Keeping up with the pace of thinking and reading

This weekend I've been writing up some ideas to teach World Literature to 12th grade students. My goal is to cover a variety of cultures and types of literature as a large-group and then have small groups of students choose a specific world culture to focus on for the semester. Members in the small group will take turns bringing in examples of literature from their chosen culture to share with the rest of the small group. After the small groups have read and discussed examples of literature from their chosen culture over many weeks, they will then compose their own original creative piece to express what they have learned about the culture and in imitation of the styles they have studied. I'm hoping that blogs will serve to log, extend, and share these discussions throughout the semester.

If we have a class blog, this could serve as a space for students to discuss the readings we do as a large group or as a space for small groups to share with the rest of the class the work they have done. Small group blogs could be a place for each group to discuss and track their research on the type of cultural literature they have chosen. And individual blogs could serve as a place for personal reflection. This is a rough draft of a plan and I don't think we will use all three types of blogs, but I hope that whatever type we use will generate discussion beyond the classroom and move us toward Phase II or Phase III digital writing.

I think that blogging is important to incorporate into the classroom because the Internet and all of its resources are changing the way that we think and learn. This morning, I read an article from the New York Times that referenced an article from The Atlantic about the effect of the Internet on our brains and on how we do business. Is it good or bad? Or is it just different?

This is a topic that I find interesting as a possibility for the final project, something about putting into context the changes that the Internet is causing in the way that we read and think.

Evolution of the Notecard

I admit that I grew up before the boom of internet research -- or maybe I just attended a high school that was stuck in the Stone Age. The spring semester of my 12th grade year was devoted to writing the "thesis paper," a requirement to graduate. The standard for credible research material back then was anything that could be found in a college library. So, with trepidation as a lowly high school senior, I made my way to the University of Minnesota. My mom came along for backup. The intimidating English teacher had told us that the best way to organize data for our paper was to bring along some notecards and record important findings in a highly prescribed way. (Actually, now that I think about it, it was similar to the "tagging" system discussed in our readings, where each notecard was labeled with key words and phrases.) These notecards then became the evidence that supported our thesis statement in the paper. I remember sitting in front of the family Macintosh computer, lost in notecards with poorly written or half-recorded quotations and citations.

And in college I don't remember using databases either for research projects. (Is that possible? Did I just block it out, or did I just take too many literature courses that only required citation from the texts read in class?)

So I guess I'm not much of a resource for credible online research material. (Thank you to members of the class who have written about many options that have worked for you.)

I am still grappling with the credibility topic. This morning I listened to Digital Campus Episode 31 while walking my dog. Unfortunately, it was a high-car-traffic time of day and the audio for their guest was poor, but one topic that caught my attention was how new media and new methods of doing research on the internet will be integrated into the current structure of academics, where producing and publishing manuscripts still seems to be valued above all else.

After the walk and while I grabbed a bite to eat, I also caught just the beginning of Kerri Miller's interview with Brian Schieffer on Minnesota Public Radio. Shieffer offered the perspective (not surprising since he works for CBS) that traditional sources of news (newspapers, television newscasts) are expected to verify a story before they broadcast it as an actuality, and they get in trouble if they do not. Bloggers, on the other hand, are free to write about events and topics even if they are only speculation. I think the implied message is that traditional sources of news are more credible. The other side of that, though, is that getting news from traditional sources of news requires less critical thinking and investigation.

One thing that strikes me in reading other people's posts is that many of us subscribe to the same sources of news. Does this mean that they are credible and valuable sources of news? Or does it mean that all of us share the same biases that are reflected in our choices of where we get information?

Face-to-face and computer-to-computer

Since I'm posting later in the week, I have the advantage of being able to read what others have already written. (One small thing I hope to learn in this class is that "trackback" feature that Hendron mentions in RSS for Educators.) Maybe these comments would be better suited as replies to the original posts, but for now I'll leave them as part of my own posting.

So Molly mentioned blogs as possibly the new form of the Sunday Night Dinner. And while I really like the rich discussion and enhanced communication that this analogy conjures, I can't help agreeing with Crystal's point that blog discussion is missing that face-to-face component (not to mention a thick, juicy slab of pot roast). And I think that face-to-face communication should still be valued as the most important form of human communication -- or at least the original, from which all other forms of communication evolved as proxies. In this respect, I agree with Ellyn that socially accepted rules of politeness should apply to blogs just as they do in face-to-face communication. I hope that blogs remain only as a tool that is a proxy for face-to-face communication for the purpose of enabling more ideas and information to be shared -- and not as a substitute for face-to-face communication.

Tonight I was talking to my husband about the social rules around blogs. His comment was that if the benefit of blogging is to get your ideas out to a wide audience, then wouldn't it be equivalent in purpose to standing on a street corner (or in the middle of a college campus) and shouting out to passers-by? Of course blogs are more efficient than that because the reader can peruse the information and add comments at his or her leisure, as opposed to stopping right at that moment to engage in the discussion. But I do think it's interesting that one form of getting ideas out to a wide audience is socially acceptable and one is not.

I also wonder if an increase in digital communication will change the way that we interact with each other when we are face-to-face.

In my student teaching experience last spring, I used blogs with my 11th and 12th grade world literature students. One thing that I noticed is that students were not hesitant to comment on the blog posts of other students whom I observed to be outside their usual group of friends that they sat with and preferred to work with in class. So I'm interested in how digital writing affects the face-to-face communication in the classroom -- I'm hoping it may improve it.