response to reading for 1/23

I was presented with a lot of new information during this week’s reading from the Richardson text. Here are some thoughts about what I read.

As I read Chapter 3, I realized that I, most of my fellow instructors, and the instructors I had as an undergraduate in college are way behind the K-12 teachers in trying to publish student work so that it can be shared by a wider audience. I have not provided those opportunities for my students, and through my work with the Louisville Writing Project, I know that primary and secondary teachers do provide them. My students write and share their writing with each other, but I have not taken the time to serious focus on how to share what they do with a real world audience—the trait of a truly “transactive” piece. It seems that Blogs may be one way for us to attempt to open up to a wider audience. It would be tempting to start my students blogging now because we are still fairly early into our semester. But, I want to resist the temptation to begin blogging because of the excitement in trying out a new technology. I need to think carefully about the goals of my classes and see if blogging is a way to meet those goals. The chapter convinced me that there are many ways that blogging can be pedagogically effective. I need to see what ways might be effective for the context of the next class I teach.

I admit to feeling really overwhelmed with Chapter 5—not the content but the call to begin to attempt to take advantage of abundance of new information made available to use through the web and its related technology. I know that the idea in skillfully using RSS is to not be overwhelmed and to make that abundance work in our favor, but taking the time now to figure out what I would like to read on a daily basis or what subjects it would be helpful for me to keep a consistent eye upon causes a slight but perceptible rise in my blood pressure and pulse rate. I think it would be best to jump in with one subject and try to follow the guidelines presented in the chapter, but I must admit, in spite of the plea of the author for this to be the one technology that we implement today (or that we should have implemented yesterday) that this is one I will probably wait to make the leap—unless we work through the process as part of this class.

However, Flickr is something that I will definitely use soon. My students are developing a multi-modal argument, and this will be a great source for images to be included in their projects without the difficulty with copyright permission. For my students and for K-12 students, using this program would be a great opportunity to begin conversations re: ownership issues and the concept of “intellectual property.” Also, it’s a way to open up discussions re: plagiarism. I think it is a possibility that students might better understand the concept of “intellectual theft” (as much as I don’t like the term) with a tangible object such as a picture though they struggle with the concept that ideas and words can also be “stolen” from the rightful owner.

Again, I am grateful for the great information and the basic approach to the technology that the book provides—especially the instructions that deal with the fundamentals of just getting started.