How I use Texts

 "The distinctive contribution of the approach to literacy as social practice lies in the ways in which it involves careful and sensitive attention to what people do with texts, how they make sense of them and use them to further their own purposes in their own learning lives" (Gillen and Barton, 2010, p. 9).

What do I do with texts, how do I make sense of them, and how do I use them to further my own learning? That depends primarily on the environment in which I am using them, work or personal. In my work, the majority of texts I use for my own learning, as well as the majority of texts I reference for my students in their learning, do not lend themselves well to social interaction per se. These books, some of which are hard print and others in electronic format, basically explain how machines are built, how they work, and how they come apart and go back together. Furthermore they are usually written by the person, or a close affiliation to the person, who designed the machine. They are, for the most part, very factual and based on scientific concepts and proven technological principles. However, they are often times misinterpreted or misunderstood. This ultimately structures my approach to teaching and the materials I build and present to my students in the classroom and in the lab (shop). 

When I put lecture material together, I try to consider the potential for confusion, misinterpretation, or misunderstanding of the text. This consideration comes from past experience and history with former students as well as my own struggles in comprehending the text. I try to create new text, present and explain diagrams, show videos, do demonstrations, and structure hands on lab activities in ways that reinforce the text and allow students to comprehend it from alternative means. In addition, I often times require students to write out and describe what they have learned. This comes in the form of lab reports where students reflect on what they did and write technical descriptions of what they worked on, along with system reports where they have to research and study specific systems on specific machines without my assistance and write a report along with the creation of an oral / visual presentation. In a way, this is another form of text for the class, and one that does allow social interaction between myself and the student as their text allows me evaluate and assess their learning and provide feedback, clarification, and support.

In my personal world, I typically access text electronically via websites, and rarely ever turn to printed text with the exception of my community’s local weekly newspaper. I like to read about news and events from these sources for many reasons, including their tendency to be updated when in reference to current events that are dynamic and changing by the hour. In addition, many web based news media outlets have built in an instrument that allows readers to integrate their social networking tools (Facebook, Twitter, etc) in response to the articles. I find this adds a wonderful dimension to the text as it allows people to respond to, question, challenge, and learn from both the original text as well as other humans. This is a great way for people to apply the concept of critical literacy and sociological imagination which Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel argue is essential to the practice of active citizenship (Lankshear & Knobel, 1992/94/97, p.89). On a side note, anyone who has had experience in reading or posting to these articles with their Facebook page know that the positives of this ability to interact with other humans are often offset by the insensitive, rude, and vulgar comments by some who need a serious lesson in civility. It is fine to disagree and even attempt to sway someone to your side of the argument, but when people start labeling each other with degrading names and profanity, the urge to participate goes away.

What about blogs, or weblogs? In my personal world, I do not find myself attracted to these forms of text much. That isn’t to say that I never read blogs, but as Lankshear and Knobel point out, bloggers are predominantly “individuals writing for relatively small audiences on themes, topics or issues of personal interest to themselves” (Lankshear & Knobel, 2001-2003, p. 197). Typically, the topics and issues that interest me are either not what bloggers are writing about, or the search engines and means of searching that I use do not land on blogger sites often. However, getting back to the work side of my life, I am intrigued about the use of blogs in my classes. While I currently do not use them, I may consider experimenting with them, or a similar form such as wikis, in the future.

Typically, I have my students work together is small groups (2-3 students per group) on lab activities and sometimes on system research reports. If I had them present their reports in the form of blogs or wikis, not only would it allow me to analyze and assess their learning as I always have, but it would allow the incorporation of a number of other benefits illustrated by David Huffaker in his 2005 article The Educated Blogger: Using Weblogs to Promote Literacy in the Classroom. “Blogs present a perfect medium for literacy” (Huffaker, 2005). What kind of literacy? Simple practice of reading and writing, maybe a form of functional literacy, at an advanced level in terms of using technologically accurate terminology and descriptions, critical literacy from the standpoint of other students being able to question, challenge, and provide feedback directly, and most certainly New Literacy.

I’ve heard many people say that teaching is an art, and art is all about creativity. To me, a good teacher is one who can find creative ways to help facilitate learning in students, and I think I might have just found a new way to do that.

REFERENCES: 

Lankshear, C. & Knobel, M. (1992/94/97). Critical literacy and active citizenship. In C. Lankshear & M.             Knobel, Literacies: Social, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives (p. 89). New York, NY: Peter Lang    

        Publishing.

Lankshear, C. & Knobel, M. (2001-2003). The "new literacy studies" and the study of "new" literacies. In  

        C. Lankshear & M. Knobel (Eds.), Literacies: Social, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives (p. 197).             New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing

Huffaker, D. (2005). The educated blogger: Using weblogs to promote literacy in the classroom. AACE      

Journal, 13(2), 91-98.