Winding Down and Just Getting Started

As my internship/practicum placement with Chapter 16 comes to a close, I’d like to take the opportunity to reflect on my experience. My intention in reflecting is not to be overly critical, but I cannot help but think about the mismatch between the duties/tasks with which I was charged and the practicality of what I could accomplish in my time shared with Chapter 16. If there were shortcomings, then there were a great many benefits, too, that are not to be overlooked. So, let’s start there.

First, in general, becoming acquainted with Chapter 16 and two of the persons who run it – Tim and Margaret – was a benefit in itself. Having an awareness of the website allows me to tap into a local and expanding literary resource that I wouldn’t have otherwise, and the diversity of the content of the website inspires my interest in unfamiliar literature and events surrounding and bringing together the Tennessee literary community. One such event was the Southern Festival of Books, held in early in October in downtown Nashville. I worked the event two out of the three days it was held, passing out bookmarks for Chapter 16, and, in the process, getting to know a few passersby, one of whom was an English teacher. Further, my experience demanded that I engage the online literary blogger community. I’ve spent no small amount of time reaching out to book bloggers near and far (responses varied) and getting to know where others’ literary interests lie, what they have to say about certain authors, genres, etc., thinking about their writing – blogging – styles, and comparing their interests, thoughts, and blogging with my own. What’s more is that I figured out how, to some extent, twitter works. Before my placement started, I had little to no idea of the inner-workings of the twitter community. Having to jump right in got me on the edge of my seat – on my toes – and made me do a (to use an English classroom term) close reading of what was going on, much like I had to do with blogs and bloggers. As I said in my first post, I’m new to this new media stuff in many ways, and having to write a blog and attempt to connect with bloggers and tweeters got me out of my comfort zone, my circa 2000 shell. It has been an experience I won’t soon forget, if ever.

The mismatch I spoke of earlier has to do with the nature of the online communities of bloggers and tweeters, and the way in which I (with instruction) went about engaging the members of those communities. As Lange and Ito (2010) describe in their article “Hanging out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out,” the way to be recognized and, to a large extent, to become a legitimate member in online communities (e.g., affinity spaces) is to give feedback. And lots of it. Thus, the way I went about contacting bloggers (I sent them a formalized letter, basically, in an email, requesting a link or “button” exchange with Chapter 16) had its evident shortcomings. Granted, some bloggers did agree to the proposal, but most either kindly said, “no, thanks” (for various reasons, admittedly) or didn’t respond at all. The way to do it, I think, is to comment, comment, comment on a blog to gain the recognition of that blogger, and then request a link exchange (if that’s even necessary – it seems to me that relationships online are formed by virtue of the large amounts of give and take that potentially occur). I said something similar to this in a prior blog post about twitter. If and when you “mention” someone in a tweet – if you tweet “at” him or her – then you gain that person’s recognition, hopefully. Then they might follow you and give a hoot about what you’re tweeting. Gaining such recognition and partnerships in these online communities takes much time and constant effort. Thus the notion that I could have made a substantial impact in merely forty hours of work – a mere week’s worth – was sort of foolhardy.

The readings I’ve done in my exploration of new media have transformed my understanding of what it means for adolescents and the potential for new media in the secondary classroom. In prior blog posts I’ve commented upon the potential twitter and youtube have for classroom use. There’s no doubt in my mind that I will utilize these forms of new media (and others) as I enter the classroom, both as ends in themselves and means to other, more traditional (old) media (yea – regular ol’ novels and poems and short stories and the like). At the moment, I’m wrapping up a presentation on graphic novels, quite a popular form of new media (even though, as Scott McCloud (1993) would argue, the medium of comics – graphic novels included under this heading – has been around for thousands of years and thus the newness of it – it not being part of the digital realm – may be questionable). The pedagogical implications for graphic novels are staggering, and it’s truly a wonder, the historical divergence of word and picture notwithstanding, why comics and graphic novels alike take on the negative connotations they do in the world of academia. If students were charged with creating a graphic novel of sorts, they hold enormous potential for collaborative effort; or, if done individually with an autobiographical thrust, they would engage students in identity construction and meaning-making and thinking critically about their social roles. Moreover, they demand multimodal literacy skills; can be used to teach literary terminology and techniques; are useful for engaging social, cultural and historical issues and movements; and can support struggling readers and English language learners, to name a few.

The place in academics for new media only seems to be growing, and, as an English teacher, I believe I should be at the vanguard of the movement to mobilize new media in bolstering learning in innovate ways, ways that compel the minds of adolescents and inspire in them the desire to learn in and outside the classroom. If I accomplish that, then I can say I’ve been successful. That’s some time coming, though. For now, and as always, I’ve still much to learn.

Getting to Know Cosmopolitanism

“Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all kinds of human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality.” -W

See: Here retrieved from here – Hello Twitter!

And here, from here – hey, thanks, Twitter!

Another take on education and cosmopolitanism:

HeRE or hEre

Did You Tweet for Class Today?

In my last post I discussed some possibilities for youtube videos to be integrated into an educational setting, with specific references to scholarly work. Also, I began to speculate, with that scholarly work in mind, how I might incorporate Twitter into a classroom that teaches Shakespeare. In this post, I’m going to discuss how Twitter can be applied more generally in an English classroom, with particular attention given to writing instruction.

This (rather short) discussion is based on Sheelah M. Sweeny’s article “Writing for the Instant Messaging and Text Messaging Generation: Using New Literacies to Support Writing Instruction,” in which she offers a variety of techniques to be employed that utilize digital information and communication technologies. Since I have been, as you know, working with Twitter to market Chapter16.org, it makes sense to explore its implications for writing instruction in an educational setting. Here’s to synthesis!

Writing oftentimes may  be an isolating event. But it doesn’t have to be – indeed this is one of the many considerations of writing that digital technology and the Internet have shown us. Twitter serves as a paradigm for this new epistemology of writing. If Twitter were to become part of an English class, the goal of writing in such a venue – tweeting – would be to create “a sense of belonging in the education setting,” according to Sweeny.

After my foray into Twitter, it’s easy to understand how this might play out. Each student creates an account and profile (if a student is on Twitter already, which is likely, he or she may want to create another account and profile, if possible); identifies and follows his or her classmates; then submits tweets based on class requirements. The immediacy, the real-time characteristic of Twitter, would potentially create a community environment. And the truncated space alloted for tweets takes pressure off of students to formulate some grand idea. All we would be looking for, really, is an interesting tidbit.

Transcending SpaceTime: Youtube, Twitter, Shakespeare and the Classroom

Recently, I’ve done some reading and watching on how to bring youtube into the classroom. James Trier of the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) gives an insightful overview of how to prepare and incorporate youtube videos – based on their availability and immediacy – into an English classroom, and how these videos foster a critical engagement not just with the videos themselves but with related, more traditional, canonical texts (e.g., relating videos of racist cartoons and Twain’s Huck Finn). And what, who is more canonical than the Bard himself? In a complement (not necessarily intentional) to Trier’s article, Christy Desmet, in her “Teaching Shakespeare and YouTube,” elaborates on why, in part, and how to bring Shakespeare youtube videos and the classroom together. She lists three important motivating factors for teachers to do so: students are creatively inspired by youtube, youtube encourages peer review, and repetition of viewing and abbreviated video length make for a desirable unit for critical engagement. She goes on to extrapolate on the hows of teaching Shakespeare youtube videos and points to a few videos in particular. I took a peek. Good stuff; here are two of them:

Because I’ve been on twitter lately for my gig with Chapter 16, I started thinking about Shakespeare and twitter, and if there may be a way to mobilize such a couple for classroom use. Lo and behold! The Bard is on twitter! I found a user who lists quotes from Shakespeare – albeit, in Portuguese, which holds a distinct potential for learning not be to discussed here. The Reduced Shakespeare company tweets quite frequently, and with greater investments in time, I may be able to devise a use for some of what they post for educational purposes. An impostor tweets as the very Bard himself, often combining Shakespearean English with contemporary idiom. In a classroom, we might use this masquerader’s tweets as a way to access, to bring closer to home, an otherwise unfamiliar, Shakespearean idiom.

This is great food for thought, and I’m hugely excited about the potential to get teenagers invested in Shakespeare through media that are familiar to them.

Learning How to Fly

In continuing my placement with Chapter 16, I’ve spent some time on Twitter, a social media venue to which I rarely have been in the past. It’s much like other forums of social or new media in which to gain an identity, to obtain recognition, a user must offer insight or otherwise meaningfully make oneself known to other participants. Take, for example, an instance from Lange and Ito’s (et al.’s) article, “Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media,” in which Anime Music Video creator AbsoluteDestiny submits that he had a tough time getting feedback at first, until he “discovered that the way to become noticed and to get feedback [. . .] was to give feedback to other people” (p.275, 2010). So it is with Twitter. I’ve been “mentioning” my tale off and the results (kind of) show it: I have two followers! I anticipate that by engaging – by doing a close reading of Twitter – I will augment my Twitter literacy and gather more followers. Twitterers, unlike some other social and new media users or creators that submit work for a small audience, seem to have a broad target audience in mind, although I’m not certain this is “the rule.” Building a profile, frequently the first step in “hanging out” with New Media, is central to a Twitterer’s identity.

How to Fly

Twitter is a mecca for intertextuality. Most tweets will lead the user to other spaces on the web, which will ineluctably lead to more spaces and so on and so forth. What’s more is that Twitter, like Facebook, has its own conventionalized form of communication – the tweet – that readers must make sense of (enter link and new digital space) and that is attributed to an icon that identifies the user. Thus users construct identity not only through a profile, but through the layering of multimodal representation.

This merely scratches the surface – gently, perhaps – of Twitter. Having said that, I think I’m beginning to learn how to fly.

Engaging and Making New Media

This week two of my classmates, Max and Russ, and I put together a video essay that addresses the huge question: What is New Media? At the very least, because of the rapid rate of technological innovation, the all-encompassing answer to this question seems to shift annually, monthly, weekly, daily. We attempted, in our unique way, to get at the meaning of new media and its practices while engaging in those very practices. Take a peek: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VItKT3ifXTM

There were many ideas tossed around, and many that we would have liked to incorporate that didn’t make the cut. We went for a pastiche of images and quotes in an attempt to get at the decentralization of authority. The quotes are drawn from many authors – granted, though, they are from one text, mainly, albeit that text is an edited compilation. The viewer hears at least four different voices. Again, we tried to exhibit a mixing, a meshing of authorial voices.

We took images from myriad online sources. These are part and parcel to new media, just as Screen Capture, our method for compiling the images, and iMovie, our method for making the final cut, are. In many ways then, the making of the movie itself defined the practices that are part of new media. We engaged the very thing we tried to define.

Of course, humor attended.

A Meeting at the Festival

This weekend I attended the Southern Festival of Books, which turned out to be an awesome event. Tons of authors showed up to read from and comment on their work in live sessions that were held in and under the capitol building grounds/plaza. For readers and fans to be a part of this sort of exhibition is truly a rare and memorable experience. Unfortunately for yours truly, I missed, because of work, the session held by William Gay, one of my favorite Southern writers. I recommend any and all of his works, including Twilight, Provinces of Night, The Long Home, and I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down, a collection of short stories.

 

While I enjoyed the festival, I was there to do some work for Chapter 16 . We ran into some technical difficulties however, and my original assignment to work the Chapter 16 booth – which, as Margaret, the editor of Chapter 16, put it, didn’t actually exist – was supplanted by the charge to walk around and pass out bookmarks and talk about the website.

In doing so, I met an eighth grade English teacher who teaches at a school in Smyrna. He was kind of enough to stop and share some of the interesting stories from his experience, one in particular about an infamous parent who went to the school board after this teacher had his students, one of whom was this parent’s child, write on a social issue of the student’s choice. The student chose abortion.

Of my experience at the Southern Festival of Books, I’ll remember this encounter most vividly as time works its muscle on my memory. His love for the literature and the English classroom was clear by the way he spoke of his profession, and he only reinforced my aspiration to become a guide for young adults and adolescents as they encounter this strange design we call reality.

Borges and High School

In class (yesterday) we briefly touched on the tenability of reading/assigning  ”The Garden of Forking Paths” in a high school class. At first, I was skeptical about high schoolers’ ability to, first, understand the story and, second, offer an interpretation of it. So, I wondered where I might find evidence of the “fiction,” as Borges called it, being taught in school. Where should I turn? New media, of course! Youtube!  I found two videos of adolescents dealing with “The Garden of Forking Paths.”

One is a rather entertaining video re-creation of the story, replete with humor and interesting cinematography. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZEeaoZZLck.

The other features several students rapping about the story. Find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTO3g12UtlA

And while the latter is mostly recounting the plot events that happen in the fiction, their rap does convey their ability to comprehend the basic ideas Borges puts forth. And because both of these videos are part of new media and the digital space, we may surmise that these students grappled with the metaphorical significance of the ideas of alternate realities in the story as it relates to the digital space and information processing.

In another reality, though, none of this happened.

Until Next Time

Well, it’s slow going with my practicum placement thus far. Tim and Margaret told Charles and me that we would each receive an email about potential avenues and/or tasks to explore in working with social and new media. Unfortunately, that email has not arrived yet. So, I thought to take the time look around Chapter 16 to a) become more familiar with the site and its contents and b) hopefully link you readers to some interesting literary nuggets that go into Chapter 16.

Before introducing (via link) some of the literature that I found of particular interest, I want to direct your attention once again to the Southern Festival of Books and, notably, its facebook page. This festival is going to be awesome and full of interesting writers, so come on out October 8-10 at the War Memorial Plaza in downtown Nashville. Of noteworthy expected attendees is the recently decorated author, Ron Rash, recipient of the Frank O’Connor award for the short story form.

In addition, I invite all of you to follow Chapter 16 on facebook, in addition to the book festival.

There’s a wealth of literary-oriented information on Chapter 16, and I’m still flipping through its pages. What I really found to be interesting is this review of a book,  by Vanderbilt English professor, Sam Girgus, on the “cinema of redemption” in American history. Levinas and the Cinema of Redemption: Time, Ethics, and the Feminine explores themes of social and ethical responsibility and the submission of the self in films from Capra to Scorcese.

If you’re a film fan, then I suggest checking out Chapter 16 for more on this and other filmic exegesis.

Until next time.

Didn't know redemption looked like this

Chapter 16: Available for Consumption

As part of my coursework en route to becoming an English teacher, I’ll be supporting Humanities Tennessee (for, at least, forty hours during this semester) develop its social media presence, notably for Chapter 16, a community of Tennessee “writers, readers, and passersby.” Accordingly, I had the opportunity to meet with Margaret Renkl, editor of Chapter 16, and Tim Henderson, director of digital programs, on Friday, September 17, to discuss the direction and shape my work for Chapter 16 should take.

Charles, a fellow student and friend, and I are charged with the tasks of finding ways to identify would-be users of Chapter 16 and reaching out to them so to further develop Chapter 16′s social networking partnerships and status. We also intend to establish better – by which I mean more involved and complementary – relationships with the authors reviewed or otherwise featured on Chapter 16. Margaret, Tim, Charles and I discussed the potential of twitter, facebook, etcetera and also more focused methods like building relationships with book bloggers. Blog rolling and other means of getting cross-linked within the culture of online book/literature lovers should be especially significant for increasing search-optimization and thus increasing traffic.

One last item: The Southern Festival of Books, will be hosted by Humanities Tennessee from October 8 to October 10. Many Tennessee or otherwise Southern authors, including one of my favorite Tennessee writers, William Gay, are expected to attend. Podcasts from the 2009 festival are available for consumption.