Bud the Teacher

UPDATE (5/21/08): It seems that this video, certainly a controversial one, has been pulled from publication.  Chris Lehmann wrote a much better post than I did on the subject.  If you haven’t already, you should read it, and dig deep into his comments. If you know why the video’s disappearing around the ‘net, I’d love to know what you know.

Thanks to John Creighton for the link to this video. It’s well worth the six and a half minutes of your time if you haven’t already seen it.

It was about a year ago that I wrote a piece for English Journal on teaching “blogging” vs. “writing with blogs” that was pretty much a re-hash of some blog posts that I thought were saying something. The trouble is, I wasn’t sure what they were saying. I’ve been fumbling at this one for a while.

I’ve always found something particularly special about writing online, or at least I’ve learned that there’re more options, more possibilities, and plenty of challenges that make writing online much more complicated than cutting and pasting a Word file into a text box and hitting “submit.”

But most folks that I see beginning to use digital writing spaces aren’t treating them any differently. And I can’t quite figure out why. I also can’t quite figure out how to articulate the differences, even though I think I get some, if not several, of them. And if I can’t articulate them, perhaps I can’t teach them. (Not sure about that, actually - but work with me.)

I think one good way to articulate some of the differences is to tell you a story. Here goes.

Tonight, I’m sitting in a local cafe, enjoying a cup of wicked sweet coffee and some tunes. As I wrote that last sentence, and added the links in, I wondered how you would read it. Are you someone who clicks on any link you see in a blog post? Or are you more like me? I use a browser that shows me the URL of the link I’m pointing to, saving me the trouble of traveling here if, after reading the URL, I see that I don’t need to follow the link, perhaps because I already know the site, or I don’t want to go to the site, because I’m worried about pop-ups, or a virus, or something that I don’t actually want to see. I love that browser, except when it leaks memory.

I could continue, but I think (hope) I’m making my point. I could have written that paragraph without the links - but I would’ve need an awful lot more details to tell you as much as I did with the links. And you each will have worked your way through that paragraph differently. Some of you read and clicked and fiddled. Others of you read differently. (Oh - and here’s a minor nit - but how many of you, in that last sentence, read, ahem, “read” in the past tense? Present tense? Language is hard. But anyway.)

I don’t know what my students do/did when they see blocks of text with links. And I’m 98 percent sure that there wasn’t another teacher in my school who was thinking about how to explain that to students, much less about how they read that text themselves.

Digital texts have the potential to make a big, juicy mess of a linear experience. Or to turn a so-so piece of writing into a masterful collection of references, linktributions, and pointers to other good stuff. My hunch, a rough one, but one I’ve held for a while, is that reading and writing that way makes you (ultimately) a better reader and writer. I just don’t really think I know how to teach that way yet, or at least, I don’t know how to teach other people to think about teaching that way.

Will Richardson asked me recently (well, it was two weeks ago - but that counts as recent if you forgive me the week I spent sick. And I do.) about connective writing, and what a course on it might look like. I blame him for the frustrated typing that I’m up to right now. And the posts that I suspect are forthcoming. (And I’m thankful, too. I needed a push.)

What would such a course look like? What would it cover? How would it differ from a “regular” (I know - bogus term.) 9th or 10th grade high school writing course? How would it be the same? (Why wait until high school? I’ve been thinking through blogs as science or inquiry notebooks at the elementary school level.) What happens when we add video(s)? Pictures? Embedded widgets? I’ve got to believe that some analysis of what links do and how they do it would be a necessary piece of any such course. So, too, would be copious quoting and linking to others, building a network of classroom texts that would be added to the greater networks of the world.

I’d kill to teach that class.

Perhaps I’ve stumbled across another thesis idea. Again. Nuts.

_______
Postscript - I had thought that perhaps I’d dig into the research on hypertextual writing a bit before I started down this post. I know these ideas aren’t new. But I couldn’t help myself. I made it four pages into this fascinating article before I started writing. Worth a read, I think.

   This month’s English Journal is a themed issue on New Literacies.  I’m pleased that a hyperlinked version of our column, entitled "Linkin’ (B)Logs: A New Literacy of Hyperlinks" is available for free via the EJ website.  Regular readers of the blog will have seen much of the content before, as some of it originally appeared here, but hey, now it’s in print, so it’s an important text for scholarly perusal, as opposed to just a blog post. 

  Enjoy. 

    I’m pleased to report that one of our English Journal pieces is available for non-subscribers right now as it’s been featured in the NCTE Inbox.  Here’s the info (along with a PDF link):

  The English Journal article "Research and Authority in an Online World: Who Knows? Who Decides?"
(G) is a must-read on the evolving role of Internet-based research (and
the research paper) for teachers at all levels. Though the specific
activities mentioned take place in a secondary classroom, the general
discussion of Wikipedia and online research is significant for any
classroom.

       
    Enjoy. 

    I’m pleased to tell you that Louann Reid, the editor of English Journal, my teacher and my friend is now blogging.  Here’s her first post, on the class that’s brought her into the blogosphere.  I think you’ll be interested to learn with and from her class:

As a new semester and a new class begin, I’m ready to try yet another
new thing–blogging with a class. This move seems particulary
appropriate for the graduate class I’m teaching this semester: Visual
Texts and Textuality. Within the larger topic of New Literacies or
multi-modal literacy, we will explore graphic novels, videogames,
films, and other visual texts to understand how theories of "reading"
and "writing" texts may or may not apply to visual texts. All of this
exploration, of course, will occur in the context of teaching and
learning in secondary school English.

I would like to use this
blog as a place for us to raise questions, reflect on emerging ideas,
and elicit feedback from teachers and others who can help shape our
knowledge. Some of the content will be class-specific, but there should
be much that will be general enough–I hope–to engender lively
discussion.

Please join us.

I sure will.

    In one of my roles as the co-editor of the New Voices column for English Journal, I regularly have space in a print publication to discuss how particular issues or topics in language arts instruction at the secondary level affect or are affected by early career teachers.  There are several upcoming calls that would be appropriate for writers from this community to address, so I thought I’d better pass along the calls here.  If these interest you, and you’d like to submit a manuscript, or ask any questions whatsoever, please do.  Take a look.  It’s my job to help you get published, not to keep it from happening.  In addition, you don’t need to be an early career teacher in order to write with me — you just need to be relevant to early career teachers. 
    You can find more upcoming calls, or more information about requirements, at EJ’s website.  If you’re interested, I’d need to hear from you by the postmark deadline on these calls.  But I’ve got some additional time flexibility, so if you’re interested but need a little extra time, I can make that work, too.:

New Literacies

Postmark Deadline: January 15, 2007
 
Publication Date: September 2007
         

As
our vision of what counts as texts enlarges, educators are increasingly
interested in not only meanings but also representations. We find a
variety of ways of labeling our interests in this broader area of
meaning-making—multimodal literacy, media literacy, new literacies,
multiliteracies—each with slightly different meanings and uses. For
this issue, we are not interested in pinning down a particular
definition or set of assumptions and approaches. Instead, we are
interested in knowing what you do to help students recognize new
textual media, understand how texts are created, and think critically
about how representation influences meaning and value. We invite you to
consider the following questions or create your own. In all cases, we
are interested in the research and/or theory that support your practice.

         

In
what ways have you expanded the texts you include in class? What roles
do graphic novels, video and film, blogs, sound files, visual art
(graphic design), or other texts play in instruction? How do you help
students understand why certain texts have been valued and others
dismissed? In what ways do you engender understanding of media
production and consumerism? What multimodal representations do you
encourage students to use and critique? What projects or demonstrations
do you use to create and assess students’ multiple literacies? How do
you employ and/or critique digital technologies? How do you address
ethics?

Transforming English Teaching
      
      
       
         

Postmark Deadline: March 15, 2007

Publication Date: November 2007

         

To transform
is to change substance and form, or to re-create by reconceiving,
resituating, reimagining. Because teachers are always in the midst of
change, we know that not all change is transformative. True
transformation results in changed perspectives and practices, even new
paradigms. For this issue, we invite you to write about transformations
in teaching English language arts in the past, present, and future,
with an emphasis on how and why such transformations are significant in
the twenty-first century. We also seek manuscripts that show how you
help students use the English language arts to transform their world.

         

How
has the profession been transformed by historical moments, such as the
formation of NCTE in 1911, the Dartmouth Seminar in 1966, or the
English Coalition Conference in 1987, and what is the current
significance of such a historical event? How have the provisions and
implications of NCLB affected English language arts curriculum and
instruction? In what ways have those changes been transformative, or
how could they be? In an era of high-stakes testing, how are we
teaching beyond tests to help adolescents deal with the challenges of
being teenagers in difficult times or learn lessons that will help them
live productive lives after graduation? What are English language arts
teachers doing to address achievement gaps experienced because of
differences in gender, race, class, and language? How is teaching for
social change or justice a transformative approach? How have you used
technology to transform your teaching and students’ learning? What
transformations are essential, and how can we make them?

    September’s English Journal is all about poetry.   What’s great is that the EJ website is showcasing, for a limited time, the "10 Watershed Articles" on poetry from EJ.  It’s a collection of articles that span EJ’s lifetime, all about teaching poetry, as named by two of September’s contributing authors.
    If you’re into poetry, teaching poetry, or the history of teaching poetry, then thiscollection is worth a few minutes of your time.  I’m continually amazed by how today’s issues are also yesterday’s, in lots of ways. 
    We don’t necessarily seem to learn everything that we can from the past.