and in committee meetings on media I was asked to sit in on, I came away with a sense of urgency that things were just not chaning. I was worried about hundreds and thousands of teachers who were trying to "catch up" with skills their kids were learning, thinking that if they worked bit by bit, over time, they would be in the same place as their students were.

I thought at the time (and realize even more strongly now) that this simply isn't true.

Working incrementally will only leave us further and further behind the literacies that our kids are working with, playing with, growing. After the conference, I blogged a call for "educational leap - frogging" where we simply leave old skills behind and jump into a new set.  I worried about "underground digital apprenticeships" where kids were spending hours learning skills that were important to them (image editing, blogging, podcasting, video design, etc., etc.) that they were not getting at school, making classrooms more irrelevent to them.

I believe that we are soon reaching that "all - or - nothing" point that Doug talks about. It is a tipping point, but I believe (without trying to be too dramatic) that we are currently standing on a dangerous edge. We have created a lot of resources, momentum, and pedagogy this year as a blogging netowrk striving to understand what many of these new technologies mean for classroom life and learning. We have demonstrated the value of these tools, and have learned how to use them. But if these efforts are cut off, either for political reasons, or through reaching a point of stasis for some other reason such as a simple lose of momentum, we will be in a troubling area.

August / September, when most kids in the northern hemisphere head back to school is going to be very important. How many teachers that tried blogging with classes last year will pick it up again? How many teachers will be allowed by district policies to participate for the first time?

Where will we be?

I have been asked to return to the national NCTE conference in November which is taking place this time in Nashville and I'll be going. But I'm uncertain about where the landscape will be by then. We will most likely be early enough in the school year that the excitement will still be brewing, but will it be authentic and moving, or a battleground of change?

technorati tags:literacy, borderland, NCTE

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Comments

[Miguel Guhlin]

Clarence, you feel that "all or nothing" pressure because you're a blogger in the echo chamber. In truth, the vast majority of folks in the field are running like rats in a maze, chasing after illusory cheese (you folks in Canada have read "Who Moved My Cheese?" right? (oh oh...crowd is getting mean!)). Maybe that's not the case in Canada, but it is certainly so in the United States.

What's worse, they run the maze, not to catch the cheese, but to simply survive in a system that "zaps" them for failing to keep up. How can we restore to them the power of one?

By doing exactly what you're doing, by serving as a beacon of light and hope...by setting yourself on fire when you speak to others, you'll encourage them to "light up" in their classrooms, to build on their strengths rather than other's appraisals of their weaknesses as teachers and learners.

Change, one person, one classroom at a time. It's a powerful recipe for success and it is dramatic. I'm reminded of these two quotes about change:

No one jumps a 20 foot chasm in two 10 foot jumps.

An American driver in England either learns to drive on the opposite side of the road immediately, or endures a head-on collision.

Thanks,
Miguel Guhlin
http://www.mguhlin.net/blog

[Bud Hunt]

Clarence,

I'll be in Nashville, too, and I'm looking forward to shaking your hand.

[Doug Noon]

Clarence, I sent you a trackback from my response to this post, but since I don't see it here, I gather that your site doesn't display them.

http://borderland.northernattitude.org/2006/06/20/on-literacies-being-multiple/

Thank you for airing your concern for this problem. I share your concern for what is becoming an increasingly irrelevant and dysfunctional institution, and I am trying hard to temper my frustration by focusing on things that I can do something about. We can only come to terms with the questions you raise through discussion, hard work, risk-taking, and thoughtful reflection.