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. .