Welcoming new cooks to add to the stew - TTT_33 12_20_06
Posted by SusanEttenheim on December 30th, 2006
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 Bill O’Neal, an English teacher and Writing Project member from Trenton, New Jersey. Bill and his students from Trenton Central High School West have 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 a 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….
Around the Corner v2 - MGuhlin.net - Asking questions
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.
Tuttle SVC » Blog Archive » Blogging & Reader Response
Tom identifies an important aspect of blogging. Teaching students to write “quick… short posts,” is new, except perhaps for that philosophy professor 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.
Borderland » Reading to Write
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!
January 5th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
[…] I have been reflecting for some time about the amazing power of web hyperlinked writing, and I’m intrigued to read what others like Doug Noon, Miguel Guhlin, Tom Hoffman, and others have shared lately about the complexity and power of blog writing. Susan Ettenheim on Teachers Teaching Teachers actually highlighted this conversation thread for me initially. The idea that connects with with me most is “intertextual links,” which Tom wrote about and Doug extended on. I have sensed for some time that in many cases (but certainly not always) the most useful blog posts include hyperlinks to other ideas. When I blog, I typically make a conscious effort to include hyperlinks– intertextual links– possibly other ideas and experiences I’ve shared in the past, but also the ideas and experiences of others. Digital social networking, including blogging, is powerful for many reasons but basic among these are the CONNECTIONS they permit learners to identify, understand, and follow further if desired. […]
January 6th, 2007 at 1:38 am
[…] Teaching Teaching Teachers (group blog - Paul Allison, Susan Ettenheim) […]