Pithy Quotes

Chapter 5 is probably my favorite from Multiliteracies for a Digital Age by Stuart Selber. Here are some of the best quotations from that chapter and the epilogue:

In summing up, Selber says that we want to prepare students by emphasizing “functional literacy, critical literacy, and rhetorical literacy in ways that are effective and professionally responsible” (183).

What are we preparing them for? Well, I think these kinds of literacy (relating to technology and extrapolating to the rest of life) will prepare them for their careers, for good citizenship, and for their private lives. Parenting is one area in which I feel these literacies will be helpful; in fact, the variety of technologies available today makes me nervous to be a parent. And I’m not just talking about sexual predators in chat rooms; I’m thinking of trying to help my kids balance technology with the rest of life, interact online in edifying ways, and evaluate the ideas and truths that are so readily available.

He challenges teachers “to be courageous enough to experiment with technology in the classroom, even if that experimentation makes them rather uncomfortable, and even if it positions them as novices to some degree” (199).

I’m starting to realize that pride is one of the main things holding me back, keeping me from trying some new things in the classroom. (Besides teaching in Pummill, of course, which makes everything more difficult.) He’s right that many of my students probably know more than I do, and I am afraid to look like a fool. I know there are two responses to that: “stop being so vain” and “get out there and learn more so you won’t look stupid.”

Using technology in the classroom does change the “grounds for teacher authority” in some ways because “technology is one of the few areas where one can find an inverse relationship between age and expertise” (201).

True. And I want to be a real teacher-learner. Hence, here are my goals for next time I teach.

1. I will try to incorporate student blogging into the semester, following Lanette’s helpful example.

2. I will email more assignments/handouts to my students instead of always bringing them to class.

3. I might try commenting on student papers using Word?

4. If I don’t have use of a classroom management system like Blackboard, I will develop a website for the class using Google Sites.

They sound elementary, I know, but I have to start somewhere, since “an important role for English departments is to help position human-computer interaction as essentially a social problem” (235).

 

Selber, Stuart A. Multiliteracies for a Digital Age. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2004.