Thursday, February 7, 2008

Lexi's Intro of the Literacy Chapter in Jenkins

Lexi (her points and class contributions): Bruno Bettleheim (significance of fantasy; LBB remembers, "We live our lives by narratives." ) Anne Haas Dyson--what fantasies do for kids. How can kids participate in this culture? Question: How many kids have computers in homes? What goes on with these books (p. 176)? 2005: 55%. Lillian H: home-schooled example (Heather Lawver) amazing. James Paul Gee (community spaces)--people learn more from pop culture than from textbooks. Beta reading (feedback)--we should try it. Scaffolding: modeling learning/cognitive processes. Sweeney. Friere: Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Banking model. Bruffee and others picked up on the idea that this is not the only way: social significance. Constructivist theories. Who could not like student-initiated learning? Warner Brothers, man others mentioned in chapter. P. 185--good stuff in school? Kids think they can only do school work with school books. Maybe if they start with Harry, etc., the tools they learn with transfer. Several people spoke on using pop culture for this kind of transfer (SpongeBob). Public schools also have the problems of censorship, etc., in the chapter.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ken Wissoker, the editor of Duke Press, visited LSU two weeks ago. During his discussion of the future of the book he posed many insightful thoughts about why the book will be around for a very long time. The 15th century novel written on acid free paper is still around for our enjoyment, yet the floppy disc cannot be read by most new computers. Wissoker asserted that despite exciting new technologies the book is the safest bet for the long haul. What will happen when PDF is obsolete and millions of documents are lost, will there be a dark age of literature? Project into the future about 100 years, will there be technologies that will allow access the old? He also noted that reading from a novel is considerably more enjoyable than reading from a computer screen. So, the romantics out there that enjoy curling up with Pride and Prejudice for the sixth time, no worries, your fantasy wont end anytime soon.

Lilly Bridwell-Bowles said...

Thanks for highlighting this important point that Ken Wissoker made (and thanks for attending the luncheon). The problem of lifespans for storage media is one I completely understand. Before 1982, everything I ever wrote was on paper. Beginning that year, I wrote on 8-inch, truly "floppy" disks. Then I went to 5.25" disks, then to CD's, then to "jump drives," then to multiple back-ups on a portable hard drive and all the servers at Minnesota or LSU to which I have had access. My words live in "digital storage," but I don't trust any of them to survive unless I constantly move them to the next medium (or publish/print onto paper). As each new storage medium has come along, I've moved things from one to the next. The only "constant" these days has been file type, but as you point out with .pdf, I'll be changing and updating as long as I live. Some of the things I really care about have been published on paper, in books and journals, but not all--for example, this blog. I'm writing my first article that will be published entirely "on-line" right now. It has advantages: I can link to websites, images, video, and more--right from the text as I'm writing about that material--and the reader can go there immediately (more or less). But when readers print this article onto paper, only the information that I've discussed in words, literally, will be readable. Learning by doing: that's all I can say. Dr. L