Discussion and Social Networking

0111 Academy

January 8, 2008

Beth Brunk

Multiliteracies for a Digital AgeStuart Selber, 2004

Students must be able to use computers effectively as well as participate in the construction and reconstruction of technological systems. What is needed is an approach to computer literacy that is both useful and professionally responsible (7).

If teachers fail to adopt a postcritical stance, thus leaving technology design and education to those outside of the field, it is entirely probable that students will have a much more difficult time understanding computers in critical, contextual, and historical ways…

…that technology designs, informed by pedagogical and cultural values not our own, will define and redefine literacy practices in ways that are less than desirable…

…and that computer literacy initiatives will simply serve to perpetuate rather than alleviate existing social inequities (13).

Literacies

Functional literacy—current traditional rhetoric—not socially or rhetorically embedded—skills detached from contexts, computer as tool (32-33)

Literacies

Critical literacy—students encouraged to recognize and question the politics of computers, technologies as systems rather than things, access means more than just having a computer

Literacies

Rhetorical literacy—students begin to engage in design processes, place computers in a social context, question usability, interrogate biases, purposes, consider audiences, etc.

The potential problem with online learning

Although composition classrooms, generally speaking, have been decentered spaces since roughly the 1980’s, a big fear of technology-enhanced pedagogies is that they will further decenter the teacher. The students will feel disconnected; so will the teacher. How do students and instructors make an adjustment?

Shared Space

Michael Schrage (MIT) argued that "collaboration, without exception, requires" it. The nature of shared space is variable and dynamic; it can be a virtual space, a physical space, or a digital space. It can be a blackboard, a whiteboard, an online chat room, or discussion board.

Shared Space

What's important, he found, is that "you need to have the media where the ideas can be captured and represented and those representations can be modified and played with." Clearly, teaching writing using technology provides ample opportunities to create and use shared space. We believe that a digitized class creates and maintains shared spaces in ways that a f2f classroom cannot.

Shared Spaces

Until an instructor decides to use the discussion board more as a forum for working through ideas and activities and less as a virtual refrigerator for Post-It notes, then technical efforts toward creating a space for collaborative activity remain empty shells.

What are shared spaces?

Whiteboards Discussion boards Wikis

A few tips

Keep groups small—no more than 7 per group.

Have set policies about what your expectations are generally and specifically.

Don’t interfere with their discussions. Encourage collaboration, not

cooperation, when appropriate.

Tips

Make a clear connection between what is done online and what is done in class.

Give students a chance to meet each other in both shared spaces.