Walking into a Desert

"Watching a Digital Nation in Action" is the title of today's post on Digital Education, one of Education Week's blogs. It previews Digital Nation airing on PBS's Frontline next week (Tuesday, February 2 at 9 p.m. EST). You can also watch a preview and much of the work in progress on the PBS web site. Some of the quotes seemed particularly pertinent to our class discussion last week, especially this one on multitasking:

"Virtually all multitaskers think they're brilliant at multitasking," Sociologist Clifford Nass says. "And what we're discovering is that they're really lousy at it."

I have a very ambivalent attitude about multitasking. Some things I can do quite well together, and it just seems more efficient -- listening to a podcast while doing dishes, listening to a book on CD while driving . . . but for other tasks I end up not doing any of them very well. Or at least not as well as if I was only concentrating on just one task.

Another compelling quote is "Walking into a classroom without media," one educator says, "is like walking into a desert" for students these days. Wow. This description seems very apt. If media is ambient, flowing in a stream all around us, then no technology must be like a desert. If media is part of children's environment and life outside of school, then it needs to be part of their learning environment.

I missed another episode of Frontline earlier this year that focused specifically on children and the digital world, Growing Up Online, but that too is available to watch online. Sometimes it's pretty convenient to be living in the digital age!

The FCC's Future of Media Project

The Federal Communications Commission is hosting an online discussion about the future of media in local communities. Additionally there is a blog with information and resources. You can learn more at http://reboot.fcc.gov/futureofmedia

How to form an identity when everyone at school thinks you're a weirdo

I was really excited when I saw the readings for this week. In college I had a minor in media studies, which basically involved reading a lot about popular culture. I took a few classes about media fandom specifically, because I was a fan in a former life! As a result of being interested in fandom from a semi-academic standpoint, I have read a lot of Henry Jenkins. (I've followed his blog for the past few years - it's here, if you're interested.) So I was happy that he was on the reading list, taking a positive stance regarding fanfiction.

I don't have much interest in the copyright issues – are a bunch of eleven-year-olds really threatening Stephenie Meyer's profits? – but I understand other concerns about fanfiction writing. It's not the same as writing fiction from scratch, after all. The characters, setting, and sometimes even the situations are already there, as Jenkins points out. If you hope to become a real author, fanfiction won't necessarily teach you how to create interesting characters or develop a world. But it will help with plenty of other aspects of writing: it means that "young writers begin publishing and getting feedback on their work while they are still in high school," even if their school district doesn't offer creative writing classes. It means that they will learn how to plot, revise, write good dialogue – all basic stepping-stones that aren't always taught in English classes. Not to mention the fact that with writing, as with nearly everything else, you only improve by doing it.

So there are plenty of benefits when it comes to kids' (and adults'!) development as writers. In my case, though, it's a little different. I have never been much of a writer. What I always loved, and benefited tremendously from, was the community that sprung up around beloved TV shows and books. The people I met through internet fandom, starting when I was in middle school, exposed me to ideas and viewpoints I would never have encountered in the small town where I grew up. Many of the beliefs and values I still hold were introduced to me by other misfit teenagers on X-Files message boards. And because I didn't know any of these people in real life, I was able to express concerns and problems that I would not have been able to discuss with friends or family members.

David Buckingham seems skeptical about the liberating, empowering possibilities of internet communities. This reaction is understandable: as he rightly points out, the overwhelming majority of "content creators" and, by extension, fandom kids are upper-middle class. Most of them are also white and female. Though many fans benefit from those sets of privilege, it is inaccurate to suggest that participants in fandom are teenagers whose voices would be heard in any situation. In particular, many fandoms provide a safe, accepting space for GLBTQ teenagers and young adults (although there are always problems, and there are a slew of them right now, mostly having to do with the fact that "slash" fanfiction is mostly written by straight females). As Buckingham writes, "it could be argued that the internet provides significant opportunities for exploring facets of identity that might previously have been denied or stigmatized, or indeed simply for the sharing of information on such matters." Fandom tends to attract a lot of people who aren't able to fully express themselves in the "real world" – a lot of us felt like we were not accepted by our peers, teachers, or even our families. Having access to a supportive group of like-minded people, even if you never meet them, can be tremendously important for kids who feel like outcasts.

The importance of online networks in identity formation obviously varies a great deal depending on the individual. There are plenty of teenagers who participate in online networks very casually, for example, or whose online networks are just extensions of their real-life networks (i.e. Facebook and MySpace). Most of the kids I work with fall into that category – and most of those kids are friendly and socially adept in real life. They don't need to seek out strangers to connect with. But I know a couple of kids who aren't so confident, and who have found a niche in online Twilight fandom (which sort of horrifies me, because I hate that book in more ways than I can describe here, but so be it). Fandom can be a really powerful, helpful thing for teenagers who don't feel accepted in real life. Aaand there's my spiel about that.

On a sort of separate note, just because I found this quote interesting (it's Buckingham quoting Somebody Giddens): "The self becomes a kind of 'project' that individuals have to work on: they have to create biographical 'narratives' that will explain themselves to themselves, and hence sustain a coherent and consistent identity." This reminded me instantly of a comment my friend Hannah left on my blog a few years ago:

It’s interesting, too, that you question what you’re looking for there [in Los Angeles], since you’re so clearly an author of an autobiography, and have been for so obviously a very long time, that clearly you’re looking for the plot, right, and clearly for the story line to go with the narrative. Or that’s what it seems like. And arn’t the novels awfully hard on the protagonists? Life as a protagonist is hard, it really is, because novels are records of problems that are eventually solved (or are not solved; so much better to be a protagonist of a novel than a tragic hero). I’d say you’re looking for the content of your blog, which makes you exactly the kind of girl who moves to Los Angeles, because it’s the kind of person who's protagonisting in something that moves to Los Angeles, I suppose.

I started my first blog in 2000. At the moment, I blog very sporadically (and as privately as possible), but at various points in the past ten years, I have blogged regularly and openly. This activity played a huge role in shaping my identity, largely because it gave me a sense of trajectory: I knew exactly where I had started, and I could look through past entries - thousands of them - to find the decisions I made to move myself forward. As Hannah put it, I've been protagonisting. In difficult times, it makes me feel like I have some control over my own life – and that's a good feeling to have. With the internet, even teenagers who aren't "content creators" by Buckingham's definition are leaving a trail behind them. You can trace their development through Facebook notes and wall posts and photographs on MySpace. Teenagers carefully cultivate their social networking profiles to reflect the identity they want: the right bands, TV shows, and books for their crowd. There are very few teens who are online who aren't content creators, in that sense. They are all actively involved in shaping the identity they show to the world, becoming more aware of their own and other people's expectations in the process, and that can be a powerful thing.

Technology/Media and Youth

This week's readings and video clips were a reminder of he undeniably large role which current and emerging technologies play in young people's lives and our own. I was reminded of the commonly used expression 'too much information' and of the frustrated feeling I have at trying to keep up with all the technology available nowadays. However, I saw through these articles and videos reminders also of the exciting possibilities that new media outlets offer us all, young and old.

The article by David Buckingham examined how teenagers interact with and how they incorporate modern technology into their lives and I though he presented some arguments which I have occasionally seen bore out in the high school library where I work. In the article it was said that many adults think that teens are eager to embrace every technology which comes on to the scene and the are very proficient with them as well. At my school, I have had to show students how to do things on the computers, which I remember thinking at the time were 'things they should know' since I too have thought that teens are mostly tech savvy gurus we adults should be consulting rather than the other way around. Like Buckingham said, this isn't always the case. As I write this, one of our students who recently took over the lead in the production of our morning announcements is yet again here in the library using more of his lunch time to work on the physical equipment and software that's housed here for that purpose.

Another point of view presented here was the idea that the youth of today are somehow unique in how they utilize technology. Often times the media will take a hold of something like a 'To Catch A Predator' episode or a news story of how some teenage girls or boys were 'cyber-bullying' or 'sexting' to show that this generation has some special disreputable quality all of their own. I know I'm getting older however, I certainly can recall nasty notes my peers sent to one another or rumors of others using the existing technologies for less than appropriate purposes.

In Why Heather Can't Read from MIT's Technology Review, the article's focus on the way in which young people like Heather Lawver have used technology to further their passion for writing is encouraging. She is obviously someone like the student above from my school who I mentioned liked audio and visual productions, both like to incorporate technology in their lives albeit in different fashions. This article reminded me of another student at our school who I met recently who shared with me about her passion for writing and I thought of her when I read about these online communities of online peer reviews. I wonder if something like the Sugar Quill web site mentioned in the article would be an appealing outlet that would help her develop her writing ability.

I understand where there might be some validity to their criticism of schools inhibiting student writing somewhat by focusing too much on grammatical elements but, I also think that part of the curriculum is included in schools for no good reason. Writing is more than style and a good writer will master all aspects of the process for maximum effect. While I have some disagreement with this author about their stance on what they seem to portray as grammatical pickiness, I do think they are correct in what seems to be their stance that the Internet is a great learning environment for young adults who have a vast array of places to find inspiration and critical but hopefully constructive feedback.

Lee Rainie's presentation at the Networked Learners Symposium also proved insightful in what he shared on young adult and adult users' usage of technology. The one thing which stood out the most to me were his comments on the amount of information that is being presented to teens and how that will only grow worse as they get older. At my graduation from high school back in 1990, our superintendent somewhat prophetically told us how the amount of knowledge we'd need for the real world would double every so many years and that it would only get worse so, we needed to prepare for that world. I think the reason I remember his words so well was that I found this to be true in my life in the years since then. Young or old, if you are even somewhat technologically active in today's society you have what Mr. Rainie called truncated attention spans. A good example might be that while I was watching the video, I have to admit that I simultaneously had three other windows open on my computer searching for tickets to this weekend's men's Illini basketball game, checking back with this course's Moodle page to see what I still needed to do for this week's class, and I was typing notes on Microsoft Word from the presentation in between that all.

The times we live in currently are overwhelming when it comes to the technology and media onslaught and the prospect of facing strange new changes in this regard still leaves me with a little bit of dread. Yet, having said that I also look forward to it with anticipation-what an odd combination! As adults who work with teens we must at least try to stay abreast of these developments so we can best serve our constituents in their pursuit of personal, academic, and professional goals. I feel there will always be 'too much information' in our world from now on, but at least the young people we help will be better able to find their way through it all because they were prepared well.

Are Those Who Hate Glee Trying to Protect Kids from Themselves?

This week's questions, which focus around characterizing young people's relationships with media, connect with one of the items we touched on in last week's class: the idea that much of media literacy consists of "protecting" young people from the media. While this can be important (it's awfully easy to stumble onto unintended topics on the internet, and kids should probably know how to avoid doing so), it often leads to some cringe-worthy responses.

The inspiration for this post is a piece I stumbled upon regarding a conservative backlash to "Glee," a Fox-owned series that premiered last fall (if you work with teens and haven't heard of it, you might want to open your ears!). That first article, at least, is a fringe group (and, in truth, it's not clear whether it's satirical), but a quick googling of "Christian Glee Response" brings up quite a few other reactionary articles. Even Time Magazine has a piece about whether Christian leadership and families are reacting to "Glee" with hostility. It's fairly clear that they are (browse through some of those google hits and you'll see an overwhelming majority in opposition), but why?

Much of the conservative backlash to the show comes from the fact that it "glorifies homosexuality" (some of those articles claim that even the heterosexual characters are, in essence, not gender-normative enough). This is not a new trend in conservative backlashes, of course, but the sense that some of these scandalized adults are focusing on the show's musical content is hard to shake off.

Ironically, there's a fair amount of opposition to "Glee" from the liberal camps (blogs in particular, as those links will show), as well. Specifically: characters are thinly-veiled stereotypes; those stereotypes are exploited without explanation; and the show frequently falls into painful, seemingly unintentional mistakes of ableism, sexism, racism, and so on. There have been a fair number of episodes that fall into some pretty unfortunate traps, including a pregnancy faked to keep a boyfriend, a dance number in which the character with a handicap spends the entire sequence on a bed, and the fact that the only character of color is a young Black woman who is little more than a sassy afterthought. Part of this is due almost certainly to the fact that much of the show's energies go toward producing the musical numbers and bringing in guest stars, including Kristin Chenowith (most recently of Wicked fame), rather than adding depth to the characters and plot.

And yet, these are the grown-ups talking, and some of those even love "Glee" despite their protests. Among the high school crowd, especially those who went through middle school as High School Musical and its respective sequels and live shows came around, "Glee" is a phenomenon. In it, kids see a dramatic representation of the realities of their lives, from clique wars to teen pregnancies (and faked ones). The much-lampooned gay character, for example, is mostly well-adjusted with a supportive group of friends, but still encounters homophobia from his peers. Teens live in a world of stereotypes, and as we read in the Buckingham piece for this week, much of that is involved with creating their identities. In attempting to define themselves, they must also define others, but with everyone just beginning to create their roles in life, the definitions are limited and elementary. The characters in Glee are not especially deep, but teens don't tend toward viewing peers outside of their own friend-group as having characters beneath their veneer.

In the first case, we have parents (and other adults) attempting to protect kids from viewing a lifestyle of which they do not approve. For many kids, doing so is impossible. In the second, we have proponents of social equality trying to discourage stereotype. Again, it is nearly impossible to shield children from the influences of the larger culture. At the same time, most adults do hope to instill certain characteristics in the youth who look to them for guidance. A much more effective way of approaching the issues, and giving teens the tools to find their way through it, is to discuss these issues. There's an interesting article by Rachel Simmons that I found when googling links for this post that covers talking to your kids about Glee. It includes asking questions about the stereotypes in the show. If you'd like to address the issues in the show with the teens in your world, I recommend taking a glance at it.

Universal Design for Learning

This week’s essential question centers on young people’s relationships with both media/information and communication technologies, and on the role of media in our students’ lives. A pundit wrote that our students today live in a rich, colorful world of multimedia – and then they go to school. There is a lot of truth in that, but I do think we are making progress as educators to become more open to the possibilities and the uses of technology in our classrooms and libraries. That will require us to transcend our generational digital differences in order to embrace ideas and tools out of our comfort zone. Making that leap will take some guidance and a lot of motivation on the part of educators and librarians. I have been exploring some excellent resources to help with the guidance part of it – and I am highly motivated to learn more!

Universal Design for Learning is the practice of providing multiple methods of "representation, engagement and expression" for all students to maximize their learning. Once again Joyce Valenza, along with Karen Janowski, hit a homerun with their wikispace - udtechtoolkit - a free technology toolkit for Universal Design for Learning in all classrooms. This wiki is a goldmine of information and links to even more information! For example, I found the link to the digital text of the book, Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning by David H. Rose & Anne Meyer (ASCD, 2002). Chapter 1 has a section covering brain research and new technologies. The point is made that recent brain studies show that the brain does not have just one overall learning capacity, but instead has multiple areas for learning. You can easily see the importance of that to educators who understand the power of technology in the classroom – new methods of teaching and for students to show what they’ve learned gives greater flexibility – more options for engaging the students in their work. What might not be so obvious is the implication for school librarians. While libraries and print text are historically linked (!) our libraries today are so much more than simply print text. New technology has offered new ways to connect our students with the stories, the authors, the ideas. Readers who fail the quiz on an assigned reading because they struggle with print may understand the story perfectly when they listen to the audio book. An author’s website may draw them in to the story line of a series. A web tour of locations in the story may bring the story alive by giving them needed background information to understand the context. I know many teachers who believe that the only way a student should study literature is through the traditional print based materials in the textbook or in the book they hand out in class. I disagree totally with that approach. I believe we would be withholding knowledge and depriving the students of the excitement of connecting with the story if we do not use all the tools and media available.

We have been talking about learning styles at our school, and about helping our students identify their own learning style, as well as helping teachers identify their own teaching style – they might not match up! The V.A.R.K. website has a very useful assessment tool – a questionnaire - for determining your predominant learning style. There are other assessment tools online, but V.A.R.K. goes a step beyond by providing help sheets. Each is tailored to the kind of learning style – for example Visual, Aural, Read/Write, and Kinesthetic (hence the name VARK). Each provides insight into 3 aspects of the learning style: best methods for taking in information, best methods for processing or learning that information, and best methods for sharing what you’ve learned.

These resources – the Universal Design for Learning technology toolkit, the digital book (Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age), and the V.A.R.K website provide so much useful information and insight to get us on the right track for helping our students both in the classroom and in the library.

My CAS focus is on finding ways to help teachers and librarians overcome barriers to successful collaboration – I see a lot of material here to explore and use. I am especially interested in the applications in the school library for connecting readers through the use of technology and digital applications. I am excited to have multiple ways to help students find out about new books, or learn about the author, the setting, the characters or gain background knowledge to increase their understanding. In our library a GSLIS practicum student last semester presented the Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award title book talks by using a Google Earth tour of the locations. We observed that more students stayed focused on the talks, asked questions and made notes of titles they wanted to read than in other class presentations. Presentations to five classrooms using this multimedia approach generated over 200 individual title requests from those students for the books on the reading list! The English teachers are giving extra credit for each title they read from the list, and the students are reading books they have chosen. The students are completing more book reports and my circulation has increased – those books are seldom on the shelves. There will be many more multimedia projects in the future for my library, for sure!