Finding the Time

With our busy lives as teachers, meeting all the demands on our plates, the question arises as to how to fit social networking into an already busy schedule. Dr. William Kist addresses this issue from his interviews with teachers in the field as well as his own classroom experience. (W. Kist, The socially networked classroom: Teaching in the new media age, pp. 120-121)

My reactions to his suggestions are as follows:

1) Choice in media use is important for student creativity but they need to have many tools to draw that creativity from. We need to reduce the technological barriers in our classrooms.

1) Students can be excellent resources! They have a wealth of experience to offer, capture the engagement of their peers, and appreciate being respected.

2) Not all students are "digital natives" as some may claim. This is a dangerous misconception. It truly is the responsibility of classroom teachers to teach these 21st century skills. If I am unable to do it, then who do I know who can teach me?

3) Many schools offer some sort of computer class for students. Collaboration with the media specialist or other teacher can help these skills be taught in one class period and then applied in others.

Blog, blog, blog.

Being relatively new to the blogosphere, my opinions are still forming on its application to our lives and the potential lives of my students. The first blogs that I read were those of acquaintances and friends from the distance running community. Mostly these were in some way related to the sport, but those that were most interesting to read had some element of creativity to them. If the writing was good, I was hooked! If it wasn't, I would move on to something else. This is the same way I approach any other media that I read.

My first role in being an actual publisher in the blogging world way when I opened a Facebook account. At first, I struggled to determine anything meaningful to say. It was hard to find communicate something about myself that my "friends" would actually care about! I still struggle with this. When this medium is used strictly for self-promotion of thought or status, it becomes very stale to me. I appreciate those of my "friends" who are using the site to open people up to new information like political ideas, news articles, websites, music, arts, and events.

Dr. William Kist references Angela Maiers, a literacy consultant, who "advocates that 70% of what one posts be sharing resources or providing links rather than lecturing or giving online speeches. "This is purposeful, mindful literacy, she says."" (W. Kist, The Socially Networked Classroom, 2010, p.62) In using blogs in the classroom with students, I see where blogs need to have a distinct purpose. There can be freedom in the way that blogs or blog responses can be developed by students, i.e with the use of other media and links to other work, but the more structured the criteria are for blog assignments the more directed the blogs will be toward specific learning goals. As a math teacher, I was glad to see Dr. Kist reference Kenneth Rochester, a math teacher at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia. Kenneth is using Google Docs as a way to have learning groups post their solutions to the classwork from the day. The next class day, one of these Google Docs is selected as an answer key for the rest of the class. (W. Kist, 2010) I like this as a new way to get students to collaborate, to be accountable, as well as a way to share ideas and open up dialogue in class!

I am eager to start the school year with blogging in mind! I am excited to share this potential with the colleagues on my team, assuming we have access to an appropriate platform at our school. The possibilities of how we can use blogs with our students are many and I can't wait to hear the ideas of my fellow teachers!

Cell Phone Novels

"In October, the cover of Popteen, a magazine aimed at adolescent girls, featured a teenybopper with rhinestone necklaces and pink lipstick and an electric guitar strapped to her chest, wearing a pin that said, “I’d rather be reading.”"
(D. Goodyear, The New Yorker, December 22 & 29, 2008, p. 65)

Popteen is a Japanese fashion magazine and the cover picture is a reflection of the phenomenon of cell phone novels which seem to have transformed the literary culture in that country. The fact that a teen girl would rather be reading than doing anything else is telling of how pop culture in Japan is different from that in the United States. Cell phone novels, novels written predominantly about and by young Japanese women on cell phones, have been embraced by much of the Japanese youth culture. Yet the hierarchy of the literary culture in that country has shunned the genre as not worthy of being considered in the same class as novels written in the more standard form. This phenomenon is documented in the article “I (heart) Novels” by Dana Goodyear, The New Yorker December 22 & 29, 2008,

pp. 62-68.

Cell phone technology provided the medium for this genre of literature to flourish in Japan. Cell phone use and ownership is much more prevalent than personal computer use and ownership. Websites that allow people to sync their work from their cell phones into a "published" form have allowed cell phone authors to have their voices heard. These voices are supposedly autobiographical, much like a blog, yet use pen names and do not have any personal information attached. This is the result of a culture that does not allow or focus on individual fame or expression.

"Roland Kelts, a half-Japanese writer born in the United States and the author of “Japanamerica,” sees the Internet as an escape valve for a society that can be oppressive in its expectation of normative, group-minded behavior. “In Japan, conflict is not celebrated—consensus is celebrated,” he said. “The Internet lets you speak your mind without upsetting the social apple cart.”"(D. Goodyear, The New Yorker, December 22 & 29, 2008, p. 66)

This article was very intriguing to me. It is exciting to see how the internet and cellular age has given birth to a whole new genre of writing in Japan. This is probably just the thing that many of those involved in the development of the net hoped for! I do wonder if this same genre would have the same predominance in the United States. (The article does reference two websites that are acting as forums for cell phone novels in the U.S., Quillpill and Textnovel.) Our culture is quite different from Japanese culture. Would people really be willing to publish their work without getting personal recognition? Maybe most would not but I bet that many would. This could be a great forum for students to publish their works of fiction. I need to check out these sites to see if it is being utilized for this purpose.

As Mone, the pen name of a cell phone author featured prominently in the article, states,

“People say these horrible things about cell-phone novels, and I’m not sure they’re mistaken. They say we’re immature and incapable of writing a literate sentence. But I would say, so what? The fact that we’re producing at all is important.”