reading issue
Creating a Digital Literacy Community: Promoting Content Discussion Outside the English Classroom
by Liz Lulis
More and more students are losing interest in the content provided by schools for the method of delivery does not transpose into their personal lives that are inundated with technology as sources of information, communication, and the imagined self. Interested in determining how the chasm between the students’ current communicative desires and the activities desired by the school’s writing curriculum could be resolved, I restructured my classroom to allow the students’ inherent interest in technology, as a main form of discursive practice, shape writing lessons, build unit designs, and promote social capital.
of composition classrooms, in direct contrast to students’ laissez faire attitudes toward more conventional texts” (p. 44).
Arjun Appadurai (1996) introduces the concept of the imagined self as a prevailing force in cultural transactions dominated by electronic media. Appadurai (1996) maintains that individuals in society are becoming more likely to view themselves through an imagined lens that is supported by ideas consumed through digital sources. One’s identity is shaped as much by their natural world as it is by the mediated world in which they construct and surround themselves. As an ethnographer, Appadurai (1996) applies this concept to cultural migration, but I cannot help but find its relevance in education as a student’s concept of voice and identity is currently (and dramatically) shaped by his/her imagined self fostered by electronic media.
I sought to determine how social networks could become one solution to the parroting dilemma found in writing classrooms and provide opportunities for individuals to function with an identity in a larger academic landscape. Like Selfe (2004) notes, “teachers of composition may be paying increased attention to new media texts because students are doing so—and their enthusiasm about reading/viewing/interacting with and composing/designing/authoring such imaginative texts percolates through the substrata
“In these groups, students were able to work collaboratively within a social structure that allowed for the sharing of ideas and textual analysis.”
This qualitative study began during the second semester in two sections of an American Literature and Composition course taught in a suburban community during a four- week study of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. American Literature and Composition is a district-required, college-prep course for students who are not placed into the honors section. In the past, students would engage in daily activities including class
discussions, study guide responses
and quizzes regarding their understanding of the novel, but during the study such standard pedagogical methods became supplementary to larger communal discussions occurring through the social network Ning.
Fifty-two students became participants working in teams with sixteen members of the community that included parents, siblings, alumni, administrators, former teachers and interested district patrons. The teams ranged in number between nine and twelve members. Teams were identified by a character from the novel. The role of the teacher was limited to “Ning Creator” so that students could engage in discourse without fear of judgment based on the observations of Romano (1987) who determines, “talking in peer response groups— without the teacher present—gives students opportunities to be more freewheeling in their conversation” (p. 70). In these groups, students were able to work collaboratively within a social structure that allowed for the sharing of ideas and textual analysis. Students were divided into teams based on the following criteria: known social relationships exhibited
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