Study Guide List Posted Two Ways

If you are not OK with your assignment - be in touch and we will work it out.  If I don't hear from you, I will assume the list is OK.


By Reading

1. Gee, 525  .   Dorthea, Nic, Tshandi

2. Delpit, 545      Jaslyn, Nic, Autumn, Rebecca

3. Bartholomae, 511 Inventing the University    Tshandi, Dana, Amanda, Dorthea, Shaealyn

4. Pratt, posted  The Arts of the Contact Zone    Kristyna, Kayln, Jill, Nicole

5. Dias, Freedman, Medway and Pare, 199   Jaslyn, Cathryn, Dave, Autumn, Subrina

6. Selfe, 93  Technology and Literacy: A Story about the Perils of Not Paying Attention

Vince, Cathryn, Lana, Valerie

7. Selfe & Selfe, 64  The Politics of the Interface

Valerie, Nic, Dana, Amanda, Subrina

8. McGee & Ericsson 308 The Politics of the Program

Amanda, Tshandi, Jill, Krystina, Nicole

9. Eldred, 239  Pedagogy in the Computer-networked Classroom

Dave, Lana, Kayln, Vince, Cathryn

10. Hayles, posted  Deep and Hyper Attention

Rebecca,  Autumn, Vince, Shealyn

11. Williams, 469  Toward an Integrated Composition Pedagogy in Hypertext

Dorthea, Kalyn, Valerie, Subrina

12. Herring, posted  Politeness in computer culture, 

Dave, Svitlana,  Shealyn, Jaslyn

13. Boyd,  Why youth © social networking sites

Dana, Jill, Kristyna, Nicole, Rebecca

By Name:

Tshandi Allen:  Gee, Bartholomae: McGee et al.
Jill Arnold: Pratt, McGee et al; Boyd.

Autumn Benning: Delpit, Dias et al, Hayles.

Jaslyn Burgos: Delpit, Dias et al, Herring.

Svitlana Chaykivska: Selfe; Eldred; Herring;

Rebecca Degritis: Delpit; Hayles; Boyd.

Nicole Jerzewski: Pratt; McGee et al; Boyd.

Dorthea Jones:  Gee, Bartholomae; Williams.

Valerie Jozef: Selfe;  Selfe & Selfe;  Williams.

Amanda Katko: Bartholomae; Selfe & Selfe; McGee et al.

David Krausser: Dias et al, Eldred; Herring;

Kristyna Lombardo: Pratt, McGee et al; Boyd.

Nicholas Lovett: Gee, Delpit, Selfe & Selfe.

Shealyn Malone: Bartholomae; Hayles; Herring.

Kalyn McHenry: Pratt, Eldred; Williams;

Cathryn Rothweiler: Dias et al, Selfe; Eldred.

Subrina Samaroo: Dias et al, Selfe & Selfe; Williams.

Vince Santiago: Selfe; Eldred; Hayles;

Dana Virgillo: Bartholomae;  Selfe & Selfe;  Boyd.

9/29 Scribner and Cole and other Discussions

What a great class!  Thank you for your good participation - especially for asking enough questions to get a decent explanation out of me.  Clearly I would do better if I had experience with Vai script - the group that was best at giving explanations!

We convered a LOT of ground.

Quiz
I collected the quiz and will begin class next week with an overview of what we need to cover in order to get everyone up to speed.  I may also suggest one on one conferences for anyone who has been buried by the language in the readings.

Exams
From what I understood, you want to stick to the original plan of one exam at the end of the course.  You would like it to be open book, and it is not clear whether it will be in-class or out of class.  We will continue to talk about what will best allow you to demonstrate your mastery of the material as we work our way through the course.

Scribner and Cole
Notes from our discussion are posted at the link to the right.  Good work!   We covered the important findings but did not deal with higer-order questions (questions that require to make judgments and to apply the findings to different contexts) listed in the study guide.  I strongly suggest that you read over your notes - and then spend some time answering the study guide questions.

Study Guides
I have sent out the class email list  (to your Kean email).  If you did not receive it let me know.

Process:  You can use the following process  to create the study guides by using google.docs (available through your kean email).

• Before setting up the google.doc, either through email, chat, a conference call, face-to-face, whatever - decide on who is going to be responsible for what.  Make a plan for how you will cover all requirements for the assignment: 1) create a study guide which includes appropriate questions & page references for each heading in the sample study guides (Olson, + Scribner & Cole).  2) plan a classroom activity (a MINIMUM of 20 minutes) that will help students both to master the central ideas in your reading - and to connect those concepts to ideas in other readings.   
• Designate one person in your group to create the group document.  This person will click on "share" and send an email to all group members.  They should be designated as being able to "edit".
• Create the document.
• When the document is complete, change the share settings so that it is available to anyone who has the link.  
• Copy the link, and send it to me in an email.

Due dates:
Send the link to your study guide to ENG3035LiteracyStudies@gmail.com no later than noon Sunday the week that your essay will be discussed in class.  Links for the Study Guides for Gee & Delpit should be in the course email-box this Sunday (October 2).

If I have not posted the study guides by Sunday night - send and email to my Kean email (schandle@kean.edu)

A listing of individuals assigned to each eassy is posted in the blog titled Study Guide Groups.

For next class.
Read:  Gee & Delpit

We will start out with a discussion of the quiz - and then move into presentations on Gee and Delpit.

Great class today - and see you next week.

Quiz

What features of literacies.did ONG's essay focus on?  What did he identify as the most important consequences of literacies?  What did he use as evidence for his position?

What features of literacies.did HEATH's essay focus on?  What did she identify as the defining characteristics of literacies?  What did she use as evidence for his position?

What features of literacies.did OLSON's essay focus on?  What did he identify as the most important consequences of literacies?  What did he use as evidence for his position?

Write your own definition of literacies.  Justify why the features you identify as important are necessary for a meaningful definition of the term.  If you have not included social interactions and purposes in your definition - explain why you think they should be excluded. 

9/ 21: Literacy theory: Ong, Heath & Olson (and bird songs)

Scribner & Cole Study Guide is posted.


Notice:  all classes will meet in the computer lab by the CAS writing center for the rest of the term.  Sorry if there has been confusion.  


CLASS TODAY


Review of Ong and Heath = learning to learn what you need to learn
We started class with a practice quiz (see previous post).  After you took the quiz we put up answers to the questions on the board and you notices what you knew - and what you didn't know.  We then talked about how you might need to revise your study habits so that you would be able to get what you needed from the readings.  Hopefully the list is in your notes.


As you have noticed - this class is a "content" course - where you are required to learn the history of ideas about literacies, to use the language the language theorists use to talk about their theories, and to evaluate and take a position on those theories in terms of the "real world".  The course is set up so that you need to learn the languge + ideas in order.  Keeping up with the readings will make this course easier.


Discussion of our experiment from last week = you did a great job on this.  Next time I think I will give written directions - and I will define the difference between the tasks more clearly.  Thanks for the feedback.  Even though the experimental conditions wer not perfect - we were able to make some observations - and you got some practice being ethnographers.
Digital literacies (these are mostly my observations of patterns for work in classes where students are used to using google.docs)

• use google docs as a place to set up and identify different jobs  
• everybody participates - there is "specialization" of labor (each person takes a different section - or different tasks)
• work independently on multiple sections of the text all at the same time
• interaction through the text

Print literacies

• evolved into one person being in charge
• clear leader
• group bounced ideas around but then leader put talk from others into writing
• process => work on document went from the beginning to the ending

So what does this suggest about whether/how technologies affect the way we "think"?  Really - not too much. It seemed to suggest more about how technologies affected the social organization of group work (print = hierarchical, digital = more interactive + democratic) and  communications surrounding literacies.  This is interesting because except for Ong's point about how writing can create distance between groups (class, gender, etc) he does not focus so much on the social changes - as he does on the cognitive changes (changes in how writers think differently & have different relationships to ideas and experiences through writing).

Olson:  Writing and the Mind
Olson's focus was also on writing (scripts) and how it changes the way we think. He did not focus on writing as technology - but rather as a theoretical model for language.  He pointed out - emphatically - that certain kinds of thinking could not take place without writing (though Scribner and Cole question his evidence for this claim).  To set up an experience to demonstrate some of the ways writing may (or may not) influence our approach to analytic thinking and representation with respect to language = we did the bird song experiment.

Bird song experiment
We used a quick and sloppy "experiment" with bird song to explore how or whether our language experiences reflect Ong and Olson's points about language influencing the way we think about,perceive and represent experiences.

You listened to two sets of bird songs by 4 different birds.  For the first set, you just listened.  For the second set, we wrote and talked about how the songs sounded.  We then did a "test" to see how many from each group you could identify.  Although we did not use rigorous record keeping - in general - the songs we talked about and wrote about were easier to identify (there was a higher percentage of correct identifications).

So what does this mean?
First we noticed that we tended to represent the birdsong in terms of our language (just as Olson said we would -even though birdsong is clearly not English).  In some sense we did use our script as a "theory" for how birdsong worked - even though it was totally inappropriate.  We used mnemonics made up of words and combinations of easily pronouncable sounds.

A few of you indicated pitch and duration - these representations go beyond representations in our language script.(written English).  This contradicts Olson & Ong's predictions .  Cool.

We also noticed that we could recognize the birdsongs better after we talked and wrote about them => that writing and talk (literacies) did improve our performance on a "test" to demonstrate acquisition of a skill.  (This kind of connects to Olson & Ong's claims about how written language allows us to think in different, more powerful ways = though it doesn't exactly prove it.)

In general => our experiment showed that our conventions for representing language (our script) does influence the way we represent experiences, and that it might influence the way we perceive experiences.  Unlike Ong, we noticed that it both limited and expanded our abilites to represent what was "there".

Do you agree with this interpretation of the experiment?  You might think about how or whether we might do this experiment differently to show more important/relevant results.

For next week:

Read: Scribner and Cole, "Unpackaging Literacy" p.123.  The Scribner & Cole Study Guide is sort of started - I will have the complete version posted by Friday night.


Come to class prepared to write another quiz. I will collect this one and give you some feedback on how you are doing so far.  Be prepared to identify & discuss ideas introduced by Ong, Heath, and Olson; also be prepared to write your own definition of what should count as literacies = and to justify why the features you identify are important are necessary for a meaningful definition of the term..  You will not be able to use your books.

During the first half of class, you will take the quiz (15 minutes maximum) + talk about Scribner & Cole

During the second half of class I will preview the remaining readings - and you will each choose the essays  you want to create study guides for.  These will be group projects.  There are approximately 12 essays, and there are (theoretically) 20 of you.  You should each choose 3 essays to work on - so that means there will be an average of 4-5 people in each group (if necessary, we will do some rearranging to make sure everyone gets essays they are interested in.).  

We will also talk over how you want to do the exams for the course - whether you want open book, in-class, take home, etc - and  whether you want to break it up into two exams - or just have one at the end.  I am open to whatever will work best for you all as a class.

Thanks for your good participation today - and see you next week.

Wednesday, September 21:Practice Quiz

Write answers to these questions without looking at your notes

How does Ong define literacies?  Describe his version of how literacies work.

How does Heath define literacies?  Describe her version of how literacies work.

Write your definition of literacies and point out which points agree with Ong and which points agree with Heath.  

Olson Study Guide

Foreign languages for an experiment on writing, sound, and learning

I have posted the Olson Study Guide at Google.docs.  You cannot edit the document  - but you can copy it into a Word document and use it for your own purposes.  We will talk about how we want to use and interact through these Study Guides more in class.

The Olson Study Guide directs reader's attention to the main ideas in the essay through asking questions => if you can answer these questions you will do well on any test on the essay's content - as well as on any examination that requires you to apply and extend Olson's ideas. The links in the document are meant to direct you to resources that can help you gather the necessary background to read this essay.  It is very dense - with lots of new concepts.  We will work on it together in class.  Believe me - these readings get easier - it's just that all the linguistic studies are at the beginning, with all their technical language.  Hang in there.

Heads up about time:  It took me about 2 hours to read the essay and make the guide - I am assuming it will take you  longer.

If you have questions - send me an email.

September 14: Ong & Heath

What is literacy? You started class with a quiz where you were asked to define literacy.  We then talked about your definitions - and reviewed the ideas (and some of the jargony language) we introduced last week that move the definitions of "literacies " beyond the statement that it is "reading and writing " (which it is => but this kind of glosses over exactly what READING and WRITING are = how they work, what practices/processes they involve, and the social, political, psychological factors that shape them).  Our goal for the semester is for you to be able to understand and talk about literacies in ways that account for the theories introduced in the readings  - and for you to pick among those theories and develop some ideas about what YOU think literacies are and how they work.


Two different theories about literacies:  Ong and Heath presented two opposing views of how literacy works.  In his exploration that writing is a technology that changes the way we think, Ong argues that writing represents meaning in ways that are permanent - and that can be transported.  This implies that the code - the writing itself - can somehow contain and  make available all the information the writer intended. That is - if a reader knows the "right way" how to read, s/he can de-code writing and kinow exactly what the writer meant him/her to know.

In contrast, Heath's study of Trackton presents interactions with texts as inseparable from interpretive contexts:  the readers' present situation and past experiences, the ways the text is being used, and the life that surrounds the texts.

These are two very difference views of what literacies are - and how they function.  Neither is really "right" or "wrong" => but you have to make certain assumptions to buy into either theory.  Learning to identify and analyze theoretical assumptions is another goal for this course.

I used the first part of class to model a process for "reading" Ong's essay.  We looked at each section - and restated the main point in our own words.  We then did a little thinking about the overall point .

Developing study guides: After we went over what Ong's essay was about - we talked about how to create study guides that would help you get used both to the ideas in this research - and to the way the authors write about those ideas.

We proposed study guides that would present a series of specific questions or prompts, accompanied by page numbers directing attention to relevant sections of the text, that ask us to restate, explain, think about, or apply ideas in the text.  We made a list on the board of what the study guide should have in it - though we didn't necessarily put all the parts in order.  As best as I can remember, the list included prompts to draw attention to:

the essay's overall focus
the main points of each section
the essay's theoretical assumptions
vocabulary
how the essay's content connected to your future careers and aspirations as writers
what concepts/practices/theories the essay contributes to our knowledge of literacy
where the essay fits into the history of literacy studies
what methods the authors used to come to their conclusions
what points the essay makes (or implies) about relationships between literacy and social structures (power)

Class experiment
We spent the second part of class doing an experiment to how or whether digital literacies might produce different literacy practices/products than print literacies.
Group 1 worked on composing a study guide for Heath using google.docs (the method you will use to produce all of the study guides we use for class)\
Group 2 observed group 1
Group 3 composed a study guide using the pencil and paper
Group 4 observed group 3

After I made clear that you were supposed to design study guide questions - not answer the questions I posted - you worked as a group to accomplish your goals.

Observational research. This was not only practice working on a study guide - it was also an experience doing observational research.  One assignment for the course is a literacy research project - where you will be required to gather data (through talking or watching) about how a particular group of people or individual "does" literacies.  Today's exercise provided some experience with doing the kind of research you might do for your project. In terms of HOW to do observational research - we noted that (sometimes) it is best to focus on one thing at a time - so the observers either watched social dynamics - or the logcial, step by step process.

For Wednesday, September 21.
We will begin class with presentations on the study guides - followed by the observers' discussion of how the study guides were produced.  Then we are going to think about whether or how the different technologies used to create the study guides influenced the "literacies" to produce them - and the products themselves.

During the second part of class we will work on understanding Olson's essay on how writing restructures the way we think.  I will provide a study guide for this essay - hopefully by Friday night/Saturday morning (though I think I may have caught the flu  - I have been asleep with a fever since I left our classroom - so there may be a set back - I will do my best).  Use the studyguide to try out your statements of what the essay is about - and to identify what you don't understand.  Come to class with questions for me - and I will have something interesting for us to do to apply the ideas.

To prepare for class:

Read: Olson, 107; Memory and the Internet

http://digitalsciencefiction.com/is-the-internet-affecting-human-memory/

Thank you for your awesome participation.  Hang in there - and I hope you are having some fun. .

Link to sample study guide + reference for Ong

Heath: Protean shapes in literacy events: Ever-shifting oral and literate traditions

Background information about "words"  for reading Ong

Class September 8

We spent to the first class getting to know each other, getting an idea about the content of the course, and using methods for "active learning" => where you use analysis of your past experiences as a way to connect to the new terminology and concepts we will cover in the course.

Early literacy experiences.  We started out with talk about your early memories about literacy learning.  We generated a list on the board (I'm sure you've got lots of this in your notes) and then made some observations about how the different activities  provided different kinds of experiences and information with respect to literacies.  For example, tracing letters to learn to write, doing "phonics," doing flash cards and spelling words, even learning grammar rules were about "decoding" = mastering the (imagined) one to one correspondence between literal (lettered) signs and meanings. We also noted that more social activities - like playing school, being read to,and imitating siblings "taught" more interactive, culture-specific features of literacy that were neither explicit (directly stated) nor transparent (clearly 'there' in the same way for all observers).  These two different parts of what literacies are and how they work account for differences between older "autonomous" theories about literacies - and the new literacy theories.

Focus for the course. This talk both served to introduce the focus of the course = exploring what literacies are and how they work - and to spend some time talking through the jargon you will find in the readings.  A second part of what we will be doing in this class is teaching you how to understand academic discourse = the way university researchers use language to represent and explain "the way things are."   As you noticed when we read the opening section to the Heath essay - the "big words" and make it very hard to follow the ideas - and when the ideas are new, it can be almost impossible to "join the conversation."

Analysis of a literacy event.  We talked through the syllabus - both for the sake of going through expectations for this class - and as a way to think about how the syllabus and "going through the syllabus" function as a literacy event.  A literacy event - as set up in Heath's essay is concerned not only with the text itself (so that reading is not only about decoding - and being literate is not only about knowing how the letters make words, and how the words make sentences) - it is also about knowing how you are supposed to think and behave in response to the "use" of a text.  In our discussion we noticed that I talked, and students listened; and that in many ways - the syllabus presentation is about teachers confirming (getting students to - silently- by into) their authority in the classroom.  We used an analysis of the context for the event - "where, when, how, for whom and with what results" we written communication operated within the exchange as a way to understand the different literacies (moves to interpret/make meanings associated with texts) we used in our discussion.

Setting up for a less teacher-centered class.  So - I got a chance to learn some of your names and to talk about literacy research, and you got an introduction to what classes for this course will be like.  Today was sort of lecture-y; in the future you will be doing moe of the talking.  For the next couple weeks I will model how to develop and use the study guides - and then, in groups, you will take turns leading the class. As far as possible, you will get to choose the essays you want to be discussion leaders for - and I will help you with your presentation as much, or as little, as you choose.

Chandler assumptions about literacy.  Because there are many theories about what counts as literacy - and how literacies work - there will be lots of room for discussion.  To be up front about my assumptions - in general, I believe that literacies are social, dynamic, experience-based and largely unconscious; that our literate identities take on age-related patterns as we move through the life course; and that  power - and resistance -  grow out of dominant (enforced) patterns for writing/talk (like academic writing) = and I am not sure where teachers fit in with respect to making language "fair", and what they should be doing to make education more human.

So that's the summary - hopefully the rest is in your notes.

For next class:
Read:   Heath, 443; Ong, 19.
Come to class ready to continue the definition of literacies, and the usefulness of studying "literacy events" and to explore the idea of writing as a technology that restructures thought.

Thanks for the good class today - see you next week.  If you have questions - send me an email at the address listed on the syllabus.