The first hour of class was a presentation by Bob Zogby about the use of iPods in the classroom. I had mixed feelings about what he had to offer and I was glad the students did too. I’m thinking his presentation belongs more in a methods class. There are actually so many other things with tech that I’d love to have the students look at and think about. The problem is lack of time. Dr. Ikpeze had a technology piece added to this course that Dr. Broikou and I took out. I just don’t know how she managed to squeeze it in. We’re trying to integrate tech stuff into each course, but I think we need a whole course on it.

I enjoyed the reading assignments for the week. The Baron article is interesting and accessible. He makes important points. However, it’s important to remember that he wrote that article before the Web 2.0 world, so some of what he says is already dated. That’s the problem with anything about technology. It’s a moving target. My instant messaging research was hot in 2004, but now it’s old news. On to the next big thing. dana boyd (no capitalization) really hit it big in scholarship with her work on social networking. That’s still hot, but we don’t know for how long. Dan Perkle’s stuff on “cut and paste” literacies is important. And these are all things we haven’t the time to get to in this course. It’s so frustrating. We’re barely scratching the surface in this course.

But that’s what I have to keep reminding myself – this really is a survey course. Hopefully something within the course will pique students’ interest and they will carry that interest with them through out their program and into their teaching. They can then pursue it further in their capstone and in their practice. I have to keep reminding myself, I can’t do everything.

But the thing with literacy and technology that I really want the students to get is that literacy is itself a technology and that the technology mediates or changes the ways we interact with the world – and that we change the literate form as well. The Larson & Marsh chapter was the weakest of the readings. I’m thinking I might leave that one out in the future and find something else. I love Colin & Michele’s work on literacy and technology, but I’m thinking there might be a better article than the chapter they read. Or maybe skip that chapter and just go to chapter 3. But L&K’s overview of the history of literacy is important. Maybe that belongs earlier in the semester – when we’re doing the history piece. Heck, Baron could fit there too.

The students discussed the readings and I think they got the gist of the readings. That’s why I like reading the notes on the wiki. It really gives me a sense of what meanings are being made. So far, this group of students has been impressive. They are able to extract the important points and make good connections. If I wasn’t seeing it, we’d have to do a lot more revisiting of the readings.

I gave the students the last half hour of class to work on their literacy artifact reviews. I’m really stressing that they are to just play and figure it out and come up with something. I wish there wasn’t a rubric attached to it. I know it’s hard for the students to “wing it.” They’ve been socialized to a particular way of thinking and acting that has afforded them success in education. I want at least in this little bit of the course for them to experience the potential of the new literacies to subvert and transform school as usual.

We’ll continue with the new literacies this week and then on to classroom implications. I’m still trying to figure out what readings to cut. All of them are important. Maybe we can do a jigsaw with them. Yeah, I like that idea.